Considering that roughly half my time in China has been spent in Beijing, and roughly half the time I’ve spent in Beijing has been spent in this southeastern corner, around BeiGongDa, it should be kinda surprising that I’d never really explored that small quarter northeast of BeiGongDa, between Xidawang Lu, Pingleyuan, BeiGongDa, and the Fourth Ring Road.
Not that there’s anything to see there, but as I’ve said before, it’s the boring parts of town that are the most interesting.
Anyway, I decided that I needed out of the apartment for lunch and at least part of the afternoon. I was starting to get a bit beyond cabin feverish. So for lunch I went across the road to the campus Muslim restaurant, which is the second closest restaurant to home, but the easiest to get to. It was closed, and will be until February 21. Yeah, welcome to your average Chinese university campus. Anyway, I decided to head northwards, up to a restaurant on the edge of the Pingleyuan market, a Northeastern place specialising in hotpot of some kind or another. Open, good, so I settled in for lunch, ate, and spent a good couple of hours watching the world go by. Then it was time to leave, and, on seeing how this lane followed what used to be the stinkiest canal in Beijing, but which is now dry, to the east, thought, well, I’ve never been down that way before, might as well go for a wander, have a look-see.
So I did.
Past the market was a very regular housing estate that looked like it was built in the 50s, but probably wasn’t quite that old. After that, there was what looked like a park to the left, on the northern side of the lane, and what looked like was a park-by-default, because the slum opposite the northeast gate to BeiGongDa hadn’t quite extended that far north. So I crossed the former stinky canal/current dry ditch and followed one of the attempted paths along the canal/ditch until I confirmed it was only going to take me to the fourth ring road, then turned back. But there were three almost-paths leading the other ways through the slum to the northeast corner of BeiGongDa, and none of them looked like the went all the way, so I asked a passer-by, then followed her directions. Of course, it was no more than 50 metres from where I was standing to the road I was looking for, once I’d been shown which path to take.
And so I took that path, then I headed to the local Jingkelong supermarket to get those infernal lightbulbs, then came home, and that was it. There you go, nothing to report.
Actually, I did manage to make good use of today’s continuing good, clean air and get something approaching exercise, which is what I desperately needed.
And I discovered that there’s a McDonald’s much closer to here than the previous closest one I knew of, but that ain’t good. But right next to that is a Papa John’s, which I believe specialises in pizza, and which may be worth checking out, but we’ll see. lzh and I will be heading in that direction this evening. Oh, yeah, I got to see the back end of our local Outlets (which was the first in Beijing, from what I remember) on my little ramble.
And I’ve all but confirmed that the temple for which that small corner of town is named, 潘道庙, no longer exists. As the title of this post suggests, I walked around that area, but I didn’t go through it. Difference of about 20 metres. Still, didn’t see a temple.
So, in other words, nothing to report.
