Forbidden City

Today I went to the Forbidden City/Tiananmen Square/Jingshan Park area with my soon-to-be-going-home American friends and one Korean classmate. It was SO cold. Low of -16 with a -19 windchill today. Luckily I was prepared and felt a bit like a marshmallow in my thick coat. When we got to Tiananmen my friends wanted to go in to see Mao's body in the Memorial Hall. The Hall was due to close at 12pm and it was already 11:45am. I had seen his body 5 years ago and didn't really feel a need to see it again so I took everyone's bags and waited for them outside. I watched all the touts standing around making people pay 10 rmb to check their bags...what a rip-off. While I was waiting, a Chinese lady, her small daughter and cute, old mother came running along wanting to get in before the doors closed. At first they didn't believe that you weren't allowed to bring in even a small purse, but I showed them my friend's bags and said it was true. Then the lady asked me if I could watch her bags and I said sure. I was amazed she would rather trust a random stranger (and a foreigner at that) rather than the bag-check guys around me. After she was finished she came and got her bag and asked me how much she owed me! Haha, of course I said she owed me nothing at all...But maybe I've just discovered a new way to make some extra cash while I'm in China. :P Here are all the bags I was watching....

Here's a picture of almost all of us after the Mao viewing, with the Monument to the People's Heroes in the background. From left to right: George, Tammy, Gina, Ivy, Daxian, me and Angela.
Kaitlin in front of the monument:
Me in front of the Monument:
Daxian wants to collect a picture of himself in all the different places pictured on the different renminbi bills. So here we are with the 100 rmb note in front of the Great Hall of the People. People seemed to find this a bit odd.
Here's a family posing for a photo in front of the gates. The one grandchild, two parents (they are taking the picture) and a number of elderly grandparents/relatives. They were a cute group!
This picture is rather blurry, but I like the "Happy Boy" on the back of this kid's coat.




A bunch of guys wanted pictures with Kaitlin (but ignored me....perhaps due to the marshmallow coast and the fact that I'm older? Dunno, but I didn't mind). So here's a picture of them all staring at her.
And here she is posing with one of them:
Here's Kaitlin imitating one of the singers from the music video for the song "Beijing huanying ni (Beijing welcomes you)" which was partially filmed in the Forbidden city.
Shadows...
Tammy taking a picture of the only two nanren (guys) with us today.


Jumping shots!
Failed attempt:
Success! But I really need to work on my jumping skills....how come I'm so low?
After the jumping success.
Love this guy's coat:
Inside one of the chambers:


In front of the tree in the garden at the back. The love tree....hence the heart poses in the two pictures.

Goldfish heartily surviving the freezing Beijing winter safe under the ice:
The view of the Forbidden city from the peak of Jingshan:

After this we were all utterly freezing, so we hightailed it home and I am so happy to inside and warm right now. Yay for central heating!! Tomorrow is meant to be even colder, so I might just stay in and work on homework rather than going out in the freezing cold!

Jack Frost nipping at your nose...

I've been suffering from another flu this past week. I barely left my room last weekend, so not too many pictures recently:

From dinner at a Hunan restaurant with Zoe last week....yummy.
Picture from the second round of the singing contest, My classmate won third prize!
My Christmas tree and a package with some Christmas presents from Scott and Loren and Corey! Exciting! I'm looking forward to opening them all!
Tonight was a class party to say goodbye to the three Americans in our class. They have an earlier exam and go back home for Christmas. Here's Alex and Song-Jun, the singing contestant.
Here's Tammy, Daxian, me and Kaitlin:
Baoxian, Izumi and Xiuzhen:
Yinxin, me and Mika:
Most of the group:
After dinner:

After the party we intended to go bowling, but the miniature bowling alley was already full, so the party ended pretty early. I did however see this advertisement for a rather expensive, rather oddly named Christmas party...
Tomorrow I'm heading to the Forbidden City for the first time in 5 years....I bet it won't have changed much since my last visit.

Classmate in Singing Contest

He's singing a Jay Chou song...unfortunately it's a bit shaky due to someone pushing past me at one point, and the sound quality isn't great, but it gives an idea. He was 24th so it took quite a bit of waiting before it was his turn. There were a few really good singers and a lot of mediocre ones....wish I had their confidence!

Weekend

Here's the decoration I put up on the outside of our dorm room door:
Went to a friend's (Alex's) birthday party in Houhai on Friday night. He is the one sitting next to me.
Here's me and Kaitlin:
On Saturday I went with Kaitlin and Jared to Panjiayuan (a market that is supposed to full of antiques, but they are all fakes). First, here's a picture of a horse outside the Mudanyuan subway station. Horses pulling carts is a common sight, despite the fact that we're in a huge city.
Here are some Panjiayuan photos:




This is from a restaurant we went to for lunch. They plastic-wrap the dishes to show they're clean, and they charge you for it. What a rip-off!

The past few weeks in photos

The past few weeks following midterms have been a bit of a blur....I'm not sure why. During the midterm week I managed to go see a couple screenings of short student films at the Beijing Film Academy. Here are some pictures of the directors at the post-screening Q&A:

I was really shocked at how mean the audience could be when they weren't enjoying a film. They would start yelling "Hao, hao (good, good)" loudly and laughing, but it was obviously sarcastic. I wouldn't have been able to handle it if I was one of the directors.

After midterms I went on my own to check out the Olympics buildings. It was fine, pretty much what I expected. Here's the Bird's Nest as it looked from the subway station:
Here's a random guy from Hunan. I approached him to ask him to help me take a picture but he didn't move and his friends obviously wanted some "Look at me with this foreigner!" pictures, so I got a picture with him too. I can add it to my "Look at me with this Chinese person!" collection of pictures. haha.

Here's the water cube before the sun went down, with no lights on.

I believe the building with the green lights is the media building. Dunno what the one in the foreground was.

There was a stage and lighting set up in the middle of everything. They were playing music loudly and it sounded interesting, but it was surrounded by a wall. As far as I could tell, it was some kind of promotional activity put on by a bank or investment company, but it was only for bigwigs I guess. I joined a huge crowd craning their necks and trying to see something, but it was a fruitless effort.
Here's the water cube lit up.

And the bird's nest lit up:
Here's a pic giving you an idea of how close the two buildings are to one another.
My shadow:
Later the next week I went to a school-organized kungfu show which was among the weirdest things I have seen. It was in English and was entirely geared towards the foreign tour industry. I liked the promotional stuff outside of the theatre....I bet the Nobelists loved it:
One of the kungfu kids entertained the patrons before the show....
Last week I spent going back and forth between Beijing and a place called Songzhuang, about two hours by bus and subway from where I live. There was a film fest taking place there and I had a fabulous time. I felt lame pulling out my camera to take pictures of all the cool directors and artists there, so I only took a few pictures outside to give an idea of what the place was like. It was in the countryside....here's the road to one of the galleries where they were showing films:
There were some other galleries on the way, and a lot of private, fortress-like villas which apparently are owned by some incredibly wealthy, famous contemporary Chinese artists.
The other place in the village where films were screened was here, the Songzhuang Art Gallery. Kind of a weird building. The path in the pictures above is behind this building.
The barren-looking path behind the art gallery:
And finally, tonight Zoe and I went to Carrefour and bought a few things to decorate for Christmas. Here are the rather underwhelming results, but they make me happy.
What says Christmas more than the water cooler, bucket and tree trifecta?
Here we are with our miniature tree: