What do duck, military history, and bars have in common?

08/16

Thursday I went to yoga, went home and showered, then biked downtown to meet up with Scot and Catlin for dinner. An girl from MIT came along, and a guy from Harvard met us halfway through our meal, which was my first Peking duck in Peking. It was good, but not as spectacular as I'd hoped. I'll have to try a couple more places. The rest of the meal was pretty standard, but since it was more expensive than the places I tend to eat there was less (maybe no?) MSG and less oil. So it was fun, but sort of sad, as it was my goodbye to Catlin before she went back home. So stay in touch, Catlin.

08/17

Friday night I stayed in. I thought about going to see BT perform at a club literally across the street from my apartment, but I decided against going alone and paying more than I could afford, and I don't listen to his stuff much these days, anyway. So I watched DVDs. I should have studied Chinese, but I'm weak-willed. My (rather pathetic) excuse has been that I don't have a desk lamp and that it's too hard on my eyes to do it in the poor overhead lighting at night. Well, I'm buying a desk lamp today.

08/18

Jack, my flatmate's boyfriend who's sharing the apartment with me right now while Xie Fan is in Hong Kong dealing with a death in his family, invited me to go to the Temple of Heaven. I was tempted to tag along and get some Chinese practice in, but I'm trying to save these big, dramatic touristy things for when Adri or Daria (or anyone else that buys a ticket, hint to you all) come. That, plus the fact that it's the PLA's 80th anniversary and I was told I could see China's new J-10 fighter at the Military History Museum (they spoke lies) led me to turn him down and go to the museum on my own.

On my way to the subway I finally found the military surplus store I was looking for. They have some stuff there, but not the hat I'm looking for or exactly the right jacket. I really want to find navy or gray Cultural-Revolution gear.

I also took some street pictures as I biked. One illustrates the superfluous crossing guards (8 at an intersection, albeit a very large intersection, 3 visible in the photo.) Another is a sea of umbrellas on a sunny day like I discussed when I talked about combat walking. Some are construction photos, particularly of the cool new CCTV towers that are being built at an angle, eventually to be connected on top with an 'L' shape.

In the subway I noticed that there was a battery of monitors over the platform. I thought that it was a weird place for security monitors, but on closer inspection I realized that they showed every subway train door and were meant to be visible to the train conductor so he could control door closing. I thought it was neat.

I posted pictures from the museum, but other than that there's not much to say. It was absolutely crazy packed with people. I didn't understand enough of what was written on most of the signs to learn much Chinese military history, but the exhibits went back to the very beginning of the nationalist movement to the 2007 PLA anniversary with a tank simulator, updated uniforms (which look much like the US's, to much scandal), and lots of video displays that can only be described as recruiting material. Another observation is that the gift shop is on the 4th floor, way out of the way. Not only do you not have to go through it on the way out, but to get there you have to climb an awful lot of stairs to get from the 3rd to 4th floor. It was jammed with people anyway, so I guess it's not a problem.

On my way home I got a message from Scot, so we met up at the subway stop for dinner and beer. After that we started walking north up to Sanlitun, near where I work and live, to meet an MIT guy and to go to some bars. The hike is a few miles, but we broke it up with a short side-trip to Wal-Mart. I've been meaning to make the pilgrimage since I'd arrived, and I finally got my chance. It's a lot like what you'd expect from a Wal-Mart, only in Chinese. The one glaring difference I noticed was that checkout lines were short and really densely packed. We bought a durian (big spiky fruit with the strongest smell you can imagine) and cheated by having the employees cut it up for us, then continued on our hike north. I had the durian in my backpack sealed in 3 plastic bags, but it was still pretty strong.

We met Ben, the MIT guy who was in China teaching this summer, in Sanlitun, but the bars weren't really very full at 10pm. We went to Butterfly, one of the few bars I've found in Beijing that I like, mostly for its prices, and had a couple of drinks. We asked if we could eat our durian, and were surprised when they said yes. So we cracked it out. The flavor wasn't as strong as you'd expect from the smell, and was actually pleasant, but the texture was strange and soft. The waiters came by almost immediately and asked us to put it away.

We checked out Alfa, which was a fairly quiet lounge with high prices, and Nanjie, which wasn't really hopping either, but had outdoor seating next to a field and looked like it might be fun some other time. Bar Blue, winner of best in Beijing last year, seemed classy, but also wasn't packed and was way more than I wanted to pay.

So we sat at outdoor tables at Pure Girl Bar and played a drinking game with chopsticks while we people-watched. Besides lots of couples making out there were a few drunk drivers coming down the alley. One guy crashed his motorcycle about 10 feet from us. I jumped up and ran over with a couple of other people while I watched others jump up and run away- that made me feel good. The driver was a black guy with bleached hair, a sleeveless shirt, lots of bling, sunglasses on after midnight, and of course no helmet. He was ok, but he took the entire side panel off of his Honda rice rocket and destroyed one of the bar's signs. After making sure he was unhurt and wasn't about to ride off I sat back down and watched him pick at his bike and try to gather some dignity. I'd say he's an ambassador's son. I guess that because Chinese companies are loathe to hire blacks and as a result there aren't many around. The racism means that most of the blacks here, based on my observations, are with embassies or are students. Students can't buy motorcycles in China and don't tend to look that wealthy, and I guess that African embassy workers might not be that rich, either.

I went home at 3 or so, enjoyed climbing the 14 flights to the apartment, and went to sleep.