Beijing is a big city… my legs are very tired.
Gina. Beijing, China.
Yesterday was another great day! It was sunny and we even had blue skies which I think is quite a rarity since the city is supposed to be so polluted. I think the clean up for the Olympics has done a lot of good because so far it doesn’t seem very dirty or polluted. It might have helped that we got rained on quite a bit our first day here. Lima was much more dirty and harder on my sinuses, but that might be because it was in a desert where it never rained and all the dirt just built up.
Our new hostel is very nice. It’s called the Red Lantern House and the rooms are set around a pretty indoor courtyard that is covered in hanging red lanterns and other decorations. There’s even a little fish pond with a tiny bridge over it! Our room is very nice. It’s an 8 bed dorm, but it’s broken up into two floors. We even have a little sitting area and lots of windows. We took the downstairs even though it has bunk beds because there was already someone upstairs and it felt weird to impose on them since the whole downstairs is empty. It turns out that he’s from Peru and I plan to ask him all of my silly questions! He seems very friendly and is here studying so will be staying for four months. Hopefully we’ll learn his name and get to know him. He speaks perfect English and we wonder if he has lived in the U.S.
Yesterday we had our new hostel call around about Chinese lessons. The young girl who works the help desk was very confused about why we wanted to learn Chinese! It was a pretty funny conversation with me trying to explain that it would make traveling easier and her telling me that everyone speaks English! But we’ve already found that ordering in restaurants without pictures is difficult and we would just like to be able to pick different things other than just the handful on the menu with a picture attached. Finally an older lady at the hostel gave me information and a nice letter in Chinese for a university near by. But once we got there it turned out that her contact no longer worked there and that it was actually a sports college! They all seemed to think we were crazy for coming there for Chinese lessons! They do give Chinese lessons, but to their foreign students that are part of the sports program. They called the teacher anyway to find out if they would take us, but it was very expensive. We went to an information office nearby where we’d gotten a map the day before to ask them, and they were very helpful. They called a school and found out the price and where it was. It’s a more reasonable price, we think, but afterwards we were both unsure if the price she gave us was for the whole two weeks or for a day! So we need to call again or go by to arrange things.
Today we’re going to try to take it a little easier on the walking since both of us are very stiff with tired feet from the past couple of days! Beijing is pretty flat, which is great, but it’s also very, very big and we’ve been walking everywhere. After lunch (a delicious eggplant and pork stir fry and some yummy veggies) we went to Beihai Park and walked around. It was such a beautiful day and there were lots of people out walking around the giant lake in the middle of the park under the trees. There were a lot of old buildings and things to see around the lake. Supposedly the park was created originally by Kubla Khan, which is pretty cool. We had fun watching people play Go (a neat Chinese strategy game with black and white chips that look like Mentos… I’m hungry!), exercise, sing and dance. We sat for a while in a gazebo on the water where a group of older men were singing. It was enchanting. Their voices sounded so good together and the acoustics in the gazebo were so amazing–whenever they would crescendo the whole gazebo would fill with their voices. It was beautiful. We had a cute exchange with a toddler and an old woman. The old woman whispered to the little girl things like “hi” and “hello” and then she would say them loudly to us and we’d laugh and say them back. She was very excited about talking to us.
I’ve noticed that a lot of babies and toddlers have either shaved heads or very, very short hair. They also often have crotchless pants instead of diapers so they can just go where they stand! I remember my friend Rachael crying when she first had to cut her little boy’s hair… cultural differences!
We bravely (and sort of desperately, we were starving!) chose a restaurant for dinner that didn’t have pictures. But we chose a dish from someone else’s table and used our phrase book to ask the waitress to suggest something that was cheaper, and it turned out really well.
All of this talk about food has made me realize how hungry I am. We’ve been going to bed very early (we made it to nine last night!) which means waking up early. We got up at 7:30 this morning and now it’s 9 and I’ve been typing away without any breakfast. I’m sure we’ll have more adventures today for me to write about later.
Tags: Beijing, China, Red Lantern Inn
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