Beijing I Remember and Don't
Trip Start
Jul 08, 2008
1
4
25
Trip End
Aug 15, 2008
Beijing,
China
Thursday, July 10, 2008
I met up with Kirsty - a local friend of mine from when I studied abroad whom my roommate Alex once described as the ideal woman, which is a fair description - and she took me to a Starbucks. I told her how, despite working at one as a teenager, I never patronized Starbucks until I lived in Beijing. Hannah knows I'm a fan now.
Kirsty and I had a great talk, switching between our languages. When I saw her last she couldn't speak any English. She speaks very well now, if with a smal vocabulary. After the coffee, she took me shopping at the Yangsho market in Sanlitun - this is the clothes market where I bought that infamous suit three years ago. I loved watching her bargain the shop girls down. She helped me get a great and badly needed new scally cap for about $5 American. Kirsty seemed to be something of a regular there; the shop girls knew and feared her.
The subway and bus ride there and the cab ride from there to the restaurant we went to were wild. This is the neighborhood I lived in for 5 months studying here, but only about half of it remained from three years ago. Everything in this city is new. I kept exclaiming, new buildings! new cars! new subways! new buses! Kirsty joked, "new people!" I have some photos I took three years ago of a huge construction site just outside the 3rd ring road. It was in the process of demolition and was mostly a huge hole in the ground. Turns out that it is now the famous new CCTV building under construction - or as Kirsty called it, "Asia's largest pair of pants."
We went to eat at ZunJing KaoYaDian. This was my favorite restaurant here, just outside the south gate of my school. I was wicked excited to see it's still there. The menu changed and some of my favorite dishes are gone, but the Peking Duck was still excellent.
We made plans to go out clubbing Thursday night. I have to run now to meet my future MIT classmates up at Tsinghua University, so the club will be the next entry. Apologies on the lack of photos. I promise I'll get some up before too long.
Comments
lucky you!
I'd kill to go shopping in China right now (I'm fantasizing about almost-theft prices on great fabric...shoulda, coulda, woulda.)!! Glad to hear you're having fun. Be safe! (And sorry about the Bushmills...that's rough. Sons of b*tches!)
Them's some big pants
They might as well have sewn on pockets. Hope you're having a great time, dude, and steer clear of the Sprite and Bai Jo (I have no idea how to spell that) that you seem to be so fond of. A query: how's the Olympic spirit? Btw, in the process of getting my Korea visa--it's really happening. Gotta choose an actual place to work, but yeah--September 2. Can't wait to see what else you have to say--dp