So now I’ve turned twelve in Tokyo and twenty in Beijing. Wonder where 2018’ll find me. Anyway, I’m starting out my third decade of life as of a week ago (weird weird weird), and had a pretty incredible birthday. Spent the afternoon at these two parks near the forbidden city.
The first one — pretty sure it was Jingshan — featured the tallest non-building point in Beijing, a lot of retired people dancing and singing, and a tree where some Ming emperor off’d himself. Oh, and dinosaurs. Gotta have your dinosaurs. The Jurassic-park-theme-on-infinite-repeat thing got old pretty fast, though. I think Gu laoshi also mentioned something about how the line that divides the forbidden city from this angle is actually the north-south line for all of Beijing; consequently posing in front of the little pole that marks said line on the tallest hill in the city was really popular among all the other tourists there. This resulted in sorta a wait, so some of the Chinese tourists got bored and instead opted to get pictures of the second best thing, namely themselves next to random white people. Photographing oneself next to uncomfortable-looking 外国人 is somewhat of a national pastime, really. Making them pose with your kids even moreso.
Next up was Beihai, which was less crowded and a lot prettier. It had ornate walkways and gates everywhere, and you could go paddle boating if you had the time to. We didn’t. Anyway nothing really stands out as particularly memorable but overall it was a nice place to kill a couple hours.
Birthday dinner was also pretty rad; we got to go to DinTaiFung — this incredible Taiwanese soup dumpling place that Mike showed us in Shanghai. It went over well, which was pretty much expected considering that they are probably the best things I’ve eaten in China. We’d gone dancing the night before (my first time at Vick’s, actually. Cool place) so after that I think we just went back. I don’t really remember much past that because my memory is fogged by the deliciousness of the dumplings. I’m completely ok with this.
