I ♥ WU

Wudaokou, affectionately known as "Wu," is the neighborhood just outside the gates of Tsinghua University. Whenever I get that little longing in my heart that makes me almost consider hopping back on a 737 straight to Beijing, it's because I'm missing Wudaokou.

It's the Chinese equivalent of a college town, with more bars, restaurants, and shops than we knew what to do with. Wudaokou is just a five minute bus ride from campus, so it was a much more feasible trip on weeknights when we didn't feel like trekking all the way to Salitun or Hou Hai for a taste of night life.

In the beginning, we checked out many of the shops and restaurants, and by the half-way point we liked to consider ourselves regulars at a handful of the local establishments. There was Lush, where you'd find the gang every Wednesday for the Pub Quiz (no matter how embarrassing our score was the week before). The casual atmosphere at Lush made me feel instantly at home. I liked the continuity; the crowd that turned out for the Pub Quiz was always full of familiar faces. Just the down the block was Pyro Pizza, where Lindsey and Kelsey proved their beer pong chops and kicked some frat boy ass. If we were in a social mood, but still had work to do, Bridge Cafe was the place to be. If we needed a sweets fix, Tous Les Jours, a korean bakery franchise had exquisite pastries at ridiculously low prices--not too mention the constant streaming of k-pop (korean pop) music videos.

Even walking around Wudaokou proved to be an adventure--a feast for the senses if you will. Every night, as soon as the sun begins to set, a sort of clandestine, nighttime street market appears, as if out of nowhere. The vendors set up their goods on any available pavement, which makes simply walking on the sidewalk quite a challenging task.

Everywhere you turn there are racks of clothing, bags and shoes blanketing the ground, and rickshaw carts blocking every corner. Amidst all the merchandise for sale are carts selling street food. Often, we had the misfortune of catching a whiff of what is known as "stinky tofu." Whenever we got off the bus and thought "Wow, what died?," we knew the street vendors we cooking the popular, albeit foul-smelling delicacy.

Restaurants and bars aside, I found no greater joy than in wandering about the streets of Wudaokou and happening upon a basket full of puppies for sale. Each time, my heart melted, and, suddenly, I transformed from 20-year-old college student to a five-year-old, begging mom to let me stop inside the pet store. Of course, I always stopped. I'm never one to pass up an opportunity to play with cute animals. It took everything I had in me not to walk away with a new puppy in my arms. I had to keep reminding myself that customs would probably not look kindly on a living thing in my carry-on luggage.

Wudaokou is truly a microcosm of life in Beijing. I found comfort in our weekly routine and the familiarity of my surroundings. We never even extended our boundaries more than a few blocks in any one direction, but for eight weeks, Wu really became my home away from home.

Fear Factor: Beijing Edition

If strawberry Cheetos and Kiwi Lay's aren't to your taste, you might consider a trip to Wangfujing.

Wangfujing is home to the famed "Snack Street," where natives are provided endless entertainment by tourists brave enough to stomach deep-fried skewers of starfish, beetles, and scorpions. In the mix with all the scary (and sometimes still squirming) snacks, are safer items like meat skewers, sugar-coated fruit, and deep-fried dough.

The streets are narrow and crowded with people meandering from stand to stand. Walking along the street, with each stand you pass you are greeted with a new and inviting smell.

The snack market certainly lived up to my expectations. Needless to say I did not sample any of the scorpions or beetles and instead opted for the deep-fried banana (very tasty). I draw the line at half-dead insects on a skewer.

if you're craving something a little exotic..

After frequent trips to several Chinese grocery stores and a Super Walmart in Beijing, we were excited to see many of the same familiar brands of snack foods: Lay's, Cheetos, Pringles, etc. Upon closer inspection, we realized that these snacks were not quite the same as in the U.S.

Here's just a few of the crazy flavors we sampled during our feast of snacks:

Kiwi Lay's Stax

Blueberry Lay's

Orange Chips Ahoy!

Lemon Tea Flavored Lay's

Strawberry Cheetos

The crowd favorite was hands-down the Lemon Tea Lay's. They were, as the packaging promised, "cool and refreshing," literally like you were crunching on iced tea. Though bizarre, most of the wacky flavors were surprisingly tasty. Who would have thought?

798 Art District

In Beijing, a rich and vibrant art scene has developed in a former communist military factory complex. The area was vacated right around the time when Beijing's contemporary artists were looking for a new home. And so began the artistic rebirth of this factory district.

'798' denotes the government identification number of one of the factories for which this area became known. Now, artists set up their galleries in renovated factory space.

The 798 Art District is one of those trips we'd been planning on doing since the first week in Beijing. We finally made the journey there on our last Sunday, emphasis on the word 'journey'.

As usual, we took the bus into Wudaokou and hopped on the subway. After the subway, we walked for what felt like miles to the bus stop, waited, and then rode the bus hoping to figure out where we were getting off. Eventually, we did, and, after still more wandering, we managed to find it! Success!

We walked in and out of the galleries, each of them a cool reprieve from the hot, sticky air outside. Most the art was avante-garde and very striking, but sadly most galleries didn't allow photos. The artist (pictured right) had a fondness for inflatable pool toys. The galleries were interspersed with block after block of gift shops and trendy bars and restaurants.

The 798 District was definitely the place to be seen for the Chinese well-to-do who could afford to shell out 20,000 ¥ on a floor-to-ceiling portrait of Mao Zedong. There were hordes of men and women proudly displaying their designer labels (which I'm going to go ahead and guess were not fake).

We had appreciated the art, we'd purchased our souvenirs, and now we were ready to eat. We made our choice of restaurant based solely on the fact that one named Helen's had a shady outdoor patio with an industrial-sized fan blowing a cool mist over diners and passers-by. Dinner was a giant hamburger slathered in mayonnaise and desert was a refreshing lemon crepe.

Our meal was quite long, partly because we were still recovering from our early morning in Tiananmen and partly because our waitress kept disappearing for 30 minutes at a time.

After the check finally arrived we began the long journey back to Tsinghua pleased with having experienced two very different aspects of Chinese culture in one day.

wake me up before you go-go to Tiananmen Square

Realizing we had just over a week to cram in everything we'd yet to do in Beijing, we decided to take advantage of our last Sunday and wake up in the wee hours of the morning and journey to Tiananmen Square to see the flag raising ceremony.

The night went a little something like this:
12:00 AM: bed
4:00 AM: first alarm
4:15 AM: snooze alarm
4:30 AM: miraculously hailing a taxi
5:00 AM: arrive at Tiananmen

After we arrived, we waited around the square for the ceremony to begin. The flag raising is much like the changing of the guards in London; Chinese military honor guards march to raise the national flag at sunrise every morning. The crowd was dense, allowing for minimal visibility. There were thousands of people, but we were among the only foreigners in attendance. The great sense of nationalism was almost tangible in the early-morning sun as the flag ascended the pole with the national anthem trumpeting in the background. The ceremony was short, and after it ended, we made no delay in heading home.

Opting for the inexpensive route home, we trekked to the subway and practically sleep-walked through our transfers and back on the bus to campus. Needless to say after only four hours of shuteye, we spent the morning catching up on sleep.

It was a truly authentic Chinese cultural experience, a must-do if you're ever in Beijing, but not one I'd recommend repeating.

the Summer Palace

The last excursion of the trip was the Summer Palace. The grounds were once a summer resort for the Empress Cixi, who commandeered 30 million taels (this unit is equal to about 40 g) of silver for its construction. This sum was intended to be used by the Chinese navy--many attribute their subsequent defeat to this misappropriation of funds.

Three-quarters of the palace grounds is comprised of man made Kunming Lake; the earth that was excavated for the lake was used to build Longevity Hill, which dominates the landscape of the Summer Palace.

Like many of the gardens and resorts in Beijing, the Summer Palace serves as a recreational park. When we approached a pavilion overlooking the lake, we noticed a large crowd had gathered. Inside the pavilion was a older couple doing a traditional Chinese song and dance. The music provided by accompanying musicians was upbeat and the dancing was charming. And the elderly gentleman (pictured left) had a mustache that was truly out-of-this-world.

We walked around the entire perimeter of the grounds, and opted to take a "pleasure boat" back across to where we would be picked up. The grounds were beautiful, but the day we visited it was humid and overcast, so it wasn't the most ideal day to visit such a scenic spot.

In summary: lots of walking around, crowded, hot, and humid. Just a typical day of summer sight-seeing in Beijing.

Jingju

In our second-to-last week we had an optional excursion to the Beijing Opera that Gu Laoshi subsidized for anyone that wanted to go. At a cost of 10 kuai, I thought to myself, "why not!?"

The performance was in the National Centre for the Performing Arts in the center of Beijing. The building (pictured left) is nicknamed "the egg" and is one of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen, especially on the inside. Unfortunately, I had to check my camera and couldn't take any pictures inside. The structure, which was designed by French architect, has a dome made of titanium and glass and is surrounded by an artificial lake.

Beijing Opera is a traditional Chinese art form that combines music, vocal performance, mime, dance, and acrobatics. It has a history that dates back to the late 18th century, and is widely viewed as one of China's cultural treasure--this is what they tell you in the textbooks. But we were advised by our teachers that Beijing Opera is something of an acquired taste. Oh, how right they were.

The show is done completely in Chinese and it is so archaic that they must provide Chinese subtitles to native speakers, so those of us who did not speak Chinese were left completely in the dark. Of course, the travel guide books don't really tell you that. They also don't tell you that Beijing Opera is really nothing more than dramatic costumes, high-pitched screeching, and loud, percussive clanging. It was unbearable. We stuck it out for the first act, took an extended intermission, and spent the second act ad-libbing our own English translations to the dialogue. What can I say? We tried.