me love you long time

the great collapse

2007-01-31T19:58:00.000+08:00

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

2007-01-28T19:47:00.000+08:00

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

2007-01-23T22:29:00.001+08:00

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

2007-01-18T22:22:00.000+08:00

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

starry starry night

2007-01-18T22:05:00.000+08:00

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

2007-01-14T18:53:00.000+08:00

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

2007-01-11T18:27:00.000+08:00

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

2007-01-07T15:27:00.000+08:00

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 :)

eye of the tiger

2007-01-02T18:18:00.000+08:00

the usual what to do for new years dilemma was avoided by deciding to get out of town. we took a tour to harbin, the northernmost town in china to siberia (commonly referred to as little moscow), and tempretures in harbin drop to -30 degrees.

we caught the train to harbin and spent two days doing touristy things - from watching elderly chinese swimmers swim in sub-zero water, to seeing the snow sculptue festival, to eating too much, to being traumatised at the safari siberain tiger park, to wandering around an ice city, to learning about japanese experiments on chinese people during their invasion of china, to underground markets, churches and shopping - all in all it was nice but exhausting - new years' eve turned into a couple of beers and lights out at 12:10!

vrzg

2006-12-30T12:10:00.000+08:00

woke up this morning to snow!

was more excited than a kid on christmas day, it fell for most of the morning and i had great fun walking through it - i especially love the sound it makes underfoot - and thanks to justin (who spent christmas in slovakia and probably acted just as silly as i did when he saw snow), i have a word for my delight: vrzg - the slovak name for the noise you make when your boots crunch through snow.

merry crimble

2006-12-25T21:58:00.000+08:00

a very quiet christmas for us this year...
voted "best place for pizza in beijing", we decided to try out a restaurant/bar called the tree
the beer was good, the pizza was definitely the best we've had in china so far, and the restaurant was pleasantly empty

red army blues

2006-12-24T18:40:00.000+08:00

we finally organised to do a touristy thing and we were both too hungover to enjoy it or be interested enough to take decent photos or pay attention to what we were seeing. we met everyone at tian'anmen square's east gate, and through the arches under the giant painting of chairman mao we went - onwards to the forbidden city.

the forbidden city is unbelievably huge and i suppose you could say it's impressive, but i felt very underwhelmed (a word i could use for the whole of beijing). i think that if the emperor has planted grass between the buildings it would have been much more imposing, but you walk down a long corridor that has large expanses of concrete on either side and the exact same buildings throughout and it gets a bit monotonous, so we decided to go back and see it another day - we make terribly interested tourists!

one night in nanjie

2006-12-24T17:35:00.000+08:00

elan is from south africa and is another member of the cult that is otherwise known as matt's company. he is now based in shanghai and came to beijing for the weekend, so last night we all went to nanjie - the cheapest place in beijing for drinks (their slogan is "shut up, just drink") - and it went a tad bit pear-shaped ;)

above is the shot taken just before the downing of baijiu took place, not sure what matt is explaining below but i'm sure it was along the lines of "it didn't taste this bad last time"

take one waitress who didn't speak english and matt who, well, is matt, and you get a rack of shots - something peach flavoured - none of us knew what they were

and as most of you saw at noo's wedding, matt is quite the dancer...

frank's place

2006-12-23T16:32:00.000+08:00

the search for elusive christmas pressies found us on the other side of town where we found frank's place - a bar that had received good write ups in all our beijing guides, so we stopped in for some nachos, guiness steak pie, football on the big screen and of course, ice cold beer
the bar was nice and it's a pity that is wasn't closer, it's also a pity that we didn't have tyrone's impecable self-portrait talents :p

ex-pat humour

2006-12-22T18:47:00.000+08:00

this car has been parked on the pavement outside our apartment block since we moved in, and finally someone decided to be clever by writing "i wish my wife was this dirty"

since this photo, someone has added the words, "she is"

learning facts is fun...

2006-12-20T14:33:00.000+08:00

did you know that you can't join the chinese army if you have a tattoo? this useless piece of trivia led to justin lamenting the fact that yet another career door had closed for him, which led aragorn to make this little gem...

and i would walk 5000 miles...

2006-12-14T18:43:00.000+08:00

on my way to buy the newspaper today (thursday's edition of the english paper has a very handy entertainment guide), i decided to walk to wangfujing lu (one of the main shopping streets)
it's usually four stops away on the subway so it turned into a much longer walk than anticipated, but i got to see this broken rainbow extending across the road - was it a symbol for broken dreams? or was the rainbow simply too scared to cross the road (knowing beijing drivers, i'm with it on this one)

why?

2006-12-12T21:16:00.000+08:00

because i was lying on the couch and the camera was there...

bah humbug

2006-12-10T15:01:00.000+08:00

we were rudely awoken this morning by a delivery man delivering flowers for us from matt's company (vaguely forgivable)
added to our incredibly bare tree, it's starting to look a little bit more christmassy in the flat
our christmas decorations are in the container so we had to make do with a few bits and pieces i found in hong kong

apply some pressure...

2006-12-07T23:21:00.000+08:00

tonight we went to see maximo park at the star lounge, a live music venue on the third floor of a nightclub called tango
they were supported by some weird chinese band who were trying a little bit too hard to sound like the yeah yeah yeahs, but their set did get better - a bit b-52's in parts with a lot of 50's-style surf riffs
the venue was nice although because the event was sponsored by bacardi, that was the only drink available at the bar. the crowd was smallish and about 80% were foreigners - dodgy looking men with beards
as for maximo park, i didn't know most of their songs but we figured it would be a good night out and who knows when an international band will come to these shores again? all in all i enjoyed the evening

i fear it may be about to get cold...

2006-12-05T16:32:00.000+08:00

last night we went out for dinner to a (supposedly) german restaurant called the block house, it's about two blocks away from us and on our walk i noticed that the fountain was starting to freeze over, so i returned this morning to take photos because this is a bit of a novelty for me... frozen water...

looking out a dirty old window...

2006-12-01T17:02:00.000+08:00

below is the view from our lounge window - a grey city under constant construction

above is also from our lounge window, but looking down. our building consists of about 15 aparment blocks arranged in a circle around a park/play area and the semi-circle building is the gym

home!

2006-12-01T16:40:00.000+08:00

feel free to send us post - i love getting post *hint*

Room 3105, Tower 1
Central Park
No.6 Chaowai Street
Chaoyang District
Beijing
100020
P.R.C

hong kong garden

2006-11-24T18:59:00.000+08:00

hong kong was amazing! it was exactly how i pictured asia to be - busy, always on the go, crowded, alive and humid

i found the shopping a bit expensive but it was great to walk around and see all the department stores. other than that, we went up the peak tram, visited the world's largest outdoor seated bronze buddha, saw a couple of temples (they all start looking the same after awhile) and did a cruise of the harbour at night

but most importantly, they had 7/11s with nightmare before christmas bubblegum machines, except the balls didn't contain gum, they contained toys!

xiamen or bust

2006-11-16T20:34:00.000+08:00

after spending about three days in beijing matt had to go to xiamen for a month's training, and xiamen really isn't exciting enough to keep one entertained for that long a period of time so i guess it was a good thing i flew there to join him :p

little china girl

2006-11-16T17:17:00.000+08:00

xiamen is a coastal town (technically it's an island) where chinese people go for holidays (think durban, but cleaner and nicer)

it's a small fishing town and has a large street that cuts through the town that is closed to traffic to cater for the masses of people shopping

we stayed here for a couple of days and in that time, visited the wanshi botanical gardens, xiamen university, huli shan paotai (a large canon that is pointed at taiwan that they're very proud of it), nanputuo si (a 1000-year-old buddhist temple) and we took the ferry across to gulangyu island