Haidian District

A post from Lauren on my Facebook page got me thinking that it would be high time to describe where I am, and what Beijing is like on the surface.

First, Beijing is huge. I mean, really, really big. Geographically enormous. The flip side of that, however, is that the 13 million continuous residents there are quite a bit more spread out. The streets are busy, of course, but nothing like the endless swaths of people that you might expect from a country with 1.4-1.6 billion people.

Now, just because you don't see lots of people doesn't mean you don't know they're there. One telltale sign reminds you exactly how many people are cruising around Beijing. I refer, of course, to air pollution. There are days when I can't see even a half-mile down the road from the haze, and the sun is just a dim glow in the sky. People keep assuring me that it's just fog, but t'ain't no fog like I've ever seen. Now there are good days and bad days, to be sure. The first few days were bad days, but you could have mistaken today's pollution for that of Denver's. Really not too bad.

I live in a relatively sleepy part of town. It's called Haidian District, and is known for having a number of universities within its border. It's not exactly a wild-college-town kind of setup, though; there are a lot of gated apartment communities and little food stalls. It's also got some absolutely gorgeous parks. The one linked here was one I visited two days ago at around 7:30 am, breakfast in hand.

(This breakfast, to set the scene, was freakin' sweet. You take a freshly fried biscuit, cut it in half to make a pouch out of it, put in an egg over-medium, some chicken meat, sausage, and assorted mystery-veggies, and put it in a bag. All off of a street vendor for the equivalent of 81 cents.)

Back to the park. Like everything in Beijing, it's big. Wide green open spaces, dense bamboo forests, a stream running down the side, and a big lake filled with lily pads five feet tall and three feet wide. There were veritable legions of old people doing Tai Chi, a couple people fishing, and some few playing wooden flutes. Really quite pretty.

I move in with my homestay family the day after tomorrow, which I am really excited about. I should still be within Haidian District, but I'll be about 20 minutes walk from campus. When I have some nice pictures to share, I'll update this post.