And I missed this picture of UC Berkeley's Ryan and Heyuan as we rode around BNU's campus. This is the northwestern corner of campus and the dorms in the background are where our teachers live. If you hang a right here (straight ahead, as pictured) , you'll end up at the mysterious, often unseen Bei Menr.
EAP China! Robert Klein

We lingered outside for awhile, though, so the shopkeeper offered to perform a traditional Chinese tea ceremony for us, mian fei (free). We couldn't help but agree, and I will have videos of the occasion posted online soon. I bought 50 kuai worth of his best green tea (which filled a 6 inch high canister), which is what he used for the ceremony.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Making the sell...but Nate wasn't convinced yet, so we left.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Our other Chinese friend with Chris. Both she and Heyuan are from the same city in Zhejiang province.
EAP China! Robert Klein

After returning to campus (the secret park hits the third ring road...if you run up a hill you can get onto it and then it's likety-split back to Dong Men. We decided to stop in this sizzling hot tea store after our ride. To the right is UC San Diego's Ryan.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Across the way is what appears to be a homeless encampment, a reminder that life is hardly idyllic for many of Bejing's residents.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The girls had never been to the secret park I discovered, so I decided to take everybody there. This park is in the middle of the road that juts out of the second ring road going north and fronts a canal. Both the canal and park turn right toward the olympic park. It's probably the best place to run or bike near BNU...very pleasant with pagodas and old people doing funny exercises. In fact, I think it may be fairly recently redone for the olympics because you'll see construction crews all around it. Just remember the DEET.
EAP China! Robert Klein

They're collecting this plant from those boats (I believe you can eat it).
EAP China! Robert Klein

Chris Way and our Chinese friend Heyuan.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Mmmmmm...ShiTang...
EAP China! Robert Klein

Looking at the XinShiTang (4 stories of cheap Chinese eatin') on this beautiful blue day. Note all the girls with their umbrellas. It's strange, you see the most umbrellas on the rainy days and the nicest days.
EAP China! Robert Klein

I'm really psyched by this blue sky. This is the view from my room. Across the way to the left is the dining hall and on the right a Chinese students' apartment. They're six to a room, while we're two to a room.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Lanhui Gongyu from the courtyard between it and the XinShiTang. Home, sweet home. So, can you tell what's wrong with this picture?...It's a clear sky! Sweet jesus, the sky is blue!
EAP China! Robert Klein

This is the window where you reload your meal card's balance (the window to the right is where you get new ones). Around 11:45 at the beginning of the second summer semester there's a huge line outside waiting for the first window. If you don't have a card yet, skip the line! And if you do and want to put money on your card, just have patience, the line moves pretty quick. In China, when you have to worry is when there isn't a line...because you'll end up waiting some other way (like say, the damn numbered tickets at the bank where you'll easily wait 20 minutes for simple transaction.)
EAP China! Robert Klein

Our fine cafeteria. You can usually eat for about 50 cents a meal (75 cents to a dollar if you get watermelon).
EAP China! Robert Klein

Back to the corner of XueYuanNanLu and Lanhui apartments. I decided to finally look closer at the building across the way...kinda cool, eh?
EAP China! Robert Klein

This neighborhood is between JiShuiTar and BNU. Not many shops but some restaurants, I've been told. I plan to explore this later on.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Said shui. Actually, JiShuiTar is the beginning of central Beijing when coming from BNU (all the second ring road essentially deliniates that boundary...as it's the route of Beijing's former city walls.). It is just north of the first of Beijing's many lakes, Xihai, which is just north of Houhai which is where the boats were pictured earlier. None of these distances are very far, but XinJieKouWai at JiShuiTar changes from a giant boulevard to a 1-lane road which makes it a very pleasant urban roadway, but an extremely slow one.
EAP China! Robert Klein

This is the north entrance of JiShuiTar, in typical 2-line spartan style. While the 13-line has terribly inconvenient entrances, the stations are rather beautiful (each one looks like it could house a TGV).
EAP China! Robert Klein

If you want to go to BNU, go to the north side of XinJieKouBeiDaJie and walk away from the ring road. This will bring you to the southeast corner of campus (you can either walk-about 18 minutes to campus or 26 to Lanhui; or take a bus). Ask the driver/ticket taker if the bus goes to BeiShiDa. Air conditioned buses are 2 kuai, non-air conditioned busses are 1 (and there's some variation on distance which is unclear to me at this point).
EAP China! Robert Klein

Oh shoot, where do I go. Thankfully, I had my girlfriend on the phone in America with a map of Beijing to give directions, though I ended up just fine, anyway.
EAP China! Robert Klein

JiShuiTar station platform.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Oh, a good deal of the cars are giant advertisements, too.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Right now central Beijing only has two lines, the circle (2) line and the really long red line. From XiZhiMen there's an elevated subway (line 13) which follows relatively sparsely used train tracks (they get a few passenger trains a day, it seems) up to WuDaoKou (where Beijing and Qinghua universities are, and not far from the summer palace) up around looping back to the blue line at DongZhiMen (hence it's name, the DongZhiMen Cityrail). If you travel on the 1 or 2 lines, it's 3 kuai, and if you want to transfer to the DongZhiMen line it's 5 kuai). FYI, though, the transfers are a little less than seamless between the 13 and the 2 because the 13 looks and feels like a subway, but doesn't quite go the whole nine yards at interfacing well with the subway (for example, like the Blue line does in Los Angeles at Metro Center station or MUNI in San Francisco when it comes to BART tranfers.) I'll give more specifics later, with pictures to illustrate.
EAP China! Robert Klein

On the 2 line, which runs under the second ring road (which incidentally used to be the Beijing city walls). The ticket lady was really helpful once I was finally able to talk to her after about 20 people pushed in front of me to buy tickets. She said to take the blue line to Ji Shui Tar, and since I was almost exactly opposite that station, me and a couple of American students who had just finished teaching English in the countryside helped me pick a direction (based on the least number of stops). The subway, the ultimate expression in mass transportation; in Soviet Moscow the subway was ornate, with chandeliers and all sorts of luxuries to better serve the people. In today's Beijing, all the little plastic handle dohickeys (in New York they'd be leather, in San Francisco metal) have advertisments on them. The subway wall even has moving shoe advertisements using, I believe, a variant of the "flipbook" method.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Further down the street-the area reminds me a bit of Washington, DC in its better parts. But with nickel ice cream. Walking next to me is a cool guy I met by asking him in Chinese where the subway was (in fact, just down this street). He speaks South African english because he studies jewelry design in Durban and is back home for the summer. We chatted for a bit and exchanged phone numbers (for the SMS), then headed off our separate ways. He asked me if I surfed...apparently it's quite a pastime in Durban.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Up ahead on the right is the Pearl Market, four stories of people trying to screw foreigners. I paid 300 kuai (about $37 US) for a 2 GB Kingston SD memory card. It was the lowest I could get any number of vendors to go. I wanted to pay 200, it seemed like the fair price, but I couldn't get anyone a penny below 300. A friend of mine was trying to buy the same card when her watch went off, so she said she was on a tour that was leaving and would never come back (she's also Vietnamese)...she got it for 200. Though I feel a bit cheated (and by the way, we were told by Catherine and Bonnie that it's also a haven for pickpockets and you need to keep everything by your side), I really needed the memory card and it wasn't a horrific price (people started at 500). On the upswing though, I got to talk a little French with some visiting flight attendants, which was pretty sweet. Incidentally, the reason it's called the "Pearl Market" is because on the fourth floor there's a huge selection of all-real pearls, if that's your thing. Since it isn't and my girlfriend isn't in town, I decided to put it off browsing that for another time, with 100% knowledge of what I should pay. Be careful when you come to China, I overpaid about 6 times for the first thing I bought here (a pair of shoes), but the experience was invaluable. Thank god I didn't try to buy a memory card (in fact, I actually paid about the same price...)
EAP China! Robert Klein

Looking away from Tiantan (which would be to my right and behind me) at this very typical Beijing street scene...except there for some reason isn't any oncoming traffic (except of course, in the bike lane).
EAP China! Robert Klein

That is the most overpriced bakery I've seen yet in Beijing. They charge 10 kuai for small pastries that cost 1 elsewhere in the city. 10 kuai is about $1.20, which is higher than Chinatown prices in the states. SOB's. The restaurant is two buildings to the right of the apartment block. It's a great place, and they have (Chinese) salads which are pretty good.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The blackboard close up. The hutongs throughout Beijing have these sorts of neighborhood blackboards, and now their usefullness becomes emminently clear.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Chillin'. We were going to head across the street (hence the note on the blackboard) but presumably the powers that be thought it might be too subtle a message.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Relaxing after our whirlwind tour of Tiantan. The only thing I don't like about our planned EAP trips is we tend to only get 2-3 hours at a given spot, but on the upswing it gets us all around the city so that we know where we'd like to go back to on our own.
EAP China! Robert Klein

I'd love to learn to play this stringed instrument. There's a non-historical version availible to play (this one's very old, hence encased in glass), though many of the strings on the playable one are missing or broken.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Now that's a big drum.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The turnoff in the woods leads to the Divine Music Administration, which has quite a history. This was the center for China's music development over the centuries, but after the collapse of the imperial order the buildings underwent a period of not just decline, but desecration. I mean that in the most secular sense, the Japanese built a chemical weapons lab here during the war. Be sure to drop by this complex when you come to Tiantan, it's a bit off the beaten path but quieter and has recently been thoroughly refurbished into a museum featuring all sorts of instruments used throughout Chinese history.
EAP China! Robert Klein

But then there's nothing like one of these babies to remind you which continent you're on.
EAP China! Robert Klein

This is the other shot I thought looked Parisian; it really reminds me of Versailles.
EAP China! Robert Klein

I've already mentioned Jinwuxing, well this is Siwuxing!
EAP China! Robert Klein

This is a classy place. They'll sell you a tiny roll of tissues for 10 kuai.
EAP China! Robert Klein

I believe this is the construction for the Echo Wall, which will reopen in November (before I leave!).
EAP China! Robert Klein

That's my roomate pulling some fancy moves. I played this game earlier with an older raquet, which the lady at some point tried to sell me for 60 kuai. They really think we foreigners are idiotic.
EAP China! Robert Klein

What a cow. Back in the good old days, this is where cows were burned as sacrifice to heaven.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Actually, hold off on the other French-flavored photos, they're coming. Here we have UC Berkeley's Meredith framing the extensive construction at Tiantan. The preparations for 2008 have all sorts of monuments under construction, though to be honest, fewer than I expected.
EAP China! Robert Klein

The next few pictures really evoke Paris. In the background here we have the Beijing ferris wheel...
EAP China! Robert Klein

Looking back at the gates leading to the temple gardens.
EAP China! Robert Klein

This is the point I finally realized I was in Beijing. Until now it had been somewhat surreal. I grew up in San Francisco, so I'm used to signs in Chinese, and I go to Berkeley so it's not that strange for me to end up almost entirely surrounded by East Asians. You can see the so much of the city from this vantage point that it really provides you with an identifiably Chinese sense of place.
At some point, I will get Summer Palace pictures up (I unfortunately forgot my camera)...it is one of the most spectacular places in the world, besides so spectacular that it's almost surreal, you can't see Beijing at all, making it lack sense of place of Tiantan. Then again, part of the Summer Palace might look a bit more like this soon; they're putting up million dollar condos on its southern end, so maybe the serenity it's been famous for centuries will finally be injected with some unwelcome city life.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Hey, heaven, what up?
EAP China! Robert Klein

The emperor would stand here when worshipping heaven because from this point you can create a noticable echo.
EAP China! Robert Klein

We men are cool. We don't need no stinking umbrella.
EAP China! Robert Klein

Tiantan functioned very much like an Aztec temple, except they substituted humans for livestock (reminds me of my IAS 45 teacher's suggestion that perhaps the reason for human sacrifice in the new world is a lack of big, dumb animals you can easily lead to slaughter). Until the beginning of the 20th century, these animals would be burned in cauldron's outside the temple as a way of worshipping heaven.
EAP China! Robert Klein