China, Asia, Climbing and Fixed Gear Bikes

Today I did something really rare: I was in a car in Beijing. And the traffic was as expected: Totally congested.

All I wanted to do is be on my bike instead and just fly past all the standing cars! Just ride past at high speed with a wide grin on my face. Especially as the weather was so gorgeous. We could even see the Western mountain range from the East side of the city. It is so sad that most people in Beijing are dreaming of buying a car. Why do they not admit that it sucks to waste many hours a day in traffic jams. I hope more people in Beijing get inspired to ride bikes either as a fun and environmentally friendly means of transportation, or as a sport for fitness or as a weekend leisure activity or just for the joy of having a great time. Bikes are the sustainable. Bikes are the future. I love them.

In China an many places cash is the best way to pay. And that is also for paying your rent or buying some expensive things like a stero system for 20000.-RMB. It would be easier if there was a note bigger than the 100.-RMB note. But there is not. I still feel strange each time going to a bank and getting a huge stack of money and stuffing it into my bag hoping nobody is watching me. You need to bring a big enouh bag with you.

Even after the Olympics there is quite some construction going on. In some areas they are not tearing down the old traditional Hutong buildings but rather renovating them. I really like that. I hope Beijing will keep all of the current Hutong districts. I think this is the true Beijing. Not all the glass and metal high rises. These traditional houses are more beautiful.

In the Chinese New Year the first few days are counted and have special meanings. The fifth day of the New Year is called „Chu 5“ or in full Chinese „Chu Wu“ (as wu means 5). This day you should spend it with your family and eat jiaozi, the dumplings boiled in water. If you do not have jiaozi you will have bad luck, or something like that. We spent this night with Chinese friends who cooked a great dinner including the jiaozi. And then we had to fire some fire crackers as this fifth day needs to be celebrated with a lot of noise. So instead of going down we just lit the fire crackers from the window of the apartment.

I almost had forgotten the nice sentence: „Xiao jie, yi wan shui jiao duo shao qian“. If you pronounce it one way it means: „Waitress, how much for a bowl of jiaozi?“ Another way to pronounce it means „Lady, how much for a night?“. It is a funny sentence you can teach a foreigner learning Chinese and let him ask the waitress in a restaurant and the probability is high that he anyway will accidentally pronounce the second way which is funny for all capable of Chinese, especially the Chinese themselves.

Echo had accidentally cut her finger cap on New Years Eve while helping her mother prepare the big dinner. Now she currently cannot climb. I hope it heals fast.

As it is the Year of the Ox everybody likes playing around with bullhorns or anything that looks like it.

Well it did get a bit silly. Here is the link to the webalbum with all the pictures of the night.

The two foreigners started playing a game of Chinese Chess as we were nibbling sunflower and pumpkin seeds.

When we were leaving I was shocked to see my bike standing in a huge sea of fire cracker waste. They must have been placing the fire crackers just everywhere around my bike. My bike must have been so scared with all the noise and not able to run away…

During Chinese New Year celebration some of the public parks have special temple fairs. Beijing has 4 traditional parks outside the former city wall: The Temple of the Sun (Ritan) in the East, the Temple of the Moon (Yuetan) in the West, the Temple of the Earth (Ditan) in the North and the most famous one is the Temple of Heaven (Tiantan) in the South. The only one of these 4 with a temple fair is the Ditan Park. So we went there by bike. That was a good choice because there was a huge traffic jam getting to the park. This picture is at the traffic light just before the park. It needs to be mentioned that the car on the right side has a green light and the pedestrians currently have a red light and should not be on the street:

I find it interesting that the girl in the center of the following picture is carrying a stick with an inflatable pile of orange-brown shit. What a weird thing to buy at a temple fair. And what do you do with it?

On the way to the Ditan South gate the guards shouted that all the park entrance tickets have been sold out and we should all go to the East or North gates. At the East gate there was a huge line for the tickets so that we decided to rather have lunch outside the park and go in afterwards hoping it to be more empty.

We went to a hotpot restaurant and ordered „Old Beijing“style hotpot soup. When that arrived we were a bit confused to find little crabs and sea urchin as a seasoning in the soup. That is the last thing we imagined as Beijing is so far away from the ocean. It tasted a bit strange to have the thin lamb and beef meet cooked in the seafoody soup.

After lunch there were no people at the gate to buy tickets and even inside it seemed quite empty. It must have been crazy earlier.

People were really interested in buying cow hats as it is now the year of the cow.

But not only cow hats seem to be the new fashion. There were so many booths selling all kinds of new hats especially animal hats:

There were different kind of performances, like this traditional long sleeve dance from a minority group from South China (maybe Tibet):

In the center of the Ditan park is the traditional altar. Here you could wait in line to sing a karaoke song of your choice for everybody like this guy standing in front of the pink background:

And if you had the impression that you did not sing well or if you just want to ask for forgiveness for wearing a stupid hat or just to hope all will be well in this new year then you could buy some incense sticks and pray on top of the altar:

Chinese do not have much unemployment. They are creative in finding things that people can do. Like the guy on the left side in this following picture is holding a sign that says exit. I imagine it to be boring standing there the whole day…

The last day of the year of the rat! We received text messages to inform the public that fire works and rife crackers were allowed within the 5 th ring road of Beijing starting from midnight. Strangely we have been hearing fire crackers already the last few days. This is the first year that real fire works are allowed. But somehow I remember seeing them in one of the past New Years too. We made dinner at home as we assumed all restaurants would be closed or at least hardly any one open tonight. At midnight everybody went crazy with fire crackers. There were some beautiful huge fire works as well.

But the main thing is fire crackers as loud as possible to scare away all the bad demons of the New Chinese Year. They have rolls and carpets of fire crackers that you just light on the one side and it goes on forever. It soon got really smokey in our yard. Especially because some people started the idea of putting the boxes of firecrackers inside a cardboard box and then lighting them hoping to make louder sounds. Instead I had the feeling that it just created more smoke and it was shooting burning cardboard pieces all over the place.

I also found it great that they just lighted the fire crackers in the middle of the road.

Here is the link to my snap video of Chinese New Years Eve. And the noise is the actual fire crackers that in reality sound more like bombs. Happy „Niu“ Year as the Chinese say this year. Because „Niu“ means cow and this is the year of the cow.