Hutong Hopping

I am obsessed with my phone. It is so freaking James Bond/Batman gadget-ish. I don't even have to press anything; I just look at it and it practically intercepts my brainwaves.

Don't let the people who are on their feet fool you. Its slippery as all get out.

Hutongs

Jet Li's high school. Not kidding. I asked our rickshaw guy to circle around so I could get this shot. Why the eff did I think that Jet Li would come sauntering out?

Orange you glad this dimsum place is 4 stories and 24 hours?

I enjoy this aspect of driving around Beijing. You don't really get thousand year old gates popping up off the freeway in College Station, Texas.

Hutongs, Rickshaws

An example of an entrance to someone's courtyard, off of a hutong.

Current raves: Harrods' Chamomile Tea (a gift from my first manager at Merrill; back when the days were good and we were earning money), YoYoMa, not falling on my butt in the snow tomorrow morning

It's snowing in Beijing!! Apparently, its the first snow to actually stick on the ground this winter. I woke up this morning after snoozing like 15 times, breezed through a shower/making coffee, all in a hurry to show up 20 mins early to work. I ran out of the apartment, saw the snow, ran back in to get my camera for some shots. Then on the 2nd attempt to leave, I was walking briskly across the parking lot when all of a sudden my legs went out from under me. I completely wiped out. Thank goodness I had the bright idea to put the lid on my coffee cup tightly or else I would be a heck of a lot more mad. As always, my pride was hurt a lot more than anything else, but that's definitely the first time I've fallen since sophomore year of College. (Outside of the Yanjing restuarant in Harvard Square, after an HRO concert in Sanders Theater, I almost slid off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic. Thank goodness I had Jon and Alex on either side who grabbed me before I died.) Do people fall that often? Well, I guess some do, but do the rest of you remember the last time you fell? Long story short, I showed up only 5 minutes ahead of the scheduled time and found 95% of the ppl there already. Blargh.

This past weekend, my friend Susan came into town and after a lazy dimsum brunch at Golden Tripod (yes), we went to go explore Hutongs in the Houhai district of Beijing. The Houhai district is very popular with foreigners; it is built around a large lake which extends throughout Beijing. If you have heard of Zhongnanhai, that's the Chinese equivalent of the White House grounds, except in China its a closed off lakeside compound for the CCP bigwigs. Well, Houhai is part of the same lake chain (or emerald necklace as Frederick Law Olmstead would have imagined it, thanks Prof. Krieger).

Hutongs are by definition very narrow alleyways that contain entrances to courtyards. Because of the population and lack of space, hutongs were widespread throughout major Chinese cities for centuries. They do contain a lot of culture, but its because of the people who live off of these hutongs. Many were renovated or razed over in the leadup to the Olympics, and somehow hutongs became synonymous with democracy, as the Western media is apt to do when it comes to China. However, I think the best quote I've ever heard on this subject is....Everyone likes to visit hutongs, but no one likes to live in the super decrepit ones (crowded space, crumbling buildings, and lack of modern amenities.) They're like Colonial Williamsburg. Its nice to visit, but I don't see many of us yearning to wake up at the crack of dawn to put on our bonnets and churn butter urns out by the barn while Moses shovels cow manure. However, the ones around Houhai have been renovated, and they're nice to see.

My cool neighbor is from the UWS in NYC and he enjoys smoking cigars and trying out random italian phrases in a heavy italian accent. The walls here aren't that thick, haha. We have a business center on the first floor of the apt complex. My fellow tenants are all foreigners so the turnover is high. There's a pile of DVD's, CD's, and books that other tenants have left. I don't miss Netflix that much anymore. I borrowed Love in the Time of Cholera (the movie); maybe I should read the book first?

I went grocery shopping at a local store the other day (the Chinese equivalent of a Wal-Mart....I mention Wal-Mart a lot in this blog, don't I? This is brought to you by Lee Scott.) I was wandering around looking for things, and this tall Caucasian guy walked past me. I didn't think anything of it until I moved to another aisle, and he walked by again. Another aisle, same story. I moved to a different section of the store, and I was looking at coffee thermoses when he came up and 'looked' at them, too. First from my left side, and then from my right side. In America, I would have dropped everything and ran flying out of the store. (Maybe?) Here, I was very amused and curious as to what he was doing. Plus, he was good-looking with the barely-there facial hair and Rafa Nadal hair that I like in men. Finally, when I was ordering dinner from the counter, he came up again and ordered the same thing in a funny Australian accent. I burst out laughing, and finally turned to him and asked him where he was from. You could tell from his eager reaction that he had just wanted to strike up a conversation in English. Apparently, Tyler is new to the City and he overheard me on my cellphone outside of the store speaking in English. Poor guy just wanted someone to talk to. The man doesn't speak more than 5 words of Chinese and his hedge fund just sent him to Beijing for training. Talk about language immersion.

There's a huge exhibition in Beijing of ancient Chinese handicraft with representatives from the minority tribes actually making the items in front of you. For example, fish skin clothing, deer bone bows, grass paper. The fish skin clothing is real, the deer bone and grass I just made up...sounds like things that indigenous people would make though right? Anyways, I'm going to trek out there and check it out Thursday.