When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping

This post covers 5-8 October, 2010.

One of the things on my to-do list for the trip was some shopping. Books, CDs, some musical accessories (like strings for my Chinese instruments), and clothing were on the list. The Xidan area west of Tiananmen Square features one of the city's biggest bookstores as well as several buildings filled with clothing shops. Plus it was two stops away on the subway.

It being a national holiday, lots of people were off work and had the same idea I did.


The big sign there says 民族大世界 (Great Ethnic World, I suppose), so you might expect to find a bunch of craft shops and ethnic food stalls inside. You would be wrong. It's a huge area filled with vendors hawking clothes, shoes, bags, and so on, all for prices low enough that you have to suspect counterfeits. I wandered around in there, but didn't buy anything. Across the street is a newer, more reputable shopping center.


That's a giant video screen across the front of the building. It shows nothing but advertisements. I took this picture standing on the pedestrian bridge over the street, so we're at the second floor level. That's the place where I bought all my Astro Boy gear. There are about six levels of shopping in the building, then a level that has a gaming arcade, and then a few floors of offices above that. I have a friend who works upstairs there. Note the interesting design of the next building on the left.

Also notice that the air doesn't look nearly as clear as it did in the previous pictures. Those were taken on Tuesday, and by Thursday the air was getting a little thick.

Standing in the spot where I took that last picture, I turned to face south and snapped this one.


Yeah, it was a pretty hazy day. At the right side of the frame you can see the edge of the Bank of China headquarters, where I attended a few meetings when I was working in Beijing. Further south are more banks and office buildings - the shopping district is all to the north.

One of my favorite restaurants is near here, a short walk into the old residential area north of the bookstore. One evening I met a couple of friends for dinner there, and I swear the head waiter remembered me from the many times I've been there before, even though it had been over a year since my last visit.


We had 香锅 (Fragrant Pot), which is kind of like hotpot except that they do the cooking for you and serve it dry. You choose your ingredients from a big list. We had chicken (the other choice is fish) along with a couple different kinds of mushroom, noodles, tofu, carrot, and 山药 (shanyao, literally mountain medicine, a kind of root vegetable). Plus a pile of hot peppers and a few other things that make up the "fragrant" part. It's pretty spicy, and my stomach always punishes me the next day for eating it, but it's soooo tasty.

Small but only in size

This post will probably fall into the category of things I think are really cool, but most people will just go “Huh?”

For some unknown reason, last Saturday I developed the urge to buy an AstroBoy T-shirt. I remembered a store in the 西单 (Xidan) area where they sold Astro stuff, so I got on the subway and went there.

I was pleased to find that the store was still there, and they had a big rack of merchandise at 50% off. No T-shirts, but I found this nifty hooded sweatshirt.
I had the hardest time deciding – they had so many cool designs to choose from. With the discount, it came to about US$20.

Not only that, but as I was leaving, the attendant slipped a free gift into my bag.
There were only a couple days left of the Spring Festival at that point, so I guess they were trying to get rid of the nearly expired seasonal items. It’s a folding gift holder, and tucked inside the package was a packet of red envelopes for giving traditional gifts (money). It was too late for me to use them this year, but maybe I’ll get a chance next year.
It also came with a really cool little 福 (Fu good fortune, luck) poster, which is like the ones all over China, except it’s got a robot boy on it. I promptly put it on my door, though the holiday was nearly done. They’re as slow taking down Spring Festival decorations here as many Americans are with their Christmas decorations, so I’m not the only one with a poster still on display.

Well, I think it’s cool anyway.

Does this make me a mall rat?

Ever since I first saw the shopping center in Beijing with the English name The Place, I have been fascinated with the sheer scale of the over-the-top design. Little did I suspect I would eventually be commuting there every day. It’s one of those locations here that if you call it by its English name to a local, they’ll have no idea what you’re talking about, in spite of the prominent signs everywhere. That’s because the Chinese name is 世贸天阶 (Shimaotianjie), which translates to something like World Trade Sky Stairs – in other words, nothing even remotely like the English name. As an aside, it reminds me of a certain classic rock song about a stairway to heaven and the futility of seeking material wealth, but that’s neither here nor there in spite of the ironic appropriateness, since The Place is, if nothing else, a monument to celebrate wealth.

It’s really filled up since I first wrote about it a year and a half ago – most of the empty spaces have been filled, and there are a whole bunch of restaurants on level B1. Of course, the main novelty here is still the Skyscreen. Luckily they’ve got a lot more content available for it. Every evening at 6:00 we hear it start up and the glow from it creeps into our office. We’re on the sixth floor, which puts us exactly even with it, so we can’t see the images from our windows, but when we leave the building, there it is.

Sometimes they just show boring animations of their logo flying around, but they have several interesting CGI pieces, like that outer space one I posted on Youtube. The most frequent one involves an undersea scene.

Tonight I saw one that I didn’t get any pictures of. There were ghostly human figures floating above a landscape of barren mountains, and then it zoomed down to green hills with trees, and we fly along until buildings appear, and then we’re flying among skyscrapers. There were some pretty cool images of flying cars in between the towers (a little like Coruscant in the Star Wars movies). Eventually the view pulls back and you can see it’s an entire planet covered with buildings – in fact it looks a lot like a Dyson Sphere, and as the camera pulls back, there’s also a Ringworld. Somebody is keeping up on their sci-fi imagery.

Anyway, The Place is a very strange place. Like shopping centers all over the world, it is gearing up for the Christmas season. Now, Chinese people don’t really celebrate Christmas, and gift-buying is mostly relegated to the Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), so it’s not like the stores are really pushing anything more than the normal consumerist excess. But Western marketing is a very powerful force, and it seems they can’t resist the temptation to join in even if it makes no difference in sales.

A couple weeks ago they started erecting a giant tree-shaped scaffolding in the middle of the courtyard.
Then they covered it with green.
They have since added giant decorations to it, but I haven’t seen it lit up yet.
And they built an ice skating rink.

Not only that, but they’ve got a camera set up somewhere and they show pictures of the skaters and the mall on a portion of the Skyscreen. The weather here is now cold enough that most days, the ice is not in much danger of melting, and before long, they’ll probably be safe all day without even running the massive refrigeration unit.

And yes, ice skating is well-known in China. I have a friend who grew up in the northern province of Liaoning, and she tells me that when she was in grade school and the pond next to her school froze over, the kids would spend their lunch breaks skating.

The decorations are not limited to the outside. I mentioned the restaurants. Here is one of them.
I don’t even know where to begin deciphering this image I took with my phone… though I suppose the real deeper meaning is that there is no deeper meaning. It’s just the result of people unfamiliar with foreign imagery putting together what they think is a Christmas display. But…a saxophone?

This Old Town

That’s the “street” outside the Zen Garden Hotel. As I mentioned before, no cars allowed, or even really possible.
Lijiang Old Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, one of five I have visited in China (the others are the Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, and Great Wall, all in the Beijing area).
For the most part, the area consists of narrow stone streets winding around narrow canals, lined with little shops and restaurants. It seemed that there were really only about a dozen different stores, but each one of them had dozens of branches.

There were the shoe and slipper store and the jewelry store.
The weaving shop, sometimes with weaver at work making scarves and shawls.
The stores that sell paintings and wood carvings.
Also note the water pouring off the roofs. Gutters are not part of the traditional design.

Then there is the candy shop, where they make a tasty sweet from ginger and sugar.
And the yak jerky shop, with various kinds of dried yak meat.
And cute little yak toys.

There is the shop that sells traditional musical instruments from the area.

Yeah, that’s me buying a hulusi, with the shopkeeper showing me how to play it.

There is a calligraphy shop.
The artist is doing one for me of a famous poem I learned in my Chinese class.

And the camera shop, with batteries and memory cards, along with film for the old fashioned ones.
Note the restaurant sign above the Kodak store: OID BEIJING INSTDNT BOILED MUTTO – GUANGZHOU SIDEWALK SNACC BOOTH.

You also find a food place with various roasted animal parts.
I think this place supplied half the restaurants in the area.

There is a cultural center with displays and performances related to local ethnic minorities.
The other shops, not pictured, include the one that sells little bronze statues, the tea shop (local specialty is pu’er), the T-shirt shop, stores selling polished stones and stone carvings. Jewelry stores came in a few varieties: those that specialized in silver, some for jade and other stones, and those for cheap bangles and novelties. Take these businesses and repeat ad libitum.

Of course, there are lots of restaurants.
To escape the rain, we ducked into a place called the Rembrandt Café that sells a selection of Western dishes as well as local fare.
No, that’s not what we had. There was a guy at the table next to us doing about the same as we were: having a snack while taking pictures out the open window whenever anything interesting happened. He ordered one of the local specialties (dragonflies, I think) but didn’t eat much of it. I once saw him drop one on the floor for the dog that was hanging out, but it sniffed and walked away.

We ordered Naxi style fried potatoes, which are cut like French fries but cooked with green onions, soy sauce, vinegar, and hot peppers, and some yak meat skewers (maoniu chuanr). Both were quite tasty. And the Yunnan coffee we had was excellent. They make it very strong and serve it in small portions. As an added bonus, the café had music playing: old Bee-Gee’s hits (from the pre-disco era).

At night, the restaurants along one of the canals (helpfully named Bar Street) come to life with music and lights.
They all have employees dressed in ethnic garb trying to get you to visit their place. Inside, they have various kinds of entertainment.
Several of them had loud electronic versions of folk music, with dancers in costume, often joined by patrons interested in learning some dance moves. Other places had singers with acoustic guitars, and a couple had small bands.

Stay tuned for part two, which covers some of the less commercial sights of the town.

Photos by D & I.

Pomp and Circus Pants

(Photos to be augmented/replaced after I copy D’s shots to my hard drive)

To wrap up my ever-so-timely Olympic coverage, here is my report on the Closing Ceremony (24 August). Just think: a hundred years ago and more, most news was this old by the time people read it... So I’m not slow, just following an old tradition.

D and I met my colleague HC and took the subway together to the Olympic Green. We had the plan of looking around there and grabbing something to eat before going into the Bird’s Nest, but while we saw some interesting things (separate post), the food options were so limited and crowded that we ended up abandoning that part of the plan. We spent most of our time in the chaotic Olympic Mega Store picking up souvenirs and waiting in line to pay for them.

It’s a long walk from the Mega Store to the National Stadium, and the closer we got the bigger the crowd was.
Once inside, we found our seats, which were on the second level, much better than where we sat for Athletics. HC had a ticket downstairs, but eventually RR showed up to sit next to us.

The first thing we did was check out the swag bag that was on every seat. It contained a big program book, an electric mini replica torch, an orange fan, a little noisemaker drum, Chinese and Olympic flags, and a bottle of water. After we got situated, I braved the concession lines to get some beer and snacks. It was pretty much the same stuff as they had at Beach Volleyball, and even though the show hadn’t started yet, they were already out of some items. I got a couple of sausages, a couple bags of chips, and a couple glasses of Tsingtao.

We all knew that one part of the ceremony would be presented by the London Organizing Committee to set up the next Summer Games. Speculation was rife as to what the UK would choose as a symbol of their culture. Surely the Beatles were out, as we couldn’t imagine Sir Paul signing up. The Rolling Stones, maybe? That got my vote.
Before the start of the show, there was a coaching session on when to wave the fans, when to turn on the torches, when to cheer, and so on. D and I both decided we would rather take pictures than participate, but the majority of the crowd was more with the spirit.
We were intrigued by the giant drums visible down on the floor. They strapped drummers onto both sides, and we could see the rigging, so it was obvious that they would be going up in the air.
It all started the way you expect a big show in China to start: with dramatic music and a huge number of performers entering en masse.
And, of course, fireworks.
When these fanciful drum/parachute contraptions came in, my first thought was “Designed by Dr Seuss” and I know I’m not the only one who noticed.
Then the lightcycles came in, and my first thought was: Tron. Others have noted this as well.

When it comes to spectacles like this, too much is never enough, so next we had acrobats on high-tech spring stilts.
All in all, it was rather like four or five different Cirque de Soleil shows splattered Pollack-like onto a massive canvas.

This was one of the audience participation segments.
I was relieved that when the athletes entered, they did not make the slow, country-by-country march, but just streamed in. That hour-and-a-half part of the Opening Ceremony was pretty tedious to watch.
After the athletes were in, they had the dousing of the torch. It was directly over our heads, so we couldn’t see it other than a vague yellow glow through the ceiling material.
You may ask yourself: After they put out the torch, what more is there to do? As it turns out, lots.
We could see a red London double-decker bus waiting in the wings.

At first, the London portion of the show seemed okay. Maybe the bus is a bit of a cliché, but certainly China has leaned on its clichés during the Olympics, making the most of symbols like the Great Wall, the Temple of Heaven, and so on.

Little did we imagine that the bus was actually a Transformer!
It opened up and there was Jimmy Page playing the opening riff of “Whole Lotta Love.” So it was not the Stones, but Led Zeppelin. Interesting choice, and why this particular song, given its sexually suggestive lyrics? I guess LOCOG is trying to present England as the Land of Sexual Innuendo. Is this some sort off subtle, subversive criticism of the uptight Chinese? Or just desperate lack of imagination?
From there on, the London segment just got sillier and sillier. The singer who belted out Robert Plant’s part of the song was good, but then we got a strange cross-section of Brit celebs. David Beckham kicked a football into the crowd of athletes, waved, and disappeared; we had a violinist and cellist; and it kept going downhill from there. It was a virtual London Cliché Checklist, with the umbrellas, lollipop ladies (crossing guards for the Americans), and token representatives of every British trend you can think of. Later I spoke with some of my colleagues who are here from London, and when they saw it (from the comfort of an Irish pub on Dongzhimenwai), they hung their heads in shame.

After the London hand-off was done, things got ultra-Chinese. Clearly this show was designed for the domestic audience, though there were a few English-language bits to keep the foreigners engaged.

After seeing a couple of Spring Festival Gala shows on CCTV, I have learned that the Chinese capacity for dramatic, sappy, uplifting ballads with positive messages is effectively bottomless, and five minutes or more per song is perfectly acceptable. You have elaborate costumes, spectacular staging, fireworks, appearances by all the minority ethnic groups, traditional folk songs done in a modern style, references to Chinese history and culture, large groups doing choreographed moves, and every available Chinese celebrity who is not involved in any sort of scandal. Jackie Chan singing? Yikes! Anyway, in another country you might get one or two of these songs, and they would be kept short and snappy, no more than a few minutes each, but here they had eight or nine of them, and each lasted ten minutes (so it seemed). Maybe this is the downside to not having atrophied attention spans.
But aside from the length, the staging was pretty darn amazing. A tower rose out of the circular platform in the center, and a squadron of performers swarmed over it and performed choreographed moves.
It was kind of like the Millennium Show that Peter Gabriel was involved with in London, scaled up by the factor of the Chinese population.
Giant banners!
Fireworks!
More aerial work than you’ve ever seen in one place!
More fireworks! A cast of thousands! Fireworks!
“We Are the World”!

Anyway, it was quite a spectacle, and I’m certainly glad I got to see it in person.

Beijing, Beijing! Wo ai Beijing!

It took a long time to get out of the stadium. We followed the herd to the subway.
This is an alternative entrance to the station we used all the other times. I had never seen this area open to the public before.
We had to wait for a couple of trains before there was room for us.
For once, the exit from an Olympic event was relatively smooth. We took the subway to Dongzhimen, then caught a taxi to a restaurant for much-needed food and refreshment. Several colleagues (including the aforementioned Brits) were already there.

And that brought the Olympics to a close. Next chapter: Paralympics. Plus a little out-of-town getaway and the great unknown.