国都公园 GuoDuGongYuan

Last Sunday, Ross, Ariel and I visited an abandoned theme park called 国都公园(National Capital Public Park). The park is right off 北苑 (BeiYuan), a subway stop in Northern Beijing. It seems that whoever built this park thought that the subway line would bring people, which was obviously very wrong. The park seems to have opened on February 25th, 2005 at the same time as an adjacent park, which has a very similar name, 国都宠物公园 (National Capital House Pet Public Park) that was very popular at one point because they had tunnels and tracks for the dogs to play on. Dogs and their owners still go there, but it's just a piece of land now. I'm not sure what happened in the last two years, but it doesn't seem like much. The kiddie park is very small and seems to have been very cute at one point, but at the present is something else entirely. As we were roaming around in awe and taking about a million pictures, a woman saw us and screamed, "买票!" (buy a ticket!) as she smirked and walked away. People are funny here.

We wandered away from that park and headed towards 国都宠物公园. It was full of extremely cute big dogs and their owners, which you don't see in the middle of the city that often. The middle of the city has cute dogs and owners, just not big dogs. As we wandered out of that park we noticed that the entrance had been turned into a bus stop for some unexplainable reason.

We left the park and did some more roaming in a field with beautiful tall trees and weeds which germinated by attaching themselves to our socks and having us pick them off. We reached a long fence that Ross was scared to touch in fear of being electrocuted. Along this fence we found two shepards herding their sheep and goats. Walking along a bit more, we realized we had been cornered by the toxic chemical canal of death. We had no choice but to cross the canal by walking, or crawling rather, on 3 pieces of trees that were lodged between the canal walls.

We finally made it back to civilization and had a victory 小吃 meal.
Sometimes Beijing feels like a strange place where the past and present are having a bloody fight.



Some pictures:


Monkey on a pole




people use this space to husk corn now


Ross and Ariel


park name-stamped tiles with a weed


The canal of toxicity
WHAT is your name WHAT is your favourite colour? WHAT is the average speed velocity of an unladen swallow?? African or European? AHHHHHHHH!!!!


The shepards' sheep and goats who secretly terrified me

a picture-less post

Seasons are strange.
It's fall but it's really cold.
This morning, I woke up in my bed and couldn't bring myself to take the covers off because of the unbearable cold awaiting outside my sobrecama cocoon. When i finally gathered the strength to take a bath, I had trouble turning off the hot water. Ahhhhhh!

miami! 我真想你啊！

the 498 四九八路！

When I moved into my new place about a month ago, I noticed there was a bus stop right in front of my building. The only bus that stops there is the 498. I soon learned that the bus' route isn't like a regular bus that has one route and goes back and forth. This bus' to and fro routes are a bit different, which means I can only take this bus on the way back from work.



In Beijing, there are many different kinds of buses. There are standard every-decent-public-city-in-the-world sort of buses, double deckers, long snake-like ones which are cool 'cause you can stand in the accordion-walled swirly-floored middle of the bus and whirl around and there are old blue buses. The blue buses are the crappy ones. My 498 is a crappy bus. The 490 is one of them but a bit bigger than my 498. The 498 is the tiniest blue bus I have ever seen (about twice the size of those RAM vans) and if it's anytime near 5pm on any day, the bus is PACKED with people. Literally, PACKED.

One day I got on the 498 and the driver was constantly checking that there was sufficient water in the radiator which was inside the bus, exposed! with the cap off!!
But everything was fine and that hasn't happened again. (okay, mami?)



I've fallen deeply in love with the Beijing bus system. It's incredibly efficient and cheeeap (.40RMB if you have a card; 1RMB if you don't). At every stop they have signs explaining which buses stop there and every stop which that particular bus makes. So once you become familiar with the stop names it becomes extremely comfortable.

If I've never gone to a certain area before and I'm a bit self conscience about taking the bus what I do is take the subway as far as it will get me and then take a cab. While you're in the cab, you pay attention to nearby bus stops. Then it's always easier taking the bus back home 'cause you're not in a hurry and you're familiar with the place you're going. The next time you go, you can confidently go there by bus. Of course, be sure you know the names of the bus stops nearest to your house.

Or there is an extremely helpful site called BJbus. You tell them where your starting and finishing points are and they tell you the various routes you can take, and show you a cool map, too. The thing is you need to know the names of the locations in Chinese. The website has an English version but I'm not sure how good it is.



Something I did when I first moved to my house was to hop on this blue bus I love so much just to see where it went. It's a good way to find awesome places that you've never noticed like DVD shops, 两块stores, markets and good restaurants.

Enjoy and don't pay any mind to the ticket ladies, they're almost always like that.

身体的部分 parts of the body

I'm not in class anymore, so I made a book to help me study on the subway or bus...


Me!




arms and legs



back, mouth, nose and eyes

what should be the next book?

Found while correcting homework

Travis' homework...

Let's Eat 奶粉

These two have a place called Let's Eat or the Chinese name, 奶粉, which means powdered milk. They sell coffee, cookies, cake, mousse some kind of fruit liquor that is still not ready to drink and yes, people, FLAN. The baker on the left hand side told me that she studied in 广州(Guangzhou). Ross and Ariel told me about this little place. They stumbled upon it one day and decided to take me there yesterday. They had the chocolate mousse and I had the flan which I must say, competes with my Tia Tita's flan.

Here's their website. It's in Chinese but you can look at the delicious pictures.

INTERNET IS BACK!!!

My connection is again working! This means i will be posting again. Oh, what a wonderful thing.
Here are some drawings...