Journey to Nowhere

If you are now in Beijing, and need to take a taxi, watch out! Every word you say in the taxi will be monitored by the police.

To enhance the security in the run up to National Day on 1 October, a secret machine is now installed in each of the taxis in Beijing to monitor conversation, according to Hong Kong newspaper Mingpao. The machine is connected through satellite and GPS to the police intelligence centre so every word you say will be listened.

Naturally, the authority will not announce this to its people – keeping them in dark so that those needed to be caught can be caught.

Why is it that a country that calls itself People’s Republic can be so afraid of its people and so secretive towards its people?

End-March to end-April is the time to visit Yu Yuan Tan Park (玉淵潭公园) in Beijing for seeing a sea of cherry blossoms. The park has a “Cherry Blossom Garden” in its Western corner where more than 2000 trees of cherry blossoms are planted. During the time the Park holds its annual Cherry Blossom Festival, the entrance fee is raised to RMB10 from its normal price of RMB2.

The flower scene is breathtakingly beautiful.

Since the Park is in the busy “Hai Ding” Area (海淀区), transportation to the Park is easy and convenient.

How to get there:

By metro: get off at “Mu Xi Di” (木樨地) metro station, for entering the park at its Eastern Gate, whose neighbor is Diaoyutai State Guesthouse (钓鱼台国宾馆); or get off at “Jun Bo”(军博) metro station, for entering at the Southern Gate

By bus: many buses go to the park, including No. 320, 114, 717, 727, 13, 21, 37, 65 (for Eastern Gate); No. 1 and No. 4 (from Chang An Street 长安街 for Southern Gate); No. 300, 323, 374, Special Route 8 (for Western Gate, which is right across from the CCTV tower on the Xi San Huan Middle Road 西三环中路)

Legation Quarter (前門23號）, located at 23 Qian Men Dong Da Jie, has been named among the most luxurious dining/entertainment places in Beijing. It is a complex of five buildings that house restaurants, exhibitions and art galleries. Some of the world’s finest dining establishments run by renowned chefs can be found here.

Under the current economic situation, however, prices at the restaurants have come down. The posh Spanish restaurant “Sadler”, for instance, now offers a business lunch for RMB160.

The reason I introduce “Legion Quarter” is not because of its chic streak, but because of its historical value.

The Quarter is very centrally and advantageously located at the south eastern corner of Tiananmen Square. The first US Embassy in China was located here (since 1903). After 1949, the founding of People’s Republic of China, the Quarter was converted for other purposes, including becoming the home of Dalai Lama and the office of Foreign Affairs Ministry. It was also here that former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met former China Premier Zhou Enlai during his secret visit to China in 1971.

For more info, check out its website here.

Btw, this upmarket dining/entertainment place was opened only last year, before the Beijing Olympic Games.

Since last week, the Beijing authority has been placing bikes in more than 100 hotels for the free use of tourists. It is intended that a total of 10,000 bikes will be placed in these hotels, with each hotel getting an average of 20 bikes.

This new measure is obviously for welcoming in Olympics. However, the good news is that the bikes will still be kept in the hotels for tourists’ free use, even after the Olympics. So ask about free bikes if you stay in a Beijing hotel. You may stand a chance to get one.

Beijing’s Qianmen Dajie (Front Door Main Street) was the city’s busiest and most famous business street during the late 19th century and the early 20th century. The street, in decline since the mid 20th century, has recently been restored to its look in its prime, lined with wooden buildings and decorated in “old Beijing” style. Famous traditional Beijing eateries are grouped into a corner of the street.

To be reminiscent of the “old Beijing”, the place has a tram running, which was a familiar Beijing sight from 1924 to 1966. The tram’s whole journey is about 10 minutes, crossing the whole breadth of the street of more than 800m.

The restored Qianmen Dajie has been open to the public since May 2008, after a 2-year facelift work.

It is common knowledge for the Beijing locals that, if you want to buy books, go for the array of bookstores converging in the Haidian area(海淀區) , where all the prominent universities are located, such as Qinghua University or Beijing University.

Since May 2007, the bookstore area called Book City (圖書城) has been given a facelift by the authorities, with grey as the standardized color of the area, and allowing only bookstores or culture related businesses in operation. Some new bookstores have moved in.

Though the color of the City is drab, it now boasts hosting some of the “vanguard” bookstores in China, such as the reputedly first and only 24 hour bookstore Guang He Zuo Yong (photosynthesis, 光合作用), focusing on lifestyle books with coffee shop attached, and the giant Di San Ji (The Third Pole﹐第三極) bookstore, which claims to be the biggest bookstore in the world with the widest choice of books. I am not sure its claim is valid but the bookstore has become a new force in Beijing’s book industry, with its 20,000 sq meters of floor areas and 300,000 books on offer. The Beijing University is just around its corner.

In the Book City, you can also find secondhand and specialty bookstores, galleries, stationery shops, and so on.

Foreign visitors may think the Book City offers Chinese books only and hence irrelevant to them. Wrong. You can also find English books, Japanese books and Korean books here. In the Di San Ji bookstore, for instance, one area is devoted to second hand foreign language books, including some real bargain second hand English books.