Got up at 8 am. Got a bit of chinese studied, while waiting for the day to begin at 9:30. At 9:30, I got on the bus to go to the 798 art area.
This area is one of the major creative districts in beijing. It was originally a factory area on the outskirts of the city, but the cheap rent for space attracted lots of artists, and now it’s entirely an art area.
The bus got there probably at 10:30ish, and we had until 4pm to explore. I wandered off by myself for most of the time. The art was cool, a lot was painting, and most of that was fairly traditionally styled – not that exciting to me. There were several paintings that were quite cool, and much of the mixed media or larger installations were really cool.
(many places had no-photography signs, so I didn’t get quite as many pictures as the place deserved.)
Stuff was quite expensive, tourists coming probably in general stick to the basic gifts like t-shirts and books, so those were exorbitantly priced (like $120 kuai for a tshirt), while the actual art prices were cheaper than one might expect to find in the US.
I ran into mary and her tutor and we stopped for a late lunch / snack. The place we ended up at tried a little bit too hard; the ‘salsa chips’ turned out to be individual chips with a small square of cheese, a dab of strawberry jelly, a sliver of ham, half a cherry tomato and a slice of olive on each.
Some of the more exciting things I saw were a store for bandi panda, which I’d seen in the US (artist that takes pictures with a stuffed panda toy), and lots of prints of a guy who takes portraits of himself in impossible places. (forgetting his name.)
Came back to the dorm uneventfully, and met with my tutor for an hour shortly afterward. We mostly did conversation on the last four lesson (the ones I’ll be tested on for monday.) We’re meeting again tomorrow to read through the essays provided.
Studied some more characters, and then spent an hour and a half doing taichi. I finally figured out where the taichi people meet, which is in a gym I haven’t been to before. the deal is that the gym has the center separated from the track, and the middle of the gym is used for badmitton courts. From the 8:30 – 10 period the track on the edges is opened up for taichi and taikuando and the like, so there were lots of little groups practicing, as well as several larger ‘class-like’ sessions going on.
I’m still not quite as flexible in some ways as I should be, but if i’m able to stick with it, I ought to get better.
Came back, watched part of the movie ‘a world without thieves’, which was assigned as homework over the weekend. It’s quite good so far. Continued studying characters as well. Another fairly busy day tomorrow; so I’m not going to stay up any later tonight.