People

Here is an interesting thought; there is something very reassuring to knowing that whenever and wherever you go there are people - lots of people - working, playing, eating, cooking, buying, selling and doing everything else making us an active part of society. Beijing, unlike any other place I have been, is the definition of hyper-active. Last Saturday, after dinner around 11pm, there was an armada of people constructing a new skyscraper. Tonight, at 10pm on Friday, there is a crew of about 100 strong refurbishing the building across the street. You can see the welding almost anytime at night...sparks of a city on the move ;-)


CCTV building under construction - not far from our home

Forbidden city

The forbidden city, once restricted to Chinese royalty and dignitaries, this huge city within a city was absolutely beautiful in autumn. Noel and I explored the main buildings and sights for nearly 3 hours, but only saw about 50% of the entire complex.


The buildings are amazing. It was said that over 1 million people built the city from 1406 to 1420 using only simple tools. Still difficult to see how something so complex could be done back in those days.

Detail on the buildings is second to none. Even inside posts where only a select few could see, were decked out in intricate patterns. We were very fortunate that on the day of our visit, few people and, even better, less pollution was noticeable.



Though difficult to describe, you could really get a sense that this is one of those world cultural heritage sites. Something big and important, a long time ago, was at this massive palace and even now, you still get a feeling of imperial royalty.

Stinky Tofu and $0.40 Beer

So Noel has been very anxious to try some healthy Chinese food (it's more difficult to find that you think). We came across this 'healthy' Taiwanese restaurant called Alexander Creek Park not far from our place.

The restaurant is particularly known for it's stinky tofu (臭豆腐). Now, we knew it would smell, but let me tell you - it smelled not dissimilar to rotting garbage or cow shit. Still, we thought that like strong cheese, maybe it has a unique flavor. Unique it was, Noel couldn't finish one piece and a few hours later, I'm still tasting it.


Even after this adventure, the other dishes were absolutely delicious! If you ever come across it, please do try some spicy lotus root.

Oh, and this is an interesting find. Across from our place is a Russian shop that sells amongst other things lot's of cheap vodka and beer. Thought I found the jackpot when I spotted 3RMB (~$0.40USD) 600ML TsingTao beers. The first two were fine and the last two were flat. I noticed that the bottle tops had minor chips which might have let the combination escape. The following day I saw a ton of crates with empty TsingTao beer bottles next to the store. Recycled or re-bottled? I don't know but all I can tell you that I'm only going to buy bottles with the foil wraps from now on...besides, they're only an extra $0.30.

Qingdao - Tsingtao Beer Festival

Ni hao! I don't know why Pete didn't mention our little expedition over the Golden Week, but if you've been looking at our slide show you may be asking the following questions:

Why is there a beach in Beijing?

Why does it look like Oktoberfest?

Why do Pete and Noel have a giant beer tent full of Chinese friends?

Well the answers are as follows:

It's not Beijing, it's Qingdao (home of Tsingtao Chinese beer).

It's the Qingdao beer fest!

Everyone is very friendly in China, especially at beer festivals!!

Qingdao was about an hour's flight from Beijing. We were expecting a seaside city, perhaps the size of Ft. Lauderdale ... instead it turns out to be a 'small' city of 4 million! Also, since it was the holiday week, there had to be at least 6 million there. The buildings in this picture are not the main business district either - that was about twice the size of this area.

Since Qingdao is on the coast, they have a lot of seafood. We ordered up a selection, and got these guys. If anyone has ever seen prawns like this please let us know the proper way to peel them. We did manage to find a way to eat them (after photographing them thoroughly first) - they were delicious.

Oh, and another Qingdao specialty ... beer in bags (we guessed it was about 1.5 lt's worth for about $1).

The festival was HUGE! With many exotic beers from around the world, such as Pabst Blue Ribbon. Of course there was Tsingtao - as well as a good selection of German brands. We ended up in the Hoffbrau House (HB) tent, where we made many new friends!

Our place and Russia

So first things first, we have a place in Beijing - a serviced apartment near the 2nd ring road. For those unfamiliar, Beijing is laid out in concentric roads around the forbidden city. There are a total of 7 and the smaller the number, the close to the forbidden city.

Our place is small but still has a bedroom, a living room and a kitchen. The building caters to expats and locals alike which is a bit reassuring as our Mandarin skills are virtually non-existent.



We've very fortunate in that daily maid service is included with our place. Aside from washing some dishes, everything else is taken care of by our team of not one, but three Ayis. On the dishes part, we must have the smallest dishwasher in the world (yes, one bowl takes up 1/4 of the machine).

From Beijing

The service is wonderful but I'm afraid that we'll get too used to this type of service.

For unknown reasons, we've been put up in the Russian district of Beijing. Nearly every nearby building has Russian lettering and most of our neighbors are Russian. It's quite funny as outside our building, people are more likely to speak to us in Russian rather than English or Mandarin. A block or two away houses what must be the biggest fur coat mall in the world - definitely targeted to Russians. The bottom level of our building even houses a Russian bar, sure to serve up lots of Vodka.

Oh, and every night we get a call asking "you want message?" If I answer, a girl asks, and if Noel answers, a guy asks...there is always a slight delay for them to figure out who should talk. They promise to be very cheap, but I don't think we'll ever take up the offer.

China

So, if you're visiting this blog, you'll notice that we really slacked off the last few months in Australia. Work, fun and the ease of facebook.com got to us.

No more...because we're in Beijing China!

Again we visited the question, "why?" The simple answer is, China is next big thing and before it completely changes, we want to know it as a growing, changing nation. Our time here is limited - the commitment is only six months - but we hope in that time, we'll learn something about the way PRC works and plays. We picked Beijing because it's managed to retain much of the Chinese tradition, while also providing us enough work opportunity to make ourselves useful.

We arrived on September 24 and began work the following day. The first few days were full-on with establishing our residence and obtaining forwarded luggage. Fortunately, (and quite unexpectedly) we arrived just before the big national holiday and what's known as 'Golden Week'. Basically, we worked the weekend and got an entire week off in return. National day and Golden Week is akin to the US 4th of July and people from all the remote provinces make there way to the capital city, Beijing. To put things into perspective, some 380,000 foreigners came to Beijing to see the Olympics in August. During national week, an estimated 7 million came to Beijing.

Our first thoughts is that this place is huge and busy. Beijing is home to an estimated 20 million people (officially only 15 million reside) and it's by far the largest city I have ever lived in. People are out all day and night, traffic never really stops and most businesses are open late (10pm or midnight) while some never close. English is much more prevalent than I expected but that may be a result of the recent Olympics.

Check back soon for more updates.