Beijing is without a doubt an amazing place. From the awe inspiring Forbidden City to the crumbled ruins of the Great Wall, you can really lose yourself in the atmosphere of these impressive sites (unless you get too bogged down by the sheer number of other tourists that are ruining your experience!). While it may take you three hours to get to the Great Wall, you don’t have to look far to spot some of China’s cruel ways of life.
Poor turtles in the middle :(
Pets in Beijing are a mystery. Apart from the caged variety (birds, fish, etc) I don’t see the how you can raise a dog with such little public areas available. It’s a rare sight when you see someone walking their tiny dog though the massive hoards of people. There are various pet carts around our area which house various cute animals for sale. Despite their inherent cuteness nothing can hide the fact that the are housed in incredibly tiny cages. Our friend nearly bought a little white rabbit with hopes of saving it but was convinced at the last minute that there was nothing much she could do to rescue it. You also see homeless people with really cute little puppies. I don’t know how they manage to feed them but I can only assume their lives are short lived. Although the homeless people that live at the entrance to our subway station have managed to raise their dogs for as long as I’ve been here.
We went to a Hallowen party last week. For a first timer (we don’t celebrate Halloween from where we’re from) I was pretty impressed at what I saw. The party was located in 798, the art district of Beijing, in a converted warehouse. The theme was “fetish” so it was pretty much open to anything. Some of the costumes were insanely good. Some excellent male zombie brides – can’t believe they pulled this off, the makeup was amazing; the Invisible Man, Harry Potter, Tron and this awesome pack of stealthy ninjas. Oh yea, and we were the ninjas. It was a lot of fun and I think my friend put it best: “I now understand why ninjas are so stealthy. If anyone sees one they immediately want to take their photo.” Every time we got drinks at the other end of the warehouse we would be constantly interrupted for photos.
But it wasn’t all easy going. The actual lead up to the party was a nightmare. We didn’t settle on a costume until the second to last day and that was after some much needed prodding from DJ. I think he had been doing some investigating and found out how hard out this party actually was. So once we finally settled on ninjas there was the lengthy process of finding the costumes. For a city that sells pretty much anything, costumes stores are non-existent! We tried numerous shopping malls and asked countless people but we always received the same response: a look of bewilderment when DJ showed them the ninja picture on his phone, smiling and laughing, and then a something along the lines of “I don’t know.” Luckily DJ had done some serious homework and located the Hong Qiao markets. A place where they sell fake watches, bags, scarves, electronics, toys, material, etc. We ended up with what we wanted but boy did we have to work for a decent price. Some of these ladies are incredibly sneaky. When we tried to bargain for these plastic swords we ended up paying a price that we would pay get back home. Total ripoff (relatively). DJ described her bargaining approach as using “cute tactics”. I was just annoyed by the fact that she swindled us when we had the perfect game plan. It was nearing closing time, we tell her we have to go soon, don’t have much money and since we are buying 5 give us what we want. That should count for something, right? Instead she used the closing time tactic on us and before you know it we are walking away feeling like we just got played like a couple of fools. I blame DJ for falling for the cute tactics…... We all did a good job putting the pieces together and a special shout out to DJ for cutting most of the fabric and assembling the various components when the rest of us had other commitments.
So I heard winter in Beijing can get pretty cold…..well, I heard correctly! Within the span of 2 weeks the number of layers I am wearing has tripled. At the start of the month I was wearing just a t-shirt and I would still sweat profusely. Now it’s nearing November and I’m busting out the puffer jacket (down jacket) and hat. The scary part is that it hasn’t even snowed yet and the weather forecasters are predicting 2-4 heavy periods of snow this winter. A classmate who has lived in Beijing for a couple of years warned me of the wind. Apparently it gets so icy, you can actually snap you own hair in two (This sounds kind of cool but really bad if it’s true – I’ll update you guys if it is so). So please spare a thought for us if you are enjoying warm sunshine as you read this :(
So apart from class, studying, meeting up with language partners and tutoring English me and DJ are hanging with our friends. One thing that we have all been enjoying together is rekindling our childish love of video game arcades. One game in particular always keeps us coming back for more – Taiko no Tatsujin. It’s the Japanese drumming game that lets you take out all your frustrations to the beat of your favourite J-Pop songs. It’s especially rewarding if you are an anime fan like me and find music from Cowboy Bebop, Naruto, Bleach etc. I also enjoy the fighting games over here. In Beijing they have Tekken 6, Super Street Fighter IV, King of Fighters all lined up in a row. Each player has their own screen and fighting pad and they play opposite their opponents who have the exact same set up. I didn’t get a photo of this but I’ll try my best to describe this funny memory with the help of my wonderful illustration below.
I mistakenly challenged DJ to Tekken 6 (should have done SSFIV because I’m much better at that) because he destroyed me multiple times and took all my coins. Afterwards this 50 year old man motioned to me to get out of the chair so that he could challenge DJ. He picked Law (the Bruce Lee char) and started to tear DJ a new a-hole. I’m exaggerating a little, DJ did manage to win a few rounds, but he lost all the games. Back home arcades are hangouts for little kids (tweeners) and emo kids. But over here it’s full of all sorts. You could walk in at 3pm at find 50 year olds going at it at SSFIV – and they’re really good too.
Ok, that seems to be all I can think of for now. We’ll try to update this sooner than last time so come back soon!
willynilly aka Twiggy
Ninja DJ checking fb before he gets his groove on
No comments:
Post a Comment