We left Mama up there, as once again she is looking after Laolao for a bit. I'm solo-dadding again until Mama returns home at the end of the month.
While I have been to Beijing many times over the past ten years (eg here and here), usually staying for weeks at a time, this was the first time that I (and the girls) had been there in winter. The girls and I had been hopeful of even getting to have a first white Christmas, but sadly it wasn't to be. We just had to content ourselves with a cold, grey Christmas.
But even though the ground was never white during our time there, twice it did snow for a bit, with little flutters of whiteness that melted the moment they touched the ground.
We were up in Beijing for two reasons:
Firstly, it was our yearly back-to-China holiday, to let the girls stay connected with their Chinese side.
Secondly, it was to help out Laolao, who has been having chemo treatment for her cancer, which returned a few months ago. So far, Laolao is doing okay, though she is very weak with it all.
Pollution:
This time in Beijing, the big thing is pollution:
To fight the PM2.5s in the home, we bought Laolao a machine that supposedly filters out the bad stuff and purifies the air. The machine lit up with a red PM2.5 light when the pollution at home was bad, and orange when it was just moderate. We pushed the machine from room to room, clearing each zone in turn, and watching the light eventually changing from red to orange.
Here in New Zealand, before we go out we check the weather for rain. In Beijing, before we go out we check the pollution. On really bad days, we stayed inside with the windows sealed shut and our PM2.5-clearing machine busily working. On moderately bad days, if we had to go out we would wear face masks that (hopefully) filtered out the pollution. On a few days that we were there, the wind had blown the pollution away temporarily, and there was blue sky; on those days we raced out to the playgrounds and parks.
From my perspective, we went to two notable places during our time there.
Olympic Park:
Firstly, like I always do when I am in Beijing these days, I wandered around the Olympic Park area. It is a great place to get away from it all, and I went three times:
Once with Mama, when we had a date-walk.
Once with the family, with the girls enjoying seeing the frozen lakes, ice and snow.
And once on my own, when I did an 11 km round-trip walk from home, up the dragon's body, around the dragon's head and back home again. I ate lunch overlooking the dragon's frozen body, and sat near the dragon's head reading.
(For those who don't know, the dragon is the Olympic Park lake, which starts with the tail at the Bird's Nest Stadium and travels about 3 or 4 km past several Olympic buildings and into the forest park area.)
There were skaters in action on the dragon's body, next to one of the many "no skating" signs:
But sadly for this businessperson, the security guards drove up a few minutes later and (slowly) shut his business down, confiscating some of his seat-sleds and herding everyone up onto land. This was probably wise, as the temperature there at that time was 15 degrees and the ice must have been melting.
National Museum:
The second notable place we visited was the National Museum of China, and it was the first time I had been inside. But sadly I don't have any photos of it, as I discovered when I got there that the camera had no memory card -- Mama had been looking at our photos and the card was still in her computer!
One of Laolao's friends used to work at the National Museum before she retired. (In her day there were 83 staff, now there are over 1000.) It is all about who you know in China, and so by going with her we were able to enter via the staff entrance and bypass the long queues of people waiting to go in. We were also able to eat lunch in the staff buffet-style canteen. (Apparently, staff pay 1 Yuan for their meals there, which cost the museum 25 Yuan per meal.)
In my opinion, based on a brief half-day visit, the museum is an impressive and fairly awe-inspiring building, but the contents didn't jump out at me and the information signs were unhelpful. As far as museums go, it was one of the worst I have been to in recent years for displaying its contents in an inspiring and educational way.
The children's section of the museum was closed, as we were there on a Sunday. But it did not look very interesting anyway -- mostly just classroomish-looking seating facing screens for showing videos.
The most interesting and fun section for us was the display of hundreds of gifts that international politicians have given Chinese politicians over the years. The display setup itself wasn't that interesting, but we played a fun game of guess-the-country-of-the-gift. There were lots of elephants from Thailand, wooden animal carvings from various African nations, maple leaves from Canada, a Taj Mahal from India and a picture of Nixon from the USA. We spotted two Maori-influenced gifts from New Zealand.
Another section we visited was a brightly lit room (all the other areas were quite dimly lit) with pictures commemorating the Liberation of 1949. Last-supper-style, directly opposite the entrance doorway there was a big picture of Mao and several dozen leaders of the day. And hung around the other walls there were lots of other inspiring pictures of people struggling and dying under attack from bullets and bombs.
Mama had wanted to see the furniture section, and I had wanted to see the oracle bones section, but Miya had had enough of it all after about five hours so we skipped them.
Music instruments:
Finally, the other noteworthy thing we did while in Beijing was buy Miya a violin and Mulan a flute.
Miya's violin was bought unseen online. For Miya, we just needed a fairly cheap 1/4 size instrument to start her off in her first year of learning. At 520 Yuan, it was cheaper to buy than to hire one for 10 months from the music centre. In our non-expert opinion, it sounds okay, and hopefully it will last her a couple of years until she grows into the next size.
Mulan's flute needed to be something that will last her for at least several years. We were tossing up whether to go for one of the reliable Yamaha ones (at over 3000 Yuan) or risk it with a no-name brand version for less than half the price.
Fortunately, again, our Chinese social network helped out. A friend of a friend of Laolao's used to own a wind-instrument manufacturing company, before he retired. He is also a flute player. His non-branded instruments got sold to several overseas companies to stamp their brands on and sell to their own local markets. We bought one of his remaining non-branded flutes for 1500 Yuan. Being a friend of a friend we are pretty sure we can trust him when he says it will last.
Our musician friend/expert has also got into violins in his retirement, and he showed off his collection of a dozen or so pieces, including some over 400 years old. Very beautiful, both in look and sound. Miya was very interested in it all, and said she would like to do that when she is older.
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