Week Four: Even My Blisters Have Blisters
Reading, Reading, Reading
It's now been a week or so since we started the ECPAT project, and I'm still endlessly scrolling through PDFs of international and regional child protection commitments trying desperately to find some concrete data on China. Because the country keeps so much of their data under lock and key - to the point where even average citizens can't access it - most of the information we have on China's issues and stances regarding child protection is extrapolated from data that comes from other nearby countries, like Myanmar and Cambodia. While I've been certainly successful in finding the good things that China has done, it's extremely difficult to find information on anything that may be considered negative, regardless of what it is.
On the bright side - there's other interns here now! Lawrence, a rising 2L from Yale, arrived earlier this week. I get the chance to work with him on the ECPAT report, which will be nice since he speaks both English and Chinese, so we may have better luck finding information that way. We've also got an intern-alum coming back from presenting in London on traditional Chinese medicine, and he's agreed to meet up with us and talk about pretty much anything we want to know about China. I'm really not sure what I'll ask about yet - there's a lot that I don't know, and pinpointing just one or two areas is going to be pretty difficult.
I'm still - unfortunately - having issues with my internet, thanks to various political activity that's been going on here in China. June 4th, for example, was the 30th "anniversary" of the Tiananmen Square incident. Furthermore, tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong protested the fact that China stands by what occurred 30 years ago. While I can still connect to my VPN, I've found that the loading time for any foreign website has been severely throttled, to the point where a lot of them don't even load. Things have been steadily improving, however, and I'm hoping that by the end of next week things will be running smoothly again.
It was a short work week this week - we got Friday off for the Dragon Boat festival. As you may remember from my last blog post, I was originally planning on going to Xi'an. That didn't happen, though, since I wasn't too keen on spending 30 hours on a train back to Beijing, since there were no high speed tickets left. Instead, I decided I would just explore Beijing and check out more of the places I'd yet to see.
Day One: The Wrong Temple & The Place
Friday I woke up extra late - I'd stayed up the night before watching Netflix and didn't manage to get myself out of bed until almost noon. Unfortunately, that would continue to be a trend for the rest of the weekend. My host family wasn't here as they'd gone to Chengdu for the long weekend, so I had the place to myself and was on my own. I didn't want to eat them out of house and home, so the previous day I'd gone to the supermarket and gotten some food to tide me over for the next few days. For breakfast, I ate a bunch of cherries and a peach. The fruit here is much riper than it would be this time of year in my hometown, and the selection is much larger too. It's nice being able to run down the street and get pretty much any fruit I can think of. Everything is much cheaper too. Cherries, which - for the amount I got - would have cost 10 or 15 bucks in the U.S. only cost me 19 yuan, or $2.75.
After eating, I headed out without a clear idea of where I was going, as I was on the Metro, I scrolled through my phone to find somewhere to go, when I discovered {BRACKET}, a local coffee shop known for its rooftop garden and swanky interior. It was near the Worker's Stadium, Beijing's sports complex, which is close to the rest of the metropolitan center and many of the cultural landmarks, so I figured I would stop there.
The coffee was delicious, a welcome surprise as I'd gotten an iced mocha. Normally, I hate iced coffee, but it was too hot to justify getting anything warm. Lately, it's been in the 90s or hotter, and it's getting to be a little unbearable. Being from Minnesota, I'm not used to this constant humidity coupled with high temperatures. My favorite days are the days where it rains here, because at least it cools down a little bit then. Unfortunately, it hasn't rained all week, so I'm stuck with leaving my fan on high when I'm at home, and sweating to death when I'm not.
After spending some time lingering around {Bracket} trying to figure out where I would go next, I decided I would try and navigate to the Lama Temple (雍和宫). Unfortunately, that didn't quite work out since I made the intelligent decision to save my phone battery and just glance at the directions once before trekking over there. I did make it to a temple though, just not the right one. Instead of the Lama temple, I ended up at the Confucius Temple. Though it wasn't the largest place I've been to in Beijing, the temple and university was still quite large. One of the main walkways was lined by huge stone tablets inscribed with the names of everyone who had passed the Imperial Examinations, though time and the elements had wiped many of the stone slabs clean. Unsurprisingly, the temple was adorned with information about Confucius, as well as multiple intricate statutes of him presiding over the many courtyards on the grounds. In all of them, he looks like a kind grandfather. I'm not sure how they managed to make a slab of stone look peaceful, but they've accomplished it.
While I was there, I saw a few cats as well! They both seemed mostly feral, and ran away whenever anyone got close, but I enjoyed watching them cuddle with each other from afar.
After leaving the Temple, I had to figure out where I was going next. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm bad at planning things out. I think being alone makes that a little bit harder, since I'm pretty indecisive in general, so I have no one to force me to make a choice until I find myself wandering around. Beijing is a very safe city, so I don't feel worried about where I choose to go, but not having a plan definitely makes it harder for me to pick places to go, since I never really know where I'll want to end up.
I ended up wandering down the road a little, and found another hutong. While it was less tourist-y than the last hutong I was in, it still had plenty of things to see and do, as well as things to eat and drink. I got ice cream, and a couple things to drink because it was hot and I was dying of thirst. I'm not really sure what flavor the ice cream was, but it was good!
Conveniently for me, the hutong ended just across the street from a Metro station, so I headed back to the Metro to sit for a while and figure out where I wanted to go next. I was getting hungry, and figured I should probably eat dinner, so after a while I settled on a place called "The Place". It's a large, partially-outdoor mall that's known for its massive LED screen ceiling. For dinner, I got ramen (ironic since I'm in China, I know) and it was alright. I would have been much better off getting something from one of the Chinese restaurants in the mall area.
As usual, I got another fruit tea, but this one was different than the others I've had before! It was more like a slushie, and it was a mix of some sort of melon, and lychee. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay at The Place very long. The Metro stops running at 11:00, and it was already nearing 9:30. With an hour-long trip ahead of me to get home, I wanted to leave with plenty of time to make all of my train transfers.
By the time I got home, my feet were sore and I was ready for bed, so I read for a while, and tried to think of a plan for Saturday.
Day Two: The Right Temple & A Big Mac
After sleeping in late again, I steamed some bread and had that and fruit for breakfast. Since I hadn't come up with a plan Friday night, I started looking for ideas of things to do. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but traveling alone makes the whole tourist thing difficult. Most of the tourist-y restaurants are meant for two or more people, so you're stuck eating fast food. If you're lucky, the area you're in has street food, but I haven't really found many places like that yet. Today, though, I went to the Temple of Heaven. Compared to the Confucius Temple, this place was positively massive. There were tons of halls, temples, and gardens on the grounds. Apparently, it was a common place for the Emperor to perform ceremonial rights and sacrifices to ensure that China had good harvests and good luck. I made it through most of the buildings, but it was even hotter than Friday, and after a while I just wanted to get out of the sun and into somewhere cool.
I found another hutong and wandered around it for a little while, but there wasn't much to see - maybe because it was the dragon boat festival and everyone was away seeing their families in other cities, or just taking a vacation. Either way, with the heat and my sore feet, I didn't have much of a desire to stay outside any longer, so I just went home.
That night, I was too lazy to cook, and even my blisters had blisters at that point, so I decided to order takeout. In Beijing, there's no such thing as Uber Eats or Doordash, though there are similar companies. However, they generally pick up orders from stores or local restaurants, not chains. The chain fast food restaurants have their own delivery systems - people driving around on scooters and mopeds with giant cold boxes on the back, delivering people's meals. So, as any good American would do, I ordered a bad burger. I was a little concerned that (somehow) McDonald's would be higher quality here, but it was refreshing to see that they maintained some consistency in their mediocrity even all the way across the world. Like I said in last week's post, I miss bread.
There's honestly a lot of foods that are uncommon if you're not an expat looking for that specific food in some high-end Western-style restaurant. For example, I found out that Ariel didn't know what turkey was, or avocados (and thus she didn't know what guacamole was either), tortilla chips, or salsa. Having to explain turkey is surprisingly difficult, and it was interesting to see what differences there were between what I took as commonplace foods, and what they did. When I told Annie and Ariel that cucumbers could be turned into pickles, their main responses were "what" and "why". Earlier this week, Annie gave us tomatoes, but instead of putting salt and pepper on them, they topped them with sugar. It was still good, but definitely strange. I even asked Annie if she had some pepper last week, and she asked if I meant hot peppers or bell peppers. Apparently, pepper isn't a common seasoning here. I really enjoy cooking, so it's been difficult to just sit back and not make anything this month - not to mention the way things are made here and the things they're seasoned with (or not seasoned with) are drastically different from home. It's to be expected, but I'm still sometimes shocked at the differences in American (and American-Chinese) food and Chinese food.
Day Three: This Time I Only Waited 30 Minutes for My Tea
Sunday, the last day of my long weekend. I was sad it was coming to an end, but at the same time I was getting a little restless without having any sort of dedicated schedule. Ariel was still in Chengdu, so I didn't need to be back at any particular time to tutor her, and I was still on my own for food. In the morning, I finished off the fruit I had bought for breakfast, and then headed out to explore a little bit. I really had no idea where I was going to go today, as I didn't feel like walking the grounds of another temple, and I knew the Forbidden City and other places in that area would be crammed with tourists, so I figured I would just wander.
I've been looking for a place to get a chop stamp with my name carved on it, so I figured I would check out what's known as "Culture Street" - apparently an area known for its chop stamps and calligraphy, as well as other paintings. Unfortunately when I arrived, it seemed pretty dead. There were very few people there, and many of the stores were shut - whether because they had closed permanently, or just for the weekend, I was unsure. A little disappointed about my inability to get a chop, I figured I would ask Annie where I could get one, and just find something else to do for the day. In search of something to drink, I hopped back on the subway and, while searching for a cafe I found on some blog, promptly got turned around. I think it was meant to be, though, because where else did I stumble upon but another HeyTea! So far, it's been my favorite milk tea shop in Beijing (though I admittedly have yet to get any actual milk tea). There's only a few locations in Beijing, so I was extremely pleased to find this one. Even better, this HeyTea didn't have a long line out the door. I still got two teas though. This time, I got my old faithful, the grapefruit green tea, and the strawberry cheezo tea. Honestly, the strawberry cheezo might just have to be my new go-to because wow it was good.
I figured if getting lost that time had been that lucky, it was fine to just wander around a little more. I found a super nice-looking mall called Glory Mall and wandered around it (ignoring the stares, as usual), when I found a little food kiosk that seemed pretty popular. I'm still not exactly sure what I got, but it was good! I'm pretty sure it was orange chicken, but I really don't know and I didn't ask. All that matters is that it filled me up, and I didn't get sick from it. I wandered around the mall area for a little while, until my feet started complaining about all the walking I'd been doing that weekend, and I gave up and decided to go home. On my way back I stopped at this little restaurant Annie often brings dinner home from. I know what she orders, but I really don't know what's in it. I know there's meat (pork, I think), soybean husks (sounds gross, I know, but it's really not), rice, and cumin. The first time I ate it a week or so ago I thought I was going to die I was so happy. If I had to pick one, cumin is almost certainly my favorite seasoning, and I've been missing it. This dish is definitely my favorite out of all the foods I've had since coming to China, and I kind of wish I could bring the restaurant home with me when I leave.
After getting home, I sorted through the photos I'd taken for this blog post, and worked on an arrangement of a song for the a cappella group back at school. It's a good way to keep myself busy when I'm home at night, and I'm hoping to have it done soon because I'm getting a little tired of listening to the same song over and over.
Next Wednesday is my birthday, and since I've got friends to hang out with now, hopefully my entry will be a little bit more interested. A family friend will also be in Beijing next weekend, so I'm going to show her around one of those days. I'm excited to see what the remaining 6 weeks have in store for me!