Traffic in the big city

Word of advice; do not ride buses (or taxis) in Beijing at rush hour!  Take the subway at all costs!  Yesterday I was trying to get to a gathering of some of my local friends, and decided to take the bus down to the subway station.  The subway is fairly close to my school, and as I was waiting for the bus, I thought to myself: “you know, I could probably walk down there before the bus gets there.”  Turns out, I should have; I sat on what should have been a five minute bus ride for thirty minutes!  The most aggravating part was that for most of it, the bus was stuck within fifty yards of the subway station; we were just in traffic.  The bus driver finally decided to just open his doors there, and we all got out.  It made a half hour trip take an hour. 

            On the way back to my dorm, I missed the last subway going clockwise around the loop I take, so I had to take the one going the other direction; my stop was one stop away clockwise, so I had to ride the subway the entire length of the loop.  Very frustrating.  I’ll know for next time to leave a little bit early. 

            This is a little bit of a rant, but I’m honestly still enjoying it here; I just have to remember that there are certain ways to travel and not to travel in this city.  

Finding Quiet in Beijing

Edit: Wow, it took me a while to post; combination of bad internet (I finally broke down and bought a VPN) and a cold.  This is actually from last week

Hey all,

This week, I discovered something; it is not impossible to find quiet places in Beijing; you just have to look a little bit harder than you might in the States.  On Thursday I went to a museum with a friend who has an internship with a travel magazine.  We visited the Beijing Ancient Architecture Museum, fairly close to Tiananmen, the heart of the city.  This museum, however, was completely quiet; no traffic noises, no one selling anything, no construction; you couldn’t even see any skyscrapers!  It felt like we were in an entirely different world.  The museum was surrounded by a courtyard and a somewhat sizable garden, which is probably why it was so quiet.  It was wonderfully peaceful.

            The museum was a collection of traditional-style buildings around an open central courtyard, on the site of the location where the emperor once offered sacrifices for a good harvest.  The buildings themselves were clearly the old buildings either renovated or rebuilt, and inside they had artifacts, models, and pictures of ancient Chinese architecture, from several hundred years B.C. to the present.  It’s one of those places that could be boring, but if you’re interested in just learning things about a culture, it’s pretty fun.  Also, they had some gorgeously ornate artifacts from ancient China.  This is a horribly pop-culture comparison, but you know the “Pool of Sacred Tears” in Kung-Fu Panda, with the cave where the Dragon Warrior scroll is kept in the mouth of the super-ornate dragon?  Picture that dragon as a wood carving; this museum had one of those!  Unfortunately I still can’t figure out how to post pictures, so I don’t know if I can actually show you. 

            Long story short, I had a great time, and if the museum and its surrounding gardens were any closer, I would totally go and visit just to study; I’ll just have to find somewhere like it a little closer to campus.