Life in Beijing – Erlizhuang

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 in: News, Travel

Erlizhuang is the bus station out in front of our school, a rather popular bus terminal which is pretty convenient for us when we’re trying to get to other parts of town. Unfortunately, the transportation system here isn’t entirely foreigner-friendly, and all the bus stops are flooded with Chinese characters. To me this is a kind of a blessing, because it forces me to acquaint myself with destination names. It’s really nice that there are several buses that go past Mudanyuan, a convenient subway station. It’s not so nice that there are only a few buses that run to Wudaokou and Beida (Peking University), and they run with such infrequency that it’s really a pain in the butt, necessitating a bike if you really intend to go to these places regularly. I’m tempted to get a bike, but the cheap ones are complete crap and I’m only here for a couple months, which makes it harder to rationalize the purchase.

One of my fellow students (and an awesome person), Vanessa had offered her neat banana-yellow bike to me when she leaves town. It’s a cheap model, but it’ll get me from A to B. She had it parked at Beida, and showed it to me one day. A few days later, I saw her off at the train station, and decided to pick the bike up on the way home. Of course, when I got to where it had been parked, it was no where to be seen. Her crappy yellow bike (OK it was nice for a cheap bike but it was still a junker) had been stolen, despite being locked up. Next to where her bike had been was Dan’s bike, which he had abandoned almost a month ago. Sigh. I walked to the bus stop to get a ride home, and the infrequency of the route made itself apparent. I gave up after 45 minutes and caught a cab home. Lame.

Back to Erlizhuang, there’s actually quite a few attractions in the neighborhood we’ve been left to discover for ourselves. The school does its job but doesn’t provide much support outside of the classroom unless you directly request it, and when they do try to help it rarely seems to go as planned. The healthy heaping of restaurants in the area can keep you buried up to your eyeballs for years in Chinese food, although don’t expect the rice you ordered to go with your sweet and sour pork to arrive in a timely fashion. Rumor has it that rice is considered “peasant food” and is only used to help fill you up if the main dishes you order aren’t enough to do the trick. Service is generally lacking in one way or another in China, it’s been described as “a constant barrage of failed attempts at being thoughtful about the way customers are treated.” I prefer the phrasing “a slew of creative ways to dampen the customer experience.” From the aforementioned rice issue to toilets begging you not to poop in them to dishes ordered that never arrived, just don’t expect to be wowed here and you’ll never be too disappointed.

This is once again turning into a rant, stop distracting me!

There’s a small side street off 志新西路, Zhixinxi road that is home to a small piece of real China, replete with small shops and street-side fruit vendors. The 小吃 (snack) hole in the wall we frequent is located there, our main supplier of 卷饼，凉皮 and 肉夹谟 (our favorite lunch items, costing roughly a quarter apiece). Further down the street is a restaurant where me and the guys would often relax at a table outside, eating 串儿 (meat on a stick), drinking beer, and shooting the shit. The locals are all pretty friendly, especially the restaurant owners, who seem to take great pride in their food and beer and that us foreigners keep coming back to patronize their establishment.

The Agricultural University down the street has become a recent favorite hangout, I’ll talk about that in another post. Happiness Cafe down the road (where I first met Bill and Adrien my first night in the Jing) is a nice spot to study, but the owner has just closed down shop for a week to turn the place into a restaurant, damnit. I’ve talked with him a little bit, I’ll explain that later as well.

Down the street from Happiness Cafe is a restaurant we’ve loving nicknamed 拉肚子 (diarrhea) after one of our classmates suffered a bout of “the doots” after eating there. It’s actually a nice cheap little place, and the mousey fuwuyuan who seems to run the joint always takes good care of us foreign retards.

There’s a lovely pool hall in the basement of the hotel next door. Why is there a hotel right next door to our school which is attached to a Super 8? Why is there a restaurant in every other building? Are there really so many people that go out to eat that can keep these places in business? What’s the deal here?

OK I give up for now. The short version is that for all its flaws, I like this neighborhood. It’s quiet but not too quiet, and there’s plenty of local flavor to keep things interesting without being too obnoxious.

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