The Last Two Weeks in Beijing

So for the last two weeks in Beijing, I tried my best to tour as many place as possible, and I compiled some of the worthwhile places I have visited.

Bookstore

On August 8, I went to 第三极图书城, a big, comprehensive bookstore in the HaiDian district. It sort of resembles a Borders in the States, except for it is in an eight-story tall building with Level 4 and beyond to itself. It sells all types of Chinese books, movies, music, and some foreign books as well. There is a wide selection of books; besides literature, it also includes books about economics, politics, law, medicine, travel, and psychology. Books are pretty inexpensive (that is, if you are converting the price to American dollars) - about 10 Yuan to 40 Yuan a piece. I really enjoyed my afternoon there as I browsed through the Literature section and looked up authors that my HBA teachers and language partner suggested. There are lots of students in each of the section of the bookstore, and it’s pretty easy to strike up an conversation with any of them. I talked to this econ major who’s interested in literature about “The Red Chamber of Dreams,” one of the four all-time Chinese classics. There is a nice, spacey coffee shop on the six floor with a really nice view (okay, not the nicest view because you just kind of see traffic and smog, but it’s nice for Beijing), so I was able to grab a couple of books and read them while sipping a cup of nice, steamy milk tea . In the foreign language section, there is plenty of classic Chinese literature translated into English so if your Chinese level is not good enough to be able to comprehend the original text, you can definitely check these out! The music section is definitely worth visiting as well. Chinese CDs are pretty cheap, usually under 6 American dollars. This way, you can get fantastically inexpensive music and no guilt about downloading free music off bit torrent or something. There will also be people with hearing disabilities coming up to you and trying to sell you one of their key chains.

Capital Museum of China

On August 11, I went to the Capital Museum of China. It’s not a museum purely dedicated to art, which was something I was not aware of and did not like at all. It’s more of a historically based museum that includes exhibitions about the traditional Beijing life, the history of this capital city, and also other cultural aspects of China. Of course, it also had the traditional watercolor paintings; plates, vases, and other little things made of jade or copper, and Chinese calligraphy. My favorite part of the museum is the exhibition in the basement that featured art pieces by local elementary/middle school students, with its theme based on the upcoming Olympics.

National Art Museum of China (NAMOC)

The day after we had our performances for HBA, or August 12, I went to NAMOC. It turned out to be my favorite place in Beijing! Even though it was not as big as the Capital Museum of China, it contained plenty of modern Chinese art and traditional Chinese watercolor paintings. I have always wondered what exactly is modern Chinese art, and basically what I took away from this visit is that it’s just anything not in water color with the traditional motifs of mountains and bamboos, and done by a Chinese person. Modern Chinese art can be done in many different types of media, and most of them in MAMOC were done in oil paint. On the second floor, it also had an exhibition titled “From Titian to Goya,” featuring some over a hundred oil paintings, ranging from Baroque to Renaissance, from a museum in Spain. It also had a couple of El Greco paintings that, of course, just perplexed me. The museum was really crowded as anywhere in China. Unlike the LACMA or the Getty in Los Angeles, NAMOC was packed with people, whose voices were amplified by the walls in the exhibition hall. Even though I had my ipod turned on to maximum volume, it was still difficult to block out all the noises. It sort of reminded of MoMA or the Met on a busy weekend, except worse. I took my sketch book with me to draw a couple of figures that I liked, and immediately there was a crowd of people, very inconspicuously looking over my shoulders. That made me feel very uncomfortable because I felt that my own personal space has been violated. Making matters worse, people were eating and drinking next to these priceless paintings like they are just looking at their neighbor’s family photos on the wall. The stinky smell of some nasty of a hot dog pervaded the area around the Goya painting. I got spilled on by this guy with a Coke in his hand. He mumbled an apology, threw some napkins on the floor to soak up the spilled soda and walked away, leaving me there to clean up the mess he has made. But even despite the very lousy atmosphere of the Chinese museums, NAMOC is still a very worthwhile place to visit.

Chinese Ethnic Culture Park

On the same day as I visited NAMOC, I also went the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park with my cousins. I am sure people will have different taste in touring, but I actually found the place amazingly boring. It’s a park dedicated to celebrate the different minority groups that reside within China, including Mongolian, Miao, Man, and other ethnicities. Even though they are all Chinese, but they have their own individual languages and customs, all different from the ethnic group that makes up most of mainland Chin and most the Chinese that the Western world has contact with, which is the Han group. Besides the novelty of the style of houses of the different culture groups and the beautiful sceneries in same parts of the park, it was very tedious. We saw performances by different culture groups, but their half-hearted, lazy movements and singing just put me to sleep. Nevertheless, it is a great place to learn about another side of China and its cultural minorities. China is not as homogenous as we thought it is.

798

On August 14, I visited 798, a development of modern Beijing and the fruit of its western influence. It is an art district with many foreign and local artists alike who display their masterpieces and put them up for sale. Walking into 798, you would not be impressed immediately because it just seemed like a regular Chinese living community with really shabby buildings. The rundown-ness of the place is actually something that gives 798 its artistic characteristic. There are lots of interesting graffiti on the wall and corky little coffee shops scattered throughout. 798 is the place to visit if you want to see what modern Chinese artists are doing and the influences from the western world they have received. I saw a couple of artists I like; one of them draws these lines that look like a ball of yarn and compose a figure if you stand far away from the painting. The name 798 is also a pun in Chinese, because the number 798 in Chinese sounds like “Seven Bars” in Chinese as well.