Beijing, or where we are staying at least, smells bad. As we walked through the hutong, I had olfactory sensory overload. With each step, it was like a new bad smell forced itself up my nose. Smells I can't even really describe. Pee, smoke, deep fried dough, dank water, exhaust.
And dirty. There is litter everywhere. Sanitation workers sweep up wrappers and bottles with long-bristled brooms made from honest-to-god branches. It doesn't seem to do much. There are yellow-brown puddles with floating garbage. Broken down bicycles with missing parts. I saw a whole bed frame being taken apart on the street. Chairs are in the middle of the sidewalk. Everyone scurries around, bikes ding and scooters honk, old ladies push walkers over the crooked bricks.
I thought I was going to vomit.
Failed mission, we went back to the hutong where Josh tried to order the breakfast thing Qun told us to get, but he couldn't understand the guy, and the guy was not interested in being helpful. Someone handed Josh another warm soy milk, which he must have accidentally ordered. It was hot. We went over to the place next door (literally one table over), and Josh managed to order the thing. It was a dark, thick soup with tofu and mushrooms. I tried a bite. It was thick and salty, not for me.
Josh thought my feeling frassy was just the jet lag, and he suggested we go out and do something. He really wanted to go to the 798 Art District which was on my list as well. Even though he has been here around ten times, he has never done anything educational, like visit the Great Wall or any museums. So we went back out into the smelly street and flagged down a taxi.
Mandarin lao shi Janice will be pleased to know that the conversation in the taxi was right out of her lesson:
Driver: "Ni shi cong na guo lai de?" (You are from which country?)
Josh: "Wo men shi Mei Guo ren. Ni shi na guo ren?" (We are Americans. Where are you from?)
Driver: *laughs and points down* "Wo shi Zhong Guo ren." (I am Chinese.)
Josh: "Ni shi Beijing ren ma?" (You are a Beijing-er?)
Driver: "Dui." (Correct.)
Then they laughed a bunch and said some other stuff. The guy asked if we like WWE. He also asked where in the U.S. we lived, but neither of us remembered how to say Colorado. Josh said, "Colorado, Colorado," and the guy said, "Ting bu dong."
We got to the Art District which had no bad smells. Please, someone, spoil me. Here's a blurb from the guide book:
"A vast area of disused factories built by the East Germans, 798 Art District is Beijing's leading concentration of contemporary art galleries. The industrial complex celebrates its proletarian roots in the communist heyday of the 1950s via retouched red Maoist slogans decorating gallery interiors and statues of burly, lantern-jawed workers dotting the lanes. The voluminous factory workshops are ideally suited to art galleries..."
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| let this skinned sheep watch you read |
We spent some time in an exhibit featuring the artists Ming Wong and He Xiangyu. The descriptions of both artists' work were incredibly high brow. I took a picture of one paragraph from Ming Wong's intro:
His two pieces were a short film interpretation of Robbe-Grillet's Last Year in Marienbad and a weird sci-fi set. Both were super funny, though I think the Robbe-Grillet had a limited audience. The film had three sections played on three different screens simultaneously in a z-shaped room. All three looped back and started over. There were two actors, the artist and another man, who each played a man and a woman caught in series of getting back together and breaking up. I kind of geeked out explaining the New Novel and French literary stuff to Josh. The film was in French with Chinese and English subtitles:
And oh the space opera:
He Xiangyu's pieces were really cool also--series of water color and ink drawings in mostly black and yellow. Josh took some pictures of those and we also bought some sketch books since we forgot to bring some. We walked around for most of the afternoon. It was around 90 degrees.
Finally, we caught another taxi back home. I searched through the guide book and found a nearby Buddhist vegetarian restaurant that was described as being very quiet and had an English menu. It had both of those things, and the food was delicious and not at all scary/questionable.
When we finally retired for the evening, I downloaded an Air Quality Index app on my phone. It reported that Beijing was at a 53 which was the same as Denver. More information about that later: in the past two hours, it has gone from 102 to 122 to 137 to 165...
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| you can walk through the set |
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| the artist on set |
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| Evergreen students: there were two ukulele shops across the street from each other! |
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| more rabbits |
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| giant headless guy |
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| me eating mushroom thing |
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| pretty awesome lunch |
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| taking a break at a cafe |
Finally, we caught another taxi back home. I searched through the guide book and found a nearby Buddhist vegetarian restaurant that was described as being very quiet and had an English menu. It had both of those things, and the food was delicious and not at all scary/questionable.
When we finally retired for the evening, I downloaded an Air Quality Index app on my phone. It reported that Beijing was at a 53 which was the same as Denver. More information about that later: in the past two hours, it has gone from 102 to 122 to 137 to 165...
