distant ruminations

So Matt, who is stopping in Beijing for a few days on his way back to Kunming, came over this way and we got lunch then we headed out looking for a temple that has always intrigued me.

I used to go through the Guangqumen area quite often. I used to prefer going up there to pay my phone bill at the phone office there. Slightly nutty, I know, considering it meant ten times the travel, but it meant I could be in and out of the phone office in only two or three minutes instead of having to wait an hour or two at the bank to perform that simple, two minute transaction. But somehow I remember my dalliances with Guangqumen going back much earlier than that, and I can’t think why. Anyway, all that wandering through the area made me aware that there was, perhaps, a temple just north of there. Somehow I remember signs saying 白庙, but as I discovered yesterday, they actually say 白桥. Nevermind, they pointed in the direction I wanted to go….

Anyway, what got me really intrigued was actually seeing that temple from the train as we went past on the way to or from Tianjin. But somehow, even though I escaped Tianjin a year and a half ago, I never got around to seeing it from the ground-level until yesterday afternoon.

So Matt came around and we got lunch and a couple of koubei to warm us up, then we headed back out into that howling, biting Gobi wind, and jumped on the next 34 bus to come along. Fortunately there are many 34s, so we didn’t have to wait too long. We got off at Guangming Lou and wandered northwards through the lanes that probably were hutongs 15 years ago, across Guangqumen Nei Dajie and up into Baiqiao. I spotted the temple behind a wall, and asked the guy at the gate we were standing next to how to get there. He said go back the way you come, the lane you just walked past will get you there. So we went, and found the front gate of the temple, and…

…it was closed.

Locked, very firmly closed.

Oh well, Matt got to see a slice of ordinary, regular Beijing that he hasn’t seen too much of before. I now know the way to that temple. Maybe at some later date it will be open.

But I didn’t pay attention to the name of the temple and I can’t find it on either my map, Google, or Baidu. And now my camera’s batteries are out of power (again) and so I can’t turn my camera on to see if I got enough of the cultural relic plaque in any photo to see what the name of the place was.

Oh well, having wasted our time, we retreated to a nearby cafe for warmth.

Anyway,  once my batteries are recharged I’ll have a look at the photos I took and see if can get the name of the temple. And of course, if anybody knows anything about this temple, leave a comment. Otherwise, I might have to wander past again. There are other things nearby I want to have a closer look at, too. I’m just hoping this clear weather holds.

But frigid wind or no frigid wind, it was good to get out and get some fresh air and exercise. Good company helped of course, even if I did end up leading Matt on a wild goose chase (sorry ’bout that). I would also like to get out again this afternoon- I want to make good use of this weather before the place smogs up again.

I told myself I’d set a rule that I would study from 10 to 12 every morning. It’s proving to be kinda difficult. Still, I have gotten a reasonable amount of textbook reading in, and I’m quite satisfied with how much of the texts I can understand without a dictionary despite not having done anything even remotely resembling study for several months. Study break now, I’ll get back into it at maybe about one.

Two in as many days!

The one annoying thing about last night’s dinner was the taxi driver who brought us home. He started off by talking absolute horseshit about how he was really glad to see a Chinese person get in the car, because foreigners are so much trouble and never know how to tell him where they want to go. lzh pointed out that plenty of foreigners speak Chinese. I refrained from commenting. Considering how often I have had to guide Beijing taxi drivers around Beijing- even way back before all the suburban drivers came into the city- I don’t think I would’ve had anything positive to add to that discussion.

Anyways, to add injury to insult, he slipped us a fake 50 when we got home.

And he did that while rejecting a 100 he said was fake- but we’re pretty sure he didn’t have a chance to switch that one on us, too.  It would seem that the fake 100 came with one of those weird, random bonuses lzh’s danwei hands out at apparently totally random moments. Her salary is deposited directly into her bank account, so there’s no chance of them handing out fakes with her salary (although one should always be careful of the ATM- lzh has banned me from ever taking money out of an ICBC ATM because they’re supposed to dispense the occasional fake), but those weird random bonuses are often paid in cash.

Anyway, I thought nothing of this driver rejecting that 100. The guy made it perfectly clear from the moment we stepped in the car that he was a total idiot. I, unthinkingly and totally unintentionally, handed it over in a local shop whose owners I trust. Rejected. Looked at in the clearer light of 4:30 in the afternoon, it was clearly fake.

Two fake notes in two days.

So, everybody, be careful. Fake money is still floating around out there.

Last night’s dinner was great. Good food, excellent company. Can’t ask for much more than that. We went to Feiteng Yuxiang, the branch on Chunxiu Lu- oddly enough, this is the best site I can find for it, but it does at least list addresses for some of their branches- for some good chuancai, and they certainly delivered. My only gripe was that the room was too warm- but that’s nothing to complain about in the middle of winter.

Actually, I really liked the gongbao jiding- it was the first gongbao jiding I’ve ever had that actually had a bit of spice too it. They’d put proper chillies into it instead of those pathetic northern Chinese non-spicy chillies.

But Jeremiah raised two points that I found interesting:

1. The quality of commentary in the English-language China blogosphere has gone really downhill. Yep, unfortunately, and on certain bigger blogs more than others, comment threads are all too often childish slanging fests right from the get-go. It used to be you could actually get some intelligent, rational discussion in before the nutjobs dragged it off topic and started hurling abuse. Not any more.
2. New Zealand companies advertising in China like to emphasise the New Zealand origins of their products. Jeremiah suggested this could be because of the general political inoffensiveness of New Zealand. It’s really hard to get angry at New Zealand. Of course, this also applies to Canada and Denmark (at least in China, and perhaps not among China’s Muslim population). I suspect, though, that they’re trying to trade off New Zealand’s “clean green” image. I just have to wonder how they expect that to work, though, they seem to running on too many assumptions. China is not North America or Western Europe, where that image may be strong. The only ads for New Zealand products I can recall seeing on TV (and I don’t watch a lot of TV- most of what I see I see because my wife is watching while I amuse myself with something else) are for Fonterra’s dairy products, and they do seem to emphasise the New Zealand connection, but I don’t recall seeing much about “clean and green”. That may be worth further investigation…

Of course, a conversation with Jeremiah is guaranteed to include many interesting points, those are just two that I found worth sharing with the wider world.