Adventure in Beihai Park continued

Here are more pics of our epic journey to Beihai Park back in September. That day we not only conquered land, but also water. We went around Behai Lake in our pedal-powered duck boat while ramming into innocent vessels.

What a sleek ship!

Working on our tan

Cost of duck boat rental was 60RMB / hr

Lunch at Google

I was invited to the Google Beijing office for lunch yesterday. There building is very near where I live in Wudaokou 五道口 in a commercial complex called Tsing Hua Science Park. Needless to say, it was very Google-like, with colorful hallways, lounges, some cubicles wildly decorated by stressed-out engineers. 

The highlight was definitely lunch. BJ Googlers eat in a canteen which felt like a high school cafeteria. There was a Chinese corner (many choices) and a Western corner (not so many choices). The quality of ingredients and way of cooking was quite high. I had duck & lotus root soup, abalone (???!!!) with tofu, fish, chicken, salad, yam, fruit....best lunch since coming to BJ!

Facilities and freebies in BJ office:

- all kinds of drinks

- all kinds of fruit

- snacks like chocolate, biscuits, cookies

- coffee, tea

- massage chair

- massage room with 3 tables & massuse

- gym with trainer

Adventure in Beihai Park

Here are some pics of our (me & Denis) trip to Beihai Park 北海公园 back in September. 

Here is Denis at the entrance of the park. That white tower on the hill is the White Dagoba. It was built by the 1st emperor of the Qing Dynasty in Tibetan style architecture to show his belief in Buddhism.

Here we are after climbing up the hill.

These guys like to stand on each corner of the pagoda roofs

Peace charms decorating the side of a incense cauldron 

This little man was having a blast firing cannons at invading tourists!

Denis and I finally found the fabled dew catcher statue. The story was that the emperor believed that drinking fresh dew every morning would allow him to live forever. That's Denis in the corner trying to catch dew droplets.

Hooters!

Ok here is the long awaited review of Hooters BJ. Made a trip here 2 weeks ago for my b-day dinner. Actually I have never been to a Hooters in the states, so this is a non-biased review.

Food - of course American style. Very nice chicken wings, a bit on the oily side but that's what you would expect right? I also had a philly cheese steak sandwich which was only ok as the bun was a bit soggy and the steak a bit tough.

Entertainment - every hour the girls get up in front of everyone and do a little dance. It's not very exciting as they don't seem to be having much fun. I imagine that in the States the girls would at least be pretending to go wild. Here's a pic:


Here's me with our waitress, hot stuff? Maybe next time....

Best of Beijing: A handicap-friendly city

In preparation for the Paralympics, Beijing has made a number of improvements in handicapped  accessibility, especially in the tourist areas. 

However, not all improvements were welcomed. Gardeners at Beihai Park 北海公园 realized the utter waste of space these public phones are, as everyone and their dog has a mobile phone. 

What better way to remedy this than to flowerize them!

Tsing Hua University 清华大学

Visited Tsing Hua University 清华大学 back in September. The school is located on the NW area of Beijing in the Haidian district 海淀区 (also where I live).

Tsing Hua is considered one of the best universities in China, together with Beijing University, they are like Oxford & Cambridge.

Here are some pics from when I rode my bike around the Northern side of campus. It's quite beautiful!


Cool sculpture


Cammo trees (yes they are real)! I wonder why they need to hide...


Old Tsing Hua building


There is even a park in the university!

What a nice park!


Students dancing in the park. This seems to be a popular pastime for Beijingers. In many of the parks, you will see a gathering of people practicing waltz, cha cha, swing and even the macarena! All while bad music blares from a 1990s stereo system. 

A soon-to-be Tsing Hua student's biology experiment

New favorite artist: 盧廣仲

Ok not a post about BJ but I love listening to 盧廣仲. I'm not very in-touch with pop music so bare with me if you already have been listening to him for the past year.

He is a Taiwanese singer / songwriter who picked up guitar cause he got into an auto accident in his 1st year of uni! I think his songs are really relaxing to listen too and with meaningful lyrics. Also his music videos are all over China MTV & Channel V.

Xiao Long Bao 小笼包

Here is an example of standard xiaolongbao 小笼包 you can find easily on the streets of Beijing. Clearly it is more bun-like and thick compared to the more refined and delicate Shanghainese species HKers are familiar with.

But, here in Beijing, all we have are these for around 4-6 RMB / basket. 2 baskets guarantee you will be full. Unless of course you have the ca$h and go upscale to Dingtaifung 鼎泰丰 。

Rockin' at Modern Sky Festival 2008

Over the Golden Week holiday I went to the Modern Sky Festival in Haidian Park 海淀公园 which is located in the NW next to the Summer Palace. It is a 3-day music festival 30Sep - 2Oct, I only attended the 2nd day. Admission was RMB 60.

This was the 2nd year for Modern Sky and because of the visa restrictions of foreigners, international acts were missing from the lineup this year. So it was all local bands and that was want I wanted to see!

Many rockers packing the main stage area. There were 2 smaller stages indoors - one for rock and one for techno. But the main stage was were the action was at. The highlight of the day was Hedgehog a sort of punk / techno group and AV Okubo which reminded me of Limp Bizkit.  

Red-capped head bangers. There was a small mosh pit going on in the middle and other than that the crowd was pretty tame.

Umbrella sculpture reminding the crowd to bring umbrellas in case it rains. Luckily it didn't when i was there.

Food: the usual Beijing snacks - skewers, kababs, sausages

Drinks: BEER

Da Dong Duck

So far i've been to 3 Peking Duck restaurants in Beijing and DaDong 北京大董烤鸭店 is the best one so far!

There are a few DaDongs in the city and the one we went to was at:

Nanxincang International Plaza

22A Dongsishitiao

Dongcheng District

东城区东四十条甲22号南新仓国际大厦

T:5169 0329

DaDong is an "A" class restaurant that is featured in all the guide books for good reason, the food is amazing! Each dish is presented as art with great attention to detail. As such this is quite an expensive restaurant for Beijing standards, we ended up paying RMB 180 per person (group of 9).

This tomb of a menu was almost bigger than our table! The photography of the food was amazing!

Tofu cakes

Pork ribs with honey glaze presented as a mountain where snow (powerdered sugar) has freshly fallen

Cherry tomato with walnut and mayo inside

Duck master

The duck here is famous for being low in fat but still tasting great!

Everyone gets their own personal duck condiments platter 

Definitely a great place to take visitors and business clients

Visit to 798

Alright, as promised, here are some pics of uber artsy & cool 798 area located in NW Beijing. I biked all there way there from Denis' place in Dongzhimen 東直門 which took about 30min. 

The 798 area was originally created jointly by the PLA and Soviets as a joint military factory  back in the 1950s. Read more here.  

Now the area is home to many local artists and the factory buildings have been gutted and transformed into an ginormous art galleries!

There are many impressive exhibits by famous modern Chinese artists including this one below

Stay tuned for my next visit to 798 and more pics of funky art... 

Park rules

Clear signage makes for a safe park - seen at the entrance of Beihai Park:

From left to right

1. No motorbikes

2. No molesting plants

3. No jumping hurdles

4. No taxies

5. No littering / ashing?

6. No trumpets

7. No speedskating

8. No playing soccer

9. No rifles???

10. No dogs

11. No firecrackers

12. No bonfires

See more interesting things in Beihai Park

The Egg

The National Centre for the Performing Arts 國家大劇院,  aptly nicknamed The Egg, floats gracefully in the middle of a manmade lake. It would be cool if there were jets in the water so the egg could look like it was being boiled.

Hopefully I can see a show there one of these days.

BEIJING TIP: China Mobile costs

The first day I got to Beijing, I got a Beijing number with China Mobile by buying a prepaid SIM card. These cards should usually cost about 50-80 RMB, unless you want to pick a number, then it will cost more.

This morning I got an SMS from China Mobile saying I only had 5 RMB left on my card. This was strange as I recharged my card just last week with 100 RMB. I called the customer service to find out a breakdown of the costs:

- Outgoing calls 0.6 RMB / min

- Incoming calls 0.4 RMB / min

- SMS 0.15 RMB / msg

She also gave me some tips to save money:

- Add 12593 before every local Beijing number and talk for just 0.2 RMB / min (this does not work for SMS so you gotta type it in everytime)

- Join the basic 10RMB / month plan and all incoming calls from China Mobile numbers are free (you can join this by texting "KTCTWY" to the number 10086, starting from the following month)

Vehicles: Motortrike complete with mod kit

Motor tricycles or motortrikes as i like to call them are great for zipping in and out of Beijing's narrow hutong streets. Hop in the back of one of these babies and for just a handful of RMB you will be at your destination before you can say "Let me off before I hurl Peking duck all over myself!" 

 

Motortrikes are modded in a variety of styles...many are completely enclosed in a sort of brownish green material that was probably cobbled together from failed prototype of the new Feitian 飛天 spacesuit....other models like this one are open so you can enjoy that fresh fume filled Beijing air.

Gotta love this guy's pimpin' paint job & exhaust mod!