Tuanjiehu Park

Good weekend. Not amazing, not terrible. It was good, though. Friday was pretty good. Saturday was better, and Sunday was decent. Good weekend. On Friday night, I went out to this Muslim Chinese restaurant nearby with a few roommates (not the retard, you kidding me?), and some other friends of theirs that I’ve met before. They’re all teachers as well and decent to hang out with. You’re probably wondering what makes this place Muslim. I wish I had an answer for you, but I’m really not sure. They have a few specialty dishes that might resemble Muslim. Again, I’m not sure. Most of the food was Chinese, but more Westernized Chinese. It was awesome. The average plate is around 20 rmb, but if you feel like spending closer to 35 rmb, you can get a massive plate fit for two people. Definitely the way to go if you’ve got somebody to share it with, or so I’ve been told. I really wouldn’t know. Haha. Great food, though. I’ll go back there from time to time.

After dinner, we picked up some beers. Some went with one, some two. I stuck with one because my throat had been bothering me a little for the past day or two. So we bought these large bottled beers for only 3 rmb, and went next door to play some pool. It’s 18 rmb per hour, so with 6 people, that’s pretty cheap. The coolest part about this place? This pool hall has a bar and obviously the beer is more expensive. Not only are you allowed to bring in outside drinks, but the bar will open the bottles for you! What kind of craziness is this? That would not fly back in the states. Luckily, I’m in China. Awesome. I’m absolutely terrible at pool, but every now and then I make a decent shot. I usually get a little better after a few games. I just don’t play enough pool, ok? I enjoy it, but it’s a little tough on the ego when you miss shot after shot. I guess you can’t win them all. I was unaware that the UK referred to making a shot as potting a ball. Maybe in the U.S. too? I have no idea. Again, not enough pool. So if I sound dumb, deal. I’m from the country. Just say you made the shot and that’ll do. Regardless, it was a nice, kind of laid back night. Enjoyable.

On Saturday, the blue skies continued and I was a little stir crazy. I had to get out and do something and or see something. Unfortunately, my roommates felt like being bums. Me? I can’t do that. I mean I definitely enjoy being a bum sometimes, but when it’s nice out and I’ve got free time, I want to be outside in the sun. Before doing anything, we all made some lunch together. Remember ‘all’ does not include the dumb one. I may sound like a broken record, but I want to be sure we’re on the same page. While lunch was being made, I did some dishes and took it upon myself to finally clean out the sink. It’s been bothering me for a while. As a whole, it was clean, but there was plenty that needed some ‘TLC’. But wait! I almost forgot! Our whole sink operation has been garbage. The faucet was leaking in several spots, the pipes were leaking underneath, and there was no hot water. Yeah, I’ve been cleaning a few items without hot water. Not the best idea, I know. After finally having enough, I had Avi message our assistant at the company. This sink fiasco took place on Friday, by the way. By the time I was back at 11:30 PM from my morning school (it’s 10 steps away, so no – it doesn’t take me long to get back), the company had sent two new assistants over to attempt a fix. Good one. In a short time period, they realized this was more than they could handle and a plumber or something of that nature was scheduled for the early afternoon. I went to my afternoon school later on, the assistants hung around for the plumber. Came back and wah lah! New faucet, new pipes, HOT WATER! Thank you. As far as I’m concerned, hot water means more sanitation. You can’t wash in cold. I mean you can, but that’s like half-assing it.

So, back to the cleaning of the sink. I took a sponge and scrubbed out the entire thing after letting some hot, soapy water sit in each side. I then took the liberty of taking out those little stoppers at the bottom of the sink (I’m not that sink savvy so you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t know the correct term), dismantled them, and cleaned the individual parts. They were fricken grimy. I mean seriously disgusting. I don’t think anyone has ever done that. Why people? Why? You can’t just leave them there, rarely empty them, and never scrub them off.  The grime and nastiness just builds and builds. Why do I feel like I have some sort of superior brain power compared to the average joe? Some people can really make you look intelligent with the dumbest things.  I don’t blame the roommates, more so the people before them. Seriously. That’s ok, we can each learn from each other. I also taught them how to properly wash dishes or at least properly as far as I’m concerned. This is how my mother washes dishes. It makes sense. Sooo, that’s it. K? If you wash your dishes with this method that I’m about to bash, sorry. I’m really not that sorry. You have your methods, I have mine. Let’s agree to disagree. But yeah. What’s with washing the dishes one at a time? This is no good. It uses more soap (I know. Soap is cheap so why worry about it? Every penny counts as far as I’m concerned. This is how the rich get rich – worrying over trivial matters. Maybe.), it probably takes a little longer, and it’s just not the way to go about it. Fill up the sink with hot, soapy water. Hot, soapy water. If your dishes are sitting in this, they’ve got more time to sit in that wonderful sanitizing liquid mixture. It also makes it easier for the dishes that are usually harder to clean because that hot water is softening up the food buildup or whatever is on the dish. And that’s that. It makes sense to me. The two roommates were astonished by this method and had claimed to never see it before. What? How? Madness.

Where were we before I started ranting about the proper dish washing technique? I know. I went on about it for a while. I could probably right a book about it, discuss theory, make counterpoints, conduct experiments supporting my case, etc. Ok, ok. Blue skies! What to do? The only problem right now is money. I’ve got plenty if need be, but I don’t really want to break into any more American dollars. I should be able to make it before I get my first real paycheck. I’ll get a paycheck for a couple days of February, but not that much. Like a fifth of a full paycheck or a little more. I won’t get my first full paycheck until April 15^th. That will cover all of March. Like I said, I should make it with just Chinese currency from here on out. Might be close, but I think I can do it. So what to do that’s easy on your wallet? Hmmmm. Hmmmm.. Got it. I decided to go to a park. This took a little while because first I had to decide which park and then get directions to it. I wanted to go to Tuanjiehu Park, but based on the bus I was given, I thought I’d end up at Chaoyang Park. Checked the bus, and bam! I was headed in the right direction. They’re both pretty close to my apartment, which is sweet.

When I got off the bus, as usual, I had no idea which direction to go or how close I actually was. The bus stop was called Tuanjiehu, so I figured I had to be somewhat close. I’m absolutely terrible with directions, but I am getting better. I just expect to get lost. *Seinfeld reference approaching.* Elaine – “…I don’t even know where I’m going.” J. Peterman – “Well that’s the best way to get somewhere you’ve never been.” It’s a valid point, so I usually keep that in mind. This time, however, I got lucky. I ran into some foreign faces belonging to a middle-aged couple. They were able to point me in the right direction. It was still a little foggy because you think you’re going the right way, but you never really know how far it is or if you are until you actually get there without any prior knowledge. After walking for a little ways, I decided to pull the old ‘ask a Chinaman routine’ and hope he understood. He did. I was on the right path and soon arrived at my destination.

Tuanjiehu Park (gongyuan is park in Chinese – don’t stress the second ‘g’) was amazing. Absolutely amazing. I stepped in, not really sure what to expect. I walked through this little path with giant rocks on either side (I have a picture of that up on facebook and flickr), and there it was. I looked at the start of the park and said to myself, “Wow. This is what I think of when I picture China.” There’s not an overwhelming amount of traditional Chinese architecture, but the stuff that’s there is really cool. It’s just a really pleasant, peaceful park. I thoroughly enjoyed it. There are plenty of elderly people there too, which I don’t mind. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of younger people and kids as well because there’s a mini theme park on one side of the park. The elderly people practice Tai Chi there in the mornings. I think I might join them someday when I feel like waking up at the crack of dawn. I brought my camera, naturally, and got some great shots. Stupid me, though. I was still in my apartment, and considered bringing my backup battery. I knew that the battery I was on probably wouldn’t last me all day. It still had 3 out of 3 bars, but I had been using it for a while without charging it. Now, I did get some great pictures and managed to use it for a while, but I missed some shots as well. I’ll never make that mistake again. I walked around the park. It’s not massive, but it’s a good size. I loved everything about it. The sun was shining, the scenery was awesome, and it was a little warmer that day. I think it was about 14 degrees Celsius. You can do the math on that one. Multiply 9/5 and then add 32 for Fahrenheit.  It wasn’t too bad. I went out with just a heavier zip up and I was fine. I was so glad to be out of the apartment and really pleased with where I ended up. 

I WENT through these neat, narrow walkways. Round here, we call them the ‘en en dubyas’ (nnw)– neat, narrow walkways. Haha. They were really cool. I stumbled upon some older guys playing music. The guitarist was a bit older, but man could he play. I love coming across that undiscovered talent just playing for the joy of playing. Accompanying him was a violinist and later an accordionist. Their instruments were really neat too. They were both Chinese, so they look a bit different than the Western versions. They all had music in front of them and pretty much followed the guitarist. There were also a random group of people that wanted to join in the music and sang along. It must have been some old, traditional Chinese music. It was amazing. It made Tuanjiehu Park that much better. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. This music spoke to your soul. Just hearing it, watching them play, and seeing the people join in was an awesome experience. I was really happy to be in China at that moment. My camera had died at this point so I wasn’t able to take any pictures or record it, but I did get some pictures of the violinist the next day. I’ll tell you about that and Chaoyang Park in the next post.

Real quick. I was bummed at first that I had no one to join me. I’ve gone out a bunch of times with no company, but sometimes it’s nice to have some. But, there’s two sides to every coin. When there’s no one with you, you can do what you want and go where you want and spend as much time there as you want. There’s no time limits and no worrying about the other people your with and what they want to do. For that sole reason, I enjoy going out alone.

Thanks for reading.

-Jeff