Exploring Beijing Solo Style

I've got nothing going on in Beijing now that the Flag Football World Championships have ended. A couple of friends will be coming to town in the next few days and then my parents fly in next week and the we head to Shanghai for a few days before flying back to LA. In the meantime, I have less than two weeks left here in one of the greatest cities in the world so I'm gonna try to make the most of it and do as much exploration as possible.

Yesterday, I went to the National Art Museum of China to check out the French exhibit that's on loan from the Louvre and the Centre Pompidou. The exhibit was neat though there were no Impressionist paintings. When I think French art, Impressionism pops into my head. Oh well. The museum itself is beautiful and would be a great place to check out art if it had any! The French exhibit was all that was on display. Other than that, it was blank gallery after blank gallery. I even walked into a few areas with art on the walls but was promptly kicked out. The overall experience was somewhat disappointing because I had hoped to see some Chinese art. Oh well.

After that, I walked through Tiananmen Square on my way to the Liulichang cultural street (have to check out anything with LIU in it) and saw this huge crowd gathered around the flag pole (across from the Forbidden City) holding the flag of China. As I too stood there out of curiosity, I asked around and found out that there's some big hoopla-ish ceremony for taking the flag down. While waiting about half an hour, I ended up chatting with 3 entymologists or etymologists (the onese that study insects) and two of them happened to be Cal alums (so you know you can trust them). Well the ceremony started with a procession of soldiers marching from the Forbidden City with bayonets at full display. Once the flag came down, the soldier in charge of folding basically abused and smacked the flag flat and then tied it to the small pole that it was attached to. I guess they don't quite fold it the same way the US soldiers do. The soldiers then escorted the flag back to the Forbidden City. I wonder if people line up early in the morning to see it raised.

I never made it to Liulichang. I walked down through Dazhalan, which is an alleyway (hutong) with a ton of shops and food stands. I just kept walking and walking and walking and it just never ended. When I finally got out of the hutong, I was basically lost but eventually found my way back to the subway.

Today, my mission was to explore the Wadaokou area in the Hainian District, which is where alot of the universities are located, including Beijing University, Tsinghua University, and Beijing Language and Culture University. This means there's alot of western students who hang out there and when I got off the subway, they were everywhere. I felt like I was back in the US for a sec. Anyways, I started walking around Tsinghua and I was amazed by the size of the grounds, the modern-ness of the buildings as well as the beauty of the campus. It is so much nicer than UIBE, where I spent 4 weeks. I guess that's what one of the top schools in the China looks like. It actually reminded me alot of Stanfurd. I was pretty tired afterwards so I never made it to Beijing University. It'll have to wait another day.

We'll see what I do tomorrow. I think I'm having dinner with Lei (Oregon MBA '05) afterI saw her at the football event on Saturday. She's a Beijing-er so hopefully she'll share some tips on places to see in my last few days.