The city park, the Planetarium, the crowds and the food

May 14th, Beijing

The day before George's and Sha's wedding celebrations, Sha and her parents were very busy with the organising, but George was free to accompany us downtown.

Chris, Rob, George and Sally at Mudanyuan metro station

While Chris and Rob took a walk round the block, I strolled through the supermarket buying snacks (such as the "U.S. dried grape" which turned out to be a regular packet of raisins) to carry with us. The Wumart overwhelmed us with smells, especially around the raw meat in the grocery store up two flights of escalators, with its incomprehensible food labels and the unrecognisable fruit and vegetables. On another floor Sally and Rob managed to buy some rather special kai dang ku, for their baby grandson. Chinese toddlers do not wear nappies, it seems; these trousers had a convenient slit in them, instead. We saw children wearing these in their parents' arms all over Beijing. (Here's an interesting article about how habits are beginning to change, though.)

The sandy bank, Mudanyan

George arrived; we decided to walk to the Mudanyuan (Peony Garden––the peony is China's unofficial, national flower) underground station to take tube trains to Beijing Zoo, so as to visit the Beijing Planetarium, but before descending into the subway system we spent a while in the park by the canal which has a sculpture group of bronze, life size Mongolian horses and a sandy bank ... climbed by the three men while Sally and I stayed in the shade of the weeping willows.

My pictures are deceptive; in fact Mudanyuan was at the intersection of several multi-lane roads, with trucks honking, buses thundering past, scores of people trying to cross on bikes or on foot, and in the gardens, teams of gardeners watering the plants and crowds of people meeting one another, mothers and grandmothers with lively children who climbed on the horses, altogether a lively scene.

Beijing Planetarium seen from across the road

At the other end of the underground ride we could see the modern glass building which houses the Planetarium across the road from the Zoo. What we hadn't known is that the Central Bus Station is here as well, swarming with beggars and street traders as well as travellers with their luggage. We had to step over people and things. Sleazy chaos, quite the 3rd World scene, especially in that heat, and then a super posh hotel guarded by sentries in white uniforms a few paces away behind the station that was surrounded by cheap eating outlets, refuse bins, fruit vendors and chaotically parked bikes and cars. It took a while to search for lunch; in the end we found another street with a restaurant that had space at one of the tables at the back. The menu had pictures, but no translation of the Chinese characters, so we found it hard to communicate with the waitress. Did she want us to order something other than chicken (the people next to us appeared to be eating jellyfish)? Maybe we should have asked for dumplings, who knows? Anyhow, we got food with beer that was cold for once––you have to ask for iced beer: bing de pijiu.

Chris and Sally at the Planetarium

In the Planetarium, a futuristic glass building with an old style domed building to the side, we took a look at the exhibits then sat through an American, Zeiss projector show like the ones we saw in Chapel Hill in 1988, all dubbed into Chinese. We guessed that the narrator was meant to be Galileo. I liked the starscapes and understood the odd word––xingxing ... hounian ... bei ... zhongxin––not much else. Lying back in reclining seats in the dark, after the beer at lunch, it was a struggle to stay awake.

Rob and Sally went back on the subway. I took one look at the queue for the security checks and felt daunted, so Chris, and I chose to hail a taxi, saying we'd meet the others near Mudanyuan station, at the western-style coffee shop selling cappuccinos! They duly turned up; the place was fairly expensive, but very relaxing, with settees and banana splits to eat, and bookshelves all around. Then we walked back to the hotel, George returning to Sha's parents' flat for a while.

We ate our supper at the hotel with Daniel joining in (Daniel staying at the hotel, sharing a room with Xiao Peng––George had a hotel room too––on this night before the Big Day). The restaurant menu had us in hysterics. We ended up eating a meat stew with bones in, not what we thought we'd ordered, also what appeared to be sticks of potato covered with jam and some blessedly identifiable snow peas and mushrooms. The bowls of rice came last, after we had exhausted the possibilities of everything else.

Surreal items on a Chinese menu, no kidding:

• Paper pot lovesickness fungus
• Harsh imperial ricefield eel silk
• Slightly fries chicken gizzard
• Sichuan pepper glutinous frog
• The palace explodes the diced chicken
• The daily family activity sticks collapses
• Ovary and digestive gland legume flower ... features unique aftertaste!
• The Beijing onion burns the distant senate
• Irritable stomach
• The milk cabbage fries
• The vegetarian chicken
• The watermelon burns the meat ball
• Lives being addicted to baby vegetables
• Small muddled immortal

Now can you see why we had trouble ordering our meals in Beijing?