Beijing Life - Friends

One Saturday, I went to Badachu, a Buddhist temple area, with Cheng laoshi and her friend. It was quite hot and I was in my skirt, so people - of course - stared fixedly at this bizarrely garbed Chinese-speaking foreigner.

Cheng laoshi's on the right.

Towards the end of our time in Beijing, I went shopping with Lucie and Yasi, and we managed to find a photo booth and take obnoxious pictures there. Awesome! I also got some lovely Chinglish shirts for my sister.

Probably my favorite.

Great Wall v5.0

My fifth time on the Wall: doing the Jinshanling --> Simatai hike with Hella and Tony. Lovely hike, but please don't try to take public transportation, cuz there isn't a bus that goes from Simatai anymore...

Basically it was a bus and taxi disaster, involved angry bargaining, friendly conversation, the taxi driver patiently explaining that "ayi" and "shushu" implies the parties in question being younger than my parents, and in this case it seems as if they are older than my parents, so I should call them something else, except I wasn't calling them that in the first place because I'm incapable of remembering it.

At the end, at the bus station at Dongzhimen, Hella and Tony tried to buy a little bit of some dried fruit stuff and the guy cut off a huge chunk, chopped it up, and then tried to intimidate them into getting the whole 100 kuai portion. It almost came to blows... but I'd bought a naan from a nice looking guy at the next cart over, and I managed to convince him of our 道理, so he very kindly stepped in and calmed the dried-fruit-stuff-seller down.

Not pleasant, though. I hate it when they try to cheat us just cuz we're white and stupid-looking.

I'd left at 6:30am and got back at 10:30pm... and then I think Lucie and I went out to Propaganda until 4am. Was that the night? I'm pretty sure it was...

Beijing Life - Wanderings

Some pictures from April and May, from all over Beijing. The first few are from my and Lucie's quest to find the First Sex Shop In Beijing, which was mentioned (with a very interesting interview with the proprietor) in our China Candid book. Unfortunately, we got confused as to the address and dragged ourselves all over the city looking for it, asking for directions in hutongs, visiting a Sephora, calling Luisa for Googling help, and walking up a huge long street cuz we ended up at the South end and needed the North bit.

But.
We found it.
And it was boring and little and on a very busy shopping street, right in the open.
Weird.


Washing windows.


The object of our quest. Woo.

Delicious lamb and pijiu at a Muslim restaurant.

The next couple of pictures are from the Yuyantan park in southern Beijing, at Muxidibei. Kearney and I, accompanied by our tutors, went down there at 7:30am to find some Guolin Qigong participants to interview for our research papers. Guolin Qigong was formulated by a cancer patient on the theory that oxygen combats cancer, so one of their exercises is "xi xi hu", or "inhale inhale exhale", which they do while walking around in circles and swinging their arms.

The lady in the green has a microphone and is yelling "xi xi hu!" at them.

Oh yes of course. Churros.

And this last beauty is from Propaganda the night that Shanshan (my Medical Chinese professor)

and Dongshu (Luisa's tutor, Shanshan's friend) came out with us.


Shanshan is badass. Coolest professor ever. Even defended my beer to Dongshu.