Our friend Greg lived in Beijing for a year or more and told us the place to be was in the Park. Yesterday was a gorgeous Saturday, warm and sunny, and apparently he told lots of people that, because they all followed his instructions and went to the parks.  Some of the highlights:

Forbidden City from Jingshan Park

Jingshan Park is a 55-acre park immediately north of the Forbidden City, full of people doing tai chi, dancing, smelling the peonies, you name it.  The major feature is a big artificial hill, made when they dug the moat for the Forbidden City, from which there are great views.  We’d toured the Forbidden City the day before and I wasn’t enamored of it; it just seemed like a big space with a lot of buildings.  But from the hill you had a great sense of just how massive it was.

People were exercising everywhere, although sometimes the exercise was … odd.  As we were climbing up the hill, one older, shirtless guy was first falling backwards into a tree and later clapping his hands to it.  Repeatedly.  Women, again, mostly older, were dancing everywhere, though again not exactly breaking a sweat.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big fan of being outside and moving.  It was amusing, though, that it was everywhere.  If there was space, there were a group of people dancing or doing tai chi, or swinging things, or … something.  Of course, the most interesting dancer by far was a wonderful guy, leading a group of mostly women, who was really having fun.

How can you be sad when you’re dancing?

The Sound of Music

The highlight, though, by far, was a couple playing music.  He was playing the harmonica and she was singing.  I heard her from a bit away and thought her voice was beautiful and the closer we got the more I liked it.  And when she started singing from The Sound of Music I was all hers.  Let’s go to the tape, though I’m not sure we have this whole posting to You Tube down right.  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wbvUgwSEcIE

Then there are the lakes near Jingshan Park and the Forbidden City.  There are three of them, and walking around them I felt like I was back in Minneapolis.  Some people might think Beijing is nothing like Minneapolis, but only if you’ve never walked around the lakes on a beautiful spring day.  Just as in Minneapolis, everyone was out and having fun and flying kites and swimming (trust me, you wouldn’t want to have been swimming in that water) and boating and tai chi-ing, and dancing … you get the point.  Best of all, once you pass to the second lake, Houhai, there are gaudy bars everywhere!

And we finally found something that isn’t cheap in China – $8 for a gin and tonic.  It was, however, one of the finest gin and tonics I’ve ever had: sitting on the roof of Beyond Bar, on a couch, with my Kindle.  Mark hadn’t joined me for that part of the walk, so I sat there reading, relaxing, watching the world go buy below while waiting for him to join me.  And though the drinks ain’t cheap, you can sit as long as you want with one drink and they’ll never even ask if you want another until you flag them down.  It was sweet.

Oh yeah, the kite flying.  I know I haven’t grown too old when kites in the air still awe me.

Nice day for flying a kite

We’re going to be writing a lot about food here – it’s pretty much our favorite part of traveling.  So here are some quick observations about food in Beijing after two days.

First, breakfast.  I love breakfast.  Anywhere.  It’s probably related to being a morning person, but pretty much anywhere I am I love breakfast.  Bacon and eggs at home (when we had a home…), croissants and baguettes in France, pho in Vietnam, espresso and cigarettes in Italy – it doesn’t get better than that.  And breakfasts in Beijing have been every bit as good.

So far we’ve gone to the same place both mornings, a no-name place down an alley where much of the food is cooked in the street.

Yesterday we had things that we could see and point to, but I watched people getting a soup-thing that I really wanted, so that was today.  Some boiling cauldron of stock out on the street, to which she added dumplings of some sort and greens.  Boiled for a few minutes and … ahhh, I’m a happy man.  Not sure how safe it is, but until I get sick that’s what I’m doing.

There can be, of course, a real challenge eating in a place like China, where we not only can’t speak the language, we can’t even begin to read it.  Last night, for instance, we stopped in a place we thought we’d like, but we ultimately couldn’t make heads or tails out of the menu.  The young woman trying to serve us would try to explain something, entirely in Mandarin, and when we made it clear we couldn’t understand it she’d write it on a piece of paper, as though we’d certainly get it if we just saw some Chinese symbols.  Finally we just had to leave; it was a case where we weren’t getting anywhere.  Instead we went to a place where they showed us how to cook and eat the hot pot – again, a boiling cauldron of stock, thin slices of beef and lamb, and a ton of vegetables.  Definitely worth waiting for.

“Healthy” Spinach, Eggplant, and Chicken Buried in Hot Peppers

Lunch today was pretty great.  It was in a very cool, hip “alley,” really one of the oldest streets in Beijing.  Feeling noble, I ordered crispy spinach.  Turns out the crispy is all about coating it in something good and then frying it.  Not too healthy, truth be told.  There was an OK eggplant dish, but the star of the meal was chicken with szechuan peppers.  Or, more accurately, szechuan peppers with some chicken added.  It was amazing.  When you got beyond the piles of hot red peppers, you noticed little black peppers – szechuan pepper, with the unique taste, as Mark put it, of cleaning fluid.  “But in a good way.

One other thing we learned there.  Two young people sitting next to us ordered a ton of food, including a pizza.  Did you know Chinese – at least these two Chinese – use chopsticks to eat their pizza?

Dinner tonight was at a really nice Peking Duck place, though we didn’t have any duck at all.  Most amusing, though, was the street food area we went through before dinner.  They had stuff you’ve never quite imagined eating, all ready to be grilled.  Not just lots of octopus – that’s pretty normal – but scorpions, silk worms, sheep balls, snakes, and, yes, tarantulas.  By those standards the pork liver we had for dinner was pretty tame!

Finally, the prices are really amazing.  Lunch – three dishes, two bottles of beer, two bottles of soda – was about $26.  Dinner was $32.  And breakfast is pennies – less than four dollars for both of us.  It’s as though you can’t afford not to come to China!

Mark’s first breakfast on the big adventure

After five months of planning and three weeks traveling from Boston to San Francisco, we are finally underway.  We landed in Beijing last night and have already had some of those experiences that make traveling so much fun.  We got up pretty early and headed out to breakfast.  We stopped at the concierge desk to ask about street food in the area and the woman said there wasn’t any nearby, but they have a lovely breakfast buffet at the hotel.  Right – I can get something local for maybe $3 or pay $25 for the hotel buffet.  So Mark & I went out on our own and in about five minutes had found a street with a bunch of tiny local … restaurants?  Can you call them that?  They cook stuff out in the street but you sit in chairs at actual tables.  We got a bunch of stuffed buns that were *great*, a bowl of really bland bean porridge, and a big piece of fried bread that you eat with chopsticks. All for less than $2.  Take that, hotel buffet!

Then it was off on foot to Tiananmen Square, where I made my first little friendie.  Mark & I were trying to get our bearings, figure out what we wanted to do, when this little kid starts playing with me, waving his flag, dropping it, letting me pick it up, over and over again.  Basically, he was teaching me to fetch, with his mother capturing the whole thing on her camera.

So there you have it – great local food and cute kids.  What more do you need for a great adventure?  Now it’s off to lunch, on the hunt for some noodles.  Probably won’t be hard to find in Beijing!

Jim’s new friend