How I've managed to avoid this hilarity is beyond me....

Burns' Night in Beijing...

.... and we ended up at a Ceilidh in a hutong - with David on the bagpipes, natch!

Beijing: Jingshan Park

Behind the Forbidden City to the North is a small (and presumably man-made....) hill in the middle of Jingshan park, from where you get a fantastic view:

Celebrations - a word of warning...

When everything is going swimmingly, it's easy to get carried away.  With this in mind, here is a fable from our weekend from which several lessons can be learned.

We celebrated with (yet another) champagne brunch on Sunday.  Ben and I left our suitcase with the concierge, who asked for our phone number, because "sometimes people go champagne brunch, drinks champagne, more champagne, go 'woooh' (*crazy action with hands*) 'woooh' and forget their luggage! hahahahahaaaaa"  Oh, how we laughed with this charming man!  'What idiots,' we thought, 'would do that?'

As predicted, there was excessive champagne and huge gluttony (see above), combined with much laughter at 'those idiots' who 'woooooh forget their luggage'.... Then, still laughing and joking, we collected our luggage and headed back to the apartment.  Up in the lift we went, and what fun we were having!  Until... 

"who's got the luggage?"

"Erm, not me - I was carrying the flowers and champagne!"

"Erm, not me either" 

*moment of realisation* "THE TAXI!!!"  

Yes, that's right, we'd left the luggage in the taxi... which was long gone... in a city with c. 70,000 taxis.  That's the luggage that included our laptop, my passport with all the painstakingly acquired visas for our upcoming trip, my brand spanking new electronic Chinese dictionary.... and more.  By way of a few phone calls and a large dose of luck, we retrieved the luggage, and all of its contents.  So, what can we learn from this? 

1. Take heed of the concierge!  He is a wise man.

2. Always hold on to all scraps of paper - you never know, one might have the taxi numberplate on it!

3. Don't put your passport in your suitcase, even if you think it's safer there than in your handbag while you are testing your liver's capacity for bubbly....

KTV kraziness

Lo and behold, on Friday lunchtime I was invited to a work KTV session. That evening.*  At 7.30pm.  Straight from the office.  Being British, and a strong advocate of a few drinks before taking to the mic, I was a little confused but decided to go with it.  On arrival at our old favourite, Cashbox Party World, it was complete chaos (see above), with early evening being the prime time for KTV and hoards of people fighting for a  room...  Who'd have thought it?

 

* I have already noted the apparent lack of need to plan anything in advance over here, but here is another example of it in action....

China Daily

I have been reasonably quiet at work recently, so have taken the chance to catch up on current affairs.  So far, China Daily, on of the major state-run newspapers, has been coming up with the goods.

 

First, with this article about the world's tallest and shortest men, who met in Turkey recently.  Classic photo op!

 

Secondly, there has been a lot of coverage recently about China Mobile's policy to cut off mobile phone users who send text messages containing 'bad words' - for example, pornographic suggestions - and despite the fact that China Mobile has received 'thousands' of complaints, every day, it has continued this policy for over 10 years!

 

There has also been a lot of interesting coverage of the Google-China scandal, and it will be interesting to see where that ends up.  For the time being though, I have discovered google.cn's free and legal music download service, and am bolstering my collection of Rolling Stone's top 500 albums, one by one...

Chilling in China World: a very modern family indeed...

Just when I had got used to wearing an apron while I eat hotpot, and having my coat and bag covered by a pseudo-dustcloth in restaurants, at dim sum this weekend I was provided with a mini plastic bag to protect my phone.  Seeing as I promptly then dropped a prawn dumpling in the vinegar, this was  greatly appreciated!

Harbin's incredible 11th Ice and Snow Festival, 2010

Dave and I took a weekend trip to Harbin Ice and Snow festival, 2 hours by plane NE of Beijing in Heilongjiang province, where the temperature has been known to drop to -40C in winter.  Luckily for us, when we arrived at midnight, it was a relatively balmy -23C, and we happily skidded on sheets of ice across town in pimped up taxi.

 

I have never been anywhere like Harbin, or anywhere that cold and wintry, so I found it particularly interesting.  In fact, I felt like an intrepid explorer in all my layers and with self-heating wonder packs tucked under my bra straps to keep me warm from the core!

 

The Songhua river completely freezes over, and essentially provides a massive new expanse of land on which to create a winter playground, including your usual, run-of-the-mill-for-us-Beijingers chair-skating and ice-biking opportunities (see previous post), ice slides, snowmobiles, buggies and a rally track on the ice! (Very Top Gear...)

 

The ice festival was simply the most mind-boggling thing I have ever seen in China, and definitely one of the best.  The photos above give some indication, more of mine can be found here and here, and some of photographer R. Todd King (who goes every other year to take pictures!) can be found on his website, and give a good idea of just how impressive the festival is.

 

There were ice Terracotta Warriors and an ice Forbidden City (both decidedly better than their stone counterparts!), as well as other famous buildings and recognisable objects, such as the World Cup trophy, the Colosseum, the Temple of Apollo and the Great Wall of China.  All made out of ice (natch!), and with some reaching over 50 metres high.

 

The festival is now in its 11th year, and I would be interested to know whose idea it was in the first place to mine all of this ice, and sculpt it over a period of weeks in temperatures that get as low as -40C.... Rather them than me!  Of course, all the Chinese love it when the sculptures are all lit up, but I am glad we went early to see them in the daylight and the sunshine, as in the evening, while impressive, the effect is a little tacky for my tastes!

 

We also visited the bizarrely-named "Sun Island", where the Snow Sculpture Art exhibition/competition is held.  Unfortunately, the weather was quite overcast on Sunday and so the light was not the best for viewing these sculptures - but even so, they were very impressive.

 

On the food and evening entertainment front, Dave and I were a little less successful...!  First, we were exhausted by the cold weather and the lack of food (for some reason, the pot noodles and cold plates of sausage and fake cheese didn't provide much sustenance...).  Then, we headed to a bar recommended online (NB: it looked a lot of fun, with photos of people dancing on the bar etc!) but on arrival, we found it to be completely empty and freezing cold.  Top that off with a beer that is half empty before it's been served to you, and you'll understand why we polished the beers off with a quick game of "lowest card drinks" before heading back to the hotel for some quality time with Jack Bauer.  In hindsight, we may have been better off aiming for a bar which warns of the frequent and violent Korean vs. Russian brawls!

Kodak - beautifying the billions

I have to apply for various visas for mine and Ben's upcoming trip, and needed to get some passport photos done - always a traumatic experience.  *sigh*

I duly headed for my local Kodak shop, where I was shown to a mirror and hairbrush, before being led to a seat in front of a big white screen.  The shop attendant used a DSLR with a soft flash to take 6 pictures, which I then got to analyse on a large TV screen.  So far, so good.  I eventually opted for the one in which I looked least suspicious (here, suspicious of the camera holder, not suspicious serial killer as per my UK photo) and in which she had coerced a faint (albeit confused) smile out of me.  Then, lo and behold, she arranged for me to collect them the next day - allowing her time to photoshop the results!*  Amazing.

And if any further proof were necessary, yesterday I got it.  I went to the Vietnamese embassy and handed over two photos, as per the requirements on its website.  Whereas the three people before me in the queue  had had one photo returned at this point, the man behind the counter instead requested to keep mine for 'personal use'.  Ahem, thanks and I'm flattered - but no!  Nice one, Kodak - can we have this in London please?

* NB: this is common practice, not just for me - thanks, people.