UCSF Crew @ The Wall
Gettin' ready to hike the wall - From left to right - Cathy (PUMC), Michael (UCLA Resident), Peter (Harvard), Christine (UCSF), Sarah (UCSF), Andrew (UCSF), Susan (Harvard), Shennen (Harvard), Tian (Harvard), Me (UCSF). Photo taken by Dingxin (PUMC).Thursday March 5, 2009: We went to "English Corner," which is a weekly medical English club, organized by each class for their own class. Every week, there is a student who presents a case in English, and they discuss. They invited us to it... it was a case of "can't figure it out turns out is SLE" - classic for a case presentation, along with TB (for us, not so surprising around here). Met a few medical students there... one of which invited us to an interesting excursion for the following day...
Friday March 6, 2009: "Some friends and I will play roll skate to travel around the city tonight. It is a good chance to see the night view of the city." was the text message I got. Confused, I texted him back, something to the extent of "where, how, when?" It ended up that I texted him our shoe sizes, and he somehow acquired skates in our size. We show up at the entrance to his dorm building, and there are a few medical students, all wearing rollerblades, skating around on the slick floor. "How far are we skating?" I ask him. "uhhhh.... ten... ten thousand meters," he answers. Hmmm... okay. So we try on the rollerblades - they f it. fantastic. We ended up "practicing" outside of this beautifully lit church on Wangfujing street, where someone had set up cones to work on weaving in and out like a rockstar, and then continuing on to rollerskate around the Forbidden City. It was lit up and beautiful...
Saturday, March 7, 2009: This was the intro to the Lonely Planet section on The Wall:
Can we say brown-nosing? Haha. So anyway, the Wall was amazing... I didn't realize that "hiking The Wall" literally meant "hiking ON The Wall." We spent the next 5 hours or so after we arrived in Jinshangling to walk on the wall through to Simatai (the names are sections of the wall). The steps are uneven, some a few inches, and others over a foot, so it makes it fairly challenging to admire the view while climbing straight up. The views were spectacular, you could see the wall going up the ridges of the hills in front of you and behind, and also know that you, too, will ascend the ridges. The way it wraps and snakes over them is really interesting... haven't seen anything like it before. Pictures explain it better:
After the wall, we had a great meal, like most meals are done here we were first seated into a "banquet" room, which is a private room with a round table, and then we ordered many dishes to split. The dishes are placed on a lazy susan in the middle of the table, and everyone gets a bowl of rice. The dishes are then shared, family style.
Then we continued on to see Smash Up-Derby, the San Francisco based smash up rock band, which usually plays at DNA Lounge in SOMA. I heard about them almost one year ago, and then have been meaning to go, but its just never worked out with my schedule and my friends in SF. However, I caught them on their last night in Beijing! When we got there, it was a swanky hotel, mostly business-looking men, som e older couples, definitely no hipsters like we were seeking out. We were standing to one side, jamming to the music, when one of the band members caught us and asked us to come dance on the then-empty floor. Sarah (UCSF) and I obliged, followed by Peter (Harvard) and Christine (also UCSF). We were the only ones on the floor gettin crazy for the first set... but during the second set, a few more people creeped in, and by the third set, the floor was filled, and somehow the young hipsters we couldn't see in the beginning made it out into the open. It was a fantastic night... and the SF Homesickness I was feeling after being away for over 3 months was resolved - all it took was a little Madonna meets Bush (as in Razorblade Suitcase, not ala Presidente).
After the wall, we had a great meal, like most meals are done here we were first seated into a "banquet" room, which is a private room with a round table, and then we ordered many dishes to split. The dishes are placed on a lazy susan in the middle of the table, and everyone gets a bowl of rice. The dishes are then shared, family style.
Then we continued on to see Smash Up-Derby, the San Francisco based smash up rock band, which usually plays at DNA Lounge in SOMA. I heard about them almost one year ago, and then have been meaning to go, but its just never worked out with my schedule and my friends in SF. However, I caught them on their last night in Beijing! When we got there, it was a swanky hotel, mostly business-looking men, som e older couples, definitely no hipsters like we were seeking out. We were standing to one side, jamming to the music, when one of the band members caught us and asked us to come dance on the then-empty floor. Sarah (UCSF) and I obliged, followed by Peter (Harvard) and Christine (also UCSF). We were the only ones on the floor gettin crazy for the first set... but during the second set, a few more people creeped in, and by the third set, the floor was filled, and somehow the young hipsters we couldn't see in the beginning made it out into the open. It was a fantastic night... and the SF Homesickness I was feeling after being away for over 3 months was resolved - all it took was a little Madonna meets Bush (as in Razorblade Suitcase, not ala Presidente).
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