Sunday

As promised, in order to be able to attach more photos I seperated Saturday and Sunday.

This weekend was not really a big sightseeing weekend but thus I got some time to relax.

However, I did a little bit of sightseeing today.

I visited a hutong near the White Pagode "Baita Si" and the White Pagode temple itself. The hutong was quite "real". No tourists in it apart from myself. Thus I could see some real hutong life. Children playing on the street, bicycles trying to sell charcoal (Holzkohle) for the heating, small shops, people cooking.

Also the Baita Si was not crowded. In fact, apart from me I think there were maybe five more visitors (all Asian). The White Pagode is the biggest bottle shaped pagode of Beijing. It was built under the Mongolian King Kublai Khan by a Nepalese architect. The pagode itself is 51 meter high. Inside the temples around the pagode there's some nice religious sculptures.

I attach some photos so that you can have an impression about Baita Si.

I wish you all a nice start into the new week!

Saturday

Today I do two postings. One for Saturday and one for Sunday. This enables me to easily attach more photos.

Friday night I went out for dinner with Barbara (the Malaysian). We went to a good Vietnamese restaurant where they had similar dishes to our favorite Vietnamise restaurant in Berlin Spandau (do you remember? - they even had the same spring rolls and a similar vegetable curry!). They just offered some weird additional foodstuff. For dessert I had sweet rice with durian. You might ask yourself now: what the hell is durian?

I never had this fruit before and it's actually quite weird. It's called the "king of fruits" by South-East Asian people. The flesh which you can eat has yellow colour and the speciality is that it smells! To me the dish smelled of sports shoes with a lot of sweat in them. This doesn't really sound delicious. But the taste was OK. I'm not a new fan of durian, but I can manage to eat it and I don't have problems about still having the durian taste in my mouth three days afterwards like others. If your interested in durian fruit, pls. also check: http://bethge.freepage.de/duriandt.htm (the webpage is in German, but it has photos of the fruit and provides some nice explanation).

On Saturday, a Chinese colleague of mine (Sun-ya) had invited me to visit her home and get to know her family. This was a very nice experience. Both her husband and her daughter are very nice. Her daughter learns English at school but she was quite shy and didn't dare to talk a lot with me at first. For lunch they invited me to some Vegetarian buddhist restaurant near the Lama Temple "Yong he gong". They had delicious meat and fish imitations as well as "haochi" vegetables. I can't really tell the name of the vegetables I ate because I never or hardly ever saw them before in my life, but they were delicious. Vegetarian buddhist meant they didn't have any dishes with fish, meat, pork, garlic and onions. Neither do they serve alcoholic drinks.

Saturday night Rebecca (a Swedish-American woman from the language school) and me wanted to go to a cinema to watch a Chinese movie with English subtitles. It's called "Lost in Beijing". But when we got to the cinema there was a big sign saying that the cinema apologizes but they need to close until January because the landlord just decided to do some renovation work. What a pity! So instead we had a coffee together and chatted about our Asian experience which was interesting because Rebecca studied Japanese (language and history) before and can compare her Japanese experiences with our Chinese experiences.

Today's fotos show:

1.a typical Chinese foodstall on the street

2. a cushion I got as a present from a colleague (I'm not gonna comment further)

Xing qi si = Donnerstag = Thursday

At the language school, the lesson is mostly Chinese and only a little bit English.

Therefore I'm making big steps ahead in the Chinese language.

In the lunch break I stroll around in the park and I also went to Tianmen Sqare (literally translated: heaven's gate square). This square is really big - I think it is comparable to the Red Square in Moskow, but there is much more police on the place in Beijing. What still sometimes bothers me is that a lot of security staff and police wear big guns. I'm just not that much used to it and I always feel angst (yes, this word does exist in English).

Also at work security staff bring the cash for our cashier (yes, there is a safe for cash in our office!) so sometimes they just wait outside our office and when I go to the toilet I need pass them. They just look so stern.

Apart from that, I'm getting used to using the subway. It's just so quick although it's quite crowded. And it is "hen pianyi" (very cheap) - a ticket usually costs 2 yuan, that's 0,20 EUR.

I just upload some fotos from the park and then I need to "xuexi" - learn!

Learning Chinese

Chinese course
This week I improve my Chinese. My boss had given her OK that I'd attend an intensive Chinese course this week and only after the course come to the office. So I booked a course at "Sprachcaffe Beijing". The school is nicely situated just near Tianmen Place and Forbidden City. I go there by taxi and subway so I cannot exactly guess how much time it's going to take to get there in the morning because I have to go there at rush hour. Therefore today I got there much too early.

Diabolo exercise
I seized the opportunity to stroll around in the park where the school is located and once again I saw Chinese people doing sports together. I watched people doing a kind of "tai chi" with a sword, others doing real "tai chi" and yet others doing circus arts with a diabolo. This reminded me of a workshop I twice participated in and which taught me to instruct circus camps with children. There I quite loved diabolo. So it was hard for me to just watch the people perform without having my own diabolo with me.

The course itself
On Monday I had to do a test to find out what level of class I should attend. Astonishingly, they put me in the highest course they got right now, which is intermediate. In my class there's Italians who studied Chinese for three years at university. That's why it is quite hard for me to follow sometimes - but I like challenges! You surely can understand I now need to learn some new words and do some writing exercise.

Zaijian!

Decadent brunch and Chinese Sunday park atmosphere

At Saturday night I went out with Barbara (the girl from Malaysia). We had some food and later had some drinks at a place where some people sang old famous songs - Asian and International melodies. Was quite nice.

Decadent brunch

On Sunday, the "young German community" here at Hairun had invited to come along to a international brunch at a hotel. The brunch was really excellent - a lot of choice, also the sweet sings. They even prepared warm chocolate souffle for you. Yummie! So I ate just too much like everybody else. We also had champagne with the brunch.

Park visit on Sunday

Afterwards one of the people I got to know there came along to experience some real Chinese Sunday:

We went into a park - this time Jingshan park. First we climbed up the hill to enjoy the view over the palast buildings.

Then we descended into the park itself and found that there were not many foreigners there but a lot of Chinese. What did the Chinese do there? They sang together, they played musical instruments, they danced. Many seperate groups sang different styles of (Chinese) music and nearly all of them had very lively and engaged conductors (German: Dirigent). And most astonishingly: People were of all age groups and it sounded quite well.

When we watched some older people dancing in different styles, an old Chinese man approached me and asked me for a dance. So I tried to dance with him and it was quite funny.

So, all in all, I had a nice day and at the end of the day we went to the gym to lose some of the weight we had gained from the foodload we'd eaten in the morning.

The foto shows a singing group of Chinese in the park.

The Great Wall is great!

Next weekend, next sightseeiing.

Today's trip took me to the one of the Ming tombs (a tomb of a former Chinese emperor of Ming dynasty) in the mountains just outside Beijing.

It's amazing how near the mountains are considering the fact that Beijing is rather plain and good for easy cycling. And they also are not tiny little hills, but real mountains.

After the Ming tombs where the buildings are quite similar to the Forbidden City, we went to the Great Wall.

I think it's amazing how people such a long time ago were able to construct a wall as long as the Chinese wall, leading through mountain areas. The Great Wall is the only mankind build "architecture" that you can see from out of space, I read. I think I heard it also was voted as the first of the seven new wonders of the world.

I also read that Mao once said: "Somebody who never was on the great wall cannot be a heroe."

We saw a lot of sections of the wall, but only visited one section. We started climbing up some steep stairs following the wall up some mountain. The scenery and view were excellent. However, as this is in the mountains, the wind is even stronger than in Beijing - and it's a cold wind. So I was happy to have a cap and gloves with me. The wind sometimes was that strong that my cap nearly flew away.

On the pictures you can see the wall in the mountains and myself on the wall.

Vegetarian Paradise / Getting started at work

Vegetarian Paradise

Not only did I have my second hot yoga lesson this week (yes, I went there again, especially in winter it can be quite nice because it is so warm) - this time it was two "big nosed friends" (foreigners) and the rest Chinese. The other foreigner left the room after 15 minutes and didn't return... and I am very proud to have survived 1,5 hours in there doing sport, although I did not participate fully as you need extreme body flexibility ("Gummikörper") in order to be an excellent yoga participant.

I also had another massage. And we went the second time to a nearby Vegetarian restaurant.

It's conviniently located nearby our apartments. It is called "Pure Lotus" and though it is quite expensive in Chinese terms, I really like it. They have tofu in all variations, fresh fruit and vegetable juices, an excellent service and nice atmosphere in the restaurant. So if you ever become Vegetarian and / or go to Beijing, you shouldn't miss it.

Getting started at work

From my colleagues I tried a lot of new fruits and foodstuff. Today a nice colleague gave me a persimmon (German: Kaki) to eat which was quite interesting in taste.

Also my outlook at work now is allright so that I can finally start contacting all the people and gathering information.

I still use to walk to work (one way 20 minutes) despite the coldness outside. But as far as I heard, in Germany it's even colder. On the way back I can always see construction work going on and I wonder about the local safety regulations. Sparks (German: Funken) fly through the dark air, workers seem to be working in the 20th floor hanging outside with just a rope for their own security, cables hang down on the pavement where people pass by and I really don't know whether there's still electricity on them.

Today I attach a foto of a famous type of "Beijing transport".

Buyiing a lot of things

Shopping in China

We have a Chinese market next door. There you can buy clothes in a huge variety and also one stand there offers DVDs.

Today I went there because I only wanted to buy gloves for the cold winter but walking through the silk market(as it is called) I bought much more. Probably the prices were not too low (rather foreign people's prices), but still quite cheap for me. Some examples to illustrate you the price level for clothes and DVDs here in China:

DVD 10 yuan each (1 EUR)

new handbag 70 yuan (7 EUR)

winter coat 170 yuan (17 EUR).

They usually start with a much higher price. In the winter coat case the seller first wanted 400 yuan. So I started with 50 yuan and we met somewhere in the middle.

How do I know I still paid too much? The seller of the handbag afterwards still called me "pengyou" which is Chinese for "friend". I guess that is a sign I still paid too much.

The foto attached shows the food market we visited on Saturday.

Hutongs and Lama Temple - first Sunday in Beijing

The market
In the morning I met Barbara ( a nice Malaysian women I had made acquaintance with). She had offered to show me where I can buy some real Chinese foodstuff including the wet market. The market mainly is open in the morning so we already met at 8:30 am.
The market was small but offered a huge variety of vegetables, fruits and also some seafood. The other place we visited is quite hidden, but is an excellent shopping place - I would describe it as a kind of marketplace - a house in which many foodstands offer raw food. There were a fruit stand, a vegetable stand, a tofu stand, a pork stand, a noodle stand and an egg stand.
I got a bag full of vegetables for 8 yuan (approx. 80 Cent), tofu for 2,50 yuan (25 Cent) and 500 g of freshly made Chinese noodles for 5 yuan (50 Cent).
I'm very happy to know where I can get fresh Chinese foodstuff near my apartment.

The Hutongs
Hutongs are an old infrastructure of old Beijing houses around courtyards and interconnected by small alleys. Houses in Hutongs use to be quite tiny (German: winzig).
Nowadays also due to the coming Olympic Games not much of the original Hutongs is left. A lot of construction work is currently taking place in some of the most famous old Hutongs. I think that's maybe an advantage for hygiene, but still it's a pity because the atmosphere in an old hutong is unique.
I had the chance to still see some of the remainders today. I saw some real hutongs - old, and where Chinese people live (didn't see any tourists apart from me in these alleys) as well as I saw the tourist hutongs with all the construction work going on and where nearly every second house is a tourist shop and the alleys are crowded with rikscha drivers indulgently offering their services (Shichahai area).
Near the Shichahai area I climbed up the steep chairs of Gulou (the drum tower) and enjoyed the view over the old parts of town, but I could also see how many houses had been knocked down (German: abgerissen).

Yonghegong, the Lama temple

The most impressing two things about this temple are:
1. The last hall with the huge Maitreya-Bodhisvatta. The buddha is so big that you feel tiny next to it. Resembles me somehow of the Christian religion where they also wanted to freighten people by the size of church towers.
2. The culture mixture between Tibetan-Mongolian lamaism (a belief) and Chinese culture. This could be seen by the fact that many inscriptions were in four languages: Chinese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Manchurian.

So much for today's report.

Saturday: Hot Yoga and Gu Gong

Like in Germany I don't have to work Saturday and Sunday. My Chinese colleagues don't have to neither - only in special occasions when there is a peak in work load.
So what did I do today?
I did sports and sightseeing.

Sports: A colleague of mine had recommended trying HOT YOGA in a nearby yoga studio. That's what I did. The class began 10 am.
For those of you who don't know what hot yoga (also called bikram yoga) is (description in German)

"HOT YOGA ist eine Serie von Yoga-Übungen, die bei 40°Celsius praktiziert wird. Die Wärme ermöglicht das intensive Dehnen, trainiert Herzkreislauf, fördert die Entgiftung und macht den Körper beweglich."

In my own words after having made this experience: it's like doing gymnastics in a sauna. Amazing! I had already tried yoga once before in France and didn't find it that exhausting, but moving in a 40 degree celsius hall brought me to my limits. I had to do some breaks and I also had to drink a lot. The lesson was 1,5 hours long!

In the afternoon I visited "gu gong". "Gu gong" is pinyin (Chinese pronunciation written with our letters insted of the Chinese letters to make it easier for foreigners to learn Chinese, but also in order to have an offical Chinese because of the many dialects) for the king's palace in the Forbiden City. The Forbidden City belongs to Unesco World Heritage Site.
I visited the whole area for 3 - YES, THREE hours and still didn't see half of it. Equipped with an audio guide I saw some of the offical representation purpose king's premises as well as some former concubines' places and part of the imperial garden.
The audio guide told sad storys about a king dying, concubines dying, but also nice things.
However, many buildings are being restored at the moment, which unfortunately means you can only see the roof and not the whole building.
I especially liked the imperial garden where you can also see some weird stone formations and bucklet (German: "krumme und schiefe") trees. I don't really know whether these were natural or not. Don't think so.

So much for today. Bye.

Chinese massage

Ok, like promised some words about Chinese massage. It is not like usual German massage which is quite soft. Chinese massage is powerful.
First time I went to a massage place this week, they welcomed me very friendly. They first offered me fresh melon juice (hilarious :-) and a very good start). Then I had to change clothes to some weird pyjama. When the woman who was supposed to do the massage entered the room, I noticed she was quite tiny / small. But when she began I realized how much pressure her hands could excercise on me. She especially handled my sore points and afterwards I thought my back was destroyed forever, but after some days I noticed how my back felt better than before. However, even if it's now some days ago... the day after the massage was the worst: I felt like I couldn't sit, couldn't stand, couldn't lie down, couldn't move without pain.
Yesterday I tried a new massage: shoulder and head massage. Also quite weird: I thought they would massage the back of the head (like at a hairdresser), but instead the woman also massaged my cheeks (Backen), my forehead (Stirn) and all of my face including my ears. A quite nteresting experience!

Technical adventure on the way to being able to phone with a Chinese mobile number, part II:
Today I tried to insert the Chinese SIM card (in Chinese: "sim ka") into my German mobile. As a technical "idiot" I didn't even think that there was going to be a problem about simply taking off the German SIM card and inserting the Chinese one. The pure act of changing was not the problem, but my mobile said: "wrong SIM card". I investigated on the internet and found out that the German providers invented such a thing as a SIM lock. During the first two years of the mobile phone you cannot change the SIM card without applying for it and paying - just imagine - approximately 100 EUR to Deutsche Telekom (the provider). So I talked to my boss and she offered me to go to the mobile shop together next week and buy a new mobile for the Chinese SIM card, which according to her costs "a few hundred RMB" (in German: zweistelliger EUR-Betrag). I fear this is still cheaper than applying for a SIM lock removal in Germany.

Zaijian! (Goodby in Chinese, but the Chinese often say "bye bye" to each other instead)

More news

I wanted to tell a little bit about my experiences with the Chinese. Well, working in a department where everybody except me is Chinese, I had the full experience already. My first impression is really positive. They are trying to integrate me as good as possible so far, although my knowledge of the Chinese language is not yet sufficient to really understand what they say to each other in Chinese.

Embroidery (German: sticken) seems to be the trend among 20 to 35 year old women. In the lunch break after having eaten, they use the break for stitching. Today one nice colleague proudly showed me a dog with dog clothes she did - another colleague is stitching two pigs. Maybe pig is a famous theme this year as according to the Chinese calendar it is "PIG YEAR".

The typical office drink is green tea. You do not use the tea leaves only once and then throw them away and use new ones, but they use a different type of tea leaves which you can use again and again (all day).

Some time I will surely be able to give you more impressions about the people and the culture.

Today, I equiped myself with a Chinese mobile phone number. They broadly explained to me all the contract types they have. I can tell you: the number of different contract options is as broad as in Germany. However, I noticed that there are two main differences:
1. You can have a contract with monthly contractual payments and still use recharge pay modus. This is very convinient for me because I do not intend to open a Chinese bank account.
2. You do not only have to pay for calls that you do, but also for incoming calls, i.e. if I am receiving a call, I do pay the same as if I was calling this person. This is really odd to me. But maybe our German system is the odd one of the two.

So far the news of today. Next time I'll try to tell you a little bit about Chinese massage.
Hope that you are all fine.

Arrived - first days

The plane luckily was a direct flight from Munich to Beijing. However, as they already announced on the check-in, it was two hours late.

My first impression of China was that there is a lot of paperwork in order to be able to leave the airport. I had to sign that I do not carry any dreadful diseases (first paper), that I do have a visa (entry form, second paper) and that I do not carry anything valuable or dangerous with me. But, ok, I do not complain because finally after having dutifully filled the forms they let me inside the country.

And there I am! Beijing! The drive from the airport to the apartment was quicker than my expectations. Also the many trees alongside the airport road surprised me.

My apartment is in Hairun International Apartments. Due to the important new inhabitant :-) they had painted and cleaned the apartment. During the day I didn't pay much notice to the fact that the real estate agent mentioned that "heating season starts on the 15th of November" because the day was quite friendly (sunny and rather warm).
As it became dark I knew why he had mentioned this. It turned out to be awfully cold inside the building. Lucky me who had bought an additional blanket in "Li jia" ( Ikea in Chinese, literally means:in the house, if I got it right). Today the experience shows me: I even need to buy more blankets.

I already got to know the Chinese as amicable and nice people. Many colleagues offered their help in whatever I might need.

Will write more about this soon.