beijing 2016

i met xuan at the airport and we went to check-in. i’d already done the online check-in 48 hours prior, so all we had to do was print out our boarding passes and drop off our luggage. they had these self-service kiosks where you had to print your own boarding pass before doing the bag drop. it was effortless and painless, but the paper was a bit flimsy. we dropped off our bags, went to collect the router and then went into the transit area. you have to pay a $1 deposit for the router through your credit card.

we walked to the right and then xuan wanted to eat donuts, so we walked back to the left, got the donuts (one each) and an iced chocolate. then we walked toward the departure gate, which wasn’t really far away from the middle. we walked and ate, and we saw a series of t-shirts which xuan proceeded to condemn most of them for lack of artistic flair. we went through the security check, refilled our bottles, went to the toilet and ate our donuts. i spotted two different school groups taking the same plane as we were - at first i was shocked, because that would imply large amounts of noise. i was relieved to realise that they would not be sharing the upper deck with us.

we boarded the plane. xuan commented on how we were paying more for things like hot towels. when brunch came, she didn’t really like the food (she chose the vegetable frittata over the noodles) so i finished her food and she was astonished but she knew that i loved plane food.

when we arrived, hx asked us where we were and we said that we were still on the plane, taxiing to the terminal gate. she complained that there was no air-conditioning at the airport terminal. we got off, went to the toilet, walked leisurely to the immigration counters. there was this long queue, it had to be at least 5 lines long, you know the kind where it’ll snake to and fro. it kept winding back and forth. the queue was long but it took a very short time for us to get to the front, and we cleared immigration and took this train to the baggage claim area. there was a sign that said “Relax” - 别着急, assuring passengers that the train came very frequently and there was no need for pushing and shoving.

we collected our baggage and met hx, and then we went to the train station where we bought tickets for the airport express (the machine wasn’t working, we had to buy from the counter). the man at the counter was gruff and he snapped at hx, leaving xuan and me in shock. the train took quite some time, about forty to fifty minutes to reach our stop. we stood for a segment of the trip, until the train stopped at terminal 1 and 2, and some passengers got off, leaving us with separate vacant seats and we took them. when we came out, we decided to take a cab to the serviced apartment, only to realise when we got on the cab that the apartment was actually walking distance from the train station. but we had luggage and it had been a long day.

when we reached the place, we saw this really dubious looking office, with a big, old signboard and some flats above that were occupied. thankfully, this was not the apartment building; it was actually just their office. xuan helped with the check-in and qh told us that “a lady with long hair” was going to come and pick us up and bring us to the actual apartments. xuan, hx and i discussed what qh meant by “a lady with long hair”, as it might imply that the lady had very, very long hair or it could mean that she just had longer hair than the general female population. we waited for quite some time, until the guy at the counter that xuan was liaising with decided to bring us there instead. we met qh on the way and i had a feeling of relief as we walked to the apartment with our luggage. it was a really nice place at first sight. it felt like a kind of compound or campus that you’d appreciate living in. there was greenery, the buildings weren’t really that old as compared to the reviews online. the lady with long hair (who will make an appearance again) looked at our deposit receipt - written on carbon paper - and brought us to our apartment. we were assigned to a place at the top, on the nineteenth floor. it was a nice place to begin with. the facilities were all there, bath towels, hair dryer and the like. we unpacked our stuff and toyed with the gudetama activity book.

then we went out for dinner, walking all the way to the 小吃一条街. we had dinner at this place which I had a deep impression of. we had visited the place for lunch during the bsp trip. we ordered a couple of dishes including a 葱油饼 which i really liked but the rest said afterward that it wasn’t really nice. qh’s dad was very excited and spoke a lot about a wide variety of topics, including his love for learning the english language and whether we could understand his nanjing accent (i could, about eighty percent of the time). there was a performance by the restaurant staff, including a middle-aged woman who seemed to be in her late forties. they blasted some music and did some funny dance. hx felt that it was hilarious and began snapping it down. the performers weren’t that nervous and they actually felt quite comfortable doing it in front of an albeit small audience.

we then went back to rest. the next morning we woke up and it turned out that the Forbidden Palace (故宫) wasn’t open on Mondays, like most museums. we visited the Lama Temple instead, which was just one mrt station away from our apartment. between the mrt station and the Lama Temple were these little radios with pre-recorded voices of men saying “Fortune Telling, Naming and Face Reading are all Scams! Please do not get cheated” repeatedly in mandarin. the Lama Temple was huge but mundane since i’d been there before, yet nevertheless still interesting. then we went for lunch at a nearby kfc, where we split up because of a lack of five-seat tables. xuan and i sat next to a couple who bought egg tarts from kfc. i asked xuan if she wanted egg tarts, and she said no. i asked qh if she wanted egg tarts, and she said no too. i bought a chicken wrap with the roasted duck sauce, and it came with a pepsi, which could not be changed to another drink because it was a set lunch promotion. one of the things i dislike the most in this world is coke. the other is pepsi. before going to 南锣鼓巷, an alley with lots of shops and nice things. i bought a panda for norman, and some cute stickers. i also wanted to get some postcards from this shop, but the rest were leaving and i was unable to find five postcards (the shop was selling postcards at five for ten dollars, and i only wanted two which i liked). so i gave up and exited that store. all of us bought cat ears at one of the shops and i had one too, and we wore them together. they cost ¥10 each. we visited a shop and xuan was instantly attracted to a tote bag which had a picture of a girl hugging a whale. she bought it immediately, while i was drawn to a whole table of postcards. i chose two boxes of postcards (out of an estimated 30-35 different series/boxes). the same shop had this piece of paper glued on the desk; it was a list of translations for the days of the week and common stationery names. the shopkeeper was friendly and we asked if the bookmarks on the cashier counter were free, and she concurred, asking us to take what we liked since we were paying customers. all of us took some, i took two. (today i laminated one of them, fearing that it might get folded.) we also went to a scarf shop, and they bought scarves for their family members. hx and xuan bought two each for their mothers. then it rained. when it stopped, xuan and i went to get a drink and we ended up getting this 1-litre iced tea with lots of ice and those flowers, like chrysanthemum flowers at the bottom of the drink. it was weird, but still nice. we shared it.

there were many nice shops, and we shopped separately for a while. we walked away from the alley and onto a different road, and there were shoe shops and we saw hx in one of them. we also went into another shop which had cool umbrellas and cakes. on the way back to our meeting point with qh and hx, xuan spotted a shop that sold a special kind of hair band for her to wear while she washed her face. it cost ¥12, which she felt was extremely worth the money. she went into the shop and bought the band, while i waited outside. then we continued our walk. i spotted a shop that introduced itself as “the shop that sells possibly the best bread in Beijing”, so i went in and got a chocolate bun, which honestly wasn’t that nice.

afterward, we went back to rest and then met up for dinner. we took a bus to 三里屯, where we decided on a place called 老北京 for dinner at first. upon reaching the entrance, we noticed a whole row of young men standing at the door staring at us. that prompted us to exit immediately and cross the overhead bridge leading to the malls opposite. we went to a place which served warm fruit tea (i loved the fruit tea, so did qh) and really really nice food. i really enjoyed that dinner. all the dishes were nice and tasty. the restaurant looked classy; its corridor was stocked with all sorts of alcohol, including Singapore’s iconic Tiger Beer. then, we walked around looking for food to take-away for qh’s dad, passing by several shops and a supermarket in the process. finally we decided on a place which sold thai food. qh bought pad thai for her dad (she told me it was pad thai, but the man said Fried Rice - that’s not pad thai) while xuan and hx went to the toilet. then we took a bus back. while waiting at the bus stop, there was a man holding a briefcase and i noticed that he kept looking at us, probably the girls. i was very nervous, especially when he boarded the same bus as we did, but we got off earlier than him and he didn’t follow suit.

over the course of our trip, we made many trips to a confectionary near our apartment which sold lots of nice things, including Portuguese egg tarts, small jars of (raspberry) jam, 铜锣烧 and cakes. someone said that the shop was part of a countrywide chain, like breadtalk in singapore. on our last few trips to the shop, we bought products totalling ¥13. the cashier asked if we had ¥3, which we did not. she suggested using the money in our bus pass, which we complied. the next time round, we wanted to use up our remaining stored value in our bus pass as it was our last day in beijing. the cashier was also willing to deduct the money from our bus pass that time round.

the next day, we went to 故宫. it was crazily crowded but we finally managed to enter the place. xuan didn’t bring her id so she almost couldn’t get a ticket - they practise real-name ticketing or something, which meant you had to produce valid id in order to get a ticket. i brought my 11b and it almost didn’t get accepted, she wanted to see my passport instead. and they’d stop ticketing if the number of visitors exceeded 80,000. we walked around the various 宫, 殿, 庭 etc. there was a 对联 whose 上联 included the words “丽日和风" instead of “风和日丽”, and xuan argued that students should be allowed to write “丽日和风" in the future, since that was what the people in the past wrote. we even paid an extra ¥10 to visit the “treasure gallery”, which comprised a series of mini-galleries housing Qing-era mementos. halfway through we stopped to get a drink, and xuan got vitamin water while qh got sprite. hx got something else that i can’t remember. qh and hx dressed up in imperial wear and took photos on the dragon throne. during this period i held qh’s sprite and hx’s drink for them, which is why i remember the sprite, but unfortunately not hx’s drink. before we exited the palace, we sat on a bench underneath a tree and rested while local students played catching around a separate tree. we walked for five hours, and we were all very tired. afterwards we took a bus to 王府井, where we searched frantically for the 全聚德 (it was hidden behind a corner, amidst building works). after a fulfilling yet expensive lunch, we went shopping at H&M and then at other places in the apm mall at 王府井. we wrapped up the day eating Dairy Queen (DQ) ice cream, sitting in the confines of the adjacent Yoshinoya. hx, xuan and i went to 新华书店 for a short while, emerging with six books. as we had spent above a certain amount, we were told that we could redeem a voucher at the customer service counter on the first floor. a woman then approached xuan asking if she could have the receipt for our purchase. xuan refused, knowing that we could redeem a voucher (but we were still unsure of its value) downstairs. [after reading this, xuan commented that she felt that the woman looked shady back then].

while we had thought that the voucher would be worthless, it turned out that it was a ¥50 voucher that could be used on the spot. i convinced hx to use the voucher to buy 刘同’s new book,《向着光亮那方》with ¥13 more to spend, i chose a set of postcards (¥8) and the lady was kind to give us a tote bag to contain our books (¥3), totalling up to ¥48, with ¥2 left to spare. i’m using the tote bag to bring stuff to work now.

then, we entered a mall and walked one round, passing by a potential dinner place called 面爱面, which i felt looked really cool. then we took an escalator to the basement which was linked to the mrt station. at the linkway between the mall and the mrt station stood a questionable museum of fossils. we went back to the apartment.

then we went back, and hx and qh ordered 外卖 for dinner.

on the fourth day, we went to 北京大学 to meet up with xc. we exited the wrong gate, according to xc, even though she actually asked us to exit through that same gate. regardless, it was nice to see her after nine months. xc brought us around 北大 and we took photos at the entrance with the 牌匾 and also at 未名湖. she also took us to a canteen-ish place, where we had different kinds of noodles for lunch. we passed by many familiar places, because i’d been there before and most of the buildings still looked the same. each foreign language department was accorded its own building, usually artsy-fartsy-looking, modelled after traditional Ming Dynasty architecture. i asked xc to bring us to the 冰糖草莓 place because it’d been my lifelong dream to get xuan to eat the 冰糖草莓 at 北大. she ate it and said it was nice. we passed by the 光华楼, the home of the business faculty, where we bought coffee at the café (光华楼’s coffee is ostensibly the best in 北大). we met her friend, 潘聰, and she was shy and quickly ran to the toilet. i bought a small box of overpriced butter cookies, but i felt happy eating and sharing them with others. i was shaking my iced latte, and spurts of it came out of the cup and dirtied my white shirt.

xc rode a bicycle, and she parked it outside her faculty and locked it. we went to her dormitory, where we met her roommate, xinyi. we went downstairs to get ice cream from a shop. prior to that we all needed to visit the toilet, and i walked one floor down (male and female toilets were on alternate floors, her dorm was on the female floor) to pee, only to realise, as xc had accurately pointed out, that i was unable to wash my hands because you needed to swipe a card to gain access to the water facilities in this student dormitory. i, having no such card, was unable to wash my hands, until we got back to xc’s dorm, where she had a tap with unlimited access to water.

in the evening, xc took a bus with us to a nearby shopping mall, where she introduced us to a steamboat shop called 辣府. 辣府 is named for its specialty, that is spicy things, and also to rhyme with the english word, “Love”, i.e. (I Love) 辣府. we attempted to connect to their wifi but failed. it wasn’t a complicated procedure - first, you had to follow their official wechat account (this actually required an internet connection to complete - imagine those people who did not have a connection to begin with). then, you had to click on one of the buttons in its menu. that was supposed to provide you with their wifi password, but it responded saying that there was a system error. we asked the staff for the password and they asked us to follow the steps above, and we said that there was issues with the procedure itself. then they said the wifi password out loud. we ate lots of meat and vegetables and talked about lots of stuff over the few hours, like university group work and how people can be really horrible when during collaborating with one another, especially when peer evaluation was not a component of the grading process. the 微辣 (mildly spicy) side of the steamboat was dominated by xc after less than twenty-five minutes into the meal because it was really really spicy. the three of us had eaten from it for a while and then we couldn’t continue and admitted defeat and began eating from the non-spicy side of the 鸳鸯锅. we were stuffed after the meal, and we walked over to a cake shop, reportedly renowned amongst singaporeans. i bought a strawberry crepe while xuan and hx bought a green tea crepe for qh/qh’s dad. i ate the strawberry crepe a while later and it was really good. then xc told hx about 周黑鸭, and she proceeded to buy some of them. then we walked opposite to the bingsu place which we had seen earlier, and had made plans to go to after 辣府. i attempted to connect to the wifi at the bingsu place, but to no avail. xuan’s miracle fingers made it happen, though.

afterward, xc left for her meeting while we stayed around at the bingsu place for a while longer. then we took a bus over to her school to meet up with her before taking the train back to the apartment. xc was staying over with us, in hx and qh’s room, for two nights, before heading back to school for lessons on friday. on the mrt on the way back, Shaun The Sheep was playing on beijing’s subway line 2. while walking from the mrt station back to the apartment, we fooled xc into thinking that we were staying at a hotel called 如家, which was embroiled in a scandal involving their unresponsive staff during a recent incident where a man was forcibly dragging a woman out of the hotel. the staff did not step up to stop the man, thinking that it was a simple lovers’ squabble. the whole incident was captured on video and 如家 was deemed an unsafe place to live. we fooled her into thinking that we had chosen 如家 as our choice of accommodation, up to the very point where we were going to enter the hotel itself. xc felt very cheated but laughed at our sense of humour.

on thursday, we went to a ktv place that qh had pre-booked the night before, and stayed there for a few hours until ~3pm. xuan, qh and i purchased some sushi at 7-11, which tasted good. then we went to a nearby shopping mall, Ginza Mall, for late lunch (korean bbq) before heading to 798 art space via bus. it was peak hour traffic so we were stuck on the bus for quite some time. all of us fell asleep, then woke up. eventually we reached and we walked around the area. there was this wishing tree area where people had penned down their wishes and dreams and tied them on the trees. there were a couple of shops too, so we looked around and eventually, we saw this place that was lit up with red LED lights (?) and we took some photos there.

then we took a bus back and xc, qh and hx ordered 外卖 using an app. the food was nice! there were dumplings (饺子), and xc told qh and hx not to eat too much because i would be eating the 饺子 later too and they were extremely upset that xc had said that.

on friday, xuan and i woke up late and we walked leisurely to the mrt station. halfway through, we stopped at our usual bread shop and i bought an egg tart and a tiny jar of raspberry jam for my croissant that i had bought the previous day at paris baguette, at Ginza Mall. we went to 琉璃厂 (Líu Lí Chǎng), which, contrary to its name, is not actually a place where you can blow glass and become a master. 琉璃厂 is simply a road name. we took a direct train there on Subway Line 2 and walked around the cultural street, or 文化街. they had these little letterbox-sized containers which had newspapers in them, for those people who were walking their dogs to use the newspapers provided to clean up their pet’s litter, and hopefully to pay it forward for future dog owners’ use. we saw many art pieces in different galleries, and then exited the place and saw a starbucks outlet. xuan and i walked in to have a look and there was a large crowd of deliverymen waiting for their orders to be fulfilled so that they could go forth and fulfil other people’s orders. then, we went in search of the walmart that was supposed to be nearby. (a sign in the vicinity, pointing to a “walmart carpark”, prodded xuan to look for the walmart itself.) walmart was a wonderful experience. we deposited our bags at the free lockers provided (they’d give you a piece of paper with a barcode, all you had to do was scan it and you could collect your bags after your shopping journey) and went to explore the wondrous two-storey Walmart. we spent a couple of hours there, in typical xuan-and-trevor-go-walking-around-in-supermarkets-fashion, and then went back. i bought three pairs of socks, two sets of miffy pens, big brown envelopes, a cup of jelly, magnets with smiley faces on them for the office whiteboard, and a box of 绿豆糕. xuan bought two bottles of vitamin water (i also bought a bottle of minutemaid grape juice) and a jigsaw puzzle of “The Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh which cost ¥9.90 for xinyu; xuan thought that it looked “too-good-to-be-true”. she also insisted on carrying the puzzle all the way back to the apartment, all by herself. (it weighed less than 200 grams.) i love walking around in supermarkets with xuan. it is just about the best de-stressing thing to do. i wouldn’t turn down chances to walk around aimlessly with my love, perhaps not even buying a single thing when we walk out after twenty minutes. the company alone is worth every minute of my time. we passed by a 报摊, where a few copies of 读者 caught my eye. i decided to purchase two different issues (a normal copy and one “原创版” - original version) and xuan decided to get a copy of a chinese business magazine for her dad. the lady who was operating the news kiosk was kind enough to give xuan and me brand new copies that were stored inside her kiosk, so that we did not have to buy the old copies lying around outside, exposed to the elements of Beijing. then we went back to our mrt station, 东直门 - Dongzhimen, where we went to a nearby food court and queued for about ten to fifteen minutes in pursuit of this 肉松煎饼 (floss “prata”, or floss savoury crepes). xuan also purchased a box of cuttlefish kimbap, which we deemed extremely unsatisfactory after unboxing it back at the apartment, despite the pleasant attitude of the staff there at the shop. for dinner, hx and qh ordered 外卖 for all of us. we played funny games and enjoyed ourselves before going to sleep.

on saturday, our last day, xuan and i woke up, bathed and played monopoly deal while waiting for the lady with long hair to meet us at 1.30pm. qh texted us saying that it was an emergency and that she had lost a pen in hx’s room, and i went over to find it, only to realise that the door’s PIN had been changed. so i went back to xuan and my apartment, and the lady with long hair had arrived, and we returned the room key to her and checked out. we walked to the shop and i bought cup noodles before we walked to the mrt station with our luggage. as we were walking to the convenient store for the last time, we noticed that 农夫山泉’s (a local Chinese mineral water brand, Nongfu Spring) was on sale, and a woman stood outside the store, with a table draped with red cloth, proclaiming a buy-one-carton-get-one-1.5l-bottle-free promotion. xuan said that a caucasian man was interested in purchasing the water, and made enquiries in mandarin. however, he did not buy the water and walked back to his block.

we mistook the normal mrt exit for the airport express entrance, and we ended up having to scan our luggage twice. we arrived at the airport two hours early, checked in (i’d already checked in 48 hours prior) and dropped off our baggage. we went to post our postcards at level 1, at a branch of China Post. xuan was introduced to the wonderful contraption of the rolling glue, which was stationed outside the post office, on top of the post box, for the public’s convenience. xuan quipped that she had never seen rolling glue in her life: the contraption allowed users to roll their stamps on the roller, and glue would be applied onto the stamps. xuan also went into the post office to confirm that local mail cost ¥0.80, as she was sending a postcard to xc’s dorm. then we walked around the airport, looking for keychains for my boss. we entered the departure area and we bought some last minute souvenirs, including the keychain. before we boarded the plane, i bought a Cocoa Cappuccino from the starbucks near the departure gate. we contemplated buying the frozen dumplings, only to realise that they were being sold only in bags of five, and we did not have the stomach nor the space to store the frozen dumplings.

when we reached singapore, i took an uber home. the uber driver, by the name of Thomas, talked to me about how a world war was necessary to spur the global economy. he was a pretty nice person, although his ideas were pretty controversial.

please give a kudo if you read all the way!