The weekend we didn’t go to Qingdao

Oh China… you’re a great country but your train ticket system is a MESS. (You can only book up to ten days in advance and it’s a complete scramble to buy tickets because it’s you vs the rest of the Chinese population – who, it must be said, know how to use their elbows and have no shame about doing so. Also, you can’t do any of it online.) Add this to Tomb Sweeping Festival, and Claire and I were stuck in Beijing rather than heading down to the beaches and beer of Qingdao with our friends Kat (German) and Rafer (Kiwi). So, since the office was closed Monday/Tuesday I decided to treat the weekend as a holiday anyway, albeit a holiday where Saturday counted as a normal work day. We’d threatened to make seagull noises while drinking cans of Tsingtao and paddling in buckets, but in the end we saw bits of Beijing I hadn’t been to before and quite a memorable staycation.

On Friday night, we went out for a few drinks which almost inevitably (since I had no intention of going out) turned into me rolling into bed at 5.30am and struggling to keep my eyes open all morning at work. Fortunately, I’d scheduled myself a day of catching up on admin stuff requiring zero brainpower. Ah foresight! Saturday night we had a quiet one and on Sunday, Claire and I went for our Usual at the Den. We’ve been there pretty much every weekend since the dawn of our friendship and always have the same thing so Susan, the waitress, is just going through the motions when she gives us menus. She knows it, we know it… one day I’ll surprise the world by NOT ordering a Sunday Roast with orange juice and tea. Not for the foreseeable future though. (In case you’re interested, Claire always has a bacon sandwich.)

After Bacon Saturday (belated) we walked down to Ritan Park, which is possibly my favourite place in Beijing. After cycling down and parking up Delilah and Bill (the bikes) we wandered around with the families in the sunshine. I’m going to write more about Ritan Park another time, but we sat for a while by the lake and did some people watching, strolled past the fishing ponds to see kids catching goldfish with lines and nets then toddling past with their catches in plastic bags and I joined the hordes of people taking pictures of the magnolia trees. No climbing on this occasion.

Kat and Rafer came back on the Sunday night train which arrived about 5am. Fortunately, they waited until 8 to pester us for entertainment. I left the three of them making a plan and went for a run down to Ritan Park (even awesomer in the morning) and by the time I’d done that and showered, after much procrastinating they’d decided on wandering around Yashow Market and getting icecream at Coldstone Creamery. The day passed lazily away in the sunshine – after icecream we wandered back to one of our staple eateries, known to us as “Turkish” even though it’s Xinjiang food and nothing whatsoever to do with Turkey. They do the best chicken wings this side of the moon though, have cold beer in the fridge and always say hello when we walk past so it’s quite a good place to hang out. We were there for a few hours catching up before heading back to the hostel and eventually deciding that two-for-one burgers at Blue Frog were the way forward. Blue Frog burgers, apparently, are the nicest in Beijing… unfortunately I fell asleep in/over mine (the burger was rescued before I face-planted it) so I couldn’t tell you. The others enjoyed theirs though, and had so much fun making fun of me that you wouldn’t believe.

After the laziness of Monday came the supreme awesomeness of Pedalo Tuesday. We headed out to Houhai (a lake in the north west of Beijing’s central area i.e. inside the 2^nd ring road) and straight to the docks. Kat speaks Chinese, but I ended up talking to the guy in the hut and managed to get us a four person duck headed pedalo with my carefully honed miming skills and a smattering of basic Mandarin. Proud? Me? Yeah! Well, you try miming pedalo and not looking mental!! Rafer and I “drove” first while Kat and Claire took in the scenery. 

Unfortunately weren’t properly prepared for the high seas – no picnic, no beer and no cutlasses or pirate hats for pedalo boarding antics. We still managed to have a good giggle though. Piracy another day perhaps… We went for a pizza lunch at The Hutong Pizza afterwards; awesome pizza according to the Beijinger and to us. We ended the day with a Leverage marathon and so endeth the weekend that we didn’t go to Qingdao.

Staycation in your hometown? Have you found something cool and new in the city you live in?

Beijing blues

Since getting back from Hong Kong I’ve been homesick. Blue, out of sorts, quiet; I can’t even hide this away gracefully and plough on – my face is a traitor and apparently it doesn’t matter how much I lie to myself, no-one’s fooled that I’m in anything approaching a good mood. 
Things just seem to keep going pear shaped, and i'm not just talking about my figure. Claire and I had planned on moving to a twin room, but MEIYOU - no money left this month. We'd planned on going to Qingdao with Kat and Rafer (German and Kiwi/Aussie crossover) this weekend, but MEIYOU - no train tickets. I'd planned on going running at least one morning this week, but MEIYOU - no sleep, no energy, no motivation.


I'm not sure what's happened to me - I've just lost my mojo. It's not like I'm missing my family, friends or anything about England any more than usual, I just can't cheer myself up. I feel like I'm sailing the ocean, I've just discovered my boat has turned into a collinder and the crew hasn't noticed yet. Water's unexpectedly coming in from all sides, and there's nothing for it but to admit that I'm about to get wet and I wasn't prepared for this eventuality. I mean, why would I be? Collinders are not sea-worthy and I am usually cheerful. 


My usual strategy to cope with this kind of thing would usually be to run until my legs give out, bury myself in fiction, or generally take myself out of the game until I've recovered my sense of perspective and/or humour. No such respite here. One very noticable thing about Beijing is that it's bloody full of people. 


I guess this is where I need to work on endurance. I'm coming up to the three month mark of my job and three months does tend to be my sameness threshold. Something's going to change soon because something has to. I'm not sure what yet. 


It's the Chinese Ching Ming Tomb-Sweeping Festival this coming weekend (hence meiyou zhan piao to Qingdao) when the Chinese remember the dead, honour their ancestors and sweep the tombs. Well. I had planned on honouring my ancestors (particularly the maternal ones) by going for a paddle in the sea, but I guess I'll have to take the high-road and remember it's "Mind over Matter" and to put on a smile and carry on regardless instead. You'll still get to Scotland before me though.


Having relations to look up to and all the good, sensible advice to live by that I've accrued from them is kind of a comfort when I'm in danger of getting stuck in my head and taking life too seriously. I daresay it's all part of my being British not wanting to either let standards slip nor let myself or any of my ancestors (living and dearly departed) down. Right now I might be sailing a collinder, but damnit, the Union Jack is flying from it and I will carry on bailing until the damn thing is a boat again. There are other weekends for paddling.