So I've only been here for four or so days and there's already so much stuff to write about. I'm going to start with a brief post on the first half of last Saturday, wherein Ben, Martin, and I had the day free to wander around. The second half of the day consisted of a trip to 马连道茶叶街/ Maliandao Tea Street, which was a great time and worthy of a post by itself, so I'll post something on it later.
In real time, I have just moved into the apartment that I'll be staying in for the summer. It's owned by former Luce Scholar and current journalist Chris Beam, who's back in the States for the summer and has graciously allowed Ben and I to crash here for the next couple months. It's in a similar area to where we were staying before, but much nicer, with more interesting restaurants and bars in the neighborhood. But more on that later...
That morning, however, we decided to wander south from our hostel towards 天安门/Tiananmen Square to visit the Chinese National Museum. The National Museum is massive, an incredibly intimidating building right off of Tiananmen that's clearly designed to impress any and all visitors. Which it did quite well.
It is a little difficult to tell the scale from this photo, but trust me. It's huge. This is the view from inside of the courtyard of the museum, looking out at the square, which gives some sense of its scale.
There was a very long line to get into the museum, and it was fairly busy with tourists, though the vast majority of them were Chinese from all over China. We had a conversation in line with some men from 黑龙江/Heilongjiang, the Northeastern-most of China's provinces, on the border with Russia, while we waited in line. They talked very fast with a not-quite-standard Mandarin accent that made them difficult to understand, but after we mentioned that museum was huge, they commented that it was a very new building, and that many of the older smaller ones in the area had been destroyed by artillery and rifles and the like. These were accompanied by some very spirited reenactments of what artillery cannons and old-fashioned rifles sounded like and looked like when in use, so I'm very clear that artillery and rifles were mentioned. I'm less clear as to what buildings were destroyed, by whom, at what point, and why.
Walking around the museum, we were struck by, again, how huge everything was. However, it seemed to mainly for show, as they did not seem to making good use of the museum space: there were a lot of corridors and sitting areas and relatively few galleries. We only saw a tiny portion of the museum before getting overwhelmed and deciding that was enough art for the day. It was also rather tiring due to the fact that all of the text was in Chinese, which meant a lot of reaching for the phone for translations. Among the more interesting things in the museum was the following collection of statues right behind the entrance.
As best I can tell, this is a collection of important holy figures. I believe that they are, from left to right, Moses, 孔子/Confucius, 老子/Lao Tzu，Mohammed (because you can't make representations of Mohammed?), Jesus, 佛爷/Buddha, and Marx. It's kind of a funny collection of figures to have standing all together inside a museum that seems to be about showing how impressive the Chinese Communist Party is...
After wandering around the museum for awhile, we left and decided to head out and buy some tea at Maliandao Street. On the way, we walked across Tiananmen Square. This is the second time I've been through Tiananmen and again I was struck by how strange a place it was. We had to go through a security checkpoint to get into the square, but they didn't really seem to care about it all that much, as we kind of just walked on through. The square itself is huge, filled with flags, pillars, a video screen running various nationalistic short videos (filled with soaring vistas of China, soldiers saluting the flag, and the like) on loop, and people. Lots and lots of people.
The square, however, is so large, that there's still plenty of room to mill around. It was also my first time being asked by people, a young couple and a gaggle of high school girls, to take their pictures with me, though I'm sure it won't be the last. The tall blond guy looking the other way in this photo is Martin, the Luce Scholar who will be remaining in Beijing. At some point I'll post photos that actually feature all of us, but today is not that day.
The square is not particularly interesting, though you do get a lovely view of the edge of the Forbidden City, complete with a huge picture of Mao and some nice Communist slogans.
That's "Long live the People's Republic of China" on the left and "Long live the united people of the world" on the right, though I'm less sure of that second translation.
That's all I have to say about that morning, though I will leave you with a picture of a wonderful and ever-present Beijing summer phenomenon: the Beijing belly.
Men everywhere in Beijing walk around with their shirt rolled up to leave their stomach exposed, along a cooling airflow to bring a respite to the terrible summer heat. However, to pull this off successfully, you must be a man, middle-aged or older, and have a sizable beer gut. Otherwise, no dice.
再见，
Billy
In real time, I have just moved into the apartment that I'll be staying in for the summer. It's owned by former Luce Scholar and current journalist Chris Beam, who's back in the States for the summer and has graciously allowed Ben and I to crash here for the next couple months. It's in a similar area to where we were staying before, but much nicer, with more interesting restaurants and bars in the neighborhood. But more on that later...
That morning, however, we decided to wander south from our hostel towards 天安门/Tiananmen Square to visit the Chinese National Museum. The National Museum is massive, an incredibly intimidating building right off of Tiananmen that's clearly designed to impress any and all visitors. Which it did quite well.
Walking around the museum, we were struck by, again, how huge everything was. However, it seemed to mainly for show, as they did not seem to making good use of the museum space: there were a lot of corridors and sitting areas and relatively few galleries. We only saw a tiny portion of the museum before getting overwhelmed and deciding that was enough art for the day. It was also rather tiring due to the fact that all of the text was in Chinese, which meant a lot of reaching for the phone for translations. Among the more interesting things in the museum was the following collection of statues right behind the entrance.
After wandering around the museum for awhile, we left and decided to head out and buy some tea at Maliandao Street. On the way, we walked across Tiananmen Square. This is the second time I've been through Tiananmen and again I was struck by how strange a place it was. We had to go through a security checkpoint to get into the square, but they didn't really seem to care about it all that much, as we kind of just walked on through. The square itself is huge, filled with flags, pillars, a video screen running various nationalistic short videos (filled with soaring vistas of China, soldiers saluting the flag, and the like) on loop, and people. Lots and lots of people.
The square is not particularly interesting, though you do get a lovely view of the edge of the Forbidden City, complete with a huge picture of Mao and some nice Communist slogans.
That's all I have to say about that morning, though I will leave you with a picture of a wonderful and ever-present Beijing summer phenomenon: the Beijing belly.
再见，
Billy
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