Beijing Trip - Beijing Day 7 (part 2) & 8

This is my final morning in Beijing. I am heading off to the airport in about 40 minutes for my 11:30am flight to Chengdu. It's been a hectic week in Beijing, living with 9 strangers in a two bedroom apartment. Other than the crazy "showlet" (shower + toilet) bathroom (I never got the chance to buy a shower curtain) and my sore ankle, it's been great.

Last night was our farewell dinner with the DreamArts team. We went to a hot pot place where you share one pot in the middle of the table instead of having your own mini-pot. I usually get sick afterward so I didn't eat too much, especially from the spicy half of the pot. The highlight of the evening was the hand-tossed noodle demonstration where they toss and stretch some dough into noodles to be cooked in your hot pot. After the restaurant guy did it, Brian wanted to try and it was pretty hilarious. I'll upload the video later.


Plaza where the hot pot restaurant was located. It's not as Irvine-like as the other place we visited but it still had some western stores. The hot pot restaurant was huge; it took up the entire 4th floor on the right side.


We were originally going to eat here, at the Love Feast. Not sure what type of food they serve.


Noodle tossing


More noodle tossing. It turned out the guy wasn't even the regular noodle tosser. The restaurant was really busy and one of the managers had to substitute.


Brian and the temporary noodle tosser


Brian rolled his noodles into a ball and we tossed it in the pot. It never cooked all the way through. After reviewing the video, we also saw that it touched the ground. I hope we got rid of that piece before cooking... :(


Team picture with DreamArts staff after dinner

As we were walking home, two of the DreamArt staff (Sarah and Elim), came with us on Sarah's bike; Elim had her bike stolen this morning. Most of us haven't ridden a bike in China so a few people were taking turns playing with it. It had a "seat" above the rear wheel so people were riding double as well.


Steve and Brian on the bike


As with a lot of things in China, the bike wasn't very well constructed. As Brian was riding the bike, another team member tried jumping on the back seat and totally crushed the rear wheel. I've ridden a lot of bikes and the rear wheel should not have bent like that. As I type, Sarah's bike is here in the guesthouse apartment; we're going to take it to get fixed this morning, hopefully replacing the rear wheel with a stronger rim.


We saw this on the way back from dinner. Not even sure what happened since it looked like the Audi in the photo hit another car parked along the median. Maybe a bit of drinking was involved.

Instead of going to KTV as originally planned, we went back to the guesthouse after dinner to debrief and talk about our experience this week in Beijing. For everyone, it was a very positive experience. Since most of the team is young, i.e., under 30 years old, many were still not set on a career path and considering what this trip meant to their future plans.

Beijing Trip - Beijing Day 7

This morning, we went to the DreamArts Center again for morning worship and devotion, followed by a quick group art therapy session. Today is more of a free day so people were planning on shopping or playing basketball this afternoon. I finally managed to reach my friend at Google here in Beijing so I left early to have lunch with him. Google is pretty far from Wangjing; I had to take a taxi to a subway station (RMB13) then ride the subway to Tsinghua University. The trip took about 45 minutes, mainly because I went the wrong way on the yellow line from Wangjing West station (north).


The north loop of the yellow line is actually much longer than it appears on the stylized map. It took me about 40 minutes to go 8 stations.


The first building you see walking up to the Tsinghua Science Park is Microsoft. There are a lot of hi-tech companies with offices here.


Google lawn sign in front of their building


Visitor pass


Free lunch at the Google cafeteria. There were a lot of people and the food was so so.


Broadcom has a small office in the Tsinghua Science Park. I walked around until I found Innovation Plaza. On the 2nd floor was a sales office with several offices and cubicles. I got there around 1pm and no one was there except a few engineers in the lab.


Broadcom lab on the 2nd floor. There were also more cubicles and labs on the 1st and 4th floor.


Wow, someone actually enforcing parking rules in China. This was at the main entrance to the Tsinghua Science Park.


View from Wudaokao subway station towards Tsinghua University. On the way home, I took the subway the other direction which took much less time.

Tonight's agenda is a farewell dinner with the DreamArts staff since we're leaving this weekend and KTV after dinner. Maybe those two Chinese songs I learned will come in handy again.

Beijing Trip - Beijing Day 5 & 6

Day 5 was mostly spent at the DreamArts Center. We went there in the morning to hear James share about his vision for China and the DreamArt Center, went to lunch at a Szechuan restaurant, and spent the afternoon discussing possibilities of a new ministry.


Lunch aftermath


Hanging out at the DreamArts Center


DreamArts building (19th floor)

Since there was a prayer meeting at night, we went to dinner early at a Korean restaurant. It was a bit different from Korean BBQ in the US and it was pretty expensive. The food was okay but the service could have been better.

Today we went to the Great Wall. Out of the three tourist sites, we went to the furthest one, Simatai (司馬臺). It's also the least renovated so the condition is more authentic. It took about two hours to drive there from Beijing; the DreamArts people arranged a 19-passenger minibus for us and Elim came with us. Actually, none of the staff at the DreamArts Center has been to the Great Wall.


Our minibus. It cost us RMB850 to rent the minibus plus the driver for the day. It was pretty crappy. We were passed by all sorts of cars, trucks, and buses, and the seat covers were really dirty.


View from the bottom of the hill. There is a cable car that takes people up to the actual wall. However, it was under repairs today so we had to walk a long way uphill.


Looking back down the hill


Looking up towards to the first tower


Window view from the first tower


More...


Some more...


I stopped climbing at the 2nd tower. I think I could have climbed some more but my ankle was sore and going downhill would have been worse. A couple of people stayed with me while the rest of the team climbed up a few more towers.


2nd tower view. There were some local people that accompanied us up the wall. They were hanging around to try and sell us souvenirs. I ended up buying a color photo book of all the Great Wall sites for RMB100.


On the way down, there was a zip line that we can pay to go across the lake and down to the parking lot. It was only RMB40 and save me a lot of walking downhill.

During the trip to and back from the Great Wall, we witnessed a lot of crazy driving. The road was mostly single lane each way and people would try to pass all the time. Everyone was so impatient and no one followed the rules for the center divider. One time, there were four cars side-by-side coming at us directly. I don't know why the Chinese people are so impatient.

After the Great Wall, we drove back to the apartment to change and get our passports so we can go the the BICF young adult fellowship. We ended up there almost an hour late and the fellowship was not too exciting. After the fellowship, we went to dinner and dessert at Bellagio, a restaurant near the Beijing Worker's Stadium. It was a cafe like place with pan-Asian dishes and fairly expensive; the final bill was >RMB1000.



After dinner, we decided to check out a club next door for "cultural anthropology" purposes. For some reason, the guy at the door stopped me about my swollen ankle. I'm not sure what his problem was, maybe he had a bad day at work and decided to harass me at random. Oh well, didn't really feel like going into his club anyway. It just reinforces the feeling that rules and laws in China are enforced randomly.

Beijing Trip - Beijing Day 4

A couple of teammates scored some Paralympics tickets for today so we headed to the Olympic Park early this morning. Since there were 10 of us, we had to split up to take taxis to the National Stadium. Our taxi driver was lame; he want to avoid traffic so he drove on side roads to save time but since those roads were blocked near the stadium, he had to let us off far away and we walked 15 minutes to the security gate. There were a lot of people since the tickets were cheap at RMB50 each; I heard that BOCOG also gave away tickets to fill up the stadium.


Security check line. We were told to go into lines 6-8 since we did not have any bags. The line ended up moving slower since four rows of people funneled into two metal detectors and everyone had bags anyway.


I think this is the Olympic Village where the athletes stay. There are huge banners on each building so people won't get lost going home.


Security camera at each checkpoint... say "eggplant!"


National Stadium or Bird's Nest


Close up of the metal mesh construction

By the time we got inside, it was already 10:00am. The events began at 9:00am and people were probably lining up by 7:00am to get first level seats. Since the first two levels were filled, we had to walk up a ridiculously long set of stairs to get to the third level. Today was men's track and field events and finals.


First level of the stadium was completely full


Where are the elevators?! I did find some staff/stroller elevators to do down afterwards. I had to exaggerate my limp to convince them to let me ride. :)


I think the stadium's capacit is ~95,000 seats. It was amazingly free of trash, unlike many American stadiums I've been to. Some random guy even told us not to put our feet on the seat in front of us. I'll bet he spits on sidewalks and smokes in elevators.


For discus and javelin events, they had little remote-controlled cars to bring back the discus/javelin after the judges measured the throw.


The wave. I didn't know people still did the wave anymore. It wasn't spontaneous either; the announcer had to tell everyone when to do it and then he thanked everyone.


Long jumper with a prosthetic leg


800m wheelchair race final. Japan won gold and silver.


The US finally won a (bronze) medal. The medal ceremony was held between events, about 40 minutes after each final.


China won the 4x100m relay. I think this was for visually-impared athletes since some runners had a guide running alongside.


Olympic torch on top of the stadium

The morning events lasted until 12:30pm and we were quickly herded out of the stadium. There were several volunteers telling us to move out as I was taking the torch picture above. The second session at the stadium starts at 5:00pm. Without anything planned until dinner, we decided just to walk around the Olympic Green.


Olympic Stadium and BOB. By this time, the haze/fog/smog has moved in. The even/odd license plate traffic control is still in effect but it seems to have no effect on the air quality.


The Water Cube for swimming events. It doesn't look very impressive during the day; should be much better at night with colored lights shining through the translucent walls.


Self heating meal. For RMB20, you can get some rice and tofu/meat in a plastic container. There is a water activated pouch with some unknown chemicals that boils the water and steams your meal.


We met a lady who wanted us to take her picture and ended up talking to her for 1/2 an hour. She lives in Beijing and came to see the Paralympics herself. In the end, we took a lot of photos and she gave me her name, phone number, and address. I thought she was going to ask us to her house for dinner or something.


Bird's Nest with torch. We weren't that far away and already it's hard to see it through the haze.

The roads were closed to traffic and there were lots and lots of people walking around. Since we didn't all try the self-heating meal, we decided to head to McDonalds at the north end of the Olympic Green. Along the road, there were lots of company exhibits from large international corporations. For most, if you walk through their building/exhibit, you get a gift. We saw people rushing a guard trying to get free stuff. Coca-cola was handing out free bottles of soda and the line was over 40 minutes long. Sigh... Chinese people and free stuff.


Michael Phelps on the Omega (watches) building


Some cute girl/greeter outside the China Mobile building


This is the largest McDonalds I've ever seen. Even with lots of lines, it still took us 20 minutes to get to the counter and order some snacks (Nuggets and apple pies).


Huge Volkswagon exhibit

Since Pastor Brian arrived today, we walked out of the Olympic Green and took some taxis home. We went to our favorite restaurant again for dinner and since most of us didn't have a proper lunch, we ordered a lot more food. It still only came out to RMB367 for 11 people. On our way to the restaurant, we got caught in a sudden thunderstorm. I had to run/hobble half a block down the street to get out of the rain.