What little remains

Like most cities in Imperial China, Beijing at one time had a wall around it. And like the Great Wall, it was built in stages, which due to the whims of rulers and circumstances, were not exactly regular in shape. During the 1950s and 1960s almost all of Beijing’s city wall was demolished to make way for the second ring road and other development, but a kilometer and a half of its southeast section still stands.
This segment dates from 1419, during the Ming Dynasty.
The park dedicated to it is quite new, and is in fact still under construction, though most of it is open to the public. A lovely landscaped garden runs along what was the outside of the wall. On the other side, not far away, is the main Beijing train station.
It is also apparently a camping area, as long as your tent is makeshift.
Though I didn’t see any tents on this day.
In this picture you can see how the grass is kept green. That’s a water truck going along the sidewalk, while a guy walks behind it spraying water out of a big fat hose onto the grass. You can also see a couple getting pictures taken, probably for their engagement.
A little further along you can see some restoration work under way. In the background is Beijing’s tallest building, Guomao #3.
I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the warning signs on the construction fence:

NO NEARING
CAUTION, FALLING OBJECTS
NO STRIDING

This archway in the wall dates from 1915, when it was knocked out to allow the city’s first railroad to come in.
And this is the Southeast Tower. It was built from 1436-1440, a little later than the rest of the wall, and was the largest corner tower on any city wall in China. In case you’re wondering, there are 144 arrow holes for archers to shoot from in case of attack.
Like any large open area in Beijing, the park is also a place for kite enthusiasts to do their thing. These guys have some serious rigs.
For Ұ10 (about US$1.50) you can go through the railway entrance and get onto the top of the wall. This is the back side of the corner tower seen from the top of the stairs.
Inside the tower there are three levels. On the first and third, there is an art gallery, and on the second some exhibits about the history of the Ming Wall, including scale models of all nine of the original gates.
From the tower windows you can see both sides of the wall. I think that’s one of the bullet trains to Tianjin leaving the station.

Along the side of the tower, there is some graffiti.
This dates from 1900, when the forces of the Eight Powers invaded Beijing and took the tower. Russian and American soldiers carved names and dates into the bricks, “criminal evidence” as the explanatory sign informs us.

There was a sign for the “underground exhibit” but when I tried to enter, a guy in a uniform waved me away. I’m not sure what’s down there. As it was, I was the last one out of the park for the day, and they locked the gate behind me when I left.

It looks like they’re adding a little street for souvenir shops and food stalls, but it’s not open yet.

Work it on out

Since I came to China, I have worked in four different office spaces, and by a really odd coincidence, every time the company has moved, I have been out of town. When we moved from the Huabei Hotel into the G-Box I was in Japan, and they moved from there into a temporary space in The Place’s north tower while I was back in the US at the beginning of November last year. The latest time was while I was in Hawaii for Christmas. We relocated to our permanent office in the south tower at The Place.

When I first saw the new space last November, it was bare concrete with some walls.
That’s the future reception area.
And I think that’s the Call Center – kind of hard to tell. They’re using the area to build some of the custom fixtures. The one in the middle will be the reception desk.
This area would become my work space.

And here’s one more illustration of Chinese construction techniques:
Conduits for writing run across the building’s base floor, and channels are being built for more wires – network, phone, and so on. Notice how one set of conduits goes underneath the other, with the cement chipped out to make room.

When they’re done with the wiring, this pile of cement…
…will be mixed with water to fill in a new floor up to the level of the channel edges, then flooring will be placed on top.

Anyway, when I returned to Beijing it looked like this:
And this is about the same view as in the third shot above:
My work area is a little cramped.
My cube is the back left. If I’m not careful when I roll my chair back, I bump into RR, and the guys in the front cubes have to scoot in to let us pass.

Compare my G-Box desk:
Can I cry now?

For reference, this was the Huabei office in the fall of 2006, with my desk on the left:
And here is a picture of our temporary space I took with my BlackBerry from my seat. The Call Center is at the back of the room.

Back to the present, one last shot... we’re on the sixth floor, even with the Skyscreen.
That’s looking west, showing the back of the big TV screen facing Dongdaqiao Street and the edge of the Skyscreen running along the length of the building.

Walking in BJ

I walk around the city a lot.

I could probably have counted the number of times I had ridden in a taxi on my fingers before I came here, but since then it’s probably averaged almost once per day. Not that I take a taxi every day, but there are plenty of days with multiple rides to make up for the days with none. Given how cheap they are here, that’s not really a problem financially like it might be in New York, for example. But I’m just really tired of taxis.

I got myself a Beijing transportation card which is good on subways and buses, and I use both of those to get most places. But for shorter trips, say a half hour or less, I just walk. Like they say, ru xiang sui su. That’s the Chinese equivalent of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

And I usually have my camera with me. Won’t you join me? (Why do I feel like Mr. Rogers all of a sudden?)
The trees here at Season Park are in bloom.
On the way to the office, I pass a shopping mall where lots of people just hang out, with or without their dogs.
I pass by the Dongzhimen Transit Center, still under construction. I don’t know why it’s so massive. Three subway lines cross underneath it, and about a hundred bus routes, but I have no idea what it will look like when complete.
Across the Second Ring Road from the Transit Center is this big office building, which I’ve photographed before, back when it was less complete:
That's from November 2006.
A little further along I pass through Nanguan Park, where the pond is half-filled. Notice the Fuwa standing on the water.
Even on a weekday morning there’s a fair amount of activity in the park. The guy with a music stand under the tree is playing a harmonica into a little portable amplifier and a few people are dancing to his music.
Continuing along towards the office, I encounter this deconstruction site. I ate at this restaurant only last week.
Here’s my building, with one of the newer tenants visible. Finally, decent coffee nearby. Obviously, this company is trying to emulate a certain Seattle-based multinational coffee company.

Then a day at work.

I’ve been pretty busy lately, so I sometimes go to a nearby restaurant called Beijing Pastry and Congee for take away.
Here are three filled pastries called xianbing, two with spiced ground beef and one with chopped vegetables, and a cold vegetable dish called haidai made of seaweed cut in strips with carrots, peppers and a lot of garlic.
That’s the bill. It comes to ¥10, about $1.45.
After work, I head for the subway station, where I see a new advertising campaign has taken over. In case you can’t make it out from the picture, the slogan is: Protecting Intellectual Property Rights And Promoting Innovation Development. It’s sponsored by the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China. Note to all foreign businesses: your IP is safe here now.
I get off at a stop across town and walk into a neighborhood. Dozens of vendors, mostly fruit and veg, are set up on the sidewalk along the little street, and the gathered shoppers made it pretty difficult for cars to get by.

I hear a little peeping noise and look to see what’s making it.
I’m not sure if the chicks are supposed to be pets or livestock or sale goods, but for the moment they’re Free Range Chicks. I don’t hang around to see if they ever make it back into the box.
The guy on the left is welding something on the sidewalk. The woman on the right is washing some vegetables for dinner.

I meet up with a coworker in this neighborhood. And speaking of dinner, we go to a fairly nice place.
That’s supposed to be half a barbequed duck, but it’s kinda small for a half bird, and seems to be missing some parts you would expect, but it tastes pretty good. The restaurant is having a special: for every ¥19 you spend, you get a free 600ml beer. As you can see, we qualify for three. In case you don’t know your metric system, those are big beers, about the size of two twelve ounce bottles each. We end up only drinking two – one of them is still in my fridge. They don’t complain when I carry it out.

To be honest, this is a composite day, consisting of events and pictures from about three different days in the past week. But I think it gives an accurate picture of my life here, straddling the expat world and the local culture. Tune in next time, when I'll condense all the seasons into one week and a decade into a month.

Sidecars, Monkey Kings, and Kite Eating Trees

Sunday afternoon, weather’s nice, nothing that absolutely has to be done at work today, what to do…?

It’s “Get out the Map” time, of course.

This time I picked Yuyuantan Park over on the west side of Beijing, not quite as far out as the Sculpture Park or Wukesong, but in the same direction, and conveniently situated near a subway station.

On the way from Seasons Park to the subway, I took the opportunity to snap a picture of something I’ve been seeing frequently for a long time.
I first noticed this thing not long after I moved into my apartment, and it has not moved since. Note that the sidecar seat has become storage space for something – I don’t know what’s in the can.

The path from Muxidi Station to the park lies along this canal.
I paid my ¥2 (about $0.30) and went in.
I’m not sure if this was volunteer karaoke or a set performance, but the guy had a very good singing voice.
This is a very popular pastime here. It’s called jianzi, sort of a Chinese version of hacky-sack, only instead of a little beanbag it’s a weighted feathery thing.

Like many of Beijing’s parks, Yuyuantan features water.
This lake is mostly manmade, though the park dates from Imperial times when there was a spring here, so water was around, if not in this form. And like most of Beijing’s parks with water, you can rent boats. In the background is the China Central Radio Tower, which can also be seen from the Summer Palace. Maybe someday I’ll go inside to check out the view.

It has been noted elsewhere that though Beijing will be hosting the Paralympic Games, it is notoriously difficult for disabled people to get around here.
Here’s one of the reasons why. Not only are sidewalks made of tiles that can be uneven, but there are sections under repair all over the place. My personal observation is that they wouldn’t have to repair them so often if they built them better in the first place, but that’s the way it’s done here.
There’s a “bridge” across the lake, and right now it’s decorated with a “dragon” – I put it in quotes because if you look at it closely, you’ll see that the individual discs behind the head are decorated with Olympic mascots.

Yuyuantan is home to a large garden of cherry trees, and it being about the right time of year, I figured I could catch some in bloom.
Me and several thousand other people. As it turned out, this tree was the only one in full bloom. So much of the park is under construction or renovation or expansion or something that it’s hard to even tell where the other trees are supposed to be.

Regular readers will probably already have noticed that I’ve been to quite a few of the city’s parks, and many of them have little rides for the young ones. (See Chaoyang Park, Tuanjiehu, and so on – heck, even the Sculpture Park had a ride.)
Here’s a water ride on the theme of the Monkey King, who is a very popular figure here.

One last shot from the park proper:
A little traffic jam on the lake. Note the green boat in the middle, which is decorated like a Red Army tank, and the little flying saucer shaped one in the background.

Just south of the park is the China Millennium Monument.
It looks like there’s some kind of art show going on inside: Master Pieces of the 19th Century European Paintings at the Perez Simón Collection. (That is what the sign says.)

But all in all, I’d say the area gets more use as a place to fly kites.
This tree sees a lot of action. It might be hard to tell from the picture, but there are about a dozen kites stuck in it. Charlie Brown had it easy compared to the kids in this area.