A not so golden week

Plenty of photo ops along a refurbished old street

Saturday, October 1 marked National Day 国庆节 in China, celebrating the occasion in 1949 when Mao Zedong 毛泽东 proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China 中国人民共和国 from the Gate of Heavenly Peace overlooking Tiananmen Square 天安门广场. Of all the public holidays in China, National Day is probably the biggest, with many people getting the entire week off. My employer isn't quite so generous, but we still observed the three official holidays from the 3rd to the 5th (no school for both me and my daughter!). In normal times, the three of us (along with millions of others) would've made plans to travel, most likely to another country in the East Asian region in order to escape the hordes of Chinese moving around during this time.

But as we all know, these are not normal times. I've already written on this blog of the limitations and restrictions imposed by the government under its Zero-COVID policy, and of the risks of getting caught out in another city or region should an outbreak occur while we are there. But there's also another factor to take into account when considering whether to leave Beijing 北京, even on a day trip - the chance that while visiting a low- or medium-risk area, our Health Kit phone app could receive a dreaded pop-up that would change our status and result in our being barred from re-entering the capital. Should that occur, we would have to call a special number to "appeal" for readmission into the city, but even if successful, there would be a mandatory quarantine at home. It ain't worth the risk or the hassle.

And so this is how we found ourselves having a staycation of sorts during China's "Golden Week" holiday. It began on a gloomy, overcast (with occasional rain drops) but humid Saturday. Amber claimed to have homework to finish, and Shu-E preferred to putter around in her ongoing gardening project, so I went for a long walk along the beautified Liangma River, reaching the desired 10,000 steps total. Unbelievably (or not - this is China, after all), a group of male senior citizens was swimming in one section of the less-than-pristine waters, an activity I wouldn't recommend except to my worst enemies. Perhaps they're still inspired by the Great Helmsman:

Sunday, the second day of the five-day weekend, was gray and overcast, much like the previous day. This was a wife-directed day of activity, though with substantial input from her lesser half. I was in the mood for that most succulent of breaded, deep-fried pork cutlets known as tonkatsu 豚カツ for lunch, and one of my Mandarin teachers had told me that there was a branch of the Saboten さぼてん restaurant chain in a shopping center only a subway stop away from where we lived. My daughter was surprised to learn that while there were 31 Saboten outlets in Taiwan, only nine are in operation in China (13 if you include Hong Kong and Macau). Formosa rules!:

Unfortunately, it appeared many Chinese diners were also in the mood for what Mandarin speakers call zházhūpái 炸猪排. Faced with a wait of between 40 minutes and an hour to be seated, we killed time by window shopping 逛街. Stopping in a bookstore, my gaze was caught by some Mandarin translations of Japanese novels. The books in the center and on the right ("The Moon Over the Mountain" 山月記 and "Light, Wind and Dreams" 光と風と夢, respectively) were written by Atsushi Nakajima 中島敦:

Lunchtime at last! Amber did her best to ignore her old man, choosing instead to focus on the task at hand, grinding up sesame seeds:

Call it what you will (要肉猪排套餐/やわらかヒレかつ膳/Tenderloin Set), it was worth the wait:

Masks on the wall outside the restrooms:

My daughter wasn't feeling it. She prefers to think of herself as Taiwanese:

Shu-E and Amber on the mean streets of Beijing:

The remainder of the afternoon was spent at the Sanlitun Soho Shopping Mall and its environs:

Monday turned out to be a washout, both literally and figuratively. It rained most of the day, giving the girls an excuse to stay indoors. But as it was more of a drizzle than a downpour, I went out after lunch on a walk, ostensibly to get in another 10,000 steps (I ended up with almost 8300), but in reality to seek out a branch of Page One alleged to located in nearby Sanlitun 三里屯 (the trendy shopping district that we had visited the day before - see just above). But although both Apple and Google Maps were both insisting I was standing in the right spot, I couldn't find any outlet of the Singaporean bookstore chain. Apparently brick-and-mortar booksellers (at least those selling English-language titles) are having a hard time staying in business in China. 

Tuesday was dry, but the first hints of autumn were finally in the air - for the first time since we arrived in Beijing on August 23, the daytime high failed to reach 20°C (68°F). In fact, it only got up to 16°C (61°F), necessitating the wearing of a windbreaker for a good part of the daylight hours. More importantly, it meant having to wear long pants for only the second time in the last 42 days, the first being when I went to check in at the embassy soon after we arrived. The penultimate day of our long holiday weekend belonged to the wife, as she wanted to visit the Qianmen Pedestrian Street 前门大街, one of those historic neighborhoods reconfigured to satisfy the desires of the 21st-century tourist. One of the first stores we stepped into after arriving was a gift shop trying to unload some Winter Olympics character stock:

My daughter eyes a replica of a 1920's mail delivery car:

Having a spirited discussion with the 4th-century calligrapher Wang Xizhi 王羲之:

Many of the stores in the Qianmen district proudly displayed their longevity. This liquor store dates back to 1683 (or so it says):

Amber pointed out this water tower on its precarious perch:

Lunchtime in a restaurant proudly featuring "The old Beijing roast duck":

北京烤鸭:

Coronavirus be damned! Granted, almost everyone was wearing face masks, and I can't even begin to tell you how many times we had to scan QR codes and show green on our Health Kits in order to go inside anywhere:

Modeling a silk outfit in a shop dating back to 1862:

Inside a traditional sweet shop. Shu-E doesn't care much for the sweeter things in life, but she can't resist goodies made almost entirely of sugar:

Like this traditional snack called bīngtánghúlu 冰糖葫芦, sugar-coated fruit (in this case strawberries) on a skewer:

Amber wasn't happy I chose this photo to illustrate her devouring the treat:

Zhengyangmen 正阳门, the gate that gives Qianmen ("front door") its name. Behind it lies Tian'anmen Square 天安门广场, where on the fourth day of the sixth month roughly 1⁄3 of a century ago nothing whatsoever happened:

We took a sightseeing bus for a 40-minute drive around Tiananmen and the surrounding area. Unfortunately, we sat on the wrong side of the aisle for taking decent photos, but I did what I could. At one point we drove by Jingshan Park 景山公园, which my wife would like to visit once the green leaves begin changing color:

 

Passing by the back gate to the Forbidden City 紫禁城:

Approaching Tian'anmen Square:

The square was absolutely packed with visitors. The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall 毛主席纪念堂 stands in the background. Though we've been to Tian'anmen Square in the past, we've yet to pay a visit to the most famous embalmed corpse in China:

Going by the rear of the Great Hall of the People 人民大会堂, where starting on October 16 Xi Jinping 习近平 will be anointed as China's paramount leader for an unprecedented third term, and where the timing for an attack on Taiwan will be discussed and deliberated:

Back at Qianmen Dajie, and the neighborhood Starbucks:

Time for some more snacks before heading home, in this case takoyaki たこ焼き:

I told the girls that I would like to get fitted for a suit like the one on the left before we leave China in three years' time. My daughter disapproved:

谢谢:

Today (Wednesday) was the last of the five days, and again the girls elected to stay home. I, however, was stubbornly determined to locate a Chinese equivalent to Japan's excellent Books Kinokuniya 紀伊国屋書店. I had struck out earlier in the week trying to track down a Page One outlet, but that actually ran the count to strike two, as I have neglected to mention that one of the reasons the three of us went to Sanlitun back on Sunday was so I could find The Bookworm, reputed to be the best biblio outlet for expats in Beijing, but which turned out not to be where both Apple and Baidu 百度 insisted it should've been. However, while we were on the bus tour yesterday afternoon, I caught a glimpse in passing of the Wangfujing Bookstore 王府井书店. Certain that it actually existed, I returned this afternoon to check it out:

Alas, disappointment smote again. For while the sign that greeted me at the top of the escalator indicated there were imported books on the fourth floor, all I could see were Mandarin-language translations of English novels. The floor below had plenty of selections for learning English, as well as lying titles promising the ease of grasping 普通话, but these weren't exactly what I was searching for:

Art for sale. Priced at between RMB12,000 and 20,000 ($1685-2800), a bit out of the range of a modest government peon such as myself:

Just when I was on my way back to the bench having struck out swinging, I caught a glimpse of the Beijing Foreign Languages Bookstore, opposite the huge Apple outlet in central Beijing. Remembering the times I had spent browsing (and occasionally purchasing) titles at the Shanghai Foreign Languages Bookstore back in the day, I went inside to have a look around:

It turned out to be strike four (if that's possible). For while the shop's name was not a misnomer, virtually everything on offer inside consisted mainly of mass-market paperbacks and movie tie-ins. That atmosphere was that of a garage sale, and the bookshop had clearly seen better days. My guess is that with China's doors largely being closed to foreigners for the last two years, and with Chinese themselves unable to easily travel abroad, the demand for foreign language publications has dropped precipitously. It didn't appear there were many takers for a certain tome by a certain well-known Chinese personage:

没关系. There's always Amazon...:

I'll end this post with a couple of snaps of my attempting to look like a stern Chinese family patriarch while sitting in a traditional heavy wooden chair located in one of the embassy's conference rooms. The eagle was a nice touch, but whatever Confucian-derived moral authority I may have been attempting to wield was thoroughly undermined by the "Slovenia: Since 1991" T-shirt I had chosen to wear that day:

In honor of the National Day holidays, I present you with the late Holger Czukay's deconstruction of China's national anthem, the March of the Volunteers 义勇军进行曲: