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beijing subway map
My hostel is closest to Dongsishitiao station, blue loop line, right side, one stop down from connection with yellow line 13. Wudaokou is on yellow line 13, left side, third stop up.2nd post
sunday
1 june 2008
ahhhmm
I did indeed take the subway to WuDaoKou, my old stomping grounds where I lived and worked last year.
Somethings have changed since last year.
For instance, all subway costs are 2 kuai. Last year it was 3 kuai for red and blue lines, and 5 kuai if you were going up to line 13, which is where Wudaokou is. I am surprised the the costs have gone down. I would guess it's Beijing's way of promoting public transportation and "going green" for the Olympics.
Also, the trains themselves have been updated... At least the blue loop line #2 has been. The handrails inside are much more user friendly and there are TVs inside showing both earthquake coverage and Olympic coverage. And the maps within the subway cars are much improved.
And the transfer to Line 13 no longer goes through the maze outside. You do still exit at Xizhimen, but the outdoor portion is now a covered walkway.
At any rate, as soon as I got off the subway, I walked to the Muslim restaurant to eat. Ahhhhh sooo good! None of the
boys working ther are the same, but the laoban is the same goofy guy. No suit today, though, just jeans and a button up shirt. And a woman, who I can only assume is his wife, was also hostessing.
I had my xiao wan'r la mien and liang ge yang rou chuan'r. Or a small bowl of noodle soup and two lamb-on-a-stick. When my noodles came I went through 2 pairs of cheap wood chopsticks and couldn't get them to pull apart. Finally a grandma sitting at the next table with her 2ish year old grandson came to help me pull them apart... and she couldn't get them either. 3rd pair was a charm.
It's early for lunch time, but it was getting busy. They had a Chinese girl sit with me. The noodles can get kind of messy, and "la mien" means "spicy noodles" so, combined with the steam from the bowl and the hotness, my nose immediately started running. Also, the awesome chuan'r have spices on them, so as you pull them off the stick with your teeth, red spice flecks all over your
future beijing subway map
As of right now, there are 4 lines.
Line 1, red line. Line 2, blue loop line. Line 5, green line, that goes to the Olympic park. And line 13, yellow half circle to the north. face and cheeks are inevitable.
And of course I'd forgotten how to say "napkin." I could see them sitting on the shelf, and I was tryyyying to remember the word, but couldn't. Lucky for me, the Chinese girl next to me also had a runny nose from her soup. We were both sitting there sniffling while slurping up our noodles.
I asked her, in Chinese, if she could speak English, thinking if she could I would ask her the Chinese word for "napkin". Ni hui shou Yingwen ma? She said she couldn't speak English and how that was "bu hao yisi" which basically means like, "that's not good," or "that's unfortunate." I said it didn't matter.
Luckily, she then asked for napkins on her own. And I asked her what she had just said, what was the name for napkin? Turns out it's "can jing zhi'r" or just "zhi'r" for short. As soon as she told me, I remembered.
Then we briefly chatted. She asked me something that I didn't understand. I told her I can understand some Chinese - wo ting de dong yi dian'r yi dian'r, but that I don't speak very well, Wo shou Zhongwen shou de bu hao. She said that my Chinese wasn't bad. At least she didn't try to say I spoke very well.
But then she complimented me on my chopstick skills. Which made me blush.
I was done then and told her goodbye, zaijian, and went outside to ask the laoban - the boss - how much I owed. For a very full and awesome meal, it was 7 kuai, or one dollar.
I know the laoban recognized me, because he kept giving me second looks, but he couldn't place me. Which is undertandable. God I love that Muslim restaurant!
A bit about the "Muslims". They are mostly all from Xinjiang province in Western China and are actually the Uighur people . They're a Turkic people from Central Asia and look quite different from the dominant Han Chinese people. They look like a cross between Chinese and Central Asian... but I guess that would be obvious... Check out this Wiki site about them for more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_people
You can usually tell if you're going to a Muslim restaurant because generally the sign is the color green and is usually both in Arabic and Chinese... and you should be able to smell the chuan'r roasting outside!
Now I'm sitting at Cava Coffee , my favorite coffee place. It's generally just Chinese people on their laptops. Old wood floors, small wood tables, cool music that ranges from Rasta sounding Chinese, to Spanish to French to... to generally good music. There's a TV on, no sound, and it's showing Olympic coverage of what I assume are test games. Right now it's boxing. I ordered a "peppermint iced coffe" and it's huge and awesome and like 22 kuai, which is like $3. Not super cheap, but it's huge .
Ahhh I love Beijing!
***
a couple of hours later:
Well Cava Coffee has filled up a lot. A strange version of "besame" is playing. There's a Chinese guy who has one hand glued to his cell phone and the other is chain smoking. Driving me nuts. I think it's time to head to the subway and go home. Also, coffee and caffeine just aren't good for me yet. I only drank a few drinks of my peppermint iced coffee before my heart started racing. I've since drunk 6 small glasses of water. I still really like this place, though. I need to find a cool, cheap, cafe near the hostel, methinks. Yup, time to go.
***
around 19:00ish, back at the cracked hostel:
So I left Wudaokou, and got on the subway going the wrong direction. The minute I stepped on and the doors closed, I realized I was going the wrong way. I was going to get off at the next stop and turn around, but I figured, hey, I have time, I've never gone around line 13 all the way, might as well sit down and enjoy the ride.
And I did enjoy the ride. It was long, like maybe 45 minutes? But it goes way north of the city where it's all residential, hardly any apartments over 5 or 6 stories, and lots of hutongs. I had my ipod and was enjoying watching people and the scenery.
I don't generally find Chinese men attractive. But every nooooow and then, there's a good looking man or two. Like today, on the aforementioned subway.
The point of this part of the post, though, is a conversation I just had with one of the girls who works here. Her English name is D***, and her English is superb. We were just discussing rather controversial things...
First of all, when I walked in, they were having some issues with some African men who are staying here. After they left the room, I asked where they were from. South Africa, she says. She says they have a lot of Africans staying here because if they let one in, then they all know they can stay here. But they have some problems with them.
I said, well, I wonder what they DO here? I know it must be hard to find work; they certainly cannot teach English. I brought up the fact that even an African American whose family has been in America for generations and who speaks perfect English cannot find a job teaching English in China. Same with Asian Americans. Accent doesn't matter as much as your outer looks do. It's just the way it is here.
Then we came back to discussing the Africans and the problems that they have with them at this hostel, how you have to force them to pay or they won't, that one woman from Zimbabwe stayed here and was selling traditional African wood carvings, etc, and the whole hostel turned into her store, her room was her storeroom for all of her products, etc. I again, mused, but what do they DO here? And she said, well, she'd heard they sell drugs here in Sunlitun'r to the other foreigners. But she had only heard that.
That was when I told her that her English was really very good and asked her English name. And then she complimented me on my Chinese name, Bai Moli .
She had ordered and was eating her own personal pan pizza. I was eating an apple. And then she totally volunteered, "I'm pregnant," as if eating her own small pizza had to be justified. And I said, ah, congratulations! And then she kind of gave an odd look and said, well, tomorrow I'm going to have an operation; I'm not married.
At this point I thought, wow, she's being really straightforward about this whole conversation.
So, without missing a beat, I asked if "operations" were common in China? She said yes, somewhat. I then asked how many days off she would get. She said she will get one week of rest, and then come back. She likes her job; it's pretty easy for a Chinese job - mostly just talking to customers and arranging trips for them, so she will only take a week.
I then brought up America's constant abortion battle. She gave me a very sympathetic look and said, oh yes, it's because you're all Christian, right? And I essentially had to agree. Not everyone is Christian, but the majority of Americans are. I said that I think China has it right and that America should be more like China.
In some respects, I do think this. But I also said this to see what she'd say; I figured she would say agree with me.
But she didn't. She said that some girls don't know and figure they can always have an abortion. But that some girls have the "operation" too young, or too often, and then later they can't have kids.
In the back of my mind I was wondering if the government is sterilizing them as they go, and that's why they can't have kids later. But of course I didn't say this.
At any rate, D said that maybe America is right. I said, no, because it can be dangerous for women in States where it's illegal in the States. That it gets dangerous if they have to do it in the back room at night. That it is better for it to be legal and safe for the women. She agreed. And then customers came in that she had to help and the conversation was over.
Even though she brought it up rather stoically, I could see that the conversation got to her a little bit. She said that right now she's 27 years old, but that she doesn't feel she is able to take care of a baby yet. Maybe when she is in her 30's. She doesn't have the money or a house - the workers here live in the hostel, I think - and she's not ready. I told her she's making a responsible decision. She said, besides, maybe she won't be a good parent right now and wil teach them some bad things. I said, oh no, I don't think that would happen, you're a good person, but I understand about you not being ready. I am 25 and I'm not ready. And I basically tried to reassure her that she's making the right decision.
So, it's been a full day.
In other news, there are a lot of Chinese people who stay here. It seems strange to me because hostels in Europe and the States and India are full of foreigners and not too many nationals. But then I thought about it, and I thought, well, it makes sense. The Chinese are used to sleeping with several people in a small space. They're a very communal society. And since the Communists came into control in '49 it was customary for everyone to try and make a pilgrimage to Beijing, and there were communal dorms for them to stay in as they travelled. The concept of a hostel is essentially the same; it makes sense.
What doesn't make sense is my Chinese roommate. Seriously, she's ALWAYS in the room, laying in bed, on her computer. I don't know what she's doing. She's not watching movies or typing. I can't figure it out. Also, she looks like she's been here awile. I'm curious to see if she gets up to go to work tomorrow, Monday.
Okay, I think that's enough for tonight... unless something else interesting happens, that is.
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non-member comment
hmm?
So she lay on her bed all dead and she doesn't do anything at all? Is her computer on? what is she reading? This is a mystery, you have to get to the bottom of it. I think it is time for you to go up to her and ask her.