A Very Full Day Tuesday

On Tuesday morning, we went up to NW Beijing to the Bridge Cafe, to view the presidential debate live.  There were about 40 people there, a very young crowd, which made sense given this is where there are many Chinese Universities.   The debates were lively!  The crowd was very comfortable with social media, and there was a lot of live tweeting, face booking, instragramming. After the debate I was interviewed by the South China Morning Post and got quoted in the article published Wednesday morning.  here's the link:  SCMP article

After the debate we went to a meeting with the local CAFL (China Arena Football League) "fixer", Fiona Wang.  Fiona is a giant caldron of bubbling enthusiasm in a tiny package.  She invited us to the press conference on Thursday. 

Bill was exploding with joy!  He just loves this sport and it makes him so happy.  It's a beautiful thing to see.

After that we took a cab over to the Capital Museum.  It is an interestingly laid out museum with
exhibits on 6 floors and a gigantic atrium which spans the entire half of the building.  The artifacts were of some interest, as the descriptions where in Chinese.  However, we did find 2 photos of the hotel we are staying in.  This hotel was the center of the negotiations between the Chinese nationals and Chinese communists at the end of 1946.  There are photos all over the hotel depicting the events and who participated.  It was scheduled to be demolished, but was saved as a historical monument.

We were walking toward out hotel and the restaurant we were meeting Servet at, and we decided to try to take a local bus.  We have "metro" cards and they are accepted on the bus. Both the subway and the buses are a "double tap" system.  You need to tap your card on entry, and then again on exit.  The cost of the ride is then deducted from the card.  Usually the subway is 2 yuan, (30 cents) for a short ride, and 3 yuan (45 cents) for a longer one.  Our bus ride was only 1 yuan.  We rode about 3.5 km.

This is the view from inside the bus.

The restaurant was south of Tian 'anmen Square.  Last night, as we walked the length of the square, it's enormity struct me.   It is at least 1 km long, and about 1/2 that wide.  We walked down a hutong and found the duck place.

We met Servet at Li Qun, a famous Peking Duck place.  It is a courtyard in a hutong, in a former private home.  You need to reserve your duck ahead of time.  It was splendid!  Far better than the other place that we tried.

We consumed a duck, the crisped bones, various side dishes running the gamut from cold sweetened lotus root, to a Mongolian bed dish.  We washed this all down with many bottle of a local beer.  The entire meal plus booze was under $100.

I have been here long enough to feel, "you want how many yuan for that", when we are just talking about cents.  Yet, on the other hand, I don't have a problem shelling out 400 yuan for a good meal.  Just to give you perspective, 100 yuan = $15.






As Bill and I walk, or take cabs, around the city of Beijing, I can't help but be awed at the sheer economic power that will exists here when China brings its entire population up to an equal economic footing.  You can feel it in in the air, there is a vibrancy and a yearning here.  People are open and happy to help.  As the economic boat rises here this will be a place where the rest of the world will be plowed under if we don't figure out a way to cooperate and develop mutually beneficial economic structures.  This is just one of the reasons that a Trump presidency scares the absolute piss out of me. Isolationism is not going to make the long term better, it will plunge us into a chasm of economic servitude.  And then, we will be the 3rd world country.

Off Soap Box
Peace, Out

Mao And Qinghua

Today, we visited Mao's Mausoleum.  The crowd was enormous, but for China, very orderly.  We were ushered, nay, hustled through a barricade and into a long snaking line that lead up to the front of the tomb.  From there, the line was split into 2, and each line entered a guard station with 5 queues to scan viewers.  Each queue was manned by one at the front of the queue to handle the little bowls like an airport and the end of the queue was manned by a guard with a security wand. Once through the queues, the line reformed into one line that curled around to the long staircase into the front hall of the mausoleum.  Along the route, there were flower vendors, which for 3 yuan you could purchase a cellophane sleeve with carnations to place at the foot of the Mao statue in the front hall.  There were a ginormous number of bouquets there already, with white carnations in each.  No doubt these get recycled to the next day to pay homage to the great leader.

Once the flowers were placed people were ushered back into the line.  The huge throng shuffled along silently to view Mao.

Mao was not looking too good.  Waxy does not even begin to describe it.  More like melting pink plastic that is slowly giving g gravity's incessant pull.

The air quality is awful today, I purchased a mask which is difficult to fit on my face.  It is supposed to fit snugly without any gaps, but I know that there were gaps near my nose because my glasses kept fogging up

This should give you an idea of the air quality.  The building in the haze is about 100 yards away

The crowd in the foreground is the line waiting to enter Mao's tomb.  This is just prior to the line splitting into 2 to go into the guard stations.

This mask was not so great.  It did not really fit my face, could be because I am Western, or because I can't read character and purchased a child's version.  They came 3 in a pack for 18 yuan.  About $3.  

After Mao, we visited Servet up at Qinghua University which is in the NW part of Beijing.  He was busy until about 2:30 so we sat in an arena watching a student body team building olympics.  Qinghua is an engineering school, one of the best in all of China.  So this was sort of like nerds day at sports.  Not too many scholar athletes, if you get what I mean.  It was charming nonetheless.  

We joined Servet and he gave us a tour of the Schwarzman College, which is where he is attending as a Schwarzman Scholar for the year. The physical plan was quite striking.  The building was designed to look "old" even though it was completed this year.  

The accommodations are quite luxurious:  all single rooms, with private bath, completely wired super fast wifi that is able to load Google and other forbidden products.  There is a pub in the basement!!!  These students will never get any work done.  The other Qinghua students refer to this group as the "Precious Pandas".  Given their surroundings, I can see why.

We went for dinner with Servet at crawfish bar.  We had an amazing waitress who helped us order even though she spoke no English and Servet speaks only a few words of Chinese.  The coolest part of this place was the live fish in a tank below the glass of our table.   We ordered some durian eggs, garlic crawfish, and a shrimp and chicken hot pot.  All f these were really good.  The stand out was the condiments for the hot pot.  A garlic paste and a chili soy.

This is the "fish tank" table

These are the durian eggs

This is the shrimp, chicken, and veggies hot pot on the burner.  The dish to the left of the burner is a rice porridge, congee, which you add to the broth after eating the meat.

Here are the three of us after the meal, courtesy of the waitress, who just loved us.  She wrote in character for Servet, that we were old, fat, and funny.

Fighting With The Platform

for several days the pages for me have been loading in Kannada, which may be, an Indian language.  After fooling around with Chrome, I think I have been able to fix the issue.  This was not an issue for viewing the pages, but with the posting of the pages.  A background issue.  Fingers crossed, I think I've licked it.  Damn Google products!

Well, We Made It

Day 1: After arriving on Wednesday afternoon, we have had a few adventures. The weather is hotter than I would like it, but after a few more hot days will start to go into fall-like weather.

Our first day, we wandered about the new "neighborhood" and looked for something to eat for dinner, this was at about 4:30 pm local time. We finally settled on a place across the street from the hotel and had a lovely meal. I had spicy tofu, and Bill a mix of organ meats that were stir fried.

                                                                            

                                                          This was Bill's dish

                                                  

This was very good, a little salty, but really tasty

I fell asleep at the conclusion of the meal at the table in the restaurant. Never happened before, will likely never happen again! We returned to the hotel about 7 pm. Fell asleep in a nano second.

Day 2: After 17 hours of sleep, we left our hotel in search of food. We found a place near a Days Inn with an English and Chinese crawl sign. Imagine the Times Square crawl, this one is much shorter and only has a single news story being told over and over. We did not want to struggle with a menu and figured this place would have an English one because of the crawl. Turns out the special dish was dumplings. Hand made to order by 2 women behind a partition. The waiter speaks no English I ordered 2 egg and chive and 2 pork and lotus. Bill said let's hold off and see what we get. Each order turned out to be 10 dumplings. Thank god they were really good.

 Always hydrate fully at every meal

These were excellent dumplings above is the egg and chives and below is the pork and lotus

After eating we felt very refreshed and decided to play tourist at Tiananmen Square which was just a short walk away.

It is very, very large .... larger than Red Square in Moscow! A giant concrete and stone plaza that stretches side to side from Museum to People's Hall and from the Heavenly Gate to Mao's tomb. Then south of Mao's Tomb it goes down to the South Gate.

This is the south gate

This is a view of the Heavenly Gate from the center of the plaza. Note the haze, it is not a poor photo, it is very hazy, not so you are coughing, but it impairs the visuals

We are just about to enter the north end of the square

This is my thinking face

To amuse myself, and many of the Chinese around us, I snuck up on Bill, taking photos as I got closer and closer.

Fairly close.                        

                                                                     Really close

There are many technical issues that I am trying to sort out. One is that the page loads on my end in Kannada, what ever language that is, looks like written Arabic mashed up with script Thai. The page saves slower than I type, so it is challenge to view how the page looks and the last line typed.  

After leaving Tiananmen we wander a bit, hunting looking for a place to rest our feet. We went into several places and were unsure if they were open or were working-girl bars. We found a coffee shop / bar and settled in for a drink and bathroom break. We left near sundown and walked back toward Tianamen. We saw that all traffic at the Heavenly Gate and on either side of the square was stopped, cars, bikes, motor scooters, people. It was changing of the guard. After the honor guard crossed the north street, all barriers were removed and we could freely move about. The square at night was all light up with Mao's portrait in full view from a distance.

We headed back to the hotel for a lay down, and promptly feel asleep for another night without having dinner? WHAT, no dinner, yes, no dinner, but breakfast in the hotel, which was quite tasty.

Day 3

We decided to to the big shopping street nearby, Wangfujing Street. It was a giant mall. Pedestrians were free to walk on the street and there were hundreds of upscale stores and huge high rise malls.  

Bo photo bombed the shot

 We got an email that our HSBC cards had arrived at the prearranged branch. Turns out, on the map, it looked really close, but in reality it was quite far. So we took a cab and we would never have found this place if not for the cab.  

We decided on a Peking Duck dinner and choose Siji Minfu

The crowd when we arrived

It took about an hour, but we finally got in and it was, wait for it, meh. Crispy skin, but not that juicy or flavorful. Guess we will have to try another place, oh, well!

TBC

(To be continued)

C-R-A-Z-Y

It's crunch time..... have so many little errands to run and no time to run them!
1.  Go to 2 different banks to finalize travel stuff
2.  Head to Board of Elections and get absentee balloting
3.  Pack
4.  Decide how to get everything in and not cripple myself
5.  Did I mention pack????
6.  Fit all toiletries into 1 qt bag
7.  Suddenly my 1 qt bag fit a gallon worth of stuff
8.  Do I really need all that Pepto????
9.  Straighten out HSBC banking and try not to kill anyone
10.  Straighten out HSBC banking and do kill someone
11.  Dirty Martini, please....maybe more than 1


Everything seems to be working out!  Here is what I am calling "The Beast"!  I can't put it on standing up, I need to put it on one shoulder and then lie down on the bed to get the other shoulder in.
It is relatively comfy on the back, but pretty darn heavy.... may end up throwing things away as we go along.

The front pack detaches and is the day pack.  What is interesting is how stiff it is, I didn't think I would have to "break in my pack".  

Time will tell as too how friendly I become with the beast!

Ah, the shots....

As per our usual laissez-faire attitudes, we are bumping up against a hard deadline....Tuesday!

A round of phone calls to various doctors and clinics to get booster shots for travel has proven to be a nail biter...

What I think we need is a hep A booster, typhoid and perhaps a few others!  Finding a clinic that fits into our packed before we leave schedule has proven to be stressful, to say the least!

More to come!

Bill found a clinic and we are getting shots on Monday morning....better late than never!

I did get a flu shot at CVS yesterday.... lucky me!

Practice makes perfect

After struggling to figure out why I couldn't upload any photos, I got a brainstorm and a hunch that since Blogger is a Google product, perhaps I had to sync all of my stuff into Google products.

Success, only took 2 hours!

Below us a shot if the air train tracks as Bill and I made our way to JFK to visit Edna!

Of course, the fun part is watching to conductor work his magic.

Yup, his badness, my husband, Bill Kahn.  We like to"drive" the air train from the first car!

So what I need to do is to upload my choice of photos to google photos and put them in an album so that I can have access to them in order to post the.  Pain in the butt, if you ask me, but a necessary added step or two!

Good night,

C

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