Anyway, the rest of last week was all about friends and fun.
Thursday after work I met up with a fellow Tar Heel and friend, Katherine, who is also interning in Beijing. We met up in Wudoukou, which is near where she works, and she took me to The Bridge Café. The café was cool – three stories, including a coffee shop/hangout area, a fine dining floor, and a rooftop bar and eating area. The food was spectacular – I had fettuccini alfredo with chicken. It was the first time I’ve had pasta in China. We shared apple pie with ice cream for dessert – another first in China.
It was great to catch up with a friend from home, though it felt a little strange to be meeting up in the bustling and foreign city of Beijing. We shared our experiences of working for a Chinese company, living in strange places, and meeting locals and expats. We also shopped around a bit at the night market, where I bought some TV series of DVD and we saw a man giving real tattoos IN THE BACK OF A VAN - gross. We took the bus home, and it turns out she is staying RIGHT across from where I work – small world!
On Friday, Annie’s ASU/Holland Fellows friend, Jesse, came to visit. He is interning in a northern province of China and came for the weekend to do Great Wall Fresh with Annie. We went to the beer garden, where Pang Li joined us for skewers and pijiu. As always at the beer garden, rounds started stacking up, and just as we were about to leave, a few Chinese people (that seemed around our age) came up to us and gave us half of a watermelon! We graciously started eating it, which they took as a sign to bring more watermelon and beer to gambei (read: toast). Knowing they wouldn’t leave us alone until we did, we went over to their table, where it looked like they were celebrating something. Pang Li told us that they all worked together at a restaurant up the street, and it was one of their birthdays. That’s when the photo shoot started. Everyone wanted a picture with the Mei guos (read: Americans) on their camera phones. We chatted the best we could (which mainly stuck to “nice to meet you”s) and even renamed Strawberry and Javi to Stella and Seth, respectively.
As Annie and Jesse fought hangovers the next day hiking the Great Wall, I took it easy and went shopping. My first stop was Panjaiyuan Market, which was described to me as “the mother of all flea markets.” This was a good description. It was so huge, with so many different stalls full of sculptures, antiques, paintings, scrolls, books, and more that I got overwhelmed and left empty-handed.
I decided instead to try my luck at Glasses City, a huge mall solely full of eye glasses stores. It was a success – I bought a pair of prescription eye glasses for $20. They were ready in ten minutes! And now I want more.
Then it was work time. I love that “work time” for me meant going to a six-hour Chinese rock show. I was asked to report on this show late in the afternoon on Friday, so I didn’t have a chance to get a really good camera, but I made due with mine. I walked to the venue from Glasses City, which reminded me of a larger version of Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro or Tremont in Charlotte. It was such a cool experience - seeing Chinese punk kids moshing, running on stage, etc. The bands ranged from folk to screamo, from heavy metal to pop-rock. A couple of them even sang songs in English! However, I was the ONLY white person there, and seemed to be the only English-speaker, so conducting interviews was tricky. In the end, I decided to make my article into more of a slideshow of the event. Please check out the published slideshow here. Below are a few that didn't make the cut.
[Random, but the venue had a cool way to label the bathrooms: ]
During the last performance of the night, a Chinese girl, about my age, came up to me and asked me, in English, if I liked the music. It turned out that her name was Jesse (pattern?) and that she worked with one of the guitarists at a bank near Xizhimen, which is one bus stop away from my office. We exchanged e-mails since her English was rough, and decided to meet up at another point. She even invited me hiking with her!
I was exhausted from the show the following day. I took it easy again and shopped at the Hongqiao Pearl Market. China is known for pearls, silk, and of course, knockoffs, so I was obligated to bring some back home. I felt pressured, accomplished, and ripped off all in the course of this a couple of hours so I devoted the rest of the day to reading and relaxing.
As my Facebook status says right now, there is still so much to do and so little time!
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