Anthrogal's Dream Day

Beijing, November 3, 2005, 7 a.m. , um...7:30 a.m.
10 tourists students interested people crammed in a van, headed out for Niujie (Ox Street) Mosque, the largest mosque in Beijing.  It was the festival of Eid, the breaking of the fast of Ramadan.  I was fascinated to learn that there are approximately one hundred million Muslims in China. The streets were blocked off for two blocks on either side of the mosque and thousands of people were there to celebrate.  We were permitted inside the mosque, where hundreds of people were engaged in prayer.

Back out on the street there were food booths offering all kinds of tasty treats.

For four yuan (a little over fifty cents) you could buy barbequed lamb skewers from these guys.  Best. Lamb. Ever. (I ate four skewers worth)

Plenty of other treats, too. Heavy on the sticky rice sweets, like rice balls filled with sweetened bean paste, rice loaf with dates and nuts.  My favorite new treat:  sweet potato chips drizzled with carmelized sugar. YUM!

Huge opportunity for peoplewatching :

And they obviously were expecting some Anglos:

And all this before 9:00 a.m.!  Tummys filled, we piled back in the van and headed north toward The Great Wall.

Have I told you about traffic in Beijing? Think LA or New York on steroids. Beijing drivers are aggressive. Lanes? Merely suggestions. If there is room, just cram yourself in there, honk your horn, ignore all those other people honking their horns. More important for you to get where you're going. Go on, drive in the bicycle lane, pass on the right, change lanes as often as possible. Going forward, getting the edge, that's what counts in this world. And Beijing is huge. More than thirteen million people live in a land area of 6,564 square miles.  Traffic is dense and chaotic, which translates into long drive times to just about everywhere just about any time of day.

Our destination was the village of Lianhuachu in a canyon about 60 miles north of downtown Beijing.  It took about 2.5 hours to get there. We ended up here:

It's a Nong Jia Yuan. Roughly translated: peasant country courtyard - very rough analogy: Chinese dude ranch. This establishment is one of many that Choong-Hwan Park, a PHD candidate from UC Santa Barbara, is studying.  His research focuses on modernity and changing senses of time and space in modern China in the context of state power and globalization.  As I understand it, establishments such as this allow peasants to hold onto their land and make money, while offering a peasant-style experience to urban dwellers and tourists.  This is a typical Beijing-style courtyard home.

Built in a square around an inner courtyard, all rooms open onto the courtyard.

Choong-Hwan and his wife:

We were served bowls of apples and roasted chestnuts

And most of us just sat down to chat.  But I am nosy.  I want to know about things and so I got up and walked around, looking in the windows and snapping photos:

They're makiing these:

Cornmeal dumplings, filled with garlic-infused greens. Delicious!

What a meal we had:

And this is only part of it.  We also drank some of the local (moonshine) liquor. It's strong and vile, just like you'd expect. But just the thing for making it the authentic peasant experience.

Our cook:

Can you see the glow of the liquor in my cheeks?

As if that wasn't enough, when we finished our meal it was time to hike to The Great Wall. Plenty of opportunity for nice photos:

No, that's not it.  First, we had to hike up the hill:

And up:

And then, we were there:

Time for some extreme knitting:

Actually, we stopped three times for Extreme Knitting on The Great Wall, just to be sure we'd get at least one good photo (we got more than one).

We could see where we'd been:

And appreciated the opportunities for pretty photographs:

We finally came to a restored section of the wall:

And realized, too late...

That's the way we came.

The restored Great Wall is steep, baby.

My beautiful daughter in her best Mulan pose:

This is supposed to be the area with the most awesome views:

One last look:

Then down the path and back to the village:

Eva twisted her ankle on the way down, so there was some drama at the end, but no permanent damage, I'm happy to say.

What a full day! An anthropologist's dream.

 

Comments

[Vicki]

Whew! I feel a little vertigo on that top step. What a trip, Celia! Wow. Thanks (again!) for sharing with us.

[Becca]

Awesome views, great food, once-in-a-lifetime hike. Thanks for sharing them with us.