the great collapse

what's this? more construction? why of course!
not content with having a construction site on every corner, the powers that be decided to demolish a perfectly good building so that they can presumably build another perfectly good building - there really should be limits to china's need for job creation.
it took two days for the jack-hammer-on-steroids to literally pick apart this seemingly innocent building. i was secretly hoping they would use explosives and make the building implode - just like on tv, but alas no, although matt did point out that these people can't be trusted with fire works, how could they be trusted with explosives? especially in such close proximity to our abode!
i believe that the building was a thorn in the city planning office's side - it had the audacity to be only three storeys high (unheard of in this wannabe manhatten) and even worse, the building had colour! yes colour! panels of red, orange and yellow lined the sides of the building - all together now: heretic!

saturday night

my saturday started out innocently enough - i met faith at her apartment and we went on a dumpling making course, which didn't really teach us anything, but they did give us a beer
from there, her partner john joined us and we went dvd shopping and then to a german bakery before having a rest at durty nellies, which turned into a few beers, which led to us going to sanlitun (beijing's bar area) where we went to jazz ya and drank a lot more... ouch

lunch

i think jessica simpson said it best, “Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it's tuna, but it says 'Chicken by the Sea.'”

explosions in the sky

walked past this road sign on my way home today - anybody have any ideas as to what it could possibly mean?

starry starry night

today i went to the beijing ancient observatory. the ancient instruments were beautiful (but then again i have a thing for dragons), but the museum was boring and horrible - colour photocopies of exhibits, and not much explanation was provided as to how these ancient tools worked

beijing's lungs

was a nice day so we ventured out of the house for a walk to the closest park, ritan park. it was nice to see the locals relaxing and actually using the park for what parks are there for - relaxation. there were people exercising, singing, flying kites and doing tai chi. the park used to play a large support role to the palace at the forbidden city and celebrates the sun goddess. there is also a large altar that you can walk around and the old areas for where the animals were sacrificed and where the emperor got dressed. will be really nice to go again in the sumertime. we stopped off for beer and springrolls at the stone boat cafe, which is a building that looks like a boat on the edge of the (frozen) water.

construction time again

a couple of photos taken from various points around our building, just to give you an idea of how much construction we're surrounded by

snow patrol

yesterday we went to nanshan, one of beijing's ski resorts, unfortunately most of the snow is fake, but i've never been as cold as i was, i think it was the wind chill factor that killed me
we went with a guy from matt's work - forest and his girlfriend. it was nice to get out of the city for a bit, we were only an hour out but it was nice to see a bit of landscape and not just building after building
forest and his girlfriend were going skiing but matt and i wanted to go snow boarding so we hired an instructor and attempted to gracefully carve our way down a small hill
it's so weird to not have individual control over your feet, and there was much falling about (you have no idea how sore matt and i are today)
matt took to it really quickly and actually did quite well, i on the other hand was totally useless, i fell and hurt my back so most of the day i spent sitting around - but it was all my own fault as every time i started gathering speed down the hill, i'd freak out and make myself fall, so eventually i just gave up and decided that snowboarding is not for me (the exact same thing happened when i tried to skateboard)there was also a snowboarding competition being held, so we got on the ski lift (scary) to go up to the competition area and i disembarked the chair lift face first - it was a spectacular fall
then the problem was that we were on top of a hill and couldn't get down so we had to snowboard down one of the intermediate slopes, i gave up after my first fall and just walked down
all in all it was a good day, but i'm in no hurry to hit the slopes again :)