After last week’s adventures at the Great Wall we decided to stay in the city and explore Beihai Park and the Summer Palace, two of Beijing’s most beautiful and scenic parks. There’s nothing better than taking a stroll around the beautiful temples or renting a boat at the Summer Palace’s lake after an intense week of commuting during rush hour and learning almost 40 new Chinese vocabulary words a day.
That night we were all exhausted from traveling, but still had to check out Ghost Street (also known as Guijie) for some traditional Saturday night Chinese experience. Some say that the street used to be haunted and no type of business succeeded there beside restaurants and bars. Nowadays, in order to please the hungry ghosts, the street is home to over a hundred restaurants that serve mostly fresh seafood and other Chinese delicacies. Just by skimming the menu one can find snails, eels, frogs, squid and all kinds of seafood I’ve never heard of / considered edible. We tried some of their specialties (hot and sour soup, fried rice and steamed buns), but the best part about having a Chinese feast there at 2am is that we were the only non-locals around. There were people walking around and serenading the tables, and one of them even sang the Chinese song I learned in class – “yueliang dai biao wo de xin.” The next day we went with all other 40 CRCC Asia interns to a Chinese acrobatics show that surpassed all of our expectations. One acrobat climbed a tower of 10 chairs, another balanced a tower of wine glasses while climbing a ladder, and two guys performed some pretty impressive (and scary) tricks on a huge human hamster wheel.
About a week ago I reconnected with a friend from high school who has lived in China for a while. It’s a completely different experience traveling with someone who can speak the language and can show you around the non-touristic areas and even take you to the coolest KTV (karaoke) bar in town. However, even after traveling all across the city, my favorite place remains 798, which is the art district (and most significant creative cluster in Beijing) all of the current interns live in. The district used to be full of factories that were converted into studios exhibition spaces following Deng Xiaoping’s reforms during the 80’s. Occasionally when I get home from class early we go check out some of the newer exhibitions (they constantly change so there’s always something to see). What I love most about 798 is going around the smaller, less known galleries. Some are quite odd, but others are phenomenal and provide a snapshot of the emerging artistic movement in the city.
We only have two more Mandarin classes followed by a long weekend in which most of us are going to Shanghai, and then we are all off to new adventures and internships. Most of the current interns will be leaving soon, and we are already dreading saying goodbye. It is crazy how close a group of people could get in such a short time. I’ll miss coming back to the apartments and cooking dinner with the other interns, exploring the city and its nightlife, and encouraging one another to embrace the challenges of living out of our comfort zone. We will be receiving a lot of new interns next week and it’ll be up to the few of us who are staying here to show them around Beijing’s hidden gems and make sure they pass the useful knowledge onward.
That’s all for this week. I’m currently packing for our weekend in Shanghai and planning my trip to Hong Kong the following week. Stay tuned for more stories, pictures and travel tips!
The post The Art District, Chinese acrobats and late-night feasts in Beijing appeared first on CRCC Asia.
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