No Snow!

I'm sure glad we heard that it never snows in Beijing.  Otherwise, I might think the white stuff falling from the sky  for several hours this morning was snow.

 

Brrrrr.

Born To Be Wild

Flat. As a pancake. The cliché was designed for Beijing's topography. Which makes Beijing perfect for bicycle transportation. After watching Chinese traffic for a month, we traded our walking shoes for pedals. Actually, we traded one hundred dollars for two bikes equipped with fenders, a rear rack and front basket, and two heavy cable locks.

Then we cycled into the twilight zone of traffic. First, there's no such thing as right of way; might of way, maybe, or speed of way, perhaps. Second, there's no daydreaming, talking on cell phones, eating or doing anything else while on the road. It is simply not humanly possible to manage the flow of traffic without total concentration on what you are doing. And while there are bike lanes on every major street, the bicyclist must take care to avoid collisions with the cars, scooters and every other strange contraption that also uses the bike lanes--going both directions I might add. Any paved surface is fair game for any form of transportation (yes, we have even seen horse-drawn carts rolling down the road).

But what fun we've had seeing the city from the "Jingers" point of view!

PS: Thanks for all the comments.  Because I can't access the blog (these posts are coming via email), I can't post the comments, but I sure enjoy getting them!

Mid-Autumn and Mooncakes

October 1 was National Day, the celebration of the founding of the People's Republic of China. We were fortunate to be here on the 60^th anniversary of the founding. Sixty is an important number for the Chinese because, as I understand it, their calendar runs in 12 year cycles (5 x 12 = 60) and sixty is considered a life cycle. There was much excitement and flowers all over the city leading up to the Big Day. We watched a gigantic military display in the form of a parade in the morning. Although the parade took place less than 5 miles from where we live, we did not want to join the thousands (millions?) of people there.

Combined with the National Day holiday is the Mid-Autumn Festival. I have been trying to get a grasp on this holiday, but so far I can only say it involves families and moon cakes. We were given some moon cakes and based on my admittedly western preferences, the packaging for the moon cakes is far superior to the taste.

Maybe we should have eaten the packages.

To Paraphrase Tony the Tiger: It's Great!

If you visit Orlando, you go to Disney World. When you visit Beijing, you must make a trek to the Great Wall. On a beautifully sunny day, we made sure to cross that off our list before our first month was over.

The Huangyaguan section of the Wall is about two hours from Beijing (three if you take a "shortcut"). A road approaches the Wall in a river valley. We easily gained access to the Wall, but it was literally all uphill from there.

I continued beyond the restored section to stone steps climbing the side of the mountain, surrounded by vegetation. It was so refreshing to step into the cool shade after the radiating heat of the Wall. From a perch high above our starting point, the view was spectacular—mountains around as far as I could see.

And just to make the experience complete, two peregrine falcons soared overhead as I descended.

The Royal Treatment

Be there Sunday night!

 

The notice said we should not bring cameras, purses or bags because of strict security.  We were good and did not do so, but were sorry later when we saw many other people with cameras.  And there were many Kodak moments as we dined with approximately 1800 others in China's Great Hall of the People.

 

While there are no pictures with this post, someone sent me this link: http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90785/6769757.html.  The REALLY important people are pictured and part of the speech is reported (in English)! 

 

It was quite a night.

Water, Water Everywhere......

In the past, our domestic water supply was not among the top ten things in my daily thoughts. I used to go to the tap, turn it on, and drinkable water would come out. In the back of my mind, I knew that we are fortunate in the USA to have good, drinkable water issue forth from the tap. But tap water wasn't high on my list of concerns.

Here, water has become a BIG DEAL. I think about it every time I touch the faucet. The water that comes from the tap is not drinkable. Officially, it is "hard" and "needs to be boiled before drinking." This has a few repercussions, like what to do when brushing your teeth, washing dishes, washing produce, etc.

Here's how we are dealing with it so far. Every morning, two large thermoses (thermosi?) of "boiled water" appear outside our door. We reserve some of this water for dishes (and let the dishes soak for awhile so as to avoid frying the flesh from our hands). We transfer the remainder to our huge teakettle (this is China, after all), let it cool, then transfer the water into plastic bottles. We put some of the bottles into the fridge for drinking. One bottle goes into the bathroom for a toothbrush rinse. When I came down with a cold, we decided we needed to divide our drinking bottles, so mine are the label off, Cal's are the label on. (This did not have the fully desired effect. Cal still caught my cold.)

We have not had much produce except for items that can be peeled, but we did soak some apples and peaches in a mild bleach solution. So far, we are still alive. Yummm, clorox.

If We Don't Have It........

 

Imagine every sort of item to which is affixed the label "Made in China." Now, if you can, imagine all those things on display in tiny booths, crowded together on six double-football-field-sized floors in a garishly decorated building. Cram thousands of shoppers into narrow aisles, bumping each other with large packages and stuffed shopping bags. If you can envision it, you are imagining Tian Yi.

Further words fail me.

Now I Know How The Birds Feel

Little kids do it. Older people do it (just not as intensely). It was "Stare at Americans Day" at Bei Hai Park in Beijing on Wednesday. Of course, we brought much of this on ourselves. It wasn't bad enough that we were foreigners in the park; we drew even more attention to ourselves by also staring—it's just that we were gazing through binoculars and we were looking at birds.

Our first big venture out on our own was a five kilometers bus ride to Bei Hai Park to have a look around and hopefully find some birds. Bei Hai is big-- 168 acres-- and surrounds several lakes. In spite of the fact that this is a city of 17 million (plus or minus), we found some trails where we could not see anyone for several minutes (apparently not having learned our lesson from being mugged in Mexico). We saw ten species, of which we identified seven. My favorite was the "scrub jay on steroids," also known as an azure winged magpie.

While we watched birds, many people watched us. This happens at home, too, and I have to admit, it cracks me up when people gawk up at where we are looking through binoculars to try and figure out what we are looking at. It's just that at home, we are not so much a part of the show.