A perfect day in Beijing

J is visiting Beijing for a week, and we hang out together yesterday. This is what we did for the whole day:
1pm - Met up for lunch, had 新疆菜 near 新疆饭店
3pm - Took a walk on 南锣鼓巷 near 后海, stopped for coffee in 过客
4pm - Walked at 后海, had various Beijing food including 豆汁 at 九门小吃
6pm - Went to 国家大剧院 (the "egg"), amazed at the architecture, met 黄牛党 (details in the next post)
7:15pm - Couldn't get tickets for performance at the Egg, disappointed, went to 首都剧院, watched the play 莲花 there
10pm - After the show, had dinner at 西门鸡翅 near 北大
11:30pm - Went to a bar with a live band near 清华, it is definitely overcrowded and we can hardly move, the music was good but hard to breath, amazed at the amount of exchange students in Beijing
12:30pm - Foot massage in 文津酒店
2pm - Got back home

Not something one can do every weekend, but it definitely feels good to experience a city with a good friend.

A true story

Over the course of lunch, my dad told me a story of one of his aunts, named L below. L was 25 and married with 2 kids in 1949. Her husband was in the air force of GMD, and he retreated with the rest of the army to Taiwan, leaving L behind in Mainland. Since then they haven't seen each other for over 30 years, only communicated through letters intermittently. L brought up the kids alone. Despite no hope for reunion in foreseeable future, they both remained single, until they met again in HK in 1983. L have since migrated to Taiwan after the reunion.

The story really strikes me, as it is even harder to believe than fiction. Separating for 30 years and still able to keep the marriage is simply unimaginable. I am not sure if I can do it after 6 months, without a known duration of separation. I am sure stories like this is quite common one or two generations before. Comparing this to the headlines we see in HK newspapers recently (Edison Chan), I realized the world has really changed a lot.

Fireworks in Shanghai

It is awesome. Words just can't describe the atmosphere in this city on New Year's Eve. Starting around 11:30pm to 1am, one can see numerous fireballs shooting up from various parts of the cities and exploding in the key. The scale is simply unimaginable. This year is the first year I see fireworks as large as the "official organized" ones in HK or SF, and I wonder where people get those. Fireworks and crackers was actually officially banned for a couple of years due to safety concern, but the ban was lifted several years ago. Since then every year is at a new level. No doubt that fireworks in a city reflects the economic growth of the previous year.