slacking excuse #3: the Forbidden City

On Thursday my friend and I went to the Forbidden City, in Beijing!

We took one of these crazy cart things to get there. It has to be the most dangerous vehicle I've ever been on/in. It is basically a motorbike with a cart built on it.

Finally, something that looks like traditional Chinese. It was very impressive, you walk straight through courtyard after courtyard and the farther in you get, the more the walls close in towards the center and the more interesting it gets to look at.

Chinese army drilling in the yard

 

lots of chairs on display

 

 

 

If Chinese girls can do it in pictures, so can I.

 

slacking excuse #2: frog, the American bar & downtown Tanggu

Tuesday night after 798 and then my tutoring sessions, my friend and I grabbed my TA and went out for dinner and drinks right around our apartment. At the restaurant we ordered the usual excessive assortment of dishes, including frog (it is my goal to eat as many non-Western foods as I can). The Chinese tend to leave bones in their food when they cook it though and you just have to beware when you eat. Most of this had bones in it, the frog (body, not legs) included, and a lot of it was so small that getting the bones out was really difficult; it ended up being almost inedible.

frog with ginger

After that we went to the one American bar that I've seen in Tanggu; it has an American flag carved in wood over the door. We drank Guiness, played pool, drew on the walls and had a great time, even though there was nobody else there. We ended up staying out until bar time (which was 2am).

The next day, my friend and I tried to go to Beijing, and then to Tianjin, but neither train schedule worked out with my tutoring in the evening, so we ventured out to Tanggu proper. There were a lot of things to see there, tons of shopping and we went to an arcade, but I couldn't get over how dirty everywhere I've been in China is, and how insanely polluted the air in Tanggu is. Tanggu is part of TEDA (Tianjin Economic Development Area), so it is the most quickly developing industrial area in Tianjin province. All we kept saying walking around all day was that the air was going to kill us all.

"So... this is China..."

"So... this is a bull..."

"So... this is a shopping mall with a random killer whale on it..."

"...and this is one called I Love U..."

slacking excuse #1: 798

As anyone keeping up with me daily knows, I haven't posted in a few days. I have had a friend from Songyuan visiting me in Tanggu and we have been going on adventures. It's been a crazy couple of days, during which nothing has worked out as planned, but everything has been awesome. He's leaving in the morning and I am gearing up for a really long weekend of teaching, which I am also very behind in lesson planning for, but I will share the first post about adventures tonight!

On Tuesday I met my friend in Beijing and we went to 798, which is a very cool little gallery district. We only had a few hours there and I could honestly spend a couple of days going through all of the little shops, galleries and cafes. 798 has been my favorite thing in China so far.

 

 

 

 

 

it was bound to happen

Yep, Korean sushi. First sushi in China

I have no clue what any of it was, I just ate it. Mom, don't have a heart attack.

next career move?!

This would be the section in which I have a short media buyer dork out, please feel free to skip :)

I see these out of home advertisements for Rising Sun Outdoor Media every time I leave the Beijing train station and they always remind me to post about media. I have yet to turn on a tv here, so I don't get exposed to any advertising there. Radio I pretty much only hear in cabs, so that's out as well. I don't read the paper and I have a VPN routing my internet through LA, so the only traditional media I have any exposure to here is out of home.


They have a lot of really large format outdoor here, really long billboards that go over a whole road, either on the side of a bridge over the road or stand alone, and they are both on freeways and surface streets. All of their billboards are static or that kind that has panels that turn to rotate the ad (not sure what this is called, we didn't have it in Phoenix). I find it kind of interesting that they don't have LED or anything, given the fact that they have so much random public "art" using LED and neons, and so many buildings with that kind of thing just built right in (kind of like PCH, but more neon than LED). And where there are billboards, there are always lots of billboards. Placement strategy has to be interesting too, almost the reverse of in the States. You want to surface level boards in order to reach the most people, because most people don't drive, not the freeway boards.


They also have these large inflatable signs or bridges that go over surface streets with text ads on them. Picture the inflatable wavy arm men that car dealers use, just longer and thicker and arched over a road.


Outside of those, they have a lot of fairly large format backlit signage (see above), all over the place. In malls, on buildings, etc.


I've been thinking about trying to find a media outlet or advertising agency to take a tour of here, just to check it out. Being a foreigner, I would think it wouldn't be too hard to get one to show me around. It would be very interesting!

a normal lunch

This was my morning. It felt great and very normal to be posted up at a restaurant by myself eating my one (delicious) dish for lunch and working, buuuut this is not normal here. The Chinese don't work in restaurants, they never order only one dish and they don't look like me. People were literally stopping outside the window and staring at me. C'est la vie, it made me happy regardless.

hot pot

My TA made us hot pot for lunch! For a girl that can't cook, this is awesome. Also the trade out for the banana split the other day. Win.

random pix: KFC book & Happiness for sale

When my TA and I go out now we're also on the constant lookout for KFCs just so I can shake my fist at them (I've pretty much stopped taking pictures of them though). The textbook I selected for my Business English class in Beijing today is from a series and I found this in another book of the series, which almost made me switch. Curse you KFC!

But seeing this business kind of balanced out that part of the trip for me :)