Weekend

My first week back in Beijing has been a bit challenging at times. I wonder a little bit about why I am here, and I miss Scott and my family, all of which sometimes makes it difficult to feel at home here. In order to counteract these feelings, I have been keeping very busy, so this weekend was actually kind of tiring, but that's better than having spent the time sitting in my room feeling down. It was definitely nice to see some snow during the week.

On Friday Zoe introduced me to her friends Colin and Ella, two Canadians who are living in Tongzhou, an area outside of Beijing (near Songzhuang, the place where I went for a film festival last semester). I unfortunately didn't take any pictures for most of the night. We went for dinner at a Japanese restaurant, and then we went to see a band called Pet Conspiracy. I took one terrible picture near the end of the show when I remembered I had brought my camera.

On Saturday I had lunch with my old roommate, and then at 3pm I met up with a film prof, Ruihua, I had met at a film festival last November. Zoe came along (thankfully, since I was nervous about having to handle hours of Chinese by myself) and we met Ruihua's husband, as well as the subject of their first documentary film. They screened their film for us. It was really interesting, but it took a huge amount of concentration for me to follow it as it was entirely in Chinese (luckily it had chinese subtitles which made things a bit easier). It was a bit strange watching a film with both directors AND the subject of the film watching it along with you. 

After we finished, they were obviously wanting feedback, and I felt so exhausted from watching and thinking so hard that my mind went pretty much entirely blank. Zoe is much quicker on her feet than me, and made some very good comments and observations that I think they were very glad to hear. 

Anyway, we told them we could help them translate the film, so that will be our project for the next month. 

On Sunday Zoe, Colin, Ella and I went to the Agricultural Exhibition Hall for a free show on Chinese traditional arts and crafts. Because it was free and the weekend, the line-up snaked around in a gigantic swirl in front of the Hall.




Colin and Ella used our obvious status as foreigners to our advantage and managed to get us to the front of the line. It was rather unfair, but it was also nice to be able to get inside faster. 

Once inside, there were lots of neat things going on, but the place was so insanely packed that it was a battle to get close to anything. This lady was doing some paper-cutting:

Here are some of the results:
This old man must have also been involved in paper-cutting in some manner, but he was just chatting with people when we went by. Zoe bought a very beautiful paper-cut from another artist there. Hopefully she'll post her own pictures from the day at some point.
There was a stand with two ethnic Tibetan women from Sichuan province. They were selling these scrolls, but they couldn't really speak Mandarin. All these people kept coming up and asking, "How much for each one? What are these things?" And then the ladies only seemed to know enough Mandarin to say they were 5 rmb each. It was a bit strange....they were block prints....must be prayers of some kind?
Here are the two ladies:

There was a section on Chinese medicine. I took some pictures of the various tools and materials of the craft.
These were "Dragon Teeth" from the Yuan Dynasty. I'm not sure what animal they are actually from, but they were huge.
Here are "Dragon Bones" which are actually turtle pieces:
I think these were stones for placing on different parts of the body.
Here's a mud sculpture being made by a guy from Guangdong province:
And here's the artist:
Here's a member of the Miao minority making silver ornaments:
And here's an old fashioned refrigerator:
And finally, here's the reason why I was utterly exhausted after only about 20 minutes....every time I wanted to see anything I had to fight through several layers of humans just to get even a tiny glimpse. I guess it's normal when you're living in a city that's half the population of Canada or larger.
I found out this morning that Leonard Cohen will be playing shows in Vancouver, Victoria and Seattle in mid to late April. I am seriously thinking about flying back to Canada in time for one of the shows. That would, of course, mean ending my trip to Beijing about a month earlier than planned...but at the moment I think that might be ok. It would give me more time to prepare for our wedding, to work on my thesis and also to work a bit to save some money. It would also allow me to attend many of my friend's upcoming weddings (for some reason 2009 is turning out to be the year when everyone gets hitched...I guess it's just the age I'm at). Anyway, it's something I am considering. If anyone reading this has seen Leonard Cohen's recent tour (Gina or Graeme?), was it fabulous enough to make it worth cutting my trip a bit short? Haha.

Merry Christmas from Beijing!

Zoe and I had a nice Christmas here in Beijing, although we certainly also missed everyone back home a lot. 

On Christmas Eve I had class in the afternoon, and then I met up with Zoe and we went to Wudaokou to buy some DVDs, walk around and have dinner. On our way to the first DVD store (which is inside a hotel complex) we spotted a Santa and had to take a few pictures with him. We also got a couple with the lights display (and with traffic reflector cones thrown in for some extra brightness).

We picked out lots of DVDs, then we walked to Issin, a Japanese restaurant, for dinner. The walk to the restaurant was interesting and the streets were utterly packed with people. There were people selling Chinese New Year decorations, as well as Christmas decorations, socks, santa hats and even light-up devil horns for sale. 

Here I am in the restaurant:
Here's the only picture we got of the two of us:
After we finished eating we stopped in a bakery to pick up some snacks for our movie watching that night. Zoe had me pose under this decorated tree in the store...haha.
After we got our baking we headed back to the dorm and spent the rest of the evening in Zoe's room watching movies. We watched the Shrek Christmas special and Home Alone. 

On Christmas Day I had class at 8am, and I had bought a bunch of snacks to bring to share with my classmates. Hardly anyone came so we watched movies and ate instead of having class. 

After class ended at 11:30 I met up with Zoe and we went to the local coffee shop I sometimes hang out in and had lunch. The place had a few Christmas decorations:


Me, not looking into the camera so as to avoid photo face....
Here's the food we ordered. I had tuna and garlic pasta and Zoe had bacon and garlic pasta. It was tasty, but definitely was like an Asian version of standard olive oil pasta.
It's a bit out of order, but here's the entrance to the stairs that lead up to the cafe, all decorated for the holidays.
After eating we headed towards the subway station. On the walk there you have to cross over a river and it is now totally frozen over.
We took the subway to Andingmen and walked South through various Hutongs, exploring in shops and just taking our time enjoying the sun before we got hungry again for dinner.
Me looking at something:
Some of the hutongs had their doors open...sometimes the doors opened on just another alleyway, but sometimes they opened onto Siheyuans (courtyard homes). It was interesting to peek inside, but we also obviously stuck out as it seemed most people in the area were residents and knew everyone else. At one point as we were looking at a map an older man came and helped us with directions. He was quite sweet. We also saw some old Grannies....I wish I could've taken their pictures, they were beautiful.
This picture is of the inside of a courtyard home....there's a broken glass display case just inside the entranceway. You can also see the screen wall (yingbi) just behind the case. The sign on the left says they aren't renting rooms so don't just walk inside...I guess lots of tourists and other explorers must have gone in and bothered the residents before.
Here are some pictures of the main street just outside of the hutong alleyways:

Here's a cute little bar that was inside one of the hutongs. I like the sign, "The Here It ts! Baycafe." Cute.
Here's a view through another doorway. I would've loved to look inside more but I think both Zoe and I would have felt rather weird and intrusive going down such obviously residential lanes.
Down one street we came across what looked like a Siheyuan undergoing total renovations. My guess is that it is being fixed up for a wealthy person, but maybe it's for a shop or something else.

The pile of construction materials outside:
Some old men playing a game...and a sweet dog:
Another alleyway:
On one of the main roads we came across a model shop which sold some pretty fancy stuff, including the creepy Alien head.
After walking through all the residential hutongs we then entered a totally renovated, touristy hutong area on Nanluoguxiang. There were lots of interesting shops with very expensive things. It seemed the mark-up on Chinese New Year decorations was about three times the price I paid for the same things in a different part of the city.
Here are some Chinese gnomes:
After walking around for a few hours we were ready for some dinner. Zoe's boyfriend had kindly researched places for us to eat and found a particular Korean restaurant that was highly recommended and delicious:

The inside was a bit too dark to get any really good pictures, but I did manage to get one of the goldfish stream that split the restaurant in half:
We went with the Christmas set menu for 158 rmb (split between us) which is about $30 Canadian, or $15 each. It was so tasty! The perfect meal for our somewhat unusual Christmas in Beijing!
Here were the tasty snacks we had before the main dishes started coming out:
The salad and the ginseng which despite not looking fabulous in the picture were really delicious.

More of the food....a stew and some fish.
After all the dishes had arrived. Those round cakes were filled with red bean and were SO delicious. Oh and you can see the glasses of mulled Christmas wine that came with the meal.

After eating we walked back up to a main street and took a cab to a place called Ginza mall where we picked up some baking and then, totally exhausted, we took the subway back to the dorm. We got into comfy clothes and then snacked and watched movies until late. We watched Fred Claus and Mamma Mia. 

When I came back to my room my roommate was already in bed so I couldn't skype properly with my family, but I did get to see them briefly on Christmas morning...it was a bit weird as I was only able to type but they could speak to me. And then when I got up Scott was over at my parent's place so we all skyped and I opened the gifts Scott had mailed me.

It wasn't a standard Christmas, but I still had a very nice time. Thank goodness Zoe is here so that we were able to spend the holidays together.

I hope everyone in Canada (and in England, Hong Kong and everywhere else) has had a wonderful, happy Christmas. My love to you all.