Today Benjamin and I decided to take advantage of the fact that neither of us has much work left to do in the semester but that Ayi is still here watching Seth to go out and do some sightseeing in Beijing. We went to Wangfujing, a shopping street near the city center. A shopping street by defintion, of course, has a lot of shops, but there are quite a few sights to see as well. Probably the most notable landmark--simply because it is such a rare sight for China--is St. Joseph's Cathedral. It was built in 1655 by the Jesuits on land donated by the Qing Emperor Shunzhi but has been destroyed and reconstructed numerous times. Its last major renovation was in 2000. In general, it is not open to the public, but I have heard of some special holiday services being held there.
Further down the street are several statues representing Old Beijing: street musicians, a man getting his hair cut on the street, and even a rickshaw statue where you can sit in the rickshaw and get your picture taken. Across the street from the statues is the foreign book store, where we spent most of our time. We buy a lot of books in China--the ones sold by street vendors are all illegally printed, full of typos, and insanely cheap--but this bookstore was the real deal. It was fun to browse this store of legitimate books; we felt a little bit like we were in the States again, what with the price tags and all.Next stop was the Children's Store, which supposedly has every toy imaginable, but I still couldn't find the traditional game of Memory for Seth, so I guess we will have to order it from the States. We looked around in the toy department but didn't buy anything; Seth really has more toys than he plays with anyway.
The Wangfujing Snack Street is actually a side street off the main road. It can get a little crowded, but vendors offer anything and everything: deep-fried scorpions, seahorses, starfish, snakes, fetal chickens, beetles, you name it, all served kebob style. (The Chinese love their meats on a stick!) We weren't feeling that adventurous, so we went with some candied fruit on a stick, which probably would have been tastier (and easier to eat!) if it hadn't been so cold--the fruit was frozen.Finally we made our way back home via the subway to enjoy the warmth of our apartment. You know, one of my biggest fears about moving to this apartment was that it might never get warm in the winter, but it stays surprisingly toasty in here--at least until they turn off the heat on March 15!
