圆明园,四通的附近

In case you hadn't heard, Beijing is hosting the 2008 Olympics. This small fact put a dent in my plans for today the size of the hole in yesterday's Melbourne-bound Quantas flight. Like the flight, it was an inconvenience but not an incredible disaster; unlike the flight, I think it turned out for the better overall. Beijing's university campuses have been transformed into housing for Olympic athletes and administrators, meaning that security measures are at 11 out of 10. Beijing Normal University, where PIB is held, is flooded with security personnel, and presumably other campuses are the same. You're only allowed to enter the campus if you have a student ID card; therefore, I was unable to tour Peking University, and shop at its amazing mini-mart (think Walmart compressed into a school cafeteria) as planned. However, this meant that I was a light traveler today, and was able to walk around without carrying a lot of stuff.

Peking University's restricted gate

During my $4, 20 minute taxi ride from 北师大 to 北大, I had a nice chat with the driver, whose Chinese accent was much clearer than the average person on the street. After being turned away from the Peking University gates, I walked about 10 minutes north to 圆明园, the Old Summer Palace which was burned down by the British in 1860. Today it's site a little off the radar of the typical tourist, but teeming with the well-to-do locals who can afford the $4 admission fee.

I spent about 2 1/2 hours walking around the restored landscapes and stone ruins of European-style buildings. (Many of the ruins have also been "restored" and look far more organized than they should.) All of the Chinese-style buildings were made of wood and were destroyed in the burning.

There's also a reconstructed maze, which is actually rather challenging and took me a good five minutes to solve.

This picture is a perfect example of why I love Chinese. The big character in the center means "tea," the backdrop to a giant-scale tea set. The effect would be simply ruined using a large sign with roman characters.

Most of the time the amusement of a Chinese sign is caused by its translation; in this case, it's definitely the accompanying diagram which takes the medal.

After Yuanmingyuan, I decided to walk the five miles back to Beishida and take in the city sights along the way.





Beijing's major streets are mostly 8-lane avenues with an extra lane on each side for bikes. Crossing them would be a nightmare (and is physically blocked) except for the abundance of 过街天桥, or footbridges, which simultaneously provide safe passage and also serve as makeshift resting spots and street markets starting around 5pm, after the heat of the day has mostly passed. They also make for great photographic perches.



During the course of my walk I took a detour from the major streets and cut through an extremely nice 四通 district residential neighborhood of gated-community apartments like those highlighted on page 2 of the recent NYTimes article about Beijing's preservationist movement. I think this 15-minute segment of my walk qualifies as the highlight of my non-tourist explorations.



In China, these awesome bike locks can be seen all over. They simply lock the bike to itself so it's inconvenient to steal, but the way it works is that turning the key activates a spring-loaded mechanism to retract or extend the bar at the bottom, so it takes about half a second to secure or unlock. Sure beats the combination chain locks that populate campus back at home!

Well that's the essence of my 312-picture day. Time to switch back to the native tongue!