At Propaganda with Magnus and Craig

To reward ourselves after a long week of classes and studying, we decided to spend Friday afternoon walking around 天安门广场 Tiananmen Square – the largest city square in the world. Standing in the huge space, I couldn’t help but think what it must have been like when it was full of protesters during the 1989 Tiananmen massacre packed. Security in the square is very high now with cameras and guards everywhere. You can even spot sharpshooters on the roof of the Great Hall of the Peoples next to Tiananmen Square. We watched workers building a stage in the center of the square for National Day festivities which occur in 2 weeks. There was also a float emblazoned with the Beijing Olympic motto 同一个世界, 同一个梦想 “One World, One Dream” and a display with an electronic countdown noting the number of days until the start of the Olympics in 2008. Craig had fun dodging Beijing arts students; the touts in Tiananmen tend to claim to students who sell postcards in order to afford a trip to learn art and painting in Europe. I’ve discovered that a huge advantage of appearing in Chinese in Beijing is that I’m often spared the efforts of touts trying to sell souvenirs, tours, and other “great deals” to me.

We also walked around 王府井大街 Wangfujing Street and stopped by the Foreign Languages Bookstore to pick up some English reading material (I finally bought Le Petit Prince). A small side street called 王府井小吃街 Wangfujing Snack Street has vendors selling all kinds of snacks ranging from candied apples, meat kebabs, 臭豆腐 “stinky” tofu, and, get this, seahorses and scorpions on a stick. The scorpions were still moving on the skewer! Neither Craig nor I had the stomach to find out if one actually eats the scorpions alive so dinner was at a nice safe Japanese noodle shop instead.

Back in Wudaokou, we met up with Magnus and Chris to head to Lush, a small bar with a reputation for good drinks (you can order absinthe and Red Bull!) and for being owned and frequented by foreigners. Walking into Lush is an instant trip back to North America. It’s a black box space with couches and tables complete with the requisite arty, guitar-strumming singer performing on a tiny stage in the front. With curtains blocking the view of Wudaokou, the space looks exactly like a pub or lounge back home. Except music tonight was lousy with the main act being two white guys playing bad bluegrass music. So after a few drinks, we left Lush for Propaganda – a genius name for a club in communist China. If fire codes exist in Beijing, Propaganda must have broken any number of them since the place was packed tight with masses of people. It was pretty bizarre being in a club full of people drinking and dancing to American and European music and realizing that this is taking place in communist China. The party was still going strong when we finally left at 2:15am which was late for me, but nothing compared to party animal Puja who, between dancing up a storm and chatting up girls, didn’t leave until 4:15am.