Crazy Beijing Ways

I started Uni finally (despite still waiting for the money to still come back into my account). Even after such a long time of no study, I enjoyed the advanced class thoroughly. We were bantering in only Mandarin, and it made sense, I was over the moon. We then even had a lesson in a restaurant, practising our food talk. I ate a duck which I felt sad about after my school days of playing with them- I betrayed them haha. I finally ate my beloved dumplings, and then played Chinese paper, scissors, rock with my sweet Chinese teacher, who resembles a pixie and we call her 'the lollipop lady.' Fun times.



Then came the National Day and a 9 day holiday (despite having to attend class on the weekends to make up for it!) We ventured to Tian an' Men Square which was barricaded with Police, because in a socialist country they only let 30,000 people actually attend. Nice. So after a mammoth task of getting through some barriers, we spotted some fireworks through the gaps in the buildings. Hmmm, maybe watching it on TV would have been better but oh well.


For all the art lovers out there, I set out to Beijing's hip Art district- the 798 Art District. Okay, so it almost took an hour to find it in a taxi (don't worry they are cheap) but he was pissed off and my directions in Mandarin are slightly limited. But I made it, and my god it was worth it. Everything on earth was there, photography, paintings, sculptures, modern, abstract, historical. Bloody fantastic. It was humungous, an actual district so I couldn't finish it all. I met a Tibetan monk who was blessing the Buddhist Gallery, a pan piping music maestro and an ex-monk who makes a living taking pictures with foreigners for the last 40 years. I was the first Indian he had met, so there I was being photographed haha. Loved it, awesome.


In the night, I stupidly was roped into a double date with another Asian Uni girl and her boyfriend (not at all uncomfortable). We decided to try out the infamous Wangfujing district- live scorpions, hearts of some poor creature, lizards and cocoons were just some of the delights there. But watching an extremely pretty woman munching on a scorpion was more horrifying then I thought. I avoided the crazy food sense and ate some normal cuisine. We ended the night with the idiotic men taking photographs with random Chinese policemen. Not at all embarrassing.