Beijing - Day 7 - Functionally illiterate

I'd never really had any concept of what that meant. Functionally illiterate. But how can one be functional if you can't read, I thought, what with all these words and signs and papers around us?

Well, I'm finding out. And it's not nearly as hard as I suspected. My spoken mandarin may be broken, but my written mandarin is far worse. I'm getting far better at menus these days, and signs, but really not much else. Even sometimes, I know what the words are, what they mean, but can't figure out how to say them, and try to go with some butchered cantonese -- which usually seems to work. That, and some degree of pointing.

The question "what is that?" or "what's in that dish?" has been my friend, oh yes it has... I don't always understand the answers, but I can usually pick out enough words to decide if I want to eat a particular dish.

On that note, I've found my new absolute favourite eatery in Beijing. It's right across the street, and while it has the appearance of a fast food joint, it has all (well, almost all) my chinese comfort foods. It's got congee, it's got those sticky rice lotus leaf things, it's got soymilk (mmm), it's got bbq pork buns, other buns, and lots of simple dinners of rice/noodles and stuff. It's called Fieldhome (I can only read the first character of three, which does, indeed, translate as field... the rest, I can't tell. Like I said, functionally illiterate). It's not really special in any grand way, but it's great low-risk easy breakfast/brunch or late dinner after a long day. AND IT'S NON-SMOKING!!!!! This is most unheard of in China, and makes me so happy I could cry. Except not really. Since my eyes water enough with the smoke. Anyway, it's great Anytime that easy is preferable to new (not that I'm squeamish when it comes to food. More cautious. I've had food poisoning enough times from things that ought to have been easy peasy and safe in Canada, that I daren't risk things like scorpions or starfish, though both look quite exciting. But that's something I'll talk about another day... As it was a while ago... Back on track...). Plus, I've never been a big fan of eating out lots (unless eating out means picnic, for I am a large picnic girl) -- not just for price, mind, since it's super cheap to eat out here... More... I just get sick of it really quickly. I'm a big fan of plain food, ordinary food, simple food. With highlights of other fun things every now and then.

Picnic skills, however, came in handy today, as Garrett and I spent the day @ the Palace Museum (more commonly known in English as the Forbidden City), and, as my mom (who, PS, is the coolest person ever) warned me, the best you're going to do for food there is ice cream and instant noodles. Lots of instant noodles. But I'd brought lunch. So, no need to eat either yellow salt flavour or brown salt flavoured noodles. Though Garrett did say they weren't too bad. The rehydrated vegetables were not nearly so unimpressive as one might expect.

The day itself... well.... I walked around that place for... a good 5.5 h, and I didn't even see everything. Garrett stuck it out and chipped in the extra Y10-20 to go in the extra section(s), and so stayed about another 2.5 h after I left to pick up some plane tickets (from a lovely travel agent who wishes she could travel to Xian with us -- her hometown, which she very much misses. I love being able to semi-communicate in mandarin. It makes me happy. As did booking these tickets. Being able to sort out this, with the only English words having been used in the 3 times I've gone to pester her about times and prices and available flights being "passport" and "email" -- I'm pretty damn proud of that, actually. I still have to go back and ask her one more thing or two, but... I dunno. Something about that exchange today - tickets, conversation, and all - made me infinitely happy inside, so much so that I was nearly torn between glee and a tear or two as I walked down the street to my hostel. Right.).

I have very few things to say about it, and fairly few pictures (though, Karim, m'dear, I may actually give you a run for your money... I didn't think it was possible. I've taken nearly 400 photos in 7 days, and I haven't even hit the gorgeous scenery that I've been waiting my whole life to see. Admittedly, some of these will get deleted as soon as I put them on a computer and figure out which of the 3 shots is actually properly exposed, and has just the right DoF that I want -- I've been doing some serious exposure bracketing, since I don't trust me not to underexpose, and I've had a lot of weird lighting, and a LOT of backlighting. Blah blah blah *geeking out about camera*), but that's mostly because nothing I could possibly say, nor any photo I could possibly take, no matter how postcard perfect I might be able to get it (difficult to get postcard perfect photos because of (1) smog today, (2) construction aka. restoration work on portions of the palace, and (3), most importantly, TOURIST HORDES. It takes almost infinite patience to acquire people-free photos, and sometimes is legitmately impossible to do. Especially once the tour groups really pack in. Oh chinese tour groups, with your crazy matching hats and vests. If I join one of these things, where we all match like sheep, or more like lemmings, bright red vested lemmings, you have my formal permission to have me committed.), nothing I can do can possibly convey what this place is like.

The sheer scale cannot fit in a paragraph. Cannot be squashed into a photograph. Now I really know what the word palace means. It was imposing and gorgeous... and IMPOSING in its grandeur, but more so in sheer size. Its bigosity, as Jon Lam might put it. It makes you feel very ant next to giant ant hill, except that the ant hill is incredibly ornate, hundreds of years old (at least -- even the most recent stuff is Qing dynasty, which is mid-1600s), and filled with museum exhibitions. AND IS HUGE. Did I mention I walked around for 6 hours? And that wasn't covering all that was open to the public, not to mention the HUGE sections that aren't public access?

Emperor = Excess. Enough said. I feel very... grain of sand by the sea. And I'm happy.