Beijing Diary

The End

2006-07-28T22:00:00.000+08:00

Memories Will Fade

Qianmen

2006-07-27T22:00:00.000+08:00

Boarded-up Shops

Ramshackle Buildings

Excavation

Vision of the Future

Symbol of the Olympics

Changes

2006-07-24T22:00:00.000+08:00

This is our last week in Beijing, and as we pack up and get ready to leave it is feeling time to finish things up and ponder our time here.

I think the most striking feature of living in Beijing for 5 months has been the enormous rate of change. Even over this short period dramatic changes have taken place.

Demolished Canteen
The most dramatic changes, and the easiest to document, are the destruction. This is a picture of what used to be one of the student canteens on the BNU campus - the one where I used to enjoy having breakfast because one of the servers spoke English and could help me choose. This whole block of three canteens has now been demolished, and I now eat breakfast in the apartment!

Forlorn Pingpong Table
At the larger city scale thriving shopping streets are suddenly boarded up and whole neighborhoods of the old hutong areas disappear almost overnight, as I mentioned earlier and was also written about in the July 12 issue of the New York Times. (I plan to make one more visit to the Qianmen area to see how much of what we saw at the beginning of our stay remains.)

The destruction is easiest to notice since reconstruction is inevitably slower, and it remains to be seen whether the results are an improvement, an assessment that may well depend on who you are - a visiting tourist or a Beijing native.... But there have been remarkable changes that are clear improvements as well. A dirty channel full of debris and construction equipment at the beginning of our stay has miraculously turned into a river with green banks and lotus plants.

There is also clear progress in the renovation of many of the tourist attractions - the Temple of Heaven was recently reopened and the Summer Palace renovation seems nearly complete - compare these two photos:

Summer Palace in March

Summer Palace in July

The sky was bluer in July too, but unfortunately this doesn't seem to be a real trend!

Another change: probably half of the enormous bus fleet has been replaced with modern air-conditioned vehicles so that it is now much more pleasant to ride the buses. And while we were away in May the system for paying fares on the buses largely changed from getting a paper ticket from the conductor (or from one of up to 3 conductors on the double-length buses) to waving a card at an electronic reader. (The old paper ticket system is still allowed.) The subways are making a similar transition right now. Many new lines are being built too - another cause for the rash of building sites across the city.

Souvenir Shopping

2006-07-22T22:00:00.000+08:00

Since we leave China at the end of this week, we went hunting for souvenirs and gifts. We went back to Liulichangdong Street, with its refurbished Qing dynasty buildings, now mainly selling tourist items. The street is filled with the rickshaws looking for riders and salesmen pushing their wares that frequent this type of place, but at least today, the level of the sales-picthing was relatively mild. The part of the street to the west of Nan Xinhua is a little less intense, and we did most of our shopping here.

Decorated Store Front

Rickshaws and Tourists

A few doors down a back street right at the west end of the touristy part of Liulichangdong Street we wandered into a small shop which turned out to be the store of an artist who happily showed us his pieces and explained the stories behind the pictures. We swopped photo-rights: he took my picture and I took a picture of him and his wife.

Artist, Wife, and Paintings

Summer Palace - in Summer

2006-07-21T22:00:00.000+08:00

We visited the summer palace in winter when we first arrived in Beijing, and in spring when the trees and flowers were blooming, and I wanted to visit one more time in the eponymous season. After two weeks of depressing overcast, hot and thundery weather when Beijing has been sunk in a soup of haze and smog, today dawned with bright blue skies and a fresh wind, so I set off early to beat the rush hour traffic for a final visit.

Marble Boat Looking Grand in the Crisp Light
The Summer Palace is my favorite of the main tourist sites in Beijing. It has the grandeur of the historical context and does not (yet) feel over-restored; it is spacious enough that it never feels crowded despite the hoards of visitors; it has the appealing collection of morning activities, such as water calligraphy and impromptu singing groups; and it is a beautiful place on a bright sunny day.

Calligraphy

Giant Lotus

Yellow Flowers and Blue Sky
The lotus plants in Kunming Lake and some of the smaller lakes were blooming. The picture shows a giant lotus standing 4 or 5 feet tall, with leaves over a foot across and flowers almost as big. There weren't so many trees flowering as in spring, but these yellow flowers contrasted nicely with the bright blue sky.

Tower of the Fragrance of Buddha

Tiled Roof
The renovation work appears to be nearing completion. The centerpiece Tower of the Fragrance of Buddha has shed its scaffolding and sparkled with its fresh paint. The Long Corridor stretching along the lake side is still not finished though.

South Lake Island and Downtown Beijing from Longevity Hill

Sweeping

17 Arch Bridge
One of the nicest parts of the Summer Palace is the Garden of Harmonius Pleasure. (This is what it looked like in spring.) Now the lake is lush with lotus plants and green willow, and people were relaxing in the shady pavilions listening to the music groups.

Lotus in the Garden of Harmonius Pleasure

Pick-up Choir

Pavilion Roof

Table Tennis

2006-07-18T22:00:00.000+08:00

BNU Tabble Tennis Room
Table tennis, of course, is a popular sport in China. I played a lot as a teenager, but that was forty years ago, and I have only rarely picked up a bat since. But I couldn't leave China without playing again, so when some students in the group invited me to play, I happiily accepted. I was surprisingly good - many of my old good shots were still there, although there were also lots of new bad ones!

Speedboat Ride

2006-07-15T21:24:00.000+08:00

On our final day at the Wuling retreat the bus took us to a nearby lake where we went on a fast swooshy speedboat ride. We had seen such a ride at various other rivers and lakes, but never expected to participate!

Wulingshan

2006-07-14T22:00:00.000+08:00

Today the group planned to climb Wulingshan (Wuling Mountain) itself. "Wu" means foggy or misty, and the mountain lived up to its name!

The hike turned out to be a walk up about 1500ft through a pretty wooded valley with a stream at the bottom and, today, damp and mist.

Misty Forest
Chinese hiking trails tend to be very well constructed, with stone steps at the steep bits. Every pool and prominent rock is inscribed with characters either giving a poetic message or telling some history.

Inscribed Rock
After climbing 1500ft we came to a small cabin/restaurant, and it turned out we were to take a bus from there to the summit (which was still 3000ft higher). The summit, which is the highest point in Beijing, was shrouded in cloud, so we didn't get to see any view.

Halfway House

On the way down the brakes of the minibus started smoking, so we all jumped out and walked the last few hundred yards back through the village. This gave me the chance to photograph a mother dog with cute puppies and a little boy playing with them (as well as see a woman strangle a chicken and cut its throat to drain the blood onto at the side of the street - which I didn't photograph!).

Mother and Pups

Little Boy and Puppy

Wuling Excursion

2006-07-13T22:00:00.000+08:00

The BNU Physics department arranged a weekend retreat for its faculty, and kindly invited us along. The location was the Wuling Mountains, about a 3 1/2 hour drive, and right in the north-east corner of greater Beijing. In the afternoon we went on a short hike. The scenery is green mountainous with farms in the valleys and on terraces up the hillsides. The main crop seems to be corn, which surprised me since I don't see much corn being eaten. There are also some unreconstructed pieces of the Great Wall here.

Distant Great Wall

Farming Valley

Unreconstructed Great Wall

Arches and Wall

Colorful Butterfly

White Flower

Corn Terraces

Qiao Home and Zhenguo Temple

2006-07-10T22:00:00.000+08:00

On our last day in Ping Yao we hired a car to visit some more distant attractions. We first went to the Qiao Family Home, a courtyard estate of 313 rooms of a rich family built in the eighteenth century. A recent television series was filmed here, and so it was very crowded with Chinese tourists groups. The buildings were elaborately decorated with paintings and carving, but the most interesting part for me was the furnished interiors that gave some impression of what life was actually like in these old homes. Other buildings housed local museum pieces. The most interesting was a display of the instruments/noise makers that different salesmen used to announce their wares.

Interior

Nine Dragon Lamp

Roof Painting

Carving
After a lunch of local specialties in a restaurant definitely off the western-tourist track we visited Zhenguo Temple which has what is said to be the oldest wooden building in China. The umbrella roof was a very impressive layered structure of crisscrossing beams.

Wooden Roof

The halls housed various Buddhist sculptures and frescos, again with no photos allowed. Some of the outside paintings were good too.

Temple Paintings
This temple too seemed rather neglected, with many of the figures flaking straw from cracks and breakages. One of the side buildings was propped up in an alarming way.

Wall Struts

Xiaoqin's parents live at one of the city primary schools, itself converted long ago from a large courtyard house. School was out for the summer break, except for some surprisingly young children taking a computer class. Here are a few pictures of the school.

School Yard

Blackboard

Class is Out!

Shuanglin Temple and Ping Yao Streets

2006-07-09T22:00:00.000+08:00

We spent the morning relaxing in the hotel. In the afternoon we took a motorbike taxi to Shuanglin Temple a few kilometers outside of town. According to TravelChinaGuide.com the temple houses

"...more than 2,000 exceptional painted Buddhist terracotta and wood statues dating back to the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. They represent the best of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. The figures are vivid and remarkably true to life, ranging from Buddha, Bodhisattva, Heavenly Kings, and supernatural beings, to all kinds of mortals from the human world. They are reputed to be a 'treasure reserve of oriental painted sculptures'."

The figures were indeed impressive, although access to see them was unnecessarily limited, and they seemed rather unloved and neglected like so many of China's historical relics. No pictures were allowed inside the halls, but the guards outside were quite impressive too:

Temple Guard
Back in Ping Yao we wandered around the attractive streets and visited a couple more of the old courtyard house museums.

West Street

City Tower

South Street from the City Tower

Ping Yao Sights

2006-07-08T22:00:00.000+08:00

An Old Fashioned Kang (not our one!)
After a good night's sleep on our kang we were ready for some serious sight-seeing on Saturday.

In the morning we went to the Ancient Government Building where the town magistrate lived and tried cases. The magistrate was an important person in the city, and lived well. The buildings now house many small museums such as displays of gruesome punishment implements as well as items from the life of the magistrate. A costume trial of a "bad son" who had kicked his father drew a large appreciative crowd.

Shackles

City Magistrate

After lunch we first visited the Qing Xu Guan Taoist Temple.

Taoist Temple

Roof Detail
Unlike at Buddhist temples there were no restrictions on taking photos, so here are some of the Gods we saw.

Gods
Inside the compound there was also a nice display of a collection of doll tableaux from Chinese Opera.

Opera Dolls

Outside some children were playing a jump-rope game, that I couldn't follow, but Xiaoqin insisted made sense.

Skipping Game

The Buddhist City God Temple had interesting blue and yellow tile roofs.

City God Temple

Temple Roofs

Ceramic Urn

Our final stopping point was the Confucian Temple.

Confucian Temple
The nationwide university entrance exam took place a few days ago, and this "temple of learning" is a good place to pray for the success of your student!

Good Luck Wishes

Ping Yao

2006-07-07T22:00:00.000+08:00

We took an overnight train with Xiaoqin to visit Ping Yao, her home town. Ping Yao is a famous old city with a complete city wall and many old buildings inside surviving from centuries ago. The main streets are spruced up old buildings, most converted into tourist shops and hotels, and there are also many grand courtyard houses, now serving as various museums.

Corner Tower, City Wall

City Street from the Wall

Back Street and Decorated Roofs

Boy "Driving" Tourist Cart
In the 18th and 19th centuries Ping Yao was a trade and banking center. The first bank in China, the Rishengchang Bank, was set up here, and the city was one of the richest in China until changes in the banking system and the end of the imperial system led to its decline. The bank buildig is now a museum describing this history.

Courtyard, Rishengchang Bank

Window Reflections
Away from the main streets is a city of dusty back streets and alleys where there is less influence of the tourist influx. Visiting Xiaoqin's parents gave us the opportunity of experiencing both aspects of the city life.

Back Street
Our hotel, the Yi De, is a charming old courtyard house, comfortably and carefully modernized. The room had a traditional style kang bed, a brick platform with padded mats, originally heated by an adjacent stove to keep warm in winter, although our one was not heated or maybe would be heated with hot water.

Yi De Hotel

Evening Snacks

2006-07-04T22:00:00.000+08:00

In the back street areas there are many small snack restaurants serving very cheap food. The place we went to this evening with a couple of Lynn's friends from Chinese school mainly served varieties of small meat kebabs - pork, chicken, chicken hearts and liver, etc. - for about 5 (US) cents each, together with vegetables and tofu cooked in spicy oil, and pickled cold vegetables (we had pickled fresh peanuts and soy beans).

Confucius Temple and Imperial College

2006-07-03T22:00:00.000+08:00

Biyong Hall, Imperial College
On the way back from Ditan Park on our tandem ride yesterday we visited the Confucius Temple and Imperial College. According to the People's Daily Online:

The Imperial College, "Guozijian" in Chinese, was built in early 14th century and served as the highest learning institution and educational administration during the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties (1271-1911). The Confucian Temple, adjacent to the Imperial College, has served as a place to worship ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius(551BC-479BC) since its establishment in 1302.

This was in an article describing the extensive renovations being done at the sites, and indeed almost all of the Confucius Temple, and some of the Imperial College was half knocked down and inaccessible! But the large old Biyong Hall where important addresses were given and the decorative gate in the Imperial College were both impressive. In both places were many steles (or stelae) - 8 foot high stone tablets with Chinese characters carved onto them, either commemorating success of candidates in the important exams or acting as a permanent library of classic literature. Inspite of all the mess, I enjoyed visiting these places. "Temples" to learning seem more dignified than the frantic Buddhist temples we have visited - or maybe it was just the absence of crowds!

Decorative Gate, Imperial College

Grounded Roof Decoration

Stele

Confucius (?) and the Great Books

Carved in Stone
Here are some pictures of the renovation efforts

Scaffolding

Roof Figures and Tiles

On Site Brick Factory

Shaping the Bricks, One by One

Ditan Park

2006-07-02T22:00:00.000+08:00

Ditan Park is the site of the Temple of Earth where the Emperor made sacrifices to the Earth, a counterpart to the Temple of Heaven. We rode our tandem there early Sunday morning, a pleasant time before it gets too hot and with less traffic on the roads. (There is a map here.) We arrived at about 8 o'clock, and the park was still full of Chinese people performing the enormous variety of morning activities that we have seen in ever park we have visited.

Park full of Dancers

Water Calligraphers

Calligraphy Brushes

Fan Dancers

"Walking" the Pet Bird
The temple plays a rather minor role in the park, and there was almost no-one there when we went in. There is a very large square "altar", signifying the Earth, where the emperor made the sacrifices (the Temple of Heaven has a round altar, signifying the Heavens). The nearby hall had a lovely old ceiling, and some interesting artifacts such as a large drum and some stone chimes.

Square Altar

Gateway to the Altar

Walls

Colorful Ceiling

Drum
As well as the ancient temple, the park has an amusement arcade in one corner

Sideshows

Three Pictures

2006-07-01T22:00:00.000+08:00

Yellow Building

Children's Bicycles

Beijing Capital Museum

Yandai Xijie

2006-06-30T22:00:00.000+08:00

The afternoon was nice and not too warm after another thundery night, so we went on a short tandem ride to Yandai Xijie in the Houhai district to restock our fresh coffee supply. It's only about three miles away, and a relatively nice bike ride past lakes Xihai and Houhai. Only the very busy junction of Xinjiekouwai Street and the Third Ring Road presents the problems of cycling on Beijing's busy streets.

The Lotus in Lake Xihai are beginning to bloom and look pretty

Lake Xihai

Lotus Blossom
Yandai Xijie is a little passageway of tourist shops and restaurants. A pair of young artists were painting the street.

Artists

The Real Thing
Unfortunately, there was nobody to sell us the coffee beans at the shop - a trio was playing cards on the balcony, and told us there was no-one from the shop there, although the door was open. So we rode around the back streets a little, and eventually refound the Passerby Bar and had some cold coffee.

Rainy Days

2006-06-29T22:58:00.000+08:00

Rainy Morning on BNU Campus

Umbrellas

2006-06-27T22:00:00.000+08:00

Umbrella Seller
What a change from when we first arrived at the beginning of March! The weather is now a mixture of sunny hot and rather humid days, getting up to 97F today for example, and heavy rain and thunder storms. This umbrella sales lady was opposite the kindergarten on campus, taking advantage of the market for protection against both rain and sun. Umbrellas are used a great deal for both purposes here, as you can see from the picture of the crowds waiting in the sun to enter the mausoleum of Mao Zedong from two weekends ago. And in both sun and rain you can see many people cycling along holding an umbrella in one hand. Another common sight is a man on the saddle, and a woman on the luggage rack behind, holding an umbrella over both of them.

The rain is certainly a nice change from the bone-dry weather of winter. Unfortunately one thing that is the same is that the air is almost never clear. Back then it was the dust from the winds. Now a combination of the humidity and presumably city smog means that, again, we don't see blue sky for days on end. Even looking across campus the haze is evident.

More Pictures from Cuandixia

2006-06-26T22:11:00.000+08:00

Door Screen

Dried Corn

Doorway

Stone Walls

Construction Worker

Stove

Wall Construction

Well

Child Playing

Cuandixia

2006-06-25T22:00:00.000+08:00

Chinese Character from Cuandixia
Cuandixia is a small village of old stone cottages about 60 miles from Beijing. It has been turned into a tourist attraction - you pay (20 yuan) to enter the village, and almost every house either is a little shop selling souvenirs, or will put visitors up overnight or serve meals. This sounds dreadful, but the village is actually very pleasant to visit - it does not have the Disneyland feel of artificial reconstruction that characterizes many of the historic attractions in China.

We spent several hours wandering around the narrow passageways and looking at the cottages, and ended up having lunch by ourselves in one of the homes. Many of the homes (including the one where we had lunch) are constructed as four tiny buildings around a central courtyard - I couldn't tell if this was for a single family or more.

Aerial View

Fields and Village

Rooftops

Courtyard Home

Precarious

Cute Dog

Colorful Screens

Doorway and Cottages

Fishing Lake Xihai

2006-06-24T22:00:00.000+08:00

Fishing is a popular pastime in China - maybe partly because fresh fish is an essential part of meals. Xihai lake in Beijing near the BNU campus seems to be a favorite place for this. The fish being caught were quite large - some enough to feed four I would guess. I don't know if the lake is stocked, or if the fish are natural.

At one end of the lake there is a small pool dammed off from the main lake. There were several people fishing there. The man in the black tee shirt caught about 10 fish for every one caught by all the others put together. He would through the hook in, and after a wait of typically 30 seconds would suddenly yank the rod and have a large fish attached. He must have had some secret!

Fishing

Got One!

Hauling in the Catch

Meet the Fish

This man had caught four, and was cleaning them in the lake.

Cleaning the Fish
All around the lake the bank was lined with fishermen...

Xihai Fishermen
....some with quite fancy equipment including very long poles (but they weren't catching nearly as many as the man in the black tee shirt!)

This spot looked very peaceful:

Winding Down

2006-06-23T22:02:00.000+08:00

Term is coming to an end here at BNU. Here are some pictures of end-of-term activities;

Lining Up for the Paperwork

Music School Students' Graduation Concert

Chinese Dulcimer (Yangqin)

Physics Masters Students Preparing for their Photo

Shipping Home

Dorm Sidewalk Sale

Picture Puzzle

2006-06-21T21:00:00.000+08:00

Here's a puzzle: What is this a picture of?

Another hint:

The answer....

.... a lacebark pine, in a grove on the BNU campus. The trunks are very pretty, even more so when they are wet from rain or sprinklers. Here's another example we saw in the Imperial Garden on our recent visit to the Forbidden City:

Laoshe Teahouse

2006-06-19T22:00:00.000+08:00

I finally got to the Laoshe Teahouse last week, after our earlier aborted attempt. Our 5 year old guide book says they have folk music performances and other shows in the afternoons, but this seems to have been cut back to "Shadow Puppet" performances. There were very few customers in the middle of the afternoon. In the evening there are still music and opera performances, so maybe it is more popular then.

Shadow Puppet Show

So I sipped my expensive tea (I think $5 was the cheapest), which was indeed very nice, and watched the show for about half an hour, glad to get out of the hot sun. The shadow puppets are flat articulated dolls that are manipulated by the puppeteers behind a white, strongly illuminated screen. When they touch the screen, the elaborate clothing and decorations can be seen. Some simple story is acted out, with Punch-and-Judy level of violence, to the accompaniment of drums and other percussion.

This is "back stage" after the show:

Puppets, Screen, and Script

Array of Puppets

Beijing Panoramas

2006-06-18T21:55:00.000+08:00

Saturday was an unusually clear day, so the views from the White Dagoba at the top of the hill in Behai Park were spectacular.

This is the view south towards the Forbidden City. (You can find a panning version here.)

South from the White Dagoba

North from the White Dagoba
I don't think Beijing is ever this clear!

Sparkling Forbidden City

2006-06-17T22:15:00.000+08:00

Since Lynn hadn't seen the Forbidden City, and a nice clear day was promised, we got up early to avoid the crowds and took the bus downtown. Already by 8:30 it was quite hot, and there were large crowds, but most people were lined up in Tiananmen Square to see Mao Zedong in his mausoleum.

Lines to View Mao

The Forbidden City was sparkling with the fresh paints of coats on many buildings in the bright sunshine and against a clear blue sky. It was clear enough to see the mountains to the north of Beijing.

The Hall of Supreme Harmony, and many of the other buidlings at the southern end, are being renovated. Since you can't see the real thing, a mural has been painted on the cloth shroud!

Construction Mural

Yellow Roofs and White Dagoba

Marble Stairway Dragon

Imperial Lions

Sundial

Old Door Fittings

Rocks and Pavillion, Imperial Garden
The eastern portion of the Forbidden City is quieter and contains many more intimate courtyard palaces. There is a section with an extra 10 yuan entrance fee and contains various museums and furnished interiors that are quite interesting and worth seeing. It is also quieter, and so you get a better feel for the City without the crowds of tourists.

Doorway Decoration

Roof Figures

Passageways

Courtyard

More Yellow Roofs

Fresh Colors

Here is a Google track of where the pictures where taken. There is a nice pdf map of the Forbidden City here.

Back Lakes at Sunset

2006-06-16T22:15:00.000+08:00

Lake Qianhai

Lake Houhai from Sycee Bridge

Ancient Observatory

2006-06-15T21:29:00.000+08:00

The Ancient Observatory was established in the 15th century, and now is a museum with several large 17th and 18th century astronomical instruments, and a few rooms showing the early prowess of the Chinese in astronomical observations. Most of the instruments are on the roof, and fenced off so it is hard to get a close look, but some are in the pleasant gardens. The Observatory is located at the western intersection of the number 1 and 2 subway lines, so it is easy to get to on the way somewhere else.

Rooftop Instruments

The Observatory is a little sad: it is now surrounded by busy expressways, and the displays are rather tired. There are brief notes in English for each display, but obviously much more information in Chinese. But the large old bronze instruments are nice. There was repair work going on, although it didn't look as if progress would be very rapid.

Repair Work

Wildflowers

2006-06-13T22:00:00.000+08:00

Farm Scenes

2006-06-12T22:00:00.000+08:00

Here are some pictures from the farms along the trail on Sunday's hike.

Farm House and Terraces

Donkey and Guard Dog

Bees

Bee Hives and Peach Trees

Hillside Farmhouse

Hoeing

Terrace Vegetable Plot

Hike

2006-06-11T22:00:00.000+08:00

Today I went on a hike with the Beijing Hikers Club. The hike was a 6 mile loop in Pin Gu county, about a two hour drive north-west of Beijing. (Here is a Google map.) This is in the same general direction as our two trips to the Great Wall. What a change from two months ago! Then everything was bone dry and a dull brown color, and looked as if nothing would ever grow there again. Now the hills are covered with lush green vegetation, and was sparkling fresh after the recent rains.

Most of the hike was through a mixture of farmland, mainly fruit trees and small vegetable plots, and forest. At lunch time we passed through a park with a trail constructed precariously up a narrow gorge to a waterfall.

Great Wall, Simatai

2006-06-10T22:00:00.000+08:00

After rain on Friday, we woke up to a fresh morning with bright blue skies, and so we decided on the spur of the moment to revisit the Great Wall at Simitai to see it on a clear day. We got our host to negotiate a reasonable price with a taxi driver and set off. It took about 3 hours to get there, because of numerous accidents and traffic jams on the busy road in that direction, and by the time we arrived the skies had clouded over, and it was starting to rain. We began to think that the whole trip was wasted!

However the weather steadily improved, and by the time we had climbed up to the wall there was blue sky again, and spectacular views of the Wall and into the distance.

Soon after we left it started raining again! The drive back took only just over 2 hours.

Here is a Google Map of where the pictures were taken.

Demolition

2006-06-09T22:00:00.000+08:00

Caged Lion
As mentioned before, there seems to be a project underway that involves demolishing vast areas just south of Tiananmen Square. I don't know if the lion is destined to survive or be buried in the rubble.

We were aiming for the Lao She teahouse, but got lost in the back alleys and demolition sites areas after misreading where the tea house was on the map. (It is actually on the main road, and very easy to find.) Here are a couple more pictures of the demolition.

Demolition

Early Morning Risers

2006-06-08T22:00:00.000+08:00

Early Morning Riverside Walk
The sun rises early now - at about 5am (there is no summer time in China and the whole country is set on one time zone). And I tend to wake up with the sun. Today I decided to go for a pre-breakfast walk, along the river in the Beitucheng Road Park that we visited before. Many Chinese are early and active risers. Even at 6am the path along the river was crowded with walkers and joggers.

Early Risers

Early Top Spinners

Sunny Lake Houhai

2006-06-07T23:00:00.000+08:00

On the walk back home from Prince Gong's Residence I was finally able to take some "blue sky" pictures of Lake Houhai and the pretty lakeside pagoda that we have walked and cycled by many times on glooomier days!

Pagoda

Prince Gong's Residence

2006-06-07T22:00:00.000+08:00

In the hutong at the back of nearby Lake Houhai is Prince Gong's Residence. This is said to be the best surviving grand estate of wealthy Chinese in the Qing dynasty. It was a rare "blue sky" break in the ever-present haze/smog this afternoon, so I decided to take the opportunity and go search for it. I first found a different estate, that was closed today as it is a location for the massive university entrance exam happening over the next three days. This exam filters out the one quarter of the high school students who will be able to attend university next year. As you can imagine this is a very competitive and high stress exam, and I was quickly shooed away!

Prince Gong's residence was nearby. It turns out to be a very popular attraction for Chinese tour groups, maybe because it is the reputed inspiration for one of the most famous Chinese novels Dreams of a Red Mansion. I am presently wading through this. The translation is in 4 volumes, and so far, half way through volume 2, not much has happened, although it does give me some insight into this part of Chinese history and culture. Price Gong's residence is certainly a large estate, with lotus and fish ponds, pavilions, artificial rock hills etc. It is pretty enough, and probably nice when it is quite, but was overwhelmed by the crowds today. Some of the buildings, of course, were being renovated and were covered with scaffolding.

Tour Group

Fountain from Lake Pavilion

Roof Eave Painting

Chinese Lanterns

Wall Decoration

Gowns for Dressing Up

Quanjude Peking Duck Restaruant

2006-06-05T21:47:00.000+08:00

For lunch yesterday we returned to the Quanjude Peking Duck Restaurant, which is a short walk from the Temple of Heaven Park. The road it is on, Qianmen Avenue, stretching south from Tiananmen Square, seems to be getting ready for one of the massive Beijing reconstruction schemes that replace areas with character with modern shopping plazas - nearly all the shops are now closed and boarded up over the whole kilometer length. The Quanjude Restaurant is still open, so maybe it will survive.

As mentioned before this is a huge restaurant that specializes in Peking Duck. It is very modern and efficient: the order is immediately written into a handheld computer that wirelessly sends the order to the kitchen! The ducks are always cooking, and so within 10 minutes a whole or half duck is being sliced by the chef at the table. The duck is probably better than at the other duck restaurant we have been going to - crisper and a little less fatty - although it is considerably more expensive (about 3 times as expensive for a whole duck). We were seated on the second floor. The picture shows the diners on the first floor. I think there are three ducks being carved at the moment the picture was taken!

Return to the Temple of Heaven

2006-06-04T22:00:00.000+08:00

Today we returned to the Temple of Heaven Park, since the renovations on the centrepiece, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, are now complete. We went early in the morning, when it is cool. At this time there are many Chinese exercising and playing games. This man was enjoying showing off his skills.

Performer
An interesting new activity we haven't seen before is painting calligraphy on the sidewalk using water as ink. A thought provoking idea!

Calligrapher

Water Calligraphy
The roses are in full bloom now (maybe most are a little past their peak). They seem to like the Beijing climate, maybe too surprising since roses come from China. Tthe large rose garden here was quite spectacular.

Rose Garden

Yellow and Red Roses
The Round Altar is a marble construction based on the number 9. It is said that if you stand on the central stone your voice is amplified by the construction. Others were trying this, but we didn't.

carved Pillars

Central Stone

Blue Tile Dragon
The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests was sparkling with it's fresh coat of paint.

Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests

Interior

Busker

2006-06-03T22:00:00.000+08:00

We cycled to the Houhai area to buy some more coffee beans. Across the street from the coffee shop a blind busker was playing a traditional instrument.

Tour Retrospective

2006-05-31T22:00:00.000+08:00

We're back in Beijing and recovering from the long trip! We visited 7 universities and 8 cities in many parts of China in just over 3 weeks. It was a hectic schedule, but we saw many beautiful sights and fascinating objects, and met many interesting people. Here is a map of the places we visited. Below are a set of pictures, one from each city, summarizing some of what we saw on the trip.

Shanghai

Hangzhou

Xiamen

Guilin

Kunming

Lanzhou

Dunhuang

Xi'an

Another Warrior Picture

2006-05-30T22:00:00.000+08:00

Looking through my too large collection of pictures from the Terracotta Warrior Museum on the plane back to Beijing I found this one. I think it shows the individual character of each figure better than the ones I posted before.

Terracotta Warriors

2006-05-28T22:00:00.000+08:00

The Terracotta Warriors were the guardians of the tomb of the first emperor of the united China, Qin Shi Huang, who died in 210BC. They were first unearthed in 1974, and since then enormous effort has been put into excavating and restoring the figures, and building a museum and viewing sites around the excavation pits. The combination of the massive scale of the terracotta army and the individuality of the life-size warriors faces, expressions, and poses is most striking. This is certainly a place to see if you come to China!

Warriors

Kneeling Archer
The daunting task of reconstructing the warriors is still going on in the viewing halls.

Fallen Warriors

Reconstruction

The Terracotta Warriors are about a mile from the actual tomb of the emperor. The scale of the tomb is impressive too - it is a hill 50m high (originally 100m) and 500m on each side. We visited the tomb on the way to the Terracotta Warrior Museum. This was useful in setting the scene for the warriors to come, but there is not actually much to see: although there are stories of wonderful things buried in the mound, no excavation has been carried out yet. Nearby to the tomb two bronze chariots, about half life size, were discovered. These are now on display in the Terracotta Warrior museum. They are wonderfully detailed and lifelike.

Bronze Chariot

Xi'an

2006-05-27T22:00:00.000+08:00

The last stop on theour "grand tour" of China is Xi'an. This city was the capital of China in ancient times, and is now a big bustling city with historical sites in the middle of modern developments. A city wall surrounds what was once the old city, and recently parts have been reconstructed to make a complete circuit. In the morning we rented a tourist tandem and rode the 13.74km (according to the sign) around the wall.

City Wall

You can ride around the city wall

Modern City from Old City Walls

The most impressive place we visited in Xi'an was the Forest of Steles. This is a collection of large stones (many maybe 8ft by 2ft) inscribed with historical texts such as the "Four Books" and edicts of emperors - a large and very heavy library of Chinese writings. One stone that emphasized for me the incredibly long history of China was a stone describing transferring a tablets to the museum - over a thousand years ago!

Making an Ink Copy of a Tablet
The Big Goose Pagoda is another of the sites to see. There is a good view from the top, including the Musical Fountain that just started as we arrived.

Big Goose Pagoda

Candle Offerings

Musical Fountain

Dunhuang

2006-05-25T22:02:00.000+08:00

We took the overnight sleeper train from Lanzhou to Dunhuang (actually to Liuyuan in the middle of nowhere, and then another 2 hours by car to Dunhuang). Despite this being a desert with almost no rain, we arrived at Liuyuan in a heavy downpur, and got quite cold looking around for the waiting car. Dunhuang is an oasis in the harsh desert, and was an important town on the Silk Road. The main reason for going there is to see the amazing Mogao Caves - hundreds of caves carved out of the soft sandstone, with Buddhist figures lavishly decorated with colorful art from the 4th century onwards. Due to the isolation and dry climate, the paintings are well preserved, and much survives unretouched from the original times. The caves are now all enclosed for preservation, and only a few are opened each day for guided tours - with no photos allowed inside.

Dry Desert near the Mogao Caves

Cliff of Mogao Caves
In the evening to fill out the day we visited the Singing Sands Mountains (Mingsha Shan) just south of Dunhuang. These are impressive sand dunes, with the highest one rising to 1700m. They have been turned into a desert playground, with sand slides, camel rides, dune buggies, hang gliding, and any other desert activity you can imagine.

Dune Playground: Tour Bus, Sand Slide and Staircase

Camel Depot

Camels Preparing to Depart

Camel Ride

Camel Closeup
My host Wenshan and I climbed part way up the dunes, and enjoyed the views, and watching the avalanche patterns form in the sand after our foot steps.

Sand Patterns
(The "cliffs" are about 1cm tall)

Crescent Lake and Pavilion

Sand Dunes

Lanzhou

2006-05-23T22:00:00.000+08:00

Lanzhou is our next stop, to visit Northwest Normal University. We arrived at 1am last night (this morning!), and I am to give a talk in the afternoon, so we didn't do too much sight seeing. We planned a visit to the museum, but it turned out to be closed, so instead we wandered around Donfanghong Sqaure in the downtown area. On the square is a small roped off area for feeding pigeons, and both people and pigeons seemed to stick to the rule!

Donfanghong Square

Monk Feeding Pigeons
Lynn and the pigeons seemed to enjoy each other.

We had a lunch of the famous Lanzhou noodles, accompanied by sanpo tea made from 9 different ingredients (tea, loquat, rose buds, wolf berry, jujube, chrysanthemum, large sugar crystals, and one other dried berry).

Noodle Chef

Sanpo Tea

The first bridge across the Yellow River, now pedestrian only, and a musical fountain, provide an evening gathering place on the banks of the river.

German Bridge

Musical Fountain

Kunming Street Scenes

2006-05-22T22:45:00.000+08:00

Preparing Vegetables for Lunch

Streetside Tailor

Vegetable Cart

Corn Bicycle

Flowers for Sale
From the back streets just outside the university.

Shilin (Stone Forest)

2006-05-21T17:31:00.000+08:00

Stone Forest is an area of Karst rock formations in the shape of sharply carved pillars 10 to 100 feet high. It's about 50 miles from Kunming along a fast new road. It has been turned into a National Park, with carefully sculpted pathways and hand holds, and lawns and bright gardens in the more open places. It seems to be very popular with the Chinese, and many of the narrow trails were jammed with tour groups.

Crowds at the Great Stone Forest
The Dragon's Tooth gives you good luck if you can jump and touch it. It wasn't much of a challenge of my 6 ft 5in! (That's not me in the picture.)

Dragon's Tooth

Viewing Pavilion
We didn't even attempt to climb to the Viewing Pavilion because of the grid lock on the trail up to it! But our host found us a nice narrow side path with no people that climbed up almost as high - although I think he wished he hadn't, since the trail was very narrow, steep, and climbed over the high rocks (but with very good hand holds carved out of the rock)!

Views of the Stone Forest
Many of the rock formations had names. The elephant was most convincing.

"Elephant on Platform"

Lawns and Gardens

Yunnan Nationalities Park

2006-05-20T22:00:00.000+08:00

Naxi Classical Musicians

Kunming Parks

2006-05-19T22:00:00.000+08:00

Kunming is the largest city in Yunnan province in the south-west corner of China - Yunnan borders Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Tibet. Kunming itself is at a height of about 6000 ft, and so isn't hot and steamy as you might expect from its location and in fact is called Spring City in China because the climate is always springlike.

On our first day here we were taken to two of the city parks. Grand View Park is named after a famous 180 character couplet the author titled the Longest Couplet in the World describing the beauties of the view of Lake Dian. The temperate climate leads to exuberant and colorful plants - the bright purple and orange-red Bougainvillea was particularly rampant.

Bougainvillea and Strollers

Parasols

Grand View Tower

Portion of 180 Character Couplet

Lake Dian Boat
Grand View Park was interesting mainly for the usual, but fascinating, variety of enthusiasms on display: dancing, martial arts, singing, kite flying, card games, top-whipping, etc. We met a charming old gentleman with a modern slim digital camera who was also taking pictures of the kites and showed us his collection of over 500 kite pictures!

Fan Dancing

Taichi

Kite Flyers

Launching the Kite Trail

Kites Aloft
The park we went to in the afternoon, Green Park, was full of a variety of musical groups, including traditional instruments, Chinese opera, folk singing and dancing, each with a crowd of enthusiastic watchers and participants, and separated just far enough so that the sounds from one was almost inaudible at the next.

Traditional Instruments

Chinese Opera Performance

Folk Dancing and Singing

Reed Flute Cave

2006-05-18T21:19:00.000+08:00

Reed Flute Cave is some impressive limestone caverns with stalactites and stalagmites, and other rock formations with garish lighting and fanciful names - some of which you could actually imagine rather well in the rock shapes.

Reed Flute Cave

"New York City"

Brightly Colored Rafts
Nearby was a small village.

Fisherman

Village Street

Ramshackle House

Sightseeing in Guilin

2006-05-17T21:14:00.000+08:00

Panorama of Guilin from Solitary Hill
Today was spent sight seeing in the city of Guilin. We visited "Elephant Trunk Hill" and "Solitary Hill" which is in the old campus of Guangxi University.

Elephant Trunk Hill and Water Moon Cave
The cave through the foot of the mountain forms the trunk and front legs of the elephant drinking from the water.

Guilin from Elephant Hill

Tour Raft Depot
Half way down from the summit is a cave that pierces the mountain and forms the eyes of the elephant. In the cave casual sopranos were singing at the top of their voices making use of the amplifying acoustics. (It is common to find groups of musicians, singers, dancers, and others enthusiastically performing their skills in any convenient public place, without any shyness or concern about gawkers.)

Cave Sopranos

Guilin - Yangshuo

2006-05-16T21:00:00.000+08:00

The Guilin area is famous for the strange and beautiful mountain shapes - pictures of these have always struck me as "Chinese mountains". The standard way to enjoy the scenery is to take a boat cruise down the River Li from near Guilin to Yangshuo. There are "Chinese boats" which are single storey and "western boats" which are double storey, less crowded, and a lot more expensive. Our hosts had booked us on a western boat. The river turns into a procession of these boats, initially with much horn blowing and jockeying for position.

Western Boats

Chinese Boats

Boat Procession
Along the way salesman skillfully manoeuvre their rafts alongside the boats to sell their wares.

Raft Salesmen

The scenery of river, villages, and the mountains is quite beautiful. The day was cloudy, with light rain at times, making the mountains fade into a misty background.

River Li and Mountains
Yangshuo is a busy little tourist town. West Street - a street of coffee bars, restaurants, souvenir shops, etc. - is where the western tourists go. I don't know what happened to all the Chinese tourists.

West Street, Yangshuo
Guangxi province is a fertile farming region. The area near Yangshuo is green rice paddies in the valleys between the rocky outcrops.

Rice Paddies and Karst Mountains

Farming Village

Rice Field

Irrigation Channel

Old House Interior

Snapshots of Xiamen

2006-05-15T20:48:00.000+08:00

Fishing Harbor

Fish Market

Old Shopping Street

Xiamen University

University Administration Building and Lagoon

City from Botanical Garden

Xiamen Beach

Xiamen Botanical Gardens

2006-05-14T22:00:00.000+08:00

Today we visited the Xiamen Botanical Gardens. The weather was sunny, but not too hot, so it was ideal for walking around. The gardens are lush and green, helped by the warm humid climate, with many plants and pleasant places to sit in the shade and admire them. There are golden carp and water lily ponds, and several temples dot the hillside.

Lantern Hibiscus

Gold Fish and Water Lilies

Chinese Graffiti

Collecting

Small Temple

Temple in the Bamboo Forest

Nanputuao Temple and Gulangyu

2006-05-13T22:00:00.000+08:00

Saturday was a sight seeing day around Xiamen, guided by Chen, a student in the group I am visiting. We first visited a Buddhist temple right near the university. The luxuriant vegetation growing in the semi-tropical climate gave the temple a different feel from others we had seen.

Nanputuao Temple

Temple Hall

Temple Roof and Flowers

Dragon and Bougainvillea
We spent most of the day on Gulangyu, an even smaller island a 10 minute ferry ride from Xiamen harbor. Gulangyu was where the Europeans set up consulates and lived when Xiamen became a treaty port after the first opium war. The buildings are mainly European style from that time. Many of the ones on the back streets have a "Secret Garden" feel of neglect and decay. The island also has a musical tradition, with a music school and, it is said, many pianists, some of them internationally famous. There is also a piano museum set up from a private collection which we visited.

Catholic Church

Banyan Tree

Old Mansions

Monument to a Poet and Doctor

Xiamen

2006-05-12T22:29:00.000+08:00

Today we flew to Xiamen, on the next leg of our tour. The drive from the airport to the university was along the green hilly coast in bright sunshine. The university itself is modern and attractive, with spacious landscaped grounds, including a lagoon right near the campus hotel where we were are staying. To pass the time before dinner we wandered outside the campus to an older section of town.

Fishing Boats

Fishing Dock

Since Xiamen is an island on the coast, the food specialties contain many seafood dishes. One of them we were treated to for dinner is worms dug up from the mud. They are served in a jelly. This isn't one of my favorite foods - I didn't think they tasted of much except salt. Another dish was octopus, which I liked much better. This picture is from a couple of days later in the market.

Local Delicacies

West Lake

2006-05-11T22:00:00.000+08:00

The main tourist attraction of Hangzhou is West Lake. This is a lake a few km across that was constructed in the 8th century. Hangzhou is now a large city of 6 million people, but they have managed to keep most of the development away from the lake, so it remains green and peaceful. We spent the day walking and boating around the lake, and visiting the Leifeng Tower.

Sweeping the Lake

"Viewing Fish and Flowers" Park

Turtle Pond
Leifeng Tower is actually a modern steel building replacing an old one that collapsed in 1924. There is a Chinese love story about a serpent turning into princess associated with the tower, and also a museum of things found in the rubble of the collapsed tower, including an ancient silver box containing, it is said, a hair from Buddha, so it is an interesting place to visit. There are views of the city and lake from the top of the tower, although it was still rather hazy when we were there.

Leifeng Tower: Modern Steel over Crumbled Ruins

View of West Lake from Leifeng Tower

Leifeng Tower and Boats
After a lunch of the local Dragon Well tea and a buffet of tasty snacks in a tea house we were paddled around the lake for a couple of hours, enjoying the views of the city and the green park and mountains, and watching the numerous young couples having their wedding photos taken by the lake. By then it had cleared into a nice sunny afternoon.

Paddling Around the Lake

Hangzhou City from West Lake

Hangzhou Temples

2006-05-10T22:09:00.000+08:00

This is our second day in Hangzhou. The morning was spent sight-seeing, and the afternoon at Zhejiang University. The green scenery still dripping after yesterday's rain was a welcome change from dry and dusty Beijing. We spent the morning at the Peak Flying-from Afar and Linying Temple (Temple of Soul's Retreat). The cliffs and caves of the Peak Flying from Afar contain over 340 Buddhas carved out of the rock face, from thumbnail size to several feet tall. A few lower down were damaged in the Cultural Revolution (we were told) but most are intact, many with elaborate decorations.

Buddha Statue and Admirer

Cliffside Buddhas

Finger's of a Buddha

Laughing Buddha and Attendants

Leafy Buddha

Linying Temple is an active Buddhist temple with four large halls rising up the hillside, with immense Buddha statues in various incarnations and the associated guardian figures. The burning incense of the visiting believers made the air both fragrant and smokey.

Entrance to Linying Temple

One of the Four Kings of the Sky

Burning Incense

Wall Relief

Temple Roofs and Green Trees

Rainy Hangzhou Old Town

2006-05-09T22:10:00.000+08:00

We took the train from Shanghai to Hangzhou, about 160km to the south west. In the evening we walked around the old part of the city. Qinghefang Old Street is a street of old-style houses with Chinese medicine stores, tea stores, herb stores, and the usual souvenir stores - interesting in a touristy sort of way. It was raining quite hard, and so there were few people out, and most of the shops were closing for the night.

Rainy Qinghefang Old Street

Ginseng Store

Umbrella Store

Chenghuang Pavilion

Shanghai: Day 2

2006-05-07T21:43:00.000+08:00

On our second day in Shanghai we were taken sightseeing by Zhoujie (Jay), a student in the group I am visiting, and his friend Yanshenfang (Sharon). Sharon works in tourism, and was an official Shanghai guide last year. She was a tremendous guide for us, and showed us many things we would never have seen on our own. Jay, who has lived in Shanghai all his life, said he learned many things too!

We started off walking down Nanjing Street, a shopping street, now pedestrian mall...

Nanjing Shopping Street

Red Cross Solicitors

...and then returned to the Yuyuan Bazaar area we visited yesterday.

9 Turn Bridge
Across the bridge are the Yuyuan Gardens, a grand old Chinese home and gardens, full of delightful sights and tranquil resting places. Sharon made the visit particular interesting, finding hidden corners we would never have found, and telling us many insights and stories. I suppose an English stately home is an equivalent, but I find the delicate Chinese design of gardens and homes much more attractive than those ponderous houses and formal gardens.

Yuyuan Gardens

Goldfish and Flowers

Wall Carving

Wall Dragon

Moon Stone
The Moon Stone is an example of the kind of rock you see in many fromal Chinese gardens. The Chinese apparently find the river-sculptured holes in the rock intriguing and attractive, but these rocks to not appeal to me. This one is outside the study of the master of the house, for him to contemplate as he works.

Floor Pattern
In the afternoon we focussed on the futuristic aspect of Shanghai, using the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel (in which you travel in a futuristic car through a tunnel of Disneyland like flashing lights and lasers) to cross the river to the Oriental Pearl Tower.

Pudong Skyline from the Bund

Sightseeing Tunnel
The tower, has observation decks at various levels, with a complicated set of payment choices for different combinations (one including a boat ride). We went to the level at 263m (option C).

Oriental Pearl Tower

Payment Options
The views must be spectacular on a clear day, but today was rather hazy.

Shanghai

2006-05-06T23:00:00.000+08:00

Today we set off on a tour around China. I'll be giving talks at 7 universities, and we will also be seeing some of the famous sights of China. The first destination is Shanghai, where I am visiting
the East China Normal University.

Shanghai is a very modern city striving to outdo even Hong Kong in the intensity of skyscrapers. The first activity my host and his son took us on was a ride on the Shanghai Maglev train, perhaps the most spectacular transportation system in the world. This is a train that rides not on wheels but on a magnetic field, and reaches a speed of 430 km per hour on it's brief (7 minute) trip to the Pudong Shanghai airport. You don't really get a sense of the speed until the train in the opposite direction goes by, which happens in a brief flash that you only notice in retrospect.

Maglev Track

Maglev Train

Speed
There are more traditional style areas as well, although at least the ones we visited today have the "Old Town" feel of renovated or reconstructed buildings for tourist consumption. This is an artificial "money tree" where, for 5 yuan, you can purchase a
charm for future riches.

Money Tree

Yuyuan Bazaar

Shanghai Food Store
We had dinner in this restaurant, which boasts over 500 dishes. These are snack type dishes, each costing 5-15 yuan. You go around and pick what you want from the counters, and the amount is taken off a debit card you purchase. The sign in the window is probably better translated as "Spreading Chinese Food Culture"!

Yuyuan Bazaar at Night
The area along the river on the old city side is called the Bund, and is a promenade for viewing the spectacular skyline of the new city on the other side of the river, especially at night. The building-with-balls is the Oriental Pearl Building, the tallest building in Asia and 3rd tallest in the world.

Night Skyline
We finished the sight seeing day with a river cruise, to view both old and new cities ablaze with lights.

Old City from the River

One More Panda Picture

2006-05-05T18:33:00.000+08:00

Return to the Zoo

2006-05-04T20:57:00.000+08:00

Lynn, Xiaowen and Nianzi and the Zoo Crowds
We went with Xiaowen and Nianzi Zheng to the Beijing Zoo and Ocean Park. Since it is still the holiday week both were very crowded - there are alot of people in China! The aquarium is spectacular, but it was often hard to get to see the displays. In addition to the tanks of fish, there was a seal and dolphin show in a completely packed auditorium, with people standing three deep at the railings. The show was good, although I think they could learn something about the pacing from Sea World!

In the zoo it was easier to watch the people than the animals!

Lunch on the Lawn

Blowing Bubbles in the Park
A canal runs through the zoo, and a seemingly popular activity is to take a ride on a speed boat which zooms up the canal making a large wash. This atracts a large crowd of watchers too.

Speed Boat Ride

Watching the Tiger
Which brings me to the animals. I must admit I was less impressed with the zoo than on the last visit - maybe we saw more of the older exhibits today. The white tiger was sitting looking forlorn in a field of garbage tossed into the cage, and was eating a plastic bag as we watched. The lion too was lying in a sea of litter. The zoo must have taken in $1,000,000 in entrance fees today, but had no supervision of the large crowds at the cages.

Forlorn Tiger

Lion Litter
We had fun feeding the elephants. For 5 yuan we got a few sticks of bamboo, which the elephants seemed to like, carefully moving from one outstretched hand to the next. The people seemed happy too.

Feeding the Elephants

Sand Bath

Behai Park Temple

2006-05-03T21:44:00.000+08:00

Here are some more pictures from my two trips to the Buddhist temple in Behai Park (I think it is called Xitian Fanjing).

Yellow and Green Roofs

Temple Roof

Dragon Wall Tiles

Good Luck Bell

Charms

Tassles

Bell Inscriptions

King of the South

Laughing Buddha and King of the North

Niujie Mosque

2006-05-02T21:22:00.000+08:00

Prayer Hall
We took advantage of the holiday-reduced traffic to cycle to the south west part of Beijing. One goal was the Niujie Mosque (Ox Street Mosque), which is the largest mosque in Beijing, and dates back to the fourteenth century. At first the mosque appears to be a typical chinese temple, but then some more mosque-like features become obvious, such as arabic characters and the dome on the roof, although this too is surrounded by the usual guardian animal carvings.

Roof Decorations and Arabic Characters

Dome and Guardian Animals
The door to the minaret was open, and people seemed to be looking around, so I climbed up to the top to get a view of the courtyard. When I returned back down I found I was locked in. Someone soon discovered me, and went to fetch a key. Everyone thought it was a good joke!

Minaret Ceiling

Mosque Courtyard from Minaret
Apparently a few years ago the mosque was surrounded by a Muslim enclave with open air markets and stalls selling tasty Muslim food. Now it is in a rather charmless neighborhood of tall apartment buildings. There did seem to be a large number of butchers selling very fresh lamb (to judge by the smell and the discarded lamb pelt on the sidewalk), and some nice little stores selling snacks and other things. We had delicious beef dumplings standing on the sidewalk, and then waited for the egg and vegetable dumplings to cook, "chatting" with the owners about the tandem.

Old and New

Butcher's Shop

Meat Transporter

Solemn Child

Spot the Tandem
We next cycled east across town to a a place near the Temple of Heaven marked on the map as a Pearl Market and a Silk Market. We left our tandem in the guarded bike area, just outside the Pearl Market, and wandered around there - not that we wanted any pearls. The market is a building five storeys high. On the fourth and fifth floors are numerous small shops selling pearls, and other jewelry that we thought was quite ugly, and a few stores selling jade and other art. On lower floors are selections of souvenirs, and then clothes and shoes, and finally in the basement a bustling fish market selling every sort of sea life you could imagine. This meant that the fine jewelry stores on the top floors are permeated by a faint smell of old fish - maybe not too inappropriate for pearls!

Temple of Heaven from Roof of the Pearl Market
After this we decided to check out something marked as the Liulichang Cultural Street on the tourist map. This is just south of Tiananmen square. It is a street of old-looking buildings, tea and antique stores, and shops selling tourist trinkets. Pedicabs pedal up and down looking for passengers - the tandem was a good defense against the usual solicitations - so it is obviously a tourist attraction, although there were few people there today. The most interesting thing we found was an art gallery of Chinese paintings, with several artists painting in quite different, but very Chinese, styles.

Art Show
The next leg was to the Friendship Store to buy a phrase book with pinyin phonetics, rather than the more common home brewed version usually found in such books. This was again on the opposite side of town. This part of the ride took us past the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, both very crowded with visitors. We were happy not to be sight-seeing there today.

On our way back home we stopped off for coffee and cheese-cake in the Passer-By Bar mentioned in the Lonely Planet Guide. We had passed this on a previous bike ride just after a Peking Duck lunch when we didn't need more food. It is a pleasant, hippy sort of place in a quiet courtyard that the guide book says is reminiscent of the old style Beijing homes that are disappearing as the hutong areas are modernised - a nice place to rest after our long ride.

Passer By Bar
With all our crisscrossing across the city our ride added up to twenty-five miles in all. You can find a Google map here.

May Day in Behai Park

2006-05-01T22:28:00.000+08:00

May Day, and also the rest of the week, is a holiday in China. No parades or anything, just people going out and having fun. Xiaoqin, who is a student in the group I am visiting, and her friend Dong, invited us out to enjoy the afternoon in Behai park.

It was a beautiful day, and the park was full of people, but never felt too crowded.

May Day Crowds
There is a delightful Buddhist temple at the north end of the park. Xiaoqin bought us a good health charm to earn the blessings of the Laughing Buddha.

Laughing Buddha

Good Health Charm
Just outside the temple is a grand "9 Dragon Wall". Pairs of dragons are playing with a pearl (with one left out).

9 Dragon Wall
Xiaoqin and Lynn decided to dress up as empress and princess at the top of the White Pagoda hill.

Lynn and Xiaoqin Becoming Regal

Empress and Princess

Regal Headdresses
Boating is a favorite activity for afternoons in the park, as you can see in the panorama. We took a row boat out, and rowed and drifted around, and played cards, occasionally bumping other boats through our inattention.

Lake Behai Panorama

Xiaoqin, Dong, and Lynn in Rowboat
To recuperate from the rowing (!) Xiaoqin treated us to a feast of Old Beijing specialties at a nearby reatuarant. The delicacies included "noodle tea", made from flour and sesame paste, beef intestines, sheep organ soup, a "fake fish" dish made from noodles, taro cake, and many others.

Beijing Specialties

Ride to Summer Palace Area

2006-04-30T21:00:00.000+08:00

Shopping Center and Old Houses
Today we road our tandem to the Summer Palace area. Our route was due west along Xueyuannan Road, which is the south border of the Beijing Normal University Campus, and further along turns into Weigongcun Road. Then we wiggled over to Kunminghu Road running up the Beijing Canal to the Summer Palace (Google Map). This turned out to be a quite a pleasant route, without too much traffic. There was alot of construction alongside the canal road, but again not too much traffic. We only had one near miss with a taxi the whole way! An old guide book to bike rides in Beijing says there was an interesting Uyghur community in the Weigongcun area, but more recent guides say this has all been knocked down, to be replaced by buildings like the shopping center in the photo above.

We decided not to go into the Summer Palace, since we have been there twice before, and it wasn't a clear day for good photos. Near the summer palace Beijing is beginning to thin out into farmland, and so we explored this a little. The people working in the fields were very friendly, and unlike the Beijing city-folk were quite curious about our "small handsome" tandem as one described it, and the idea of two people pedalling a single bike.

Orchard near the Summer Palace
One thing we found was a source of the white seed fluffs that fill the air on windy days in Beijing like gentle snow. It had always been curious that these fluffs were everywhere, but we could never see what tree they came from.

Willow Trees: "Spring Snow" Source

Spring Snow

Fishing Pond
You might be able to see some of the floating fluffs in the last picture above.

After riding some more (walking on the dirt roads) we came to an open air market. It was fun to wander around and have gestured (me) and spoken (Lynn) conversations with the stallholders, who were happy to talk with us at the primitive level we could manage, and to have their photos taken.

Open Air Market

Fruit Stalls

Sweet Noodle Stall

Leeks

Bike Repair Man
No, we didn't have bike trouble! This is Lynn asking directions from a roadside bicycle repair man on the way home.

Bikes in Beijing

2006-04-29T22:44:00.000+08:00

There are still many bikes on the streets in Beijing - the difference from 10 years ago is that there are now many cars as well. Here are a few pictures that give some idea of this, although I haven't caught the most impressive scenes of massed bicycles yet!

Bikes on Xianjiekouwaidajie

Waiting for Green, Jishuitan Bridge
In many ways Beijing is an ideal city for bikes. It is flat, and almost all the main roads have wide designated cycle lanes, may fenced off from the rest of the traffic. It is also probably the quickest way of getting places in the rush hours. On the less pleasant side are the very cold winters, the smog, the dust and sand, and the crazy driving conventions.

Here's one more picture that doesn't show many bikes but is for me an iconic picture of bikes and Beijing.

Cycling Past Tiananmen Gate

Dinner on Lake Xihai

2006-04-28T22:50:00.000+08:00

Fishermen

It was a nice warm evening again, so we decided to have dinner at a restaurant on Lake Xihai. This is just a mile or so north of where we had dinner last Friday on Lake Qianhai, but unlike that area is not inundated with western tourists. Just next to the restaurant fisherman were using long poles fish in the reeds near the inlet to the lake. They were catching quite large fish, as you can see in the next picture. The restaurant we went to is in the background.

Caught One!
The restaurant was right by the lake, with some tables on jetties over the lake, some on floating barges, and even some on boats that were paddled out into the center of the lake after all the dishes had arrived.

Restaurant by the Lake

At many of the restaurants we have been to, a waiter will come with the menus, and then stand by patiently for however long it takes to order, occasionally adding helpful suggestions. Ordering can take a long time even if the menu is in English, since there are usually so many dishes to choose from. The hovering waiter is a little hard to get used to after the American way of doing things!

We ordered a cold dish of "peeled bamboo shoots". It arrived looking like quite inedible 3 inch sticks of bamboo, but eventually we found that you could squeeze out the edible inside by biting down from the center, which turned out to be very good. We also had a mixed vegetable dish including green soy beans, fried noodles with a variety of tidbits, and steamed fish in a brown sauce. Lynn seemed to find all the tiny bones that many of the fresh water fish have, so I didn't get many!

Lynn Choosing from the Menu

The food was maybe not the best we have had, but the location on a warm spring evening was perfect, with an interesting view over the lake. Nearby was another floating bird residence, this one presently occupied by a goose couple.

Goose Residence

As the evening got darker, the lights and lanterns came on, making a pretty scene. Here you can see one of the small boats preparing to leave for the dinner paddle cruise.

Night Scene

Forbidden City

2006-04-27T22:18:00.000+08:00

Crowds Approaching the Meridian Gate

Corner Tower and Tour Group
My afternoon excursion this week took me to the Forbidden City. (Lynn didn't come, and hasn't been there yet, so I'm sure I'll go again later on.) From my short visit in 1997 I remembered it as a rather soulless place, and my impression wasn't different this time. For my taste, there is too much concrete and too many wide open squares. Many of the building are closed, and others contain dusty displays that you can peer at through dirty windows. Some of the displays in the newly renovated buildings on the west were nice, including one of old musical instruments, although there was no information in English. But I prefer the shade and color of the various palace gardens.

One of the Central Halls and Large Courtyard

Dusty Interior
The features of the Forbidden City that I find most attractive are the the metal (bronze?) statues of guardian beasts and the colorful eaves and patterns of yellow tiled roofs.

Colorful Eaves

Yellow Tiled Roofs

Guardian Statue

Mythical Beast

Parts of the Forbidden City are being renovated under the massive Olympic preparations plan, including the centerpiece, the Hall of Supereme Harmony.

Renovation: a Thorough Job!

Scaffolding on the Hall of Supereme Harmony

30 cent Breakfast

2006-04-26T22:00:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I go and have breakfast in one of the campus canteens. This is my standard breakfast which costs 2.4 yuan (about 30 cents). The buns are steamed meat buns, and the other thing on the plate is a sort of pickle. There are four choices of gruel: soy milk, rice, corn, and bean. I don't think they cost anything. I'm having the bean (the best one) and rice this day.

I have a favorite canteen for breakfast, chosen for the English speaking server. The first morning I went through my usual pantomime of pointing and waving, and the sever dutifully fetched everything and put it on my tray. After I paid she said in perfectly accented English, "And where do you come from?" So now I go to that one, and she smiles cheerfuly and asks me if I would like an egg today.

Notice Board

2006-04-25T22:47:00.000+08:00

Wisteria

2006-04-24T19:51:00.000+08:00

I'm beginning to think warm spring weather is finally here. I keep thinking that, and then it gets cold and miserable again. The heat in our apartment was turned off promptly on April 1, and it has never really been warm inside since then. It's been nice to go to the office in the mornings and warm up in the heat from the students' computers! The locals say this has been the worst spring for decades. But today the temperature was over 70F, and the forecast is for temperatures rising to 80F by the end of the week. And the apartment, which is on the ground floor of a high rise and so takes time to adjust to the weather like an underground cave, is finally beginning to seem less chilly.

The flowers here seem to express their welcome for spring after a long, cold winter with great exuberance. The flowering fruit trees provide splashes of pinks and whites everywhere, and beds of poppies, bulbs, and other flowers in the parks are dazzling. For the past couple of days the Wisteria has been in profuse bloom. These pictures are of a plant over the entrance to the campus kindergarten.

Wisteria spray

Botanic Garden

2006-04-23T22:18:00.000+08:00

On the way home from Fragrant Hills yesterday we stopped off in the nearby Botanic Gardens. The blooms were spectacular, particularly the tulip beds, the peach and crab-apple trees, and the lilac.

Tulips and fruit trees

Tulip beds under the trees

I was not the only photographer!

Peach garden

Crab apples

There were many visitors at the park, so the bus home was very crowded.

Bus No. 331 home

Fragrant Hills

2006-04-22T21:00:00.000+08:00

Fragrant Hills is a park just outside Beijing to the north-west. It is both an ornamental garden, with bright flower beds, lakes, and temples and pavilions, and the gateway to the more rugged hills behind. After the hour long bus ride from our apartment the final walk to the park entrance is up a friendly, low-key street lined with snack and souvenir shops.

Road up to Fragrant Hills
The summit of Incense-Burner Hill is the destination for many of the Chinese visitors. It's quite a climb, but most, both young and old, seem to like the hike. We took the chair-lift...

Xiangshan Chairlift
... as did this young bubble-blowing child on the way down.

Bubbles
There are views of the city, and back into the hills, from the summit, although it was rather hazy today.

Incense-Burner Hill Summit
There is a good bird's-eye view of the park on the way down. The Glazed Tile Pagoda is a centerpiece of the park.

Glazed Tile Pagoda from Chairlift
Back down, this is the Study of Reading Heart pavilion with a pond of large Koi and bags of pellets to feed them.

Koi Pond

Feeding the Koi
The Glazed Tile Pagoda is close by.

Glazed Tile Pagoda and Distant City

Detail

Glazed Tiles

Hutong Building

2006-04-21T22:11:00.000+08:00

How to get cement up to roof level - the hard way!

Jingshan Park - Reconstruction!

2006-04-20T18:00:00.000+08:00

Thursday was clear and warm, so I took the afternoon off to go to Jingshan Park. This is just behind the Forbidden City, and contains a hill 50 meters high made from the earth excavated from the Forbidden City moat. From the viewing pavilions on the top of the hill there are meant to be spectacular views of the Forbidden City. But in the rather single-minded way Beijing is preparing for the Olympics in 2008, every one of the pavilions is being renovated at the same time, and since the hillside is covered with trees, there are no good good observation points left.

Renovation

Detail Work on a Pavilion

Roof Work
The view North to the Drum Tower in the distance is a little better.

View North towards the Drum Tower
The park has some other attractions. This is the "the scholar tree where the last Ming emperor Chongzhen (1628-1644), wracked with despair after rebels broke into the Forbidden City, took his own life" (from chinatravel.com)

Location of Ming Emperor's Suicide

Notice Boards and Poppies

Dust Storm

2006-04-19T20:46:00.000+08:00

The weather has been miserable for the past few days, with dust stirred up by strong winds from the desert in north China blanketing Beijing and much of the north east. The sun barely pokes through, everything is a drab yellow color, and visibility is hardly to the end of the street. The air is thick with dust, irritating throat and nose. On the worst day in Beijing (fortunately one I was in Baoding where it wasn't quite so bad) a layer of sand was left covering everything. Today actually felt a little better, since strong winds here blew away the atmospheric sand cloud, and we could actually see blue sky. However the same wind stirred up the recent deposits, so the air was still gritty, and cold too.

Kite Flying in Baoding

Street by BNU

Dusty Car

Clean Me?

Baoding Balls

2006-04-18T17:23:00.000+08:00

The city of Baoding is probably most famous for its Baoding Balls. These are a pair of balls, about an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, and usually made of metal or sometimes stone. The balls are manipulated around in one hand, with therapeutic effect, it is said. The ones in the photo are a farewell gift from ny hosts in Baoding.

Baoding Street Scenes

2006-04-17T21:26:00.000+08:00

Waiting to Dance in the Square

Kites and Tall Building

Stunt Cyclist

Gaudy Stores

Baoding Sight Seeing

2006-04-16T21:12:00.000+08:00

I'm visiting Baoding for a couple of days to give a talk at Hebei University. Baoding is about 80 miles south of Beijing. I was escorted on the train trip from Beijing by Yafeng He, a student in the group I am visiting. On Saturday he and Weili Fan and Weili Liu, two other students in the group, took me on a sight seeing tour of the nearby Han Tombs, and the Governor's Office and Lotus Gardens in the city. The Han Tombs are the burial chambers of a Chinese emperor from about 2000 years ago, in caves excavated in the limestone hillside, that were not discovered unitl 1968. These were perhaps the most impressive part of the tour, but no photos were allowed inside.

Community Park

2006-04-15T18:51:00.000+08:00

A pleasant walk for less than a mile north from our appartment leads to a park that is a narrow green strip stretching for several miles along Beitucheng Road. The park commemorates the Yuan dynasty capital of Dadu that predates the Ming dynasty Beijing, and runs along the old earthen city wall and moat. There are a few historical relics in the stretch we walked - a local website describes "a restored waterspout, one of the old city's eight great drainage ditches" and there is an "ancient boat with tea fragrance" - and some modern sculptures and murals describing the history. But mainly the park is a strip of pleasant gardens where people come to walk, exercise, play, and sing, and go boating on the river, in the way the Chinese seem to love to do.

Reading about the Park

Kublai Khan Sculpture

Choir Group

Wedding Boat

Exercise Game

Old Stlye - New Style

Boating on the Moat

We had lunch in this little restaurant next to the park.

Lunch Restaurant
We were initially attracted to it by a long line of people buying something from a takeaway window. This turned out to be separate from the restaurant, but the waitress was quite happy to get us a piece of the fresh corn bread that was being sold. We also had dumplings, including some glazed ones that we hadn't seen before.

Fresh Cornbread

Glazed Dumplings

Team Spirit Games

2006-04-14T19:31:00.000+08:00

The past two days the BNU students have been competing in some team cooperation games. Yesterday, I gather, the games were part of a study course that is a requirement for entrance into the Cummunist party, but today they were purely for fun and exercise. (Or I may have misunderstood completely!) All the games seemed to involve the team developing a cooperative strategy, such as coordinating steps for a multi-person shoe, or jumps in a tethered sack race. The most interesting race was with giant rope caterpilla- treads, where the team of 20 inched along with a circular rope underfoot and held overhead. As usual, the students competed with great enthusiasm and enjoyment.

Warm Up

Multi-person Shoe

Pass-the-Basketball

Rope caterpillar-tread

Quadri-sack Race

Pandas

2006-04-13T21:07:00.000+08:00

The zoo is a short bus ride away, and so we went there for a few hours over lunch time, mainly to see the giant pandas. We found about half a dozen there in the Giant Panda House, and without the long queues that are ineveitable at panda displays in the US. Most of the pandas were asleep, but one was given its bamboo meal just as we arrived, and spent the next few minutes happily chomping and looking cute. So here are too many panda pictures!

Sleeping Panda

Contented Panda

Laid back Panda

PS: The Lonely Planet Guide is quite disparaging about the Beijing Zoo. We found that the animal facilites were rather modern and attractive. The zoo grounds are very green and pleasant too.

Zhongshan Park

2006-04-12T21:06:00.000+08:00

Today the dust in the air dispersed, and by afternoon the skies were blue - the first time for about a week. So I took a couple of hours off and rode the No. 22 bus to the center of Beijing to wander around and enjoy the nice afternoon. The main focus of the wandering was Zhongshan Park, which is right at the front corner outside the Forbidden City. It is a peaceful hideaway - the 3 yuan entrance fee seems to keep away causual visitors, and there are no real sights to see. The gardens are well kept however, and the spring bulbs just coming into bloom together with the flowering trees made a colorful show.

Forbidden City and Moat

Purple Tulip

Are these tulips too?

Flowering Tree at the Laijinyuxuan Restaurant

Fruit Blossom

Lilac Trees

Fierce Figure

Tiananmen Gate from the Rear

Building Site Update

2006-04-11T21:01:00.001+08:00

The site where a building was demolished just oustide my office window is steadily turning into a new building. Sometimes there is heavy building equipment, but much of the labor is done by hand. Here are some pictures of the progress.

After Demolition, March 8

17th March

20th March

5th April

10th April

11th April

Pancake Snack

2006-04-10T21:22:00.000+08:00

This is a delicious snack that you can find in many places as street-food. The place I got it for breakfast is a tiny store next to the supermarket on the BNU campus which serves various takeaway snacks (we've bought dumplings there before).

The starting point is a large crepe-like pancake. Next some onions are added, and an egg is broken onto it, spread, and cooked. The crepe is turned over, and covered with a spicy brown source. Finally a 6 x 9 inch rectangle of something crispy (there is a pile above the stove) is put on top, and the whole thing is folded over about four times, and handed to you to eat from a platic bag. It cost 2 yuan (25 cents US). Very tasty!

Great Wall

2006-04-09T21:00:00.000+08:00

We went with the Chinese Culture Club to the Great Wall, hiking along it about 10km from Jinshanling to Simatai (map). When I visited the wall at Badaling about 10 years ago, I came away with the impression that the Great Wall was better as a concept than in reality. However the part we visited today, with less drastic reconstruction and fewer tourists and touts, is a much grander experience. The day turned out very misty however, and although the wall stretching into the haze has a certain appeal when you are there, it doesn't tranlsate well into photos. Here are some anyway!

Near Jinshanling

General's Tower

The area around Beijing is incredibly dry, and almost nothing grows this time of year except wild cherry trees (I think), which grow in the foothills and right up to the Wall.

Cherry Blossom
Some of the walk along the wall involves steep climbs.

Steep Climb

One of the guides with us kept calling the something that sounded like "Wild Animal". When I asked him about this he said it was a mistranslation of the Chinese characters, but sometimes the wall does seem like a serpent snaking along the mountain tops.

Wild Animal

We walked past 37 towers. This is the view from one of them.

The walk ended at Simatai. Just past here the Wall soars up the mountains again. Maybe we'll try to come back on a clearer day!

Near Simatai

Duck Lunch and Hutong Ride

2006-04-08T21:53:00.000+08:00

We biked to a different Peking Duck restaurant for lunch - the Tianwaitian Restaurant on - Dianmenwai St. - conveniently located just the other side of the "Back Lakes". After a delicious, and rather too large, lunch we rode for a bit around the Hutong's behind the restaurant, following a portion of the bike ride suggested in the Lonely Planet guiide to Beijing. You can find the Google map of the ride here.

Tianwaitian Duck Restaurant

Wen Tianxiang Temple

Temple Gate

Ornamental Fish Store

Fish for Sale

Street Ping-Pong

Market Hutong

Pink Magnolia

Another Pink Flower

Kindergarten

2006-04-07T20:07:00.000+08:00

My walk across campus to and from my office takes me past the bright and cheerful BNU kindergarten. In the morning at the time I usually go by the yard is full of happy children playing. The school is open to non-campus families (for whom it is quite expensive, I'm told) and it has a good reputation. In the late evening the scene is like many US private schools, with SUVs and expensive cars crammed along the street, and harried looking parents in business suits and talking on cell phones rushing in to pick up their children before closing time.

Rain!

2006-04-06T21:26:00.000+08:00

It rained today! The first time in the 5 weeks we have been here. Not too much, but enough to make puddles.

Rainy Campus

Yuanmingyuan

2006-04-05T20:42:00.000+08:00

Twilight
I took a few hours off on Wednesday afternoon to visit Yuanmingyuan. The English name is the "Old Summer Palace", which is not a translation and doesn't seem to have much to do with the rather sorry history. It's in the north of Beijing, about a half hour bus ride from the BNU campus. (An amazing thing about the Beijing buses is that you seem to be able to get between any two points without changing bus - so long as you can figure out which bus it is! There are at least two that go between the BNU campus and Yuanmingyuan - I took the 331 going and the 726 coming back.)

Now Yuanmingyuan is a large park, largely taken up by with numerous lakes, some with boating, and what is becoming familiar as the "usual" bridges, islands and pavillions. The park did have some very pretty flowering trees and willowy walks, but otherwise is rather barren at this time of year. It's hard to tell yet if it gets much greener later, or is just too dry and overwalked.

Cherry Blossom

Cherry and Forsythia

Bridge and Willow

Enjoying Jasper Pavilion

There were a few self-paddle boaters out, and these strange oar-paddle boats in which a boatsman takes you around. It was too cold today for me to want to do that.

Paddle Boat

The only official "attraction" in the park is the European Palace Ruins - what is left after the British and French troops destroyed some Versailles-style fake European palaces about a century ago.

European Palace Ruins

Campus Flowers

2006-04-04T21:41:00.000+08:00

The weather has turned quite warm, and there is much more evidence of spring around campus. The Magnolia blossoms are already over, and the yellow of the "Welcoming Sping Bush" is now dotted with green as the leaves appear, but other trees are coming into flower.

Even what appeared to be dead "twigs" behind our apartment are coming into leaf...

... and there was a pretty flower poster amongst the student activity displays today.

Flower Poster

Beijing Style Restaurant

2006-04-03T19:06:00.000+08:00

On Sunday evening we went with our host to what he called a traditional style Beijing restaurant.

Crowded Restaurant

Dining Room
The walls are decorated with famous Chinese pictures, some telling epic stories.

Story Picture

The dish the restaurant is known for is a bowl of noodles which comes with six or seven small plates of flavorful additions. At the table the waiter rapidly mixes it all together.

Noodle Dish

Other Dishes
My host's son's eyes were caught by the picture in the menu of this attractive looking dessert plate, with a variety of sweet bean cakes, sticky rice, and other tasty morsels.

Dessert Plate

Temple of Heaven

2006-04-02T21:08:00.000+08:00

We rode our tandem to the Temple of Heaven, Tiantan Park. This is south of the center, and so the ride took us past the Forbidden City again. We chose a better route to get there this time, on the quiet streets (at least in the morning!) past Lakes Houhai and Qianhai, and then through narrow Hutongs down to the palace area. After that there were nice wide boulevards that took us to the park.

At the Entrance Gate
We planned mainly to walk around the gardens, and so only bought the entrance ticket (15 yuan) not the full ticket (35yuan) that has various sites added. We'll look at the sites some other day. We arrived at past 11am, but the park still thronged with the storied early morning game players, exercisers, musicians, etc. The Long Corridor was lined with groups of people playing various card and board games, and musicians. Just outside, people were playing an exercise game somwhat like badminton, except the idea seems to be to cooperate, to catch the balls on the soft rackets in an elegant way. There were a few kite flyers, although there was not much wind. A variety of martial arts dancers were perfroming their routines, with bright costumes and swords. The motivation appears to be personal, rather than to attract an audience, but the performers seem not at all bashful

Long Corridor

Ball Game Exercise

Folk Musicians

Martial Arts Performance
The central feature of the park is the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest. This was closed for rennovation until May, according to a sign, so that will have to wait for another time too. As you can see, it was another smoggy day.

Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest
Nearby is the Imperial Vault of Heaven with bright blue tile roofs.

Blue Roof
A spectacular flowering Magnolia was just before the exit, probably the best we've seen so far.

Magnolia Tree
On the way home we followed a similar route, but with some details suggested by the Lonely Planet Beijing bicycle ride. The guide suggests that you can actually cycle right along the moat of the Forbidden City, north of the Tiananmen Gate, the Workers' Cultural Palace, and Zhongshan Park. This seemed unlikely, since it takes you through the main entrance courtyard full of the crowds waiting to get in to the Forbidden City, but did indeed turn out to be true. On the moat, right opposite the Forbidden City, is this gray and dusty Hutong area.

Hutong near the Forbidden City
The route back to the campus from there was through various Hutongs back to the lake area. Now it was afternoon, and so we joined the jams of Pedi-Cabs showing the tour groups the area.

The route of our ride is here. (There are some gaps in the track for the outward trip.)

Purple Bamboo Park

2006-04-01T22:31:00.000+08:00

Purple Bamboo Park is a large park with gardens and a lake two or three miles from our apartment. The busy city is all around, and you never quite get away from the traffic noise, but since there is an entrance fee (2 yuan), it is uncrowded and quite peaceful. We went there at the end of the day, when the weather was trying to clear, but never quite made it. The guide books and websites all call the park "Purple Bamboo", but the proper translation is probably "Black Bamboo". We never did find the fortune Blessed Garden - maybe it was the part under piles of rubble being rennovated, as so much of Beijing is right now.

Wedding Photos

Pretty Duck
An interesting part of the park is a "stone chess" playground, with life size carved chess pieces for kids to climb on, and chess puzzles carved into rocks or sculpted out of concrete.

Stone Chess

Flowering Shrubs

Sunset

Signs and Posters

2006-03-31T17:35:00.000+08:00

Summer Palace Rennovation Sign [*]

Sign on Railings around Historical Relic

Famous Mathematicians ...

... such as ...

Chopstick Shop

Posting
Note added 4/8/06: Now Lynn can read more characters we understand the cateful to meet sign better: cateful is, fairly obviously, a typo for careful (not to); the character translated as meet should have been translated as something like hit your head, but has a meaning of meet in the context of putting your heads together or meeting of the minds . The signs had all disappeared by our second visit.

Maybe more to come ....

Sport and Exercise

2006-03-30T19:58:00.001+08:00

Chinese people seem to be keen on sports and exercise. On the BNU campus, particularly in the early mornings and in the evenings, there are all sorts of sports activities, both organized practices and classes, and enthusiastic pick up games.

Evening Sports

Morning Tennis Class

Exercise in Houhai Park
Wherever you look there are arrays of exercise equipment - and people using them! There is an enormous variety of machines - I can't even guess how some of them are used!

A variety ...

... of strange ...

... exercise (?) ...

...machines!

Shadows