Day with a Stranger
I’m a big proponent of getting to know the place you’re in, regardless of how long you might stay. I go for walks around my neighborhood, whether I've lived there my entire life or I'll only be staying the night. It’s grounding for me, so on the first day of the Lunar New Year and my third day in China I got up the motivation – and stamina, amid all the crowds and smells and fireworks – to venture out of NLGX.
Wearing a red skirt (it’s auspicious for the new year!), I headed to Jingshan, a series of temples on a large hill overlooking the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square to the south and the Drum and Bell Towers to the north. Beijing is set up like a grid and Jingshan is nearly at the heart of it. The mountain was thought to block bad qi that might have come from the north to harm the emperor.
I was embracing the fact that I was out and about, learning to be more independent, when a British guy approached me and started chatting. He lives in Doha, Qatar, was in Beijing for four days total, and it was his last day. He asked if I’d take a picture of him on the steps, and as we continued chatting it was decided that I’d take him to the next site he was interested in, the Temple of Heaven. It wasn’t as though I had any commitments.
The two main things about Adam (apart from the British accent – “Sam, your wish is my command.” “Oh, whatever.” “You know that if a dashing British gentleman such as myself were to say that to any of your friends, it would melt their hearts, right? And then there’s Sam, and you’re like [Valley Girl accent] ‘what-everrr,’”) were that he was tall and very snarky. We got along well, but for everything that I do know about Beijing, China, and Chinese culture, Adam would ask me two things I had no idea about and then tease me relentlessly for my "ignorance."
At the Temple of Heaven we came across a monstrous crowd watching a reenactment of the emperor along with costumed dancers wielding swords and feathers. (“Tickle sticks,” as Adam called them. “No wonder they couldn’t keep the Mongols away.”) Next we went to the Echo Wall, which was also completely crawling with people, though I was clueless about this one as well.
As we were leaving we were accosted by street vendors selling snacks and silly souvenirs for the temple. Adam wanted to try tang hulu, fruit on a stick with caramelized sugar, so we bought two. Just as we started eating them a man came up and insisted that Adam wanted to buy a silly model of the temple that looked like it was made out of Popsicle sticks. As I argued in my best Chinese that he didn’t want it, it was way too expensive, and that he thought it was ugly, Adam goes, “30 quid, I’ll take it!” They must have made some sort of eye contact where this understanding had passed between them, because I was totally not on the same page. As he stuffed it haphazardly into his backpack he dropped his tang hulu, sacrificing it to the dirty ground. He’d been talking about it since we met and barely had a chance to try it.
We ended up in a cab and went to the Drum Tower, another famous Beijing “thing.” We climbed the steep steps to overlook the gulou area. (“China has a thing with gradients, don’t they?” they’re either unnecessarily spread out or dangerously steep and skinny.) From the drum tower you can see Houhai – a reservoir surrounded by a charming bar district, currently with great ice skating – and due south is Jingshan, where we had started.
As we were about to leave we realized we had just hit the last drum performance of the day. Men dressed in traditional clothing (and Nikes) came out of the woodwork and did a powerful chest-thudding routine. We left and headed to Houhai, where we got warm chestnuts (and compliments on our Chinese – mine was ordering the chestnuts, Adam’s was saying “Happy New Year” after asking me twice) and overpriced bottles of Yanjing beer.
We walked around the lake and met up with Luke - who I recently started dating - for dinner at a hotpot restaurant nearby, and as we toasted beer and baijiu through the evening, Adam would enthusiastically let me know how much he approved of Luke anytime he was out of earshot. “But you’ll always be my favorite, Sam, don’t you worry.”
Well-suited to lots of toasting and great conversation, hotpot is a boiling vessel of broth set into the table to which you add raw meat, noodles, mushrooms, greens, and anything else edible, and fish it out with chopsticks. We have some fantastic photos, but they're isolated on some Brit's laptop in Qatar; he just can't seem to figure out how to share them. Between the food safety and the rolling boil, hotpot is an exciting and dangerous way to eat. I was ecstatic however because it was my first full Chinese-style meal and because Adam was such a fan of Luke and vice versa. ("Let's just appreciate him for his magnificent beard and the haircut that I couldn't pull off because, let's face it, I don't have enough up there.")
After dinner we walked back to Nanluoguxiang among constant fireworks and had several more drinks at a number of different hipster establishments before stumbling to the end of the hutong and putting Adam in a cab to the airport, thus concluding my first random adventure and an all-around fantastic day in Beijing.
