Sunday, July 20, 2008

公寓, 北京图书大厦

Well, lots of new and exciting things on this end. First, Professor Gong hooked me up with an apartment so his place wouldn't be too crowded after his sons arrived. It's sweet! It has occurred to me that the only place I have ever had my own apartment is in China. Beijing and Nanjing are also the largest cities in which I have lived. Lots of excitement. Anyway, the apartment is sort of studio-like. This is the view from the entrance:


Desk:


The first actual bed I've slept on this time around. Luxury!


Views from my window. The buildings across the street are vacant, still under construction. Note the gate to my building. Everything, EVERYTHING, is gated here and there is invariably some sort of security officer manning the gate.



Living room:


Bathroom:


Kitchen:


Not bad, eh? I could get used to this.

Next up, my adventure to downtown Beijing. As part of my immersion program, I made the decision to take public transportation to a large bookstore near Tian-An-en (天安门, or "day of peace gate", a pronunciation and meaning of which I was ignorant until yesterday) square. My first discovery was there there is a special Olympic (NOT "Special Olympics." It's not a short bus ;) bus line that goes from right outside my apartment all the way to Tian-An-Men. It costs one yuan, about 15 cents. At Chang An Jie, (Long Peace Street, on which Tian-An-Men is located), I got this photo:


Everyone else was getting photos of Chairman Mao, but I thought his paranoid legacy to the people of China was interesting: all these cameras. They ain't for monitoring traffic, that's for sure. They aren't even pointed at the road. Speaking of which, security has just had a major increase around here. I'm questioned every time I want to get into the institute and forced to fill out a little card with my name, number and where I'm going. It's good character writing practice, but sheesh. What's the point? It's like the security at airports, it does nothing except harass people for no reason. Sunday was also the first day of the system whereby odd numbered license plates can drive on odd days and even plates on even days. If it were up to me, this would be instituted in the US as a permanent law.

Anyway, once I got to the bookstore (the name of which is roughly translated as massive book building), I found it to be the largest, most crowded book Babylon I have ever been to. What chaos! I found my way to the dictionaries and "learning Chinese" section and went wild for over an hour in there. I was quite relieved to get back on to the street and buy a cold drink. After that, I tried my hand at navigating the subway system. No problem. For 2 Yuan, (30 cents) you can go anywhere in the city. It's fast, efficient and easy. BART seems fantastically overpriced and fucked up in comparison.

So, the public transportation system I found to be quite well developed and easy to navigate. The addition of Pinyin to the signs really makes a big difference. This is one of the ways that I find China to be advanced over the US. Another excellent practice that I believe should be implemented everywhere in the US: you have to buy the bags you use at the grocery store. It's not much, but why the hell don't they do that in the US? Instead they triple bag your shit for no obvious reason. It's backwards, in my opinion, and a good example of unchecked, runaway consumption.

Second-to-lastly, a couple notable quotes from the State run English media that I noticed on TV last night. (Can you see how this is in direct reaction the Western media?): "Qing Dao was chosen as a sailing venue due to its status as a first rate tourist destination and its clean water quality." Ha, ha, ha, ha! And this: "Chinese peacekeeping engineers [not a typo] reached three hundred and fifteen [315] in Darfur." Wow, just in the nick of time, eh guys? I wonder how many they had while the Sudanese govt. militias were running around with machetes and chopping people's arms off? Anyway, it's so transparent, I don't know why they keep it up.

Lastly (for real this time), here is a view of the moon over the Olympic tower. It's really amazing. The lights on this tower are incredible and the other day I was treated to the loudest fireworks display I have ever heard. The Chinese don't skimp on explosions! It merely stoked my anticipation of the actual event! According to one of my Chinese friends, this tower will have a massive flame shooting out of it for the entirety of the Olympics, burning some thousands of gallons of gas in the process. I say, what better use of gas? As they say in China when cheering on competitors, 中国加油, "Zhong Guo jia you!" (China add gas). I'm not kidding!

2 comments:

foam4me said...

Hey, what about us round eyes!
I can't read the title.

Nicey Nice said...

I just got sick of writing the pinyin, which wouldn't mean anything anyway and doesn't really convey the same feeling. Think of it as a title that's a pretty picture!