Routed at the National Library

Yesterday was the last day of the week-long "fall break" vacation. It has been a productive one for me. I felt like I got some good work done despite the fickle library hours and enormity of the task. And I continued in my slow but steady effort to discover new things. That being said, yesterday was something less than a miracle of productivity. Admittedly, I discovered some new things, namely, the National Library. It has a better collection of English language books than the one at my university, and there are a couple I need to look at.

I figured out the best bus to take and where to catch it. After a lot of walking around and puzzling over signs, I figured how to get to it behind the massive subway-stop construction that's going on in front. I figured out which door I was supposed to go in, and that I was supposed to leave my bag at a bag-check outside. I figured out that I was supposed to pay 100 RMB for a one month library pass. But that's where the figuring out stopped. I didn't understand the person at the information desk when she explained where I should go to hand over my 100 RMB. I did understand that I really was supposed to have my passport with me. (I had got it back, but had also got out of the habit of carrying it around. Oops.) But she said, try and see.

How hard can it be to find the ID card place? I thought to myself, and set off wandering. In the back of my mind was the thought that perhaps I could also avoid paying the 100 RMB if security was lax. After all, I've never yet had to use the borrowing privileges I'd paid 500 RMB for at the university library. So I went exploring.

The library: a gloomy dark maze. Assault of mysterious smells, long unlit corridors of forbiddingly closed-up offices. The overall plan centers around a large courtyard, so there are four wings, one for each cardinal direction, but each wing (I believe) shaped more like a square or a U--certainly not a straight line. Sudden dead ends, circumventable by going up or down a flight of stairs. Unexpectedly bright corridors with card catalogs, or bright skylighted atriums with depressing white tiled benches and languishing plants. It was like a museum with nothing to muse upon.

Some of the doors were open to reveal cheerily lit reading rooms. But I soon discovered that they had anticipated cheaters like me, and you had to swipe your card to get into any rooms. I got another set of directions from the lady I'd feigned ignorance to. A third set of directions from some "ticket-sellers" in a first-floor office. I felt like I'd walked miles by the time I got to the ID office. It turned out to be outside the library, which is what had me confused. I took a number, as at the DMV in the States. But I was feeling fiercely hungry, and discouraged about not having my passport, and not really up to doing any reading anyway that day. So after a while I just left and took the bus back home. Here is a picture of a pretty garden on the library grounds, which I took on the way out. It was not an especially successful excursion, but at least I know exactly where everything is and what I need to do next time.

I had fancy "little cage dumplings" (xiaolongbao) for lunch, at a clean-looking place across from the South Gate of Beida. They're called little cage dumplings because as they steam liquid becomes imprisoned within their watertight wrappers. When you bite into them, hot soup streams out, which is startling and potentially comical. If you practice, though, you can get most of the soup into you rather than all over the table!

After lunch I went slowly to the Beida Library, but none of the rooms I needed were open yet, and anyway my heart just wasn't in it. I desultorily read a section of the M.A. thesis I'm going though, discovered the reference room and a bibliography periodical on Shiji that my advisor back home had suggested I ask the librarian to order. It was okay. It would have been very useful a year and a half ago, but I have found out most of the necessarily information on my own by now.

On the way home, I was very hungry and I bought myself another gorgeously hot sweet potato. This picture is placed here for the express purpose of making Brigid's mouth water. Oh, they are soooo good. I am hoping that eating one every other day or so won't make me turn orange. I would be very embarrassed to turn orange, but how wonderful the sweet potatoes are on a chilly drizzly evening.

News pick for yesterday: discovery of a giant camel in Syria, "as big as a giraffe or an elephant," and apparently killed by either humans or Neanderthals (evidence ambiguous). I enjoy thinking about giant camels much more than I enjoy thinking about a nuclear North Korea.