Brrr...Big Brother Beijing
Post date: 15-Nov-2009 12:05:35
We arrived in Beijing on Oct 30, 2009 and were instantly banned from our blog, Google docs, Facebook, Twitter and many other useful websites that the Governement has decided to deny access to (which means you won't be reading this until we're in Japan). Although this is frusturating, it's not nearly as frusturating as the government letting its people freeze to death. The Government decides when people are allowed to have heat coming into their houses. Even though it snowed on Nov 01, 2009 and was -10 C, there was no heat available in any homes. If you have a space heater than you might be able to make the temperature in your house bearable, but if not then you freeze. Also, the people in the nice areas of the city get their heat turned on before people in outer or other areas of the city. We are staying with a really nice teacher from Australia, Catherine, who has lived in Beijing for 5 years. Thankfully she has space heaters. She also had a fabulous modern apartment that is decorated with nice antiques too.
Since we're in China where almost everything in the world is made, but where most items are exported and not sold in China, I wondered if I would find a rubber duck or not. At least 3/4's of my collection say "Made in China" on the bottom. On Saturday, Oct 31, 2009 we visited a mall called Solana's and a store called Potato & Co. and I found my Bud dudcks. For 71 Yuan (10 cdn) I bought Propaganda, Stadium, and Panda duck. The Propaganda duck is my favourite since it most accurately describes China.
On Nov 02, 2009, we went to the Temple of Heaven Park and despite the cold weather of zero we had a great blue sky for pictures. Many emperors visited the temple of Heaven where it was necessary to maintain a balance between heaven and earth. There is also a Harvest Temple where he prayed for a good harvest every year. We saw many people doing Tai Chi, singing, playing hacky sack with a hacky sack with feathers on the end, and playing card games in the park.
We had to warm up so we went to Leymo Coffee which has the same logo as Starbucks. I had an ice blended cocoa which was really good and Colin had a Cappuccino. They also had drinks such as Ice Blended matcha, peanut and mango.
We spent most of the afternoon a the Hongqiao Pearl Market which is a 5 storey indoor market that mostly has freshwater Pearls and other jewlery. We picked up the following goods:
The market was a bit chaotic of a shopping experience. It reminded me of the market in Manila where all you here is "Mum, you need" with people shoving items in front of your face. The same thing happened when I looked a purses and wallets and they said "Lady, look at this." I looked at the green wallet which I liked and then I didn't like the price I got so twice I walked away and the girl dragged me back by gripping on to my upper arm and pulling me back to her booth. Talk about aggressive shopping. If I hadn't have wanted the wallet after all I wouldn't have made it out of there. In these types of markets you can't pause in front of anything to look at it unless you really want to buy it and you're prepared to haggle.
A few more random pictures to highlight our first weekend in Beijing:
Crazy building in downtown Beijing
Currency
View of Temple of Heaven from the roof of the Pearl Market
Adorning the Temple of Heaven
HDR of one of the many temples
You can view our other 173 picture here: