marya_

I hitched another ride to Beijing and Shanghai this past month. This role of trailing spouse with independent projects rather suits me. I get to meet some local people and participate in some dinners and events, a privilege to be savoured. Yet, like many of you, I love going solo as well so, while my husband is working long hours, I can luxuriate in independent exploration. It’s an equal mix of stumbling about and serendipitous discovery. It also makes for a quirky commute between relative luxury and penury since I keep a pretty tight reign on expenses while on my own.

We fly United transpacific (BOS-ORD-PEK and PVG-SFO-BOS) because that is where the miles accumulate. The itinerary this time: 1 night en route, 6 nights in Beijing, and 7 nights in Shanghai. Our PEK-PVG connection was on China Eastern.

There is such choice of accommodations in these two cities now that I think that I’ll dally a bit on the subject of our hotels just in case that helps anyone else with planning.

The Jianguo Hotel, Beijing

We chose this hotel on the advice of my husband’s colleague, an old China hand who has stayed here on and off since it opened. Built in 1982, it is reported to be the “first joint-venture hotel” built in Beijing after the country opened up, which puts it on the map historically, but none of the people I asked knew who the second party in “joint” was. American? European? I lazily gave up asking and still don’t know the answer. That pretty much sums up my experience in China; I often learn remarkable things yet completely fail to get answers to what I (at least initially) think of as simple, direct questions. Part of the satisfaction in returning places though is shedding light on this issue of how one’s own culturally determined or idiosyncratic biases can put one completely out of sync with the local way of seeing, doing, and valuing things.

The hotel is a 4 star. If you want luxury and attentive service in this part of town, there are better options nearby such as at the China World, the Kerry Center, Raffles, and much more, but, this is a choice for the less demanding and more price conscious. We booked off the hotel’s website. On that colleague’s recommendation, we reserved a “business executive room.” The rate: 924 RMB including 1 breakfast, plus 150 for an additional breakfast, plus 15% service, so that’s about 181 USD per night in all. It included “Jianguo Club” (concierge floor) privileges. I expect that you could do better on the rate but that’s what we did.

The lobby is small but the walls right and left as you enter are made of glass and charmingly give on to corridors of fountains between garden-level rooms with small balconies. An eccentric touch – a life-sized antelope or something similarly incongruous is poised along one of the far balconies. (These rooms may be very appealing rooms in warm weather if you don’t share space with ornamental wildlife.) The garden effect is refreshing.

Check-in for business-executive rooms is conducted upstairs in the Jianguo Club. We were pressured to upgrade to a suite but declined. The rooms offer everything you need, including very comfortable bedding, but are quite small so the suite may have been a good idea but we didn’t wish to spend more. What is fine space for an individual and just okay for a couple would be less agreeable for friends sharing a room. Our room had a little balcony that was sealed closed; you could contact the management if you wished to have it opened, but that neither suited us in March weather nor did we know the security ramifications.

The club-room privileges are modest. Cocktails and appetizers are offered every day from 6-8 p.m. but nothing about the experience feels especially welcoming. Think Chinese notion of what “businessmen” want married to resource conservation delivery mode. There are numerous bottles of hard liquor and some wine and beer plus some horrid hors d’oeuvres to maybe take the edge off the hard stuff. Staff hover nearby, zealously soliciting room numbers and eyeballing everyone’s consumption habits as if the goal were to return the major quantity of the refreshments to the storeroom at the end of the day. We stopped in twice but weren’t tempted to make it a routine.

The Jianguo Club staff are pleasant enough but don’t seem to have high-level problem solving skills. You perhaps would like an example so that you can decide whether I am insanely demanding or reliably able to make such an assessment so here is an account of my most demanding request. On our second day, I asked them to call the “Egg” (National Performing Arts Center) to ask about the best way to secure tickets for a performance (two days later) by the National Symphony. I had noticed that the ongoing CPPCC conference had introduced temporary pedestrian and vehicular traffic disruptions in the area around the Egg so I hoped either for guidance, or the opportunity to reserve tickets over the phone with a credit card for pick-up on performance day, or some solution preferable to just burning up my time by making a trip out into the thicket and possibly bumping up against access routes shut off by police lines.

I always go into these inquiries armed with written documentation so that my accent won’t trip us all up but still this request proved staggeringly difficult even though it involved a major local cultural attraction. When phone contact with the box office was finally made, the answer was that three or more days (not two, as we were offering) were necessary to reserve and messenger over the tickets so nothing could be done. I find it hard to believe that the new national performing arts center doesn’t have a capacity for taking a credit card number over the phone and sending tickets to the “will call” window but maybe it is true. Our question about whether it would be difficult to find a taxi after a performance that let out at 10 p.m. on a Sunday also flummoxed the panel and they had no ability to help us weigh competing taxi and subway options. Requests for help at this desk that are routine – Can you make a reservation for us at X? – tended to produce panic unless you provided the whole script plus phone number. I wonder about the staff training because this is a type of request usually handled with grace and ease by staff of a concierge-level floor.

Breakfast is served at Justine’s, billed as the oldest French restaurant in Beijing. The décor is a blend of fading faux French and opulent safari tent. The big plastic Tour Eiffel in the center of the dining room is only slightly more congruous than the antelope (or moose or whatever it is – it was a recurring peripheral observation rather than a source of real interest) hovering over one of the garden rooms. There is a standard buffet with good fruit and an omelet station but mediocre baozi (alas), Japanese breakfast offerings, and western pastry. The coffee was badly burned on a daily basis and arrived topped off by the fabulously foaming froth that intense boiling produces, but self-help was available from a “specialty coffee” machine on the side of the room. The dining room’s strength lies in crisp white linens, substantial distance among tables, and a welcome peacefulness so we chose this dining room over the more casual coffee-shop style restaurant on the premises. As a financial calculation, such a breakfast isn’t at all worth the 150 RMB (plus service!), of course, but you already know that.

The location of the hotel on Jianguomenwal in the southeastern part of the central city, by the CBD (Central Business District), is great for walking, access to subway, and catching a taxi. The hotel grew on me somewhat over the six nights that we were there, but there were periodic jarring experiences reminiscent of an older, less hospitable Beijing. I was reminded of the time six years ago that we stayed in a modest hotel in the far north of the city in which floor matrons were prone to breaking into your room unannounced just to…er… keep an eye on things or on you, the “guest.”

Since then, the Olympics have come and gone and Beijing is more accustomed to us foreigners, but at a hotel like this, there are traces of the old ways. For example, right after we completed check-in formalities and settled into our Jianguo room, the phone rang. A clerk said (with perhaps the best of intentions but menacing effect) that our rate was only good for stays of 4 or more nights and did I truly understand that? I was perplexed since our booking was for 6 nights and we had allegedly just concluded all these discussions with them, but in dim-witted, jet-lagged fashion I eventually worked out that I was being warned not to check out early and expect the rate to hold. Oh, okay. Sure. We won’t skip out and argue that they honor the rate.

Let’s call the hotel an unsettling cross between a middle school and a luxury hotel. I loved the comfortable beds and the one red rose in the room but was less fond of the ‘hospitality police’ style of the staff. They reminded me of a passel of hall monitors and cafeteria ladies vigilantly policing the behavior of potential truants, I mean… guests. Bobody wants to go back to middle school and pay for the privilege.

Please, oh please, do flood this thread with advice on how to do much better for the equivalent of 181 USD (157 for room plus 15 % “service”) per night for a couple in central Beijing. Now that we have followed up on the recommendation to try the Jianguo Hotel, I am ready to try other digs if another opportunity to hitchhike to China arises. Tart tongued observations about the Jianguo Hotel aside, it was a splendid trip.

Shanghainese

Hitchhiking/Trailing spouse, what a great opportunity to travel and share your explorations and observations, can't wait for you to continue!

PeterN_H

I think the choice of the Jianguo is a good example of the problematic nature of 'Old China Hand' advice. The situation changes very quickly in Beijing, and does so constantly, and few can keep up. In the case of the Jianguo the hardware is tired, despite refits, and the last foreigner left the management, I believe, several years ago. It's time the whole site was redeveloped.

It's probably 'Old China Hand' advice that keeps the place going, since it was (decades ago) once 'the' place to go, and even up to a decade ago the Sunday coffee concerts in the lobby remained a popular 'Old China Hand' meeting place. A decade ago I would regularly take one of the garden rooms overlooking the goldfish-stocked ponds, although they were small even then. But there are now very many better, newer, fresher, larger-roomed, foreign-managed choices to be had for this kind of money, or indeed for less. None will deliver quite the level of service you expect, but some will come very close.

Some of the other frustrations arise from assuming that institutions and functions with familiar English names in China (concierges, box office, etc.) function with the same motivations and understanding of their functions as those they purport to copy. In general staff are entirely ignorant of any aspects of life beyond their own personal experience, and in general incapable of discovering the right answer to any query or indeed motivated beyond giving you any answer other than that which will make you go away, right or wrong.

They themselves are not attending the National Grand Theatre and hopping into a cab afterwards, and lack the ability to imagine themselves into your situation. These problems extend into many of the foreign-run hotels, too (there is only a tiny number of concierges in Beijing worthy of the name), but in general if you are looking for a simulacrum of the services you expect in a Western hotel, as opposed to merely having the sign without the function, it's in these foreign-run hotels you need to look.

Almost nothing in China is organised with the convenience of the end-user in mind, and certainly almost nothing at all that's a government institution, as the National Grand Theatre is. To buy tickets the best thing is just to go and buy them yourself at the counter, or there are three or four on-line ticket agencies, some with English-language interfaces, that provide an alternative. But the basic rule is do-it-yourself: the concierges would in general certainly prefer you didn't trouble them with projects that have no immediately resulting income for them. Now if you'd like to book for this dinner-dance show for which they conveniently happen to have leaflet on their desk, that's another matter...

Peter N-H

thursdaysd

Lucky you getting to "trail"! Looking forward to more.

Kathie

Chuckling along with your hotel account. I've also done the "trailing spouse" routine in a past life... and to China. This was a lot of years ago, over 15, and the city was Guangzhou, but the story was the same. At least we were in the "best hotel in town" but the service was very similar to yours. We were also on a club floor. Accustomed to Club floors elsewhere, I expected some canapes along with the drinks. Well, like you, I thought the food offered was inedible (and I didn't see anyone else eating it either), and after the first night I didn't even have a drink. After a couple of attempts of making simple requests of the Club floor staff, I simply took care of things for myself, which is what I expect they wanted me to do.

marya_

This analysis is very helpful.

For anyone else who wrestles with like cultural conflict over service delivery issues, I am going to expand on this at the risk of flogging it to a second death.

My previously limited but instructive experience to date (including stays at the Beijing Continental Grand, Uniscenter, Friendship Hotel, Shangri-la, and the Kerry Center) had sensitized me to the range of approaches to service by Beijing hotel personnel, so it wasn't quite the case of 'clueless westerner striding in and demanding too much' that I may have made it out to be above.

I had done all the research on-line about what I wanted to see, the date/time/prices and all the particulars. I had been to the venue already on a previous trip so I didn't need help finding it or understanding protocols. I just wanted some real-time consultation on how to get tickets given what a Chinese associate described as near blockades around the facility related to the CPPCCC meeting. (Indeed, I had walked through that area the day before and seen underpasses/subway entrances blocked off by police, etc.)

My routine approach would be to just head over there, as you say, but it seemed foolish to do so without further guidance. It seemed like a particularly appropriate matter for the staff of a concierge-level floor to handle -- I just wanted them to call the theater and ask what my options were for buying two tickets to a particular concert at the National Symphony. It seemed quite likely that they would take a credit card number and hold the tickets.

Here's the point. It boiled down, in my mind, to brief interpretation help rather than any particularly demanding request for service. I didn't begin to have the language skills to call the theater myself; asking one of the unoccupied staffers sitting behind the desk to do so seemed eminently appropriate.

The story ends fine even though I am slow to grasp an understanding of what the premium for a concierge-level floor actually buys at a hotel like this. We made it to the box office the day before the concert and secured tickets. It just took lots of time.

Nothing like self-reliance, as you suggest.

merckxxx

I can tell you what to do in the future if it really matters. Stop by the Peking youth hostel at the wall of the Forbidden C. & do a deal at the counter (not having a room, some rouse will be needed) & they will handle 100% of what your 4* hotel cannot deal with. I went directly to the EGG and bought tickets, but I could have dealt with the hostel staff and they would have done everything - with a genuine smile.

PeterN_H

I think the frequent use of the words 'seem' and 'seemed' are all you need to know. In a Chinese-run hotel there's a lot of seeming, where things have names but not actually the functions attached to those names.

> The story ends fine even though I am slow to grasp an understanding of what the premium for a concierge-level floor actually buys at a hotel like this.

The name, but not necessarily the function. If you want to increase your chances of getting the function you need to go a foreign-run hotel, or, as hinted above, to some backpacker/budget traveller-targeting hostels--although the latter, having seduced with budget room prices typically take their guests hand over fist for every other service, which explains their eagerness to help with tickets, day tours, etc. Had you stayed in one of the Hiltons, for instance, you would have found the service you required.

marya_

This "name but not the function" distinction is very helpful. Going forward, I am resolved to be leery of forms that mimic western services because they have been observed to be marketable/profitable (like a separate club floor) but that likely won't deliver the goods beyond meaningless superficia such as a separate check-in and a few bottles of booze put out at sundown. It just doesn't work to copy the trappings without getting the core idea of customer service, does it.

So, less clear is how to choose more wisely next time. The idea of a Hilton stay is not attractive. We went with the Jianguo this time suspecting it was past prime but thinking that it might offer a more local experience than the Shangri-la did last Fall. We thought that it might offer some hints of its significance during those years when Beijing was opening up. Well, no.

Let me make myself fairly ridiculous and ask plaintively if there is a way to have a more culturally engaging lodging experience in Beijing. Particularly if one's Mandarin is at toddler level. Quixotic? Give up? Go western-run in the major cities and look for something more distinctively Chinese in a rural spot?

What about the courtyard hotels? They too have the potential to be soul-less efforts to capitalize on current western hutong mania, no? More possibilities of shiny trappings and nothing more.

Is there a path that eschews western and eschews ersatz or am I dreaming?

Thanks for any thoughts. I'd be grateful and I think that this is potentially useful to other people thinking about where to stay in Beijing.

rhkkmk

personally i prefer my hotels to be modern and as up to date and comfortable as possible....to create a sort of oasis and refuge....i then like to immerse myself all day in the real and current life of a place....including its heritage

marya_

Bob -- maybe that is the best strategy of all.

Kathie -- Guanzhou 15 years ago! Now that WAS a trip.

Merck -- thanks for suggesting another approach.

Thursdaysd and Shanghainese -- lovely to see your names pop up since I have often enjoyed reading your words.

Peter -- thank you for the on-going tutorial which has been crucial to making sense of things.

Back to thinking about Beijing.

Day 1 in Beijing

For those of us East Coast Americans who are not morning people, one of the side dividends of traveling to Asia is those few days of time zone adjustment when we wake up uncommonly early and get to experience those special pre-dawn into sunrise hours whose tranquil pleasures normally elude us. I enjoy this in limited doses although not nearly enough to make a habit of rising early once back at home.

We breakfasted at leisure in the hotel dining room, devouring the CHINA DAILY along with the buffet. Mmmm… baozi, and also some appealing looking maki at the small Japanese station, but all proved of so-so quality. Plan B included an omelet, yogurt, and enormous fruit platter, all served up with robust servings of the news. Articles about Google ‘s challenge to local…ahem…authority and Obama’s so-called political posturing on the yuan revaluation issue were especially memorable. Just like the B-grade baozi, these news matters were to be recurring items on the breakfast menu throughout our 6-night stay.

That first day in Beijing was not only brisk and sunny, it offered some glorious freedom. My husband headed off to work and I had the entire day to myself, with only the requirement of meeting a group of people well across town for dinner at 6 p.m. Anyone else out there love walking solo around cities as a way of making a connection to them? I decided, given the fine weather, to devote the whole first day to a long stroll. No obligations, no must-sees, just a walk-out-the-door-and-let’s-see-what-happens before I have to be up in Haidian for dinner.

A horridly expensive but dependable pair of Mephisto shoes make this kind of day possible. A set of maps, compass, Chinese cell phone, cards with my hotel address, and guidebook provide all the support I need. Within the hour, a tired-looking westerner with flapping map asks me if I can point him in the direction of the Mongolian Embassy, so either I look more competent than I actually am or I have just skirted set-up for a scam. Part of the fun is neither knowing nor caring.

For any of you committed urban wanderers who know the local terrain, my route headed north on Dongdaqiao lu past lots of shops, then west on Guaghua lu where I sampled glimpses of well-guarded embassy properties from the road and then turned off into Ritan Park where I idled happily for awhile. Made a mental note to return to the Stoneboat Café some day. Wended south again on smaller roads, then picked up Jianguomenwai dajie just as it becomes Jianguomennei dajie. Time to head inside the old city walls that linger on albeit largely in imagination.

Heading west on Jianguomennei dajie afforded one chance -- admittedly among so many -- to feel awestruck by the scale of Beijing construction and the explosive development in recent years of the high-end retail sector. After breakfast stroll through Tiffany’s, anyone? I dipped into some glossy stores but just as a sightseer, not as a shopper. Clerks far outnumbered customers and I felt as though I might as easily be in museums as in retail stores. Perhaps they are busier at other times of day.

At Wangfujing, I turned off and headed north, both curious to see how that area might have changed since my pre-Olympics visits and looking for a shopping opportunity. I claimed earlier that I had no must sees, but my one destination of the day was the Foreign Languages Bookstore where I hoped to update my beloved pre-Olympics laminated map. That map evokes many memories but is now about as useful as a pair of reading glasses from three prescriptions ago. Too much guesswork and memory work has to be supplied to add to what is before me on paper.

The bookstore didn’t disappoint. I browsed for quite awhile in the expansive English language fiction and non-fiction about China section, bought the map, and then parked on a bench outside in that pedestrian area of Wangfujing. I just watched the world swirl by and delighted in being somewhere else where the simplest matters – reading a sign, crossing a busy street – engaged my full attention and still held a certain amount of mystery.

thursdaysd

Still enjoying this (and thanks for the kind words).

"we wake up uncommonly early" - yes, I still remember my first morning in Beijing in '97, wandering around the outside of the Forbidden City, and through hutongs that have probably gone now.

Impressed to read that the FLB now has an "expansive English language fiction" section - in the past I've had trouble finding fiction to read in China. I was reduced to "The Scarlet Letter" (not required in school) and an abbreviated "Wind in the Willows" during a storm in the south west!

marya_

I remembered it as a none too impressive bookstore as well, thursdaysd, but things have changed for the better. You can now find most of the China titles you find in a Boston bookstores.

dogster

Hi marya_ I'm following along here. Not having been to China, all I can do is watch and learn. Enjoying all of it. You're traveling in true Dogster style; head out the door with little or no agenda, follow your instinct... ahhh. great.

Shanghainese

Thank you, Marya, isn't it great to wander? I lived on Jianguomenei daje/Daijichang many moons ago, and have visited pre-Olympics, didn't know it's so high-end now with Tiffany's there. Loving your TR!

Kathie

marya, ah, another wanderer. There are few pleasures as nice as wandering alone in an unfamiliar city! I always have the hotel card with me, knowing that if I get lost, I can always catch a taxi back. But with that safety net present, I can't remember ever taking a taxi back because I was lost. Wandering means you get to see so much that is not "on the tourist track."

And in the early morning, geting to see the locals doing tai chi in the parks, etc, feels like a delightful little slice of life.

PeterN_H

Hotel queries:

I think the whole hotel question is being over-thought. While I've stayed at almost every single real four- and five-star hotel in Beijing at some point or other, and most of them several times, and enjoy my creature comforts, I'm largely at a loss to see that this all needs much thinking about. If you really want the Westernised services (or something reasonably near to them) you choose the familiar names and the luxury Asia brands.

If you can live without that (and really, if you're planning to be out all day what's the point as long as your room is secure, clean, comfortable, and everything works--you'll spend most of the time in it with your eyes shut anyway) then why not go to one of the courtyard hotels, that vary from hostel to luxurious, and from original to complete rebuild. There's at least something local about them, and it can be argued that even if entirely fake (which means underfloor heating and a proper bathroom) are in their very fake-ness authentic.

China is the land of fakes: fake government, fake news (China Daily, as mentioned), fake legal system, and fake everything from pearls, to shampoo, to iPods. These places tend to be small scale, do not pretend to offer the Westernised trappings, and so do not fail to do them well. Staffs tend to be very small, and so more easy to become acquainted with and to interact with.

Otherwise, why not choose a hotel with more individuality than those churning out the same formula (however comfortable) that they do everywhere else--again, why come to Beijing to be unable to tell whether you're in New York or Geneva? The Opposite House, Hotel G, and on a larger scale the Raffles, all have unusual and interesting qualities while offering every possible creature comfort.

Really the last category to choose is the one into which the Jianguo now falls--the Chinese-run up-market hotel that's pretending to be the real thing, but whose only real equivalence with the Western-run properties it seeks to emulate is price. If you are going to go Chinese-run then there are plentiful newly-opened middle-market properties, clean and quiet, that will cost a third of these prices, and do what they do adequately. If you really must go Chinese-run up-market then choose something truly monstrous like the Legendale (although actually a Macau-run property) which is very Chinese insofar as it takes bad taste to heights beyond the stratosphere (mock French 18th-cent interiors with crystal lampshades and gold-plated bath taps) and is the most monumental piece of kitsch ever conceived outside of Las Vegas or Macau; a place of quite dizzying joy.

Peter N-H

marya_

She who was doing the over-thinking now gets it and I enormously enjoyed reading this spirited last bit of advice. Thanks.

Sadly not tempted by that Macau-run bit of faux French heaven only because I have already experienced such dizzying heights of joy. Twice in my life have I been so blessed. (A) I once took a business trip to Las Vegas. (B) I once lived for a (seemingly very long) week in an over-the-top service apartment in Gubei in Shanghai.

Oh, that apartment... maybe it was designed by a Legendale apprentice. The living room was presided over by a prodigiously large electroplated Napoleonic eagle whose fierce expression is burned into my memory. Someone had stuffed the living room full of copies of Empire-style furniture, but they had failed to connect the pipes in the kitchen to a water supply so the kitchen was just for show. Priorities. The lawn was strewn with fake greco-roman ruins of impressive proportions and, oh, yes, a likely full-scale model of a dinosaur. The one bit of English language instruction that we encountered on-site -- a sign on a door exhorting you to PLEASE CLOSE THE DOOR OMNIVOROUSLY -- added to the overall hilarity and failed to clear up any cultural confusion. Young men looking like toy soldiers saluted you on and off the gated premises. Indeed, we were somewhere special. Not until I was taken to Shenzhen on a later trip did I again experience such...er...rapture.

So, falling in line behind the idea of "in their very fakeness authentic" courtyard hotels with small staffs, I am wondering where to look for recommendations of specific properties. The fall-back can be a western oasis -- I am forever cured of Jianguo fever -- but I'd love to try a Beijing courtyard hotel next time.

I am home again so surely it is time to begin planning in earnest for a next time, no?

dreaming

Thank you Marya, I'm enjoying your report so far!

marya_

dogster -- China is much easier than India. I know that without ever traveling to India because I have read the dogologues. I have wandered around China and SEA a bit, and am working up to an India-level skill set, but I'm feeling like it may take awhile yet. Anyway, you could make a trip into the backyard sound fascinating, so keep writing and I'll just hope that you someday decide to venture to China and take us along.

dreaming -- and I thank you.

More drivel to follow.

Continuing north on famed Wangfujing dajie, out of the pedestrian zone and back onto functioning city street, I soon happened upon one of those sights that trigger both laughter and wonderment at how comical we are as a species. Although I had left the hotel with a mind stuffed full of ‘kill-all-the-westerners’ fantasies spawned by the Boxer Rebellion-era potboiler I had just read and topped off by my breakfast intake of all the anti-western tracts splashed across the morning’s “China Daily,” I had nevertheless found myself soon trotting past Starbucks and through Tiffany’s. And more temples to western commerce. And now this.

Across the road loomed St. Joseph’s Church. Three different photo-shoots jockeyed for space on the premises and spilled onto the street. The three Chinese brides-to-be, attired in white western bridal gowns, shivered in temperatures better met by a wool or down coat. Members of their retinues periodically draped them in blankets or coats while camera and prop adjustments were made. Flowers, makeup, lights, umbrellas, a hovering hairdresser, even a groom rounded out each of the teams. I leaned against a post as a way of steadying myself against the swell of pedestrian traffic and just watched.

Whether these were individual brides staging photos that would be later displayed at their wedding – a custom I met in Vietnam – or whether they were professional models, it all comes down to the same thing. There must be a market for the commoditized western wedding with Roman Catholic characteristics -- or at least aesthetics – in Beijing. However uneasy the east-west alliance in politics and philosophy, however venomous the passions that led once to the burning down of good old St. Joe’s in the Boxer Rebellion, and then once again to the shuttering of it during the Cultural Revolution after it had been rebuilt and reopened, everyone now happily pulls in harness for commercial purposes. Today, anyway, St. Joseph’s Church makes a damn fine backdrop for a wedding photo shoot. And make that wedding gown white, not red, please.

The turn onto westward-leading Wusi Dajie brought the monumental China Art Gallery into view on the right. Only in a city like Beijing can something this big escape your notice on multiple visits. Of course, only in a city like Beijing can something this big be built between one visit and the next, but that doesn’tseem to be the case here. Note to self: Why have I managed to miss any and all references to this art museum? AM I missing anything? It was too beautiful a day to retire inside to attempt to answer that question so the gallery remained an unclaimed treasure on this trip. I moved on, peering curiously into shops and sometimes detouring several paces down cross-streets.

The approach to Jingshanqian Jie brought both a sense of majesty as the Forbidden City complex arose on my left and Jingshan Park rose on my right. It also brought a fair amount of nuisance as touts materialized. “Buyao,” or complete failure to acknowledge them work equally well except for the occasional sticky one with too much energy and too few other targets. When you are alone it is so much easier to shake them though. When you are with some kinder-hearted soul than yourself, and a tout finds a chink in that fellow traveler’s armour, it takes more time and effort to extricate.

I glanced over at the Forbidden City, hoping that the next day’s weather would be as lovely for our return visit there, then I turned north on Jingshan xijie. Somewhere off the northwest corner of Jingshan Park, I lost myself in a hutong for awhile. Looking afterwards at a map, I still can’t make out exactly where I went in that warren of streets but it was lovely and peaceful that early afternoon. A few little children said “halloo” sanctioned by their adult caretakers, I replied “ni hao,” and we all chuckled at how silly we were. There were bicycles and cycle-drawn carts loaded with vegetables and household goods, and only one noisy automobile that crankily tried to force its way down the street. I meandered for as long as it was fun and eventually dumped out on Di’anmen dajie near the juncture of Beihai and Qianhai (lakes). A cup of tea or coffee with my name on it was likely waiting across the road.