骑自行车到故宫

First week of classes are over. In the last half hour of class on Friday, just before lunch, one of the other teachers came into the room and handed our teacher a large stack of paper. Homework for the weekend and next week, great. Write an essay, do some homework, and turn both in at 8am on Monday, and also we will have a quiz at 8am so prepare. Have a good weekend, bye.

Today we went for a 6hour bike ride around the city. We rode along the outside of the Forbidden City.

This is the view I had most of the time.

This is one of the major streets in Beijing.

This is kind of what most of the city looks like.

Our teacher explained to us about how he does not like politics and government, but how he does like culture. He says those three things are what make up life..and you need all three. He says that the recent development in the city..is too focused on money. For example Beijing used to have a city wall in addition to the great wall. The city wall was torn down and replaced with what is now the second ring road to allow better flow of traffic in and out of the city center. It was proposed at one point by a professor at Beijing University to only build/ develop outside the city wall and let the inside remain true Beijing. He also said that as a child he remembered playing on the city wall. Also he talked about the hutongs and how there used to be far more. A Hutong is like a narrow residential street. There are a few left and we rode through a few. Most have been destroyed and replaced with high rises.

This is the Front of the Forbidden City (gugong).

Notice the man above the door.

This is a nicer Beijing street.

This is a man taking a picture of me. He is hired by the government to take pictures of Chinese culture, or tourists ( Chinese and Foreign) doing tourists things, publicity stuff I think.

Along the nicer streets you can still see traditional old Beijing houses and doors. There are also lots of new structures that are built to resemble the old stuff. Our teacher pointed out which were old and which were new.

Here is a very large, modern door/gate and a nice reflection of me on my bike with camera in hand.

This man’s jacket is for “Beijing Light Automotive Co, Ltd.” ie: Bicycle.

Food.

Today I had an assortment of small eats from some place near the Gugong. Most were rice or redbean of some sort. Most were not good. I had a bun with pork in it that was good, I also had what resembled a biscuit but was closer to the density of solid rubber. It was tasty. I had a ball of sticky rice that I thought was benign until I bit into the center to find green chilies drowned in sugar.

The other day I went out to lunch with some classmates and had some good food, but none of them ate it. There was one bad dish. It consisted of lots of sugar cube size and shape jello cubes with potato flakes within, all douses with vinegar of some sort..not good. There were these awesome slime noodles, transparent, stretchy, chewy, huge and awesome to play with. There was also broccoli with garlic. I ate another duck last night.