This is the end of the second day! What a day it’s been. I’ll get started! After finishing the morning update, I got ready and went to one of the many neighborhood noodle restaurants to get some brunch. The place was called “The Little Bean Noodle Restaurant,” for what reason I don’t know. I didn’t see a single bean on the menu, nor was there a bean in my food. I got something that looked edible from the menu (the names of the menu items were inordinately complicated), for not all of the food items looked palatable. When my food came, it turned out that I ordered spicy beef noodles (why couldn’t they have just written that?!), and they were delicious. I’ve been trying to get my sinuses cleared, and the spicy noodles did the trick. My nose was running all over the place, and I’m sure the other customers thought there was something wrong with me. My noodle meal came with some cabbage (also tasty), and some soymilk concoction that was very hot and very good. I’m the best foreign noodle-restaurant-chooser in Beijing, I think.
I took the subway to Dong Dan, which is a little to the east of Tian’An Men. Turns out there is a huge basketball center very close to the Dong Dan station, and is quite the hip location in the warmer months. I walked back towards Tian’An Men, checking out some of the sites along the way. The Oriental Plaza is right by the station, which is a HUGE shopping mall/office building/hotel. The plaza is made up of 5 buildings (at my count), and spans a few city blocks. I saw some interesting stores there, including Tiffany’s, western clothing stores, and a watch store whose most defining feature was a 7 foot tall advertisement with Nicolas Cage. Who would have thought that I would see Nicolas Cage, of all people, at a watch store in Beijing?! I can’t escape his bad acting anywhere!
At this point, I was accosted by not one but two groups of Chinese citizens trying to finagle me into visiting one of their art exhibitions. I’ve fallen for this once, and you shant catch me again! The art is generally bad and, without fail, overpriced.
I also passed the Beijing Hotel, which looked to have been built in the early 1900s or the late 1800s. I turned north past the hotel, in search of the Imperial Wall Ruins Park, which was located somewhere in the middle of an expansive and confusing Hu Tong. However, I prevailed and found the park, which turned out to be a little bit of a disappointment. What made the visit to the park worth all the trouble was this little temple-building, whose porch had clay busts of the last 12 emperors or so. They were priceless. Guess which one was my favorite.
I then wandered through the Hu Tong, following the Forbidden City North. May I take a moment here to again mention the immensity of the Forbidden City? It’s big. I was going to skirt Jing Shan Park again, but I realized that the price of entry was only 2 Yuan, not 100 Yuan. I learned later on that the 100 Yuan tickets were for frequent attendees of the park, perhaps for a year’s membership, or something. The park was beautiful, and the view of the Forbidden City and surrounding area was breathtaking. Perhaps that was just the wind on the top of the hill that was breathtaking (Jing Shan = scenic mountain). The temperature hovered around freezing the entire day, and the wind was blowing extremely hard the entire day. My face is raw, and on more than one occasion, I was almost knocked over by the wind. No joke.
I then headed north to see the Drum Tower and the Bell tower. Both of these towers, along with Jing Shan Park, lay to the north of Forbidden City, along the north-south axis of Beijing. I made it just in time to see a drum performance, and it was very cool. Five drummers performed on drums that ranged from 1.12 meters in diameter to around 2 meters in diameter. I learned that from the sign there. The Drum Tower was the way that Imperial China kept time during the day. Along with sundials, the Drum Tower had an ingenious method for keeping time with 4 water vessels and something about 3600 metal balls, which would fall on a cymbal every 4 minutes, or something to that tune. It was very complicated, I promise. On every Imperial Quarter Hour (not entirely like our own), the drummers on Drum Tower would beat their drum to announce the time, on any or all of the 25 drums atop the 150-foot tower.
Bell Tower was a little less daunting than Drum Tower, and it was used for keeping time at night. The ancient Chinese night was divided into 5 sections, each corresponding to an animal. The beginning of each section was announced by tolling the 63 ton copper bell atop the tower. Here’s a story: Many moons ago the Emperor wanted a 63-ton bell made to go on top of his new tower. The workers were having trouble getting the bell to smelt correctly, and so the king gave them an 80-day mandate, at the end of which if the bell was not complete, the emperor would behead all of the bell-makers. The bell-makers tried their darndest, but the bell would simply not smelt. On the last day, the daughter of the chief bell-maker determined that the reason they could not make the bell was of supernatural origin. So, as the emperor approached the bell-making headquarters to remove the heads of all present, she threw herself into the vat of copper. Turns out that was just what the copper needed, the copper behaved as good copper should, and bell came together nicely.
While I was on the Bell Tower attempting to evade a group of American tourists who had a fairly inaccurate concept of Chinese history, I ran into Chang Qiang (try to say that ten times fast). Qiang (surnames come first in China), is a soldier on duty in Beijing. He’s been here for 4 years, and still has another two. We started chatting on the tower, and we hung out for the rest of the afternoon. He was off today, and was taking advantage of his military ID: he doesn’t have to pay to get into any historical sites. Pretty nifty.
Qiang is from Jiang Su, a province just north of Beijing. His father and mother both work on their farm, farming corn, soybeans, and some kind of fruit/vegetable/legume that I don’t understand. We talked about everything, and Qiang is quite the sports buff. He loves the NBA and playing basketball, and his favorite players are Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. He also like soccer, and his favorite teams are Germany and Argentina (hmmm…). We talk a good bit about life in the American South, and I busted out my handy-dandy picture book.
We chatted on the way to the way to the Confucius Temple, which was in the Fodor’s top 5 things to do while in that part of the city. While on the way, Qiang stopped to buy us both hot milk tea.Too bad Fodor’s couldn’t pay the entrance fee to the temple for me. It didn’t look like it was worth the money, but I did snap a picture of the entrance. We tried to stop by another Buddhist Temple in the Neighborhood, but it was closed for the day. Instead, we walked north towards Di Tan Park, or Park of the Earthly Altar. A lot of the sights in the park were closed off for the winter, but the park is going to be amazing to return to in the spring. It seemed like the entire park was made up of flowering plants.
We headed back towards the subway, as the sun was going down and he needed to get back to his bunker (or something…). We parted ways in a metro not far from my stop, and I got his number. When I have a chance on one evening or weekend, we’re going to meet up again and get a bite to eat, or something. I think I have a man-crush. I got out at my subway station, and I was yet again confounded by the complications of the subway station.
I ventured to another noodle restaurant near my dorm, which was called “The Small Chinese Herb Restaurant.” The special ingredient in all of their food was this Chinese herb, but the nature of this herb remained obscure for me. I know that I fought off the urge to fall asleep in my beefy herby noodles though, and it looks like it may be an early night for me.
I talked to the people at the front desk, and it looks like I’m the only person with ACC staying in this dorm as of current. So much for finding a fellow student!
For those of you in the engineering and architecture world, I think you may have been missing an important architectural paradigm. It’s called constructive emptiness. Think about it. It’s the next big thing.
I’ll write again soon!
Love,
Jamey
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