Where to begin…

So two weekends ago, I went to Beihai park with Hannah and Patrik. I still had a severe throat inflammation, could only talk in whispers and only once every ten minutes or so. Yes folks, Feifei was quiet.
Anyways, we took the bus there, which took about one hour and had me finishing the water I’d brought for the entire day. The bus trip was nothing special except for one magical part – along one of the ring roads, there were roses planted, clinging to the steel-wire fences. Even though it was in the middle of November, some roses were still in bloom, splashes of brilliant yellow and tender pink amidst all the dusty green leaves and the grey cement. My Mom’s roses always looked healthy, strong and in their rightful place amongst all the plants and flowers in our garden, but these roses were such fragile, rare misfits, and yet all the more stunning because of the contrast.
And even more so, when I realized the only reason they hadn’t been plucked yet, was because they were planted in the middle of a highway.
They were the most beautiful roses I’d ever seen.

We finally arrived by Beihai park. By now – as with the journey to Panjiayuan – I was grumbling to myself and wondering why I’d thought this was a good idea. And just like with Panjiayuan, I was soon convinced it was well worth the trip.
(I’d link to a wiki article about Beihai park, but Wikipedia is now blocked in China again. Blogspot blogs have become accessible though. Go figure. I know, I shouldn’t complain – tomorrow China may block Blogspot entirely, and that’ll be the end of this little blog)

Beihai park used to be the royal family’s own park, and I forgot that Chinese emperors never do anything half-assed. It wasn’t just a walled-in grassy area, it was beautiful: big, artificial ponds and a small lake, lots of striking red koi in the waters, maze-like paths between the beautiful Chinese buildings and the ponds, (sort of like Venice?) and best of all – very, very few people for a Beijing attraction a Saturday.





See how few people there are?



This little kid matches the koi.








Water calligraphy. Absolutely stunning. Another reason I’m glad I know at least some Chinese.



This one I guessed! The old man wrote it as part of a word game: “One tofu split in four, in a pot with the lid on – which character?” I was positively jumping up and down and shouting “画!” “画!” (yes, with my non-existent voice) He gave me the kind of patient look you give slightly dim-witted people and said: “Well, this one’s easy, it’s for the kids…” To be honest, it didn’t deter me one bit. On some issues I sound like a Chinese kid, but I’m doing my best!


After Beihai park, we went through the hutong area to Houhai. The hutong area was nice, but the effect was marred by the legions of bicycle taxis and offers of bicycle tours we had to wade through. This is China I guess – you just gotta appreciate it while it’s still there, no matter how cheesy the surrounding conditions. On that note, I’ve yet to see the Starbucks inside the Forbidden City…





The hutongs are not as authentic these days.. Sad? Yes. But rather keep them and exploit them, than have them all razed to the ground - but maybe this is how I think because there are so many things I've yet to see, hopelessly exploited and tacky or not.






This is one creepy-ass bug (for those interested, it’s called 蝈蝈 in Chinese). People keep it as pets in little glass jar, because they like the high-pitched, jarring sound it gives off. Why? No. f*cking. Idea. I hate bugs, especially if they’re too big to squash under your foot, like this one.




Houhai was quite lovely as well. I’ve yet to go there during the evening, but I can imagine how nice it must be to sit in one of the bars on warm summer evenings. Only problem is that the drink prices are on par with Sweden, which is a bit of a rude shock when you live on about 10-15 RMB/day.



A cool bicycle.


In the evening, I went to a play in the 798 art district with a friend of mine. It was a touted as a Chinglish comedy about young people in modern life Beijing – in reality, it was more English than Chinese (which was probably quite appreciated by the largely western audience) and more of a sitcom comedy, but it was still quite enjoyable. A lot of the one-liners were true inside jokes for people used to Beijing, but quite fun even if you were just a tourist. The ABC girl and the western guy were easily the best characters – how often haven’t I heard Chinese people praise Hannah’s “Ni hao” with a “Wow, your Chinese is really good!”, just to stare at me and scowl, wondering why I’m so slow on the uptake when I don’t understand certain words or concepts. It was like a condensed, comical version of each and every foreigner’s life in Beijing, and in that sense, it was worth the hour-long bus ride and the ticket price.

On the way back, we grabbed a black cab, and he was one of those wonderfully nice people that make this city just a little more sparkling and beautiful. I ended up giving him wrong directions, causing him to drive on the same strip of road for a total of 3 times, but he waved away my apologies and would hear nothing about me adding a bit extra on the agreed-upon fee. He drove me all the way to my front door, and I tipped him 20 RMB. Sure, it’s not much by Swedish standards, but he would barely take even that and I didn’t want to offend him. I almost flew into the house, I was so happy – it’s hard to be a nice person in this city, in this country, and it’s the most wonderful thing in the world when you meet one of those precious few who are.

On Thanksgiving, I went to a North Korean restaurant with my Chinese class. Ironically but understandably, the North Korean in our class was one of the few who didn’t come with us – the restaurant was really pricy, and he’s living on a quite meagre scholarship from North Korea.
It was a very… interesting experience. First of all, there’s apparently a saying in Korea: “Southern men and northern women are good-looking.” I don’t know about South Korean men – and I’m really not the best judge – but the North Korean girls were almost all very striking. It makes sense that North Korea only sends its most capable and/or good-looking people abroad, but still, wow. I’m not very good at telling Asians of different nationalities apart, but the North Korean girls did look very different from all other Asian girls: They had round faces, very pale skin, big doe eyes and full lips, and for some reason they all wore very heavy makeup. I was really interested in knowing more about them and North Korea, but unfortunately their Chinese sucked. I did manage to find out that they were in China on a 1-2 year apprenticeship thing, and that they would return to North Korea afterwards.
The food was very… interesting as well. I didn’t know this, but apparently North Korea is famous for its dog meat dishes. There was an entire set menu with only dog meat, but we refrained from throwing 100 RMB on an assured uncomfortable experience, and chose some all-round set menu instead.
Some of the food was much like South Korean food: kimchi, barbecued meat with lettuce leaves and barbecue sauce, and other dishes were very much Japanese: sashimi, squid, different kinds of sea food. Well, North Korea is part of a peninsula.
Other dishes were harder to place – they were all spicy; ribs, meat, some weird fish, etc., but all tasted pretty good. Then came the kicker, the North Korean specialty: their cold noodles.
First of all, in my experience, cold noodles were simply noodles that weren’t warm. These noodles came in a chilled stainless steel bowl filled with clear ice water, and the waitresses then helped you mix in the right ingredients and cut the noodles for you with a pair of scissors. Within minutes, the clear ice water had become a surprisingly tasty ice soup, with noodles, and it was quite a novel experience.
All in all the food was good, but weird in an inexplicable way. (yes, insert your jokes about dog meat here) It was tasty, but so strange, and not something I particularly want to eat again. I wouldn’t say no, but I definitely won’t go out of my way to eat it again.
A fun thing though: an entire wall was painted in red, white and blue, to symbolize the North Korean flag, except for some reason it looked like the Pepsi logo. That one had me snickering so hard.

The past week has been an exam week again – 3 exams and 2 essays. On the plus side, my Chinese teacher actually complimented my essay to the entire class! – unfortunately, I was late (as usual, ehm hi Mom and Dad =D ), so I didn’t hear it. But it was an essay about the coolest people in my life, namely my parents, so it should almost be good by default. =P It was really nice to hear the teacher complimenting my parents (from my description of them), and wanting to know more about their lives in Sweden.
Tuesday lunch was an interesting experience. I didn’t have time to eat lunch, so just grabbed one of those Chinese-ified wraps they sell in the Russian building (where I have some of my classes) – the wraps come in traditional Chinese 薄饼 (thin, tortilla-like things), with deep-fried chicken, lettuce, and a horrible Chinese dressing – and headed for the classroom. To my amazement and amusement, several of my class mates were already there, each sweating over their speech for our oral exam.
I did great on mine. I forgot what I was going to say, stammered and spoke for too long, but I did make people laugh (albeit unintentionally), even the teacher I think, which is always good. Best thing hands down was when QQ was sitting in the front row, talking during my speech and making me lose concentration – I finally had enough, and just told her loud and clear: “Please be quiet QQ, you don’t have to listen but your talking is making me lose concentration”. The entire class started laughing – I guess it was pretty apt, since she’d talked during most of the other’s speeches – and it was a good explanation for my lackluster speech.

This Saturday was a family day. My cousin Jia Jia from Sweden was going to Singapore on a business trip, and decided to do a one-day layover in Beijing. I picked him up by Beida and we had a nice lunch at a Yunnan restaurant, famous for its pineapple rice and other cool ethnic dishes. Then we headed over to my other relatives and had a really nice dinner with them – it felt good to be with family.
After that, I met up with Lulu and Tianhao, two Swedish Chinese like me, one visiting and one doing an exchange year at Qinghua University. I was quite tired already, and didn’t plan to stay longer than 1ish – I ended up getting into bed at 4.30 am. The last 2 hours, I was dead exhausted, my feet hurt and I could barely keep my eyes open, but they just wouldn’t let me go. Gah! We went to Propaganda, a club in Wudaokou, and a nigh all-Asian club as well, though I didn’t know that before going in there. Chinese, Koreans, Japanese – either way, there were about 20 foreigners in the entire place. All three of us spoke Chinese as well in the beginning of the evening, but as it got more and more late, the Swedish started popping up. The Chinese thing wilted completely when we met a Swedish guy from Skellefteå, but for a few hours, I did truly feel like a Chinese girl. Or an undercover Chinese girl, at least. It was an interesting experience, and equally interesting to observe the differences between this club, in a pre-dominant student area, and the clubs I’d previously been to in Sanlitun.

Two wonderful things today:

1) A few days ago, I bicycled towards the West Gate at full speed, as usual, not planning to slow down, when the guard quite sharply told me to get off my bike. I did and did a double-take – turns out, he was the guard I spoke to my first weeks at Beida, a few months and an eternity ago. He was still fun to talk to, and we joked about me not getting off my bike at the gate. This morning, I breezed through the gates, not stopping, and just turned my head and smiled my biggest smile to the guard on duty by the gate. And guess what – he smiled back! So now I have an excellent rapport with the guards, which means that never again will I have to worry about getting off my bike because of some silly regulation, or because Hannah insists I do. Mind you, I’ll probably slow down more often though to chat with them, but I’m not doing it because of that silly regulation, and that’s what counts.

2) My bicycle chain fell off mid-bike today – luckily I was going slowly (albeit navigating between four cars), so there was no real danger. I got off, sighed and prepared to walk to my bicycle repair shop, when a man on a bicycle stopped in front of me. He turned around and said “Here, let me help you with that”. And then he did. It was all done in 30 seconds, and I just alternated between staring in amazement and thanking him profusely. He wouldn’t hear of my thanks, simply said it was nothing, and headed off without further ado.
I had the biggest grin on my face the entire way home. As I said about the taxi driver – it’s not easy to be nice in this city. But damn, when people are, it’s all the more precious. It makes me want to smile till my cheeks hurt with all the happiness bursting inside of me – it may sound silly, but I’ve more and more come to realize how much I value the little things I used to take for granted. If nothing else, China teaches me, over and over again, day after day, just how lucky I am and how wonderfully magical life can be in all its simplicity.

Yup. In love am I.