Greetings From Beijing: Day 2 continues

After our Tuesday morning in the Hutong, we met our guide Cathy at lunchtime for a bit more shopping. This time a different market to get some custom clothing made. The Chinese Tailors are fabulous, I got three custom fit cotton work shirts and a silk coat and kris got a suit. They take your measurements in the store, you select your fabrics, and then they do all the fitting and final adjustments in your hotel room. I could get used to this lifestyle. I feel a bit like royalty here. At our next Chinese new year celebration we will now look like all the other white parents who have visited China and dress in traditional Chinese silk suits with dragon emblazoned fabric.

Being treated like royalty (and feeling rather rich with the exchange rate) might make us feel a bit self-important. Fortunately the rich and very old culture you see everywhere in Beijing is a terrific guard against any feelings of self-importance. We usually walk around feeling incredibly humbled and relatively insignificant. Having grown up in a 300 or 400 year old culture, it is hard to imagine living in one of (or perhaps the) oldest and richest cultures in the world.

After shopping, we enjoyed a lovely Hot Pot lunch with our guide. Hot pot restaurants are all over Beijing, I think they have one or two in Portland. They consist of raw meat, tofu, vegetables served with a boiling bowl of broth. You cook it yourself and it is very delicious (Hao chur).

After lunch, since it was still daylight, and we were only a little exhausted, we decided we had more touring to do. We visited Qianhai lake - about a 20-30 walk through more Hutongs. Qianhai is a fantastic lakeside park next to the forbidden city. This lake is most famous for the street of bohemian bars with American names full of young white international tourists. We walked most of the way around the lake. Lakes in china are very interesting. Because of the pollution many are closed to fishing and swimming. Of course, there are dozens of fisherman, and the lake is full of swimmers. Apparently, the Chinese people are not too worried about the pollution. There is also, a thriving boat tour industry with several docks where you can rent boats to row yourself, or be rowed. No motors on these lakes. Despite the pollution (the lakes here don’t always smell like the mountain lakes of the pacific northwest, if you know what I mean), the park is beautiful and populated by many many interesting characters. We had a really terrific self-guided tour around the lake and made it home just before dark. We spent time playing with some local kids, Kris received a music lesson from a local music teacher (lao shur), and we spent half an hour trying to figure how to get back to our Hutong. The hutongs of DongCheng are a mazelike conglomeration of similar looking neighborhoods. Of course we made it back just before dark.

In this park, the locals have built a special island for the local ducks. You can see the sign that shows the ducks gratitude for having the island. You can see many ducks coming and going from their island.

NO SWIMMING NO FISHING - See the men fishing and swimming next to the sign and the swimmers in their suits and towels. We watched them dive into the lake.