Wednesday
…was a day on which I went looking for several things I remembered from Beijing in 2000 and 2002, and found them gone.
Spent a couple hours on the computer this morning trying to get photos uploaded, journal entries written, and e-mail sent out. It’s so frustrating to use the internet here, I think Brainysmurf’s recent post on reverse-culture shock (he’s in the USA for his wedding) does it some justice:
Talking to the computer reverse cultural shock: “Heh. My dial up connection in the US is faster than my broadband over there.” “Wow BBC News formats their website pretty well.” “Instapundit is even more of a doofus when you’re reading it from the US. Sweet.” “Hmm. I wonder if the authorities will do a search for this keyword. Oh wait.”
GMail has been very inconsistent, the uplink from different internet cafes varies widely in quality, and the computers around town are in creative states of disrepair. The one pleasant surprise is that every computer so far has let me install PuTTY for encrypted SSH access to my UMich and Freeshell accounts.
The first disappointment came when I walked through Liulichang and couldn’t find the store where the people had been so friendly to me when I lost my backpack in 2002. It must have been sold, or remodelled, but I’m not exactly sure so I’ll probably end up going back one more time. Second, I took the bus to Ditan, the temple of earth park, and found that the old Beijing restaurant just outside the east gate had been flattened, along with the neighborhood around it, to make a (pleasant little) green strip just outside the park walls.
I hopped on the bus back to Wangfujing for lunch, only to find that the cafeteria style food-court at whcih I had intended to eat (behind the big shopping malls) had been torn down into a parking lot. Amusingly (and I’ll upload the picture I took tomorrow), instead of tearing down all the buildings and putting up a fence around the lot, the builders chose to tear down all but the store-front walls, leaving them to enclose the lot. As a result, when you walk along the street you are seeing a false facade, and if you look in through the store windows and glass doors, you see not merchandise, but cars parked in a field. It is very surreal.
Back at the hostel, I napped, showered, and hung out with Isaac and Cindy. Isaac is studying Chinese in New Jersey, but he’s into Japanese pop culture so we shot the breeze about anime, drama and music.
For dinner, I took a taxi (felt uppity!) to meet Helena and Max at the Jazz-ya restaurant in Sanlituan. Travelling around Beijing with Helena is fun because she really got around the city back when she lived here, so she can tell you everything that has changed and the way that it used to be. It’s sad, but it’s also exciting. After shopping for shoes at the Yashuo market and square-dancing with the old folk in the cool evening, and snacking on raisin popsicles, we hit up Club Max in front of the Workers’ Stadium to catch Kid Koala in his exclusive (exclusive!) Beijing appearance. It was a great night, he played a bunch of danceable stuff, and did some more experimental tracks like a composition featuring Louie Armstrong’s trumpet, another of his mom’s favorite old movie music, and one that he dedicated to DJ Krush, which totally had DJ Krush’s moody feel. Martin, from the BLUG, was at the club so we did the whole “shout random stuff at each other, nod and smile because the music is so loud” thing. Maybe it’s just me.
Food
-
Breakfast
The Breakfast Association would be ashamed of me.
-
Lunch (Wangfujing Dongan Mall Chinese food court)
curry rice with chicken, and too-sweet suan mei tang (“tart” plum punch).
-
Dinner (Jazz-ya)
tamago omelette appetizer, the creamiest macaroni au gratin, and raisin popsicles for dessert.
permalink | Micah/Beijing | 2004.07.15-17:35.00
