My family and other edibles

OK, so thats a bit of a cryptic title, but I'm sure some will get it...

Firstly, sorry for my being slack in posting for a while now. I have just been battling to get to a computer whilst in a sober state. So many people keep passing through this hostel and now with this week being a week-long public holiday they've all found themselves stranded in Beijing with nothing to do but partake of the insanely cheap beer. I constantly feel compelled to join them...

A typical scene from my hutong... bring on the R2 quarts!

One of the local rickshaw drivers.

I've actually become a bit of a tour-guide around here. After nearly a month of living in Beijing I've gotten to know most of the sites, and all of the restaurants in my hutong, though this isn't always such a delicious concept... I've discovered that every night at around midnight one of the restaurants prepares its dog meat in the street. They first use a blow torch to shave the dog and then cut it up right there for all the world to see. Yum yum.

I've also befriended a tailor down the road who is happy to sell all my friends heavily discounted tailormade clothes. I'm definitely going to have to have a couple of suits etc. made myself. I've always wanted a bright yellow silk tuxedo!

Even the little kids on the back of mommy's bicycle aren't afraid to let a spit-ball fly...

Getting to know people in the area sort of reached its zenith this evening actually, when the owner of the local hot-pot restaurant recognised me from previous occasions and coerced me in to helping him with his new english menu. Truth be told, I was more than happy to help as he's always been so friendly and tonight he laid on a massive dinner of lamb and prawns for me! It was kinda cool to sit there with my Chinese dictionary and repair the bad translations for him. Some were pretty obvious, like "Crap" instead of "Crab"!

Dinner tonight with my friendly hot-pot restaurant owner, Zhen.

I've been so spoiled recently it seems. Last night an old business colleaque af my aunt Jenny, Fucheng, took me to an amazing Roast Duck restaurant in Wanfujing. I have never tried anything so delicious before. Thank you Fucheng for your incredible kindness! I'm honestly going to have to roll south to Thailand after my time in China...

Its golden week now, as I mentioned, so Beijing is insanely busy. I still have my classes this week, I will be so sad to end them on Friday as I've really enjoyed my lessons. On Sunday my mum arrives, so that will be my next chapter I guess...

One of the hundreds of stalls that awaits my mums credit card in the famous Xiu Shui market

I'm feeling very Olympic today...

After three weeks in Beijing I finally made it out to Andingmen Dajie to see the Olympic village today. Its obviously still very much under construction so the site is very dusty etc., and its hard to get close to the action as their are guards everywhere. But wondering around was interesting anyway as three of the buildings are very out of the norm.

The main stadium is built to resemble the intertwined twigs of a bird's nest (not really sure why?), while the communications centre will look like a microchip (fair enough link there). The aquatics arena is on its own mission altogether with thousands of suspended Teflon air pockets combining to form a translucent cube that will apparently be very earthquake resistant and energy efficient.

The National Olympic Stadium in all its martian spaceship-like glory...

And the even more funky aquatics centre.

And what (the architects say...) they will look like next year.

The communications centre. The slits will supposedly be illuminated waterfalls come Olympics time.

Which should look something like this.

What... no leaning on spades while one guy works? We're not in Africa anymore Toto...

One concern that may become an issue closer to the games is the air in this city. Expect to see athletes breathing through airfilters... Apparently they are making strides in combatting polution, but if thats the case I can't begin to imagine what it used to be like!

And a couple of random pics, 'cause I can.

I just had to take a picture of this... "Beijing First Experimental Primary School". Hmmm...

Off to school on a sunny spring day in Beijing.

The Hanging Temple and Yuangang caves near Datong

On Friday evening an entire bus load of American grad school girls arrived at my hostel... but I got on a train to Inner Mongolia...

It was a bit of a spur-of-the-moment decision to go to Datong; the English guys I had been hanging out with here in Beijing were both leaving this weekend and I figured I should do something while I have some free time (next weekend SA will be playing in the World Cup Cricket final so I can't possibly travel then!). I always thought Datong was a bit far flung, but then realised I could do it between two overnight trains.

My first train left Beijing at 11:40pm on Friday night, arriving in Datong at 7am. I managed to get a berth in a soft sleeper compartment so got a good rest overnight and was thus able to head straight out on a tour. The first stop was at the remarkable Hanging Temples about an hour and a half out of the city. These 1500 year old temples literally hang off a cliff face above a riverbed. The river was apparently very prone to flooding (a Chinese version of Laingsburg...), and the flooding was obviously caused by dragons, so the temples were built in order that prayers could be offered to the dragons. Logical enough.

The amazing temples towering above.

I guess the Ancient Chinese weren't too sure what religion Dragons were; the temples contain icons from Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism and Confucionism.

Beautiful.

The old riverbed is now a garden after a dam proved more effective than prayer...

After the Hanging Temple my tour took me to the Yuangang Grottoes just outside Datong. This amazing string of 54 caves containing more than 55,000 statues were built from as far back as 400AD. Dug into a line of cliffs and filled with some incredibly intricate carvings, they a truly wonderous place to visit. The older caves are more rough-hewn, but the most striking, with massive Buddhas looming above you. The more recent caves, from around 650AD, are dug deeper into the mountain and contain much more intricately carved scenes. These scenes depict such things as the life of Buddha, but also contain traces of Hindu and Greek mythology.

Looking east from outside cave 18 towards caves 5 and 6.

The incredible Buddhas carved around cave 18.

Amazing though it is, this isn't even the biggest Buddha, it was just in daylight so I could photograph it properly...

Inside the spectacular cave 6.

Trying to capture some more of cave 6 proved difficult with so little light...

But photos can't do it justice anyway...

My return train left last night at 11pm, so I had a long wait in Datong, and I was only able to get a hard sleeper ticket as China has the irritating situation where you cannot buy return tickets until you arrive at the place. I got back to my hostel at 6am this morning. Think I might go back to bed now...

A touch of Buddhism and Supersport 2

Yesterday I missioned off to the Foreigners' Police Department to look at getting an extension for my visa. After wandering around for ages trying to find the place (the people who draw maps for guide books need help!) and then queueing for an age I was told the extension is only valid for 30 days from the date of application so I'll have to go back at the end of the month.

Whilst in that area though, I got to visit the Tibetan temples of Yonghegong. Though the temples etc are very beautiful, I just love the propaganda behind it all. As you will know, China is not particularly friendly with Tibet. Yet, they use Yonghegong to show the world that this isn't the case anymore. The signs everywhere declaring China's love of Tibetan culture are pretty amusing, as are the fake Tibetan monks wandering around (at best they're sanctioned by the government).

One of the many beautiful temple buildings at Yonghegong.

There were people burning incense and praying everywhere.

One of the sights at Yonghegong is an amazing 18 metre high Buddha carved out of a single piece of sandalwood that took 3 years to transport from Tibet. Unfortunately photos are not allowed to be taken inside the temple buildings but the size of the building should give you an idea of scale...

Aarh!

From Yonghegong I made my way to class via the market of Ya Show as my mum is coming to visit in May so I need to scout out this stuff.

Last night was Alex's last in Beijing before he too heads off to Tibet, and we had a couple of beers at dinner to send him off. At some point we realised that the South Africa versus England World Cup game was on and we decided to head to expat country to find a bar that was showing it. A fellow Safa I met a while back recommended a place to me and we were very pleasantly surprised to find the bar had a big screen showing Supersport 2, one of the South African sports channels. We only got to watch the England innings before the bar closed, but I'll definitely have to head back there for some rugby this weekend.

Great Wall to Wall tourists!

Hmmm... Badaling, what can I say? I joined Andy and Alex on their first excursion to the Great Wall today as they had chosen to go to Badaling, a section I hadn't been to yet. A combination of determination and a little bit of (my very poor) Mandarin meant that we avoided the 250yuan package tours and 150yuan tourist buses and managed to find a good public bus that only cost 12yuan each way. That proved to be a very good move as the wall was not a good experience.

Badaling was the first section of the wall to be reconstructed and as it is the closest to and most accessible from Beijing it attracts a lot of people. Almost the entire section of wall was jammed with people and the ensuing hawkers bothered one all the way. I will definitely recommend the Jinshanling to Simitai section to anyone instead!

Yeah, it is the Great Wall, but just look at all the people and junk on sale...

The eastern section was even worse!

Adding a little Olympics kitch to the scene as only the Chinese can...

At least we found a little respite at the top of the mountain where the fat cannot tread...

Tomorrow it's back to class to try yet again to get my spoken language up to snuff. I'm starting to get a bit despondent with that side of things as I'm really struggling to make progress. I'm thoroughly enjoying learning to read Hanzi, and even managed my first full paragraph today. But spoken is proving much more tiresome. I guess my brain is totally photographic. The sounds are all incredibly similar and the meanings of those sounds so diverse. Aaah!

Anna sent me a photo from my birthday dinner... That's Kiko on the right trying to understand what the hell I'm trying to say in Chinese.

Acrobats, bai jiu, and yet another hangover

I managed to recover from my birthday shenanigans on Thursday, even getting to class for a lesson on tenses in Chinese. I also tried to be proactive in life by attending a business networking function at the Hilton Hotel; I thought it would be good to see what the expat business environment is like here. It turned out to be a complete waste of time, partly due to my hangover but also as I couldn't stomach the dark-suited corporate types.

My lesson yesterday was cancelled as Lei was ill, but it gave me a chance to work on my reading skills in the morning and I took Andy and Alex on a bicycle tour in the afternoon. Last night we went to an acrobatics show at a theatre just down the road. It was pretty spectacular. After the show we had dinner in our hutong and then headed off to SanLiTun, the expat bar area. We noticed quickly that booze was ten times more expensive there than back in our hutong so we ended up drinking beers and bai jiu at the street stalls and eating the little chinese kebabs that are sold everywhere here in the evenings. From SanLiTun we headed across to the HouHai lake area to check out the lounge bars that proliferate that area. Again the stupidly hiked prices discouraged us from staying too long.

Some Chinese acrobats in the mix

Sorry about the blurred photos but as always I was in the cheap seats!

Come on... I can do that...

A well timed shot... an acrobat somersaults through a hoop over ten foot in the air

Today, after recovering from the previous nights bai jiu imbibations, we did some shopping at the crazily cheap Silk Street market and then headed to one of the beautiful parks around the Forbidden City for a bit of R&R. I think tonight will be a quiet one for a change...

Spring has sprung in Beijing!

Timmy diligently doing some Hanzi studying in the sunshine.

Zhu ni shengri gaoxing

Thats "happy birthday to you" in Chinese... As a result of a great birthday here in Beijing I am now suffering (again!). I have to go to class soon so this won't be a long post but maybe I can just slot in a few photos.

Lei laoshi, my awesome teacher at Frontiers Mandarin School.

The temples in Lishan park, behind the Forbidden City

The view back over the Forbidden City

Chang 'An Jie, the main street in Beijing with its huge bicycle lane. Heading towards Tian'anmen square.

Two of the people responsible for my current hangover, Anna and Fiona from Ireland at the Temple of Heaven yesterday.

The lowering of the flag ceremony in Tian'anmen last night.

Anna, Fi, Andy, Alex, Me and Kiko (the chinese girl who lured us to the rock concert last week) celebrating my birthday in a hotpot restaurant last night.

Alex showing us all just how good Bai Jiu (Chinese rice spirit) really tastes...

An Easter Egg story: Humpty dumpty on a Great Wall

I'm now feeling well settled in Beijing. I have started my lessons, I have two one-on-one hours every afternoon, and I'm sure they'll really help. Its so upsetting to try so hard to speak a language only to have people stare blankly at you when your tones are slightly off, I'm just chuffed when I remember the right words!

But I've realised I have learned a bit in my studies in SA and I can bargain pretty well. Which incidently is a useful talent when everything is as (potentially) cheap as it is here in China. Designer clothes and accessories, some obviously fakes (but since when did I care), cost next to nothing... so put your Christmas present orders in here!

At my hostel I met 4 brothers from California and we ended up exploring quite a bit together. Besides some interesting meals around our hutong, from dubious dog meat to delicious Beijing duck, we also found ourselves at a Chinese heavy metal concert on Friday night, and spent yesterday cycling around the city. They left today for Tibet.

Jordan, Peter, Nathan and Drew on our tour of Beijing by bicycle yesterday.

Yum, yum, a scorpion....

A night of heavy metal, chinese-style...

Today I finally made it out to the Great Wall. I was planning on going yesterday but a severe concert-induced hangover put paid to that idea. The section I visited is a bit further out of Beijing than the areas that are usually touristed, I just felt like avoiding crowds on a weekend. My shuttle dropped me off at Jinshanling and from there I hiked the 12kms along the wall to Simatai. Its pretty hard going as the wall is built along the top of the ridges and thus rises and falls constantly. Again I'll leave it to the photos, but I must say the spectacle is worth a flight to China on its own...