...And Beijing

I realize that recently this blog has been very much about Chicago, and Beijing has faded into the background. That is in a way how life has been lately, but in the past few days I have been working on the Beijing side of things. Time is getting short.

Grinding out e-mails to friends of friends is like pulling teeth for me, but I sent a few. What turned out to be most helpful, however, was a website someone mentioned on the 2006 FB fellows Yahoo group, which is a online booking service for youth hostels worldwide. There were quite a lot of choices for Beijing! So I booked one, called Templeside house hostel (pictured at left). It is in a traditional Chinese courtyard, seems clean and highly rated, and besides, it looks like fun. There's another hostel much closer to Beida, where I will actually be looking for an apartment, and I considered that for a long time. But I realized that--seeing as I have never been to Beijing before--I would actually like to spend a few days in the city center before exiling myself to the suburbs.

Got myself an extravagant private room, a whole $24/night. It has two beds and just one me in it, but I don't care. Might as well be comfortable and not have to worry about sleeping in mixed dorms with the backpacker set!

So I will be staying there for three nights. The only question is, should I book the other place, which is convenient to Beida, for after that, or should I just play it by ear? I'm inclined toward the latter. After all, in late August the tourist season will be winding up, and hostel business will probably be slowing down. Besides, maybe transportation to Beida will be so convenient that I'll want to stay in the city center for a while longer. (Yeah right.)

Elsewhere in the news, I have been reading Amy Tan's Saving Fish From Drowning, which my mom sent me. It has a very slow beginning (all the psychic stuff doesn't do much for me at all), and eventually it launches into a total worst case disaster scenario trip to Asia. Actually kind of terrifying to someone who's going to China for the first time, but I keep reading it with a kind of horrified fascination. Perhaps ultimately it will leave me with the "at least I'm not that bad" and "well see it could be worse" kinds of sentiments. Or maybe it will just give me nightmares. I'm only halfway through right now, so I'll let you know!