Chinese time machine #5

Moving back even further – though not a lot – we come to 15 February 2009. It was clear and very cold in Beijing, but I chose to venture out to Daguanyuan (大观园), which I’m not even really sure how to translate. The English maps give it as Grand View Garden, which will apparently do.

One thing about this place that is unique among all the places I’ve visited in China is that it is not old, and not only is it not old, but it was built as a set for a TV series. It’s hard to explain the cultural importance of the book called 红楼梦 (Hong Lou Meng, usually translated Dream of the Red Chamber) to the Chinese. It is one of the Four Great Novels, and you probably would be hard pressed to find a single Chinese person not familiar with it on some level. In the 1980s, China Central Television produced a series based on the book, and instead of filming it on soundstages, they built an entire compound designed to match every description found in the book of the place where the main family lives. It’s the story of a prominent family in decline, so grandeur is called for.

Here’s the front entrance.
Yeah, it was February, so prepare yourself for lots of pictures with bare trees.

At Ұ55 (US$9), the ticket is a bit on the expensive side compared to a lot of Beijing sights.

There are many buildings arrayed around various water/ice features.
Helpful signs tell you what parts of the book involve the buildings, which character lived there and so on.
As you can see, they did a very good job of imitating the style of construction you see at the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and so on.

Inside some of the buildings are figures dressed as the characters.
Most of the major characters in the story are women.
This compound within a compound is the nunnery where Miaoyu retired to a Buddhist life.

Here’s a view across the largest lake.
I’ve never before seen a sign that said “Keep off the lake” – though of course while it’s frozen solid, the meaning is correct. The Chinese is a little more verbose, and says that the ice is not safe, so please don’t go on the lake. I presume they change the sign once it’s not frozen.

Since the family in the story was highly placed in society, they had some special buildings made just for occasions when the emperor would visit.
Any resemblance to the Forbidden City is no coincidence.

Inside one building is a bunch of Red Chamber memorabilia.
These are photos of actors who have played the various parts in various productions of the story, not just the 1980s series that was filmed here.
And this kind of tree...
...is called a “Dragon Claw Tree.”

Some visitors are not impressed by elaborate buildings.
And for a price...
...you can dress in period costume and have your picture taken.

As I promised, you’ve seen lots of pictures of bare trees. It seems that such a situation is intolerable.
So the staff has provided some trees with a little help.

I guess there’s a new version of Red Chamber currently in production, and they had some promotional posters of the new cast.
I’m hoping that for the actual filming, they will have more authentic hairstyles.

There you go. I think about when I’ve visited Universal Studios, and it’s kind of hard to imagine sets like this ever being built for an American production.

Daguanyuan is in the Xuanwu (宣武) District of Beijing, not a long taxi ride from Changchunjie Station (长椿街站) on subway line 2. It is certainly not on the short list of Beijing places you must see unless you are a Chinese literature buff or maybe interested in TV production, but it was interesting, and I’ve already seen the things on the short list. There is also an underground theater at Daguanyuan where they show a computer animated 3D short feature that involves a dream in the Red Chamber. A character falls asleep and drifts through various scenes somewhat resembling events in the book. Or so I’m told – I haven’t read the book yet.

Happy Niu Year, part 1

Once again, the Chinese Spring Festival is upon us. Most Beijing residents who are from other cities in China have returned to their home towns, leaving the city oddly depopulated but far from quiet. As in the last two years, firework madness has taken hold of the city.

This is the Year of the Ox, and the word for ox (also cow and beef) is niu 牛, so we’re getting a little pun on some seasonal signs. There’s a beef and dairy company called Meng Niu (Meng here refers to Inner Mongolia, where they are based) which is especially using the slogan. (The Chinese phonetic spelling niu is actually pronounced nyo, like yo with an n tacked on the beginning of it, but it’s still close enough for a bilingual pun.)

One exception to the pattern of returning to hometowns is a friend of mine, and she very kindly invited me to New Year’s Eve dinner at her place. She and her mother, originally from the Shanghai area, live nearby and have not gone south for the holiday. They fixed a wonderful meal for me, the first time I’ve been invited into a Chinese home for a taste of non-restaurant food.
I was told that the tradition is to have ten dishes, which of course is way too much food for three people. Especially when one of them stays in the kitchen the whole time! Since their stove has only two burners, making ten dishes is more of a serial than a parallel process (to venture into computer metaphors). My friend’s mom kept cooking away (and I think I heard the sounds of cleaning as well) while we ate.

The picture was taken when eight dishes had been served. Shrimp, small whole crabs, roast beef, little pieces of ribs, chicken wings, a dish with squid and vegetables, and one with pork and vegetables are on the table along with a crock of soup. Still to come were broccoli and dumplings. And because in China too much is never enough, we also had some steamed buns with sweet fillings. We were so full we never even touched the soup.

With so many pieces of dishware being used to serve food, there was nothing left for us to eat off of, so we took food directly from the dishes with our chopsticks and put the shells and such on the table. Everything was quite tasty. I had to wonder about the predominance of meat. Was that for my benefit, special for the holiday, or what?

After dinner we watched the CCTV Spring Festival Gala on TV. There were a few times when I could tell what they were talking about, if not all the details. The two pandas recently given to Taiwan were mentioned a lot. I kept hearing their names, Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan. Finally the show got too corny for my friend and we decided to take a walk to work off dinner.
We entered a wasteland of fireworks debris.
As before, the pyromaniacs were out in force, openly displaying their obsession.
Across the street, we saw a big bunch of fireworks go off close to the ground. They looked like the kind of big colorful explosive things that are supposed to go off way up in the air. Soon flames leaped up from the shrubs next to the sidewalk. You can see a guy bringing a fire extinguisher. They soon had the fire out and went on with their fun.
A little further on our walk we came to the famous Gongti Xilu club area. There weren’t many people in the dance clubs, but the lights were going, competing with the fireworks going off around them. Along this street, there were fire extinguishers sitting about every ten meters or so along the sidewalk.

After we finished our circuit around Workers Stadium, we went back to their apartment and watched the rest of the Gala. I thought it was very interesting (especially after all the talk about the pandas sent to Taiwan) that the closing performance of the show, which started at about 12:30, was by a band (yes, and actual band, with guitars and drums) consisting of four famous Taiwanese singers from the 80s. My friend pointed out that when China started opening up to the outside world and discovering pop music, it had no music industry of its own, so most of the music came from Taiwan and Hong Kong. And since most Taiwanese pop was in Mandarin, as opposed to the Cantonese from Hong Kong, many of the songs from Taiwan are still well known today.

I am somewhat familiar with one of the singers, Luo Dayou (罗大佑 sometimes written Lo Ta-yu), and know that many of his songs have in the past been considered too politically outspoken for Mainland consumption. But the ones he sang for this Gala seemed to be well known to all the people in the audience.

I am sure that the Gala organizers were well aware of the symbolism of giving a Taiwanese artist such a place in the program (though honestly I think a lot of viewers switch off after midnight and might have missed it). And the performers are also aware of it, so it’s obviously a mutual agreement. Certainly these musicians could have declined the offer if they had problems with it.

Anyway, in my next post I’ll continue with more Spring Festival activities, and then catch up on some of what has gone in in the overly long time since my last post.

Keep on Running

To back up a bit from the previous post, I got to see the inside of the incredible Bird’s Nest on 20 August for a session of Athletics. I’ve already described the process of getting to the Olympic Green – it was the same this day as for when I went to Fencing. As we walked from the subway stop to the stadium, we passed by the set used by the Today Show, and since it was almost time for them to start their program (7pm local time, 7am New York time), we decided to skip the beginning of Athletics and watch.

The first thing we saw was a rehearsal of the routine the Hip-Hop Grandmas would be doing on the show.
This is a group of older Chinese women who have achieved internet fame by dancing to American hip-hop music, and being pretty good at it.

Given the chance to be on TV, even in a foreign country, will attract a crowd. Not a very large crowd in this case, but people do like to try to get their kids on TV.

Eventually the stars of the show arrived. Here’s Matt Lauer preparing for his work.
I don’t know if they showed it on NBC, but they have a pretty cool location.
We watched them do the first part of the show, then headed off to the Bird’s Nest.
Our seats were up on the third level, and this is how you get there.
There are a few elevators – somewhere. We didn’t see them. There are no escalators and no ramps, just a long hike up and up and up.

This is what it looked like from our seats.
That’s what you get for ¥200 a ticket (about US$28).

It’s kind of hard to tell at this distance, but the scoreboard on the far end (the only one we could see) displayed only Chinese. The one above and beside us (that we couldn’t see from our angle) showed the English. Seems like it would make sense to alternate the languages on both boards so everyone could read them, but apparently no one thought of that.

Sorry, no exciting action shots for this one. We were much too far away to see any details. The events we saw were Women’s Hammer, several preliminary heats of Men’s 800m and 5000m races, and a bit of Pole Vault way at the far end.
The only event we saw final results for was the Hammer, in which Aksana Miankova of Belarus set a new Olympic Record for the Gold, Yipsi Moreno of Cuba took Silver, and China’s Zhang Wenxiu took the Bronze, which pleased the crowd greatly.

Another highlight was in the first heat of the 5000m. This is a pretty long race, so as the laps went slowly by, most people were paying attention to the hammer throwing going on. But as it progressed one particular runner started catching people’s attention. Not the guy in the lead, but the guy at the very end. He was clearly out of the running, but courageously continued on, even after all the other runners lapped him. He finished more than a minute and a half behind the next best finisher, but got a huge cheer when he did. It wasn’t until after we got home that I looked up the results online and discovered it was Min Thu Soe of Myanmar.

Since there really wasn’t much to see, we left early, missing various other races, to check out the Green at night.
It was a warm night, so the fountains around the Water Cube were popular.
Back over on the Today Show set, they were wrapping up their final hour.
Note that Ann Curry has taken off her shoes. We watched her interview figure skater Michelle Kwan, who was in town as one of President Bush’s representatives for the Closing Ceremony.
By then it was getting kind of late, so we walked to the east exit of the Green and managed to find a taxi after maybe ten minutes. As we hadn’t eaten at all on the grounds, we were starving and headed for dinner.

Pretty much all pictures by D this time.

Skating into the new year

Shortly after I managed to roll out of bed this morning, I got an email from TG that he and SJ were going to check out Houhai and see what it was like on New Year’s Day. I had no plans, so I decided to join them.

We caught a taxi a little after noon and headed to one of the most popular entertainment districts in town, which strangely I’ve never visited before. When we got out of the taxi, the first thing we saw was how Beijingers make use of their lakes in the winter time.
This is Qianhai, one of a series of lakes west of the Forbidden City. It’s just north of Beihai, which I wrote about a while ago. They have chairs mounted on rails, and propel themselves with metal poles.
There are also ice skates for rent. I like the tricycles parked on the ice. Off in the distance, straight beyond the skate vendor in the chair, you can see that even the ice chairs can be tricky to control. That’s a woman down on the ice with a man helping her.
This part of town is highly commercialized, with old-style hutong buildings renovated into trendy restaurants and night clubs.
Here you can see one of the ice chairs better, as well as one of the other contraptions they rent, a pedal-powered ice cycle.
The north end of Qianhai turns into a little channel that connects to the next lake in the chain, Houhai. The banks of the channel are crowded with shops, restaurants and bars.
I saw these decorations in the window of one of the restaurants.
We came across these guys, who had just finished with a swim in Houhai.
From the end of the lake you can see all the way to the China World Trade Center Tower that’s being built.
I am going to have to come back to this place when it’s warmer. You’ve got Aladdin, Nilotic Monkey, and the Water Nymph Café, and some nifty Egyptian style decorations.
And here are the namesakes for the little island in the background, Wild Duck Island.

After completing our circuit of Qianhai and Houhai, we found a taxi to take us to Ditan Park, which held the big festival I visited last year. SJ is heading back to the US tomorrow, so I suggested it as a good place to get a real look at China celebrating their biggest holiday.

For the most part, it looked very similar to last year, so you can just go back to the old post for pictures. This time we arrived earlier in the day than last year, so there were a few things I missed last time round.
Like people burning incense at an old religious site. Ditan was the Temple of Earth opposite the more famous Temple of Heaven. There are also temples of the Sun and Moon to complete the four sides.
We were in time to catch some of the entertainment. This group played traditional instruments along with an electronic backing track. And to be honest, they could have been playing along with the whole arrangement for all I could tell.
And here’s a little emperor being conveyed around by his loyal servants.

I took this standing at the intersection of two major paths in the park.

That made for a pretty tiring day, so I came home and threw some veggies in a pot with water and chicken bouillon to make a soup. I watched a bit of the CCTV Gala rerun and started organizing the day’s pictures.

This notice in my building’s lobby is how the management office greeted us for the holiday:

All Occupants/Residents
Spring Festival is approaching, our property department officer send our best wishes to you!
Spring Festival period, strengthens the safe guard work, asks you to come in and out of the building on own initiative to carry access card. Regarding the visit visitor, like is unable to determine the concrete room number, the great hall security temporarily does not give the gate and informs the property department to carry on the inquiry, the relation. Holiday period like you egress, please close, the windows and doors, the engineering department can help you to closes the electric circuit, the closure water supply pipe valve, please leave your urgent telephone at the property department.
The weather in Beijing is dry and windy, so it is very easy for the plants in and around our mansion to catch fire if they meet spark. To ensure our owners/residents have a neat and safe living environment, our management office kindly advise you not to ignite firecracker when you celebrate the Spring Festival with you family. You can ignite firecracker at designated locations outside the south gate of the east gate.
Thanks for your cooperation
Wish you to have a happy and healthy holidays!

I’m guessing this was translated from the Chinese original by Google.

Of acquisition and loss

Now on to the events of Saturday, 29 September. Pictures (some by D some by me) and more events added 10 November. How could I have forgotten the fireworks?

For the first time, I ended up taking a taxi to the Beijing Airport. All my previous trips the company driver was available to provide transportation. Not much to report here. The ride cost about $10, which included the toll for the expressway. Unlike my previous Shanghai trip, we got to board through a jetway directly onto the plane instead of having to take a shuttle out to the plane. And instead of going to Shanghai’s new Pudong Airport, we flew to the old one, which is called Hongqiao and is situated right in the midst of the city. It was very strange flying below the tops of buildings on the approach.

We had read about the taxi queue, so we followed the signs (no checked bags) and got into a big long line. There were about four lanes of taxis, with a uniformed person directing people to the next available one. There was also a guy who had a big car (not a standard taxi) who was trying to entice people to ride with him instead. I managed to tell our driver where we were going – it was pretty easy since our hotel was on a well-known street right across the street from a major park, and I knew the names of both in Chinese.
We stayed at the Radisson Hotel, a five-star tower that showed up in my pictures from Shanghai in August. It’s the one that looks like a UFO is landing on its roof.
There was some sort of confusion upon check-in. They seemed to think I work for Google. My reservation, which I made online a few days in advance, had got jumbled up with someone else’s. We ended getting upgraded from a standard king room to a deluxe king.
It was really nice, actually a small suite. We were on floor 18 facing towards the river, though other buildings mostly blocked the view. We could see a bit of the Pearl Tower and several other noteworthy buildings.
After getting settled, we went out to explore Nanjing Road, a famous shopping district I visited last time. We mostly just browsed, though we did see a few interesting things.
We were pestered almost constantly by people trying to sell us watches, bags, and whatnot, some of whom were very persistent. Like a store called Baleno that specialized in jeans and other casual wear for young people, but had a big display of items related to Doraemon and Astro Boy in the window, so like moths to a flame, we entered.
By the time we left, we had a sweatshirt and a T-shirt, and only a supreme exercise of will power kept the damage down to that.

Around the time it was starting to get dark, we met a friend for dinner. She took us to a nice Shanghai-style restaurant. It was on the way to dinner that D realized something was missing. She had been carrying her Zen MP3 player in her backpack, and someone had unzipped it and got away with the player. This put quite a damper on the enjoyment of the food.

Upon reflection, we have our own stupidity (or naiveté) to blame. First, there was no reason to have the Zen with us – we should have left it back at the hotel. Second, a backpack is like an invitation to a thief – easy to get into without being noticed, especially in a crowded place where there are jostling people. We’ve noticed many people who use backpacks actually sling them around the front. These are smart people. We can take some small comfort in the fact that Zen players are pretty uncommon here, so the lucky acquirer might have trouble finding accessories like a charger and USB adapter for it. They’re sure to find an odd selection of music on it.

Anyway, back to dinner. Our friend wanted to give us a good sample of Shanghai cuisine, and took us to a place called Shun Feng. It was huge, with well over a hundred tables, taking up what seemed to be an entire floor of a downtown building near the Marriott tower. Our waitress was a tiny little woman who was shorter than us even when we were sitting down, but she seemed to be in charge of that part of the place, ordering others around. Shanghai food is known for being sweet and rich, and we certainly found that to be true. We had a wide sampling of foods, meat, veggies and fish. The fish was a little spicy, and was our favorite. For dessert we had an amazing concoction of sweet black beans, glutinous rice and coconut milk which was ridiculously rich. It was either will power or sheer overstuffing that kept us from finishing it all.

Originally we had sort of planned on going to a pub or something after dinner for drinks, but after the theft, we weren’t in the mood for it, and wanted to call it an evening. But it was Saturday night in Shanghai, and it would be a shame to miss the lights along the Bund and across the Huangpu, so we made a quick little trip to the river.
Several things set this visit apart from my previous one. First, there was this:
It’s a big tourist boat with a water dragon theme, full of people cruising the river. Note the water gushing from the dragons’ mouths. Then we started hearing the sounds of explosions.
The Saturday night before a major holiday – fireworks! We hung around for the whole show, which lasted 20 minutes or so. Combined with the lights of the buildings, it was quite something.

After that, we said goodnight to our friend and took a quick taxi ride back to the hotel.
It was here that we discovered the addictive attraction of the National Geographic Channel. For China Day, they were doing a marathon of documentaries about this country. I watched one which I think must have been made at about the time when Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon came out. It was about one of the prominent wushu (martial arts) schools in China, and profiled several students from the ages of 8-18 or so. As far as I could tell from the credits, it was not an actual NG production, and while the subject matter was fascinating, I was constantly annoyed by the narrator’s consistent mispronunciation of virtually every Chinese name and word. It seems like a matter of simple respect to say people’s names right.

That was a pretty full day.