Losing Face. How about Winning Face?
Today walking over two different street overpasses I noticed two different kneeling men with cast down eyes, with some sort of message scratched in chalk in front of them. They didn’t look like the usual sun-burnt, weathered beggars that frequent the pedestrian overpasses, and didn’t have any begging bowl. My leading hypothesis is that they were convicted of petty crime, and that public shaming was their punishment.
I went on the subway to the shopping district of Xidan to look for a cell phone, but all the models in the stores start at like $80-90 and way up. I think this is in part that cell phones are used for more than just calling around here and more like a PC, so the advanced feature phones are very popular. I’ve never been able to get text messaging to work on my previous phones, but I’m curious to figure out how it must work in Chinese.
I found a great bakery today, called “Bread Time,” and was delighted after eating a perfectly-flaked croissant to chow down on a piece of naan bread with chicken curry baked inside of it. I guess the delight is in finding what you weren’t expecting for a thousand miles. Near the subway station in Xidan is the largest bookstore I’ve ever been in, called the “Beijing Books Building,” where I bought English/Chinese versions of the Analects, the Tao Te Ching, and an Ancient Chinese Folk Tales compilation.
Yesterday at the Great Wall, I also got my little Red Book. It carries such jewels of wisdom as: “We must have faith in the masses and we must have faith in the Party.” Or for the economists out there: “The change-over from individual to socialist, collective ownership in agrircutlure [sic] and handicrafts and from capitalist to socialist ownership in private industry and commercc [sic] is bound to bring about a tremendous liberation of the productive forces.” Maybe I just got the wrong edition.
It takes about two hours to get to the Mutianyu Great Wall, which is about 70 kilometers north of Beijing. The restored portion of the Wall I was at was apparently sponsored by Kekoukele (Coca-Cola). I was disappointed that they didn’t have a McDonald’s at the top in one of the guard towers.
It is a killer stair climb to get up to the Wall which is on hills at this section, but they have cable cars for you puny wimps out there. Yeah, I was crawling the last ten meters. In a few places in the wall itself, the stairs are so steep, that when you are about to walk back down, it looks like there is a 15-foot sheer precipice. You have to lean against the wall, and be very, very careful going back down. There ain’t no guardrail, just an out of the way warning sign.
To get down from the Wall, I took what else but the $5 toboggan ride. It was too slow to be exciting, but because like everything else here it wasn’t designed for my proportions, so that’s probably a good thing. I seem to remember the alpine slide at Heritage Square having twice the surface area, but I could be wrong.
Well, another school week awaits, but on a parting note, here’s the smiting of a Great Wall urban legend.
I went on the subway to the shopping district of Xidan to look for a cell phone, but all the models in the stores start at like $80-90 and way up. I think this is in part that cell phones are used for more than just calling around here and more like a PC, so the advanced feature phones are very popular. I’ve never been able to get text messaging to work on my previous phones, but I’m curious to figure out how it must work in Chinese.
I found a great bakery today, called “Bread Time,” and was delighted after eating a perfectly-flaked croissant to chow down on a piece of naan bread with chicken curry baked inside of it. I guess the delight is in finding what you weren’t expecting for a thousand miles. Near the subway station in Xidan is the largest bookstore I’ve ever been in, called the “Beijing Books Building,” where I bought English/Chinese versions of the Analects, the Tao Te Ching, and an Ancient Chinese Folk Tales compilation.
Yesterday at the Great Wall, I also got my little Red Book. It carries such jewels of wisdom as: “We must have faith in the masses and we must have faith in the Party.” Or for the economists out there: “The change-over from individual to socialist, collective ownership in agrircutlure [sic] and handicrafts and from capitalist to socialist ownership in private industry and commercc [sic] is bound to bring about a tremendous liberation of the productive forces.” Maybe I just got the wrong edition.
It takes about two hours to get to the Mutianyu Great Wall, which is about 70 kilometers north of Beijing. The restored portion of the Wall I was at was apparently sponsored by Kekoukele (Coca-Cola). I was disappointed that they didn’t have a McDonald’s at the top in one of the guard towers.
It is a killer stair climb to get up to the Wall which is on hills at this section, but they have cable cars for you puny wimps out there. Yeah, I was crawling the last ten meters. In a few places in the wall itself, the stairs are so steep, that when you are about to walk back down, it looks like there is a 15-foot sheer precipice. You have to lean against the wall, and be very, very careful going back down. There ain’t no guardrail, just an out of the way warning sign.
To get down from the Wall, I took what else but the $5 toboggan ride. It was too slow to be exciting, but because like everything else here it wasn’t designed for my proportions, so that’s probably a good thing. I seem to remember the alpine slide at Heritage Square having twice the surface area, but I could be wrong.
Well, another school week awaits, but on a parting note, here’s the smiting of a Great Wall urban legend.
brainfart by Daniel at
6:44 AM
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