Spring Festival - Part 2

February 7

Much of Chinese New Years Day was spent revisiting the past. My friend and I spent the afternoon exploring our old campus while reminiscing. We were both disappointed but not suprised to see that the university was in the midst of a major facelift. The dining complex (a once noisy construction project that kept use awake many nights during our stay) had been completed, many dorms including ours were being renovated, and all the small shops including our beloved boazi (stemmed bun with meat inside) shack had disappearred to make way for an impressive athletic center. Beijing Foreign Language University has always been renowned for its language studies, but clearly it intends to compete on many other levels. Our classrooms were gutted, our favorite bar and restuarant destroyed, and young newbie Americans had taken up residence in our newly refurbished rooms - nothing is sacred in this city.

With no specific plans and a clear sky (an empty city translates into a week of blue skies) we headed north through Zhonguancun, the electronics center of Beijing. None of the resturants were open that day except for a few chains - luckily we happened upon a Japanese fast-food restuarant attached to a DQ. Although my ear was still out of whack, my hangover seemed to have resided at this point. The next leg of our journey brought us through Beida, Peking University. Although the typical swarms of students I was accustommed to while studying there were home for holiday, many families had come to ice skate on the university's Weiming Hu, No Name Lake. Actually, only a hand full could actually skate, many basically walking on their skates, while most had brought home made sleds with chairs on top and would use ski poles to push themselves along the rough ice (similar to what I had experienced in Harbin). Ice skaters in Central Park or at the Rockafeller Ice Rink look like Olympic skaters compared to these Chinese, but I must say this had no baring on their enjoyment (if the ice wasn't all messed up from the ski poles, I would have certainly loved to join them).

Chinese New Year this year happened to also be my girlfriend's birthday. We celebrated with a large Chinese meal with some friends at one of the more popular Chinese restuarant's in the area. We ate well although we were being pressured to leave early since many employees wanted to get home to see their families on this very important night. We continued the festivities at her bar which including multiple bottles of whiskey and a slew of drinking games, many falling under the realm of scandalous. If any of these photos resurface lets just say I will have a hard time running for political office - and I'll leave it at that.

On a side note, in 20 to 30 years, as my generation(a generation of facebook, digital cameras, and blogs) enters the the world of congressmen, judges, and even presidents, the skeletons should be interesting. And if they have no skeletons, that should raise some questions too.