Beijing in January...

We've recently returned from visiting my parents in Beijing. It's not the best time to visit as it's so cold at this time of year but with the rest of the year taken up with sowing, growing and harvesting in my garden at home it was the least worst option. Although it's very cold (never more than about 3C even in the sun) it is also very dry so there's no frost or ice (except for the frozen lakes).

Near to my parents' apartment is a small river/canal alongside which a park stretches for about a mile. At frequent intervals along the park there are places where people can exercise, play Chinese chess or cards and enjoy a game of table tennis or basketball. Despite the cold these areas were always well used by local residents. In addition to the open parks, lots of residential street corners and within condominium compounds have similar exercise equipment. A new innovation we noticed this time was the provision of automated library stands on street corners. Apparently these started to be introduced about 4 years ago and are now becoming more widespread and well used.

The river


Playing Chinese chess




Card games


Table tennis


Exercise gym style


Rehearsals


Self-service library (photo borrowed from website)

 

There is a large outdoor market nearby which is open 7 days a week. Irrespective of the season there is a huge range of fruit and vegetables available. For example, strawberries, cherries, sweet corn were all on display despite the near freezing temperatures.

Produce area


In order to show the size of the market, when we next visited the market we stood on the same spot for a photo of opposite direction


Plenty of exotic fruits


Giant sugar canes


Around the produce stalls are indoor shops selling cakes, sweet, flour, rice, noodles, spices, teas and the like. The passage ways along one long side lead to the household goods area, to the other the covered meat area. Upstairs above the meat area is clothing and anything else the ground floor shops don't accommodate.

In the fresh meat area, the meat is displayed with none of the sanitised package of the UK where we try to disguise the fact that it originates from a dead animal. In the past, there were live poultry in cages waiting for buyers, now with the possibility of bird flu, only slaughtered birds on display, with all parts attached including feet and heads. There were live frogs, eels and turtles still on available to buy.

Due to poor light and the gruesome subject matter, I took only one photo

 

Cor

Did you bring us back any Liquorice Ginger?

 

As it's so cold and dry, the parks and gardens are rather brown and dusty at this time of year. We did however visit the Beijing Garden of World Flowers which has seven large greenhouses dedicated to different climates or types of plants, eg tropical, desert, fruit and vegetables, etc. We also visited the Beijing Botanical Garden. This is set in the northwest corner of Beijing where the flat plain on which the city is built starts to turn into mountains. It's a large park with lakes and temples and with a large greenhouse, again featuring different habitats. The main temple in the park is the Reclining Buddha Temple where at this time of year the courtyards are full of the fragrance of chimonanthus praecox (Winter Sweet).

I'll post some photos of interesting plants from these 2 gardens in another forum later. Here are a couple of chimonanthus




The Clivia (hybrid?) my parents have are beginning to flower, it is so pretty that I took a small offset back with me to join my exiting collection.


There wasn't a great variety of wildlife about, apart from huge flocks of tree sparrows and large number of magpies.


In the river in front of our compound were a small group of little grebes


And occasionaly this azure-winged magpie.


And, in some ponds in parks where the lakes were not frozen solid, shoals of goldfish.

 

It does look very cold! I really enjoyed the photographs and write-up. Thanks for showing us.

 

Modern day China is hugely different from the country I left 25 years ago. For example: my parents' apartment is in an area which, 20 years ago, was farmland but is now a forest of tower blocks. The latest addition to the skyline is a new commercial development called WangJing Soho where the architects have given free rein to their imagination.





Although still governed by the Communist Party, China is run on rampant capitalist lines. There has been a huge growth in the wealth of the middle classes and this can be seen in the shops selling a huge range of consumer goods, the designer clothes which people wear, and the BMWs and Mercedes stuck in traffic jams on one of the six ring roads around Beijing. The increase in car ownership means not only massive grid lock at times and increased air pollution but also leads to an "interesting" approach to car parking. We witnessed double parking, parking on pavements, parking on white hatched markings in the middle of a road all without much regard to pedestrians or other road users. Yet people are so used to this kind of behaviour that they just walk or drive around any obstacles without the slightest complaint.

Regarding the air pollution which Beijing has suffered from in recent years, fortunately for us it was not so much in evidence and although we had a couple of days when the sky turned yellowish, much of the time it was a clear blue.

The worst day: view from our bedroom window


The use and pursuit of new gadgets are as bad as here if not worse. They even have gadgets to 'walk' faster. A few times we saw people on these 3 wheeled battery powered devices, by the time we got our camera ready they were already many metres away.


Access to the Internet presents a challenge, at least for people like us trying to access foreign websites. The use of computers, tablets and smartphones is at least as widespread as it is in the UK and for those using Chinese services it is fast and efficient though Chinese websites are often swamped with pop up advertisements. However using services based outside China, eg Gardeners Corner, is slow and often impossible. No Google services (search engine, Gmail, Maps etc, etc) are available, nor are Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and many others. Apple Maps on the iPad does work but shows not an inch beyond Chinese border. Fortunately we could see the BBC website (though rather slow at times at it made its way through the Great Firewall) and even download radio programs from BBC iPlayer.

We know that China's economy is slowing down and I now understand that to a certain extent this is due to their anti corruption campaign. In the past the so called 'oiling the wheels' which ran from the top (in millions) down to the bottom (a posh dinner) drove the economy, now the brakes have been put on all that. A friend of mine who runs a car accessories business told me that their business is down by 40% since goverment offices stopped buying new cars.

Well, interesting times are ahead for the Chinese, that's for sure.

 

Thanks HsuH! I do so miss travelling and your photos made my day.
It does go to show that as long as the climate isn't wet and miserable, there are plenty of things to do outside if you're well wrapped up!

 

Very interesting and informative, I hope there is more

 

So you're not Welsh then?

 

Thank you so much for this personal and unbiased insight into everyday life in China in 2015. Their strong community spirit fascinates me. They seem to be out and about more than us and using facilities such as those you have shown us wouldn't gel well in the UK would it. They have had to adjust to financial growth at such a fast pace but they are good at adjustment like that. And they do work very hard - at all times of the day and night.

 

Thanks so much HsuH for that fascinating description and great photos!

 

Fascinating and informative, thanks Hsuh.

 

Really enjoyed your photographs and insight into China, HsuH,
Thank you!

 

Thank you all for your kind comments.

I assume most people would have seen plenty of photos of tourist sights, but have limited knowledge of day-to-day life. Since I'm always interested in what locals do, and spend about a month there whenever I visit, I do end up absorbing a fair amount of information. I'm quite happy to share in this fashion

I'll have a think and have a look through my photos, including the ones taken during previous winter visits, see what else maybe interesting.

I've eaten many strange things in China but I'm not a big fan of liquorice . We did bring back a fair amount of tea though. Mostly Iron Goddess, a semi fermented tea, very refreshing.



Below is Pu'er tea pressed into a "cake" about 10 ins across and stamped with the sign of the Year of the Mouse. It was presented as a gift to my brother who was born in the Year of the Mouse. This kind of tea can be kept "indefinitely".


Edit: According to the characters stamped on the "cake" this tea lowers cholesterol, helps reduce weight, is good for the stomach and helps you to recover fron hangover!!