Beijing noodles

Pulling noodles

Beijingers love their noodles and they don't come much better than at 'Noodle Loft' where the chefs pull, stretch and even slice individual noodle strands off a block using a single chopstick. My favourite are the short, wheat noodles with tomato and egg.
Stretching noodles

Slicing noodles

Building across the street II

Mid March

Mid May
Two months on and work progresses. The foundations are now dug and the concrete poured. Fleets of trucks line up at sunset to fill up with earth and take it off to some place where, presumably, they need earth.. The generators run through the night emitting a low buzz that is just loud enough to disturb your sleep. Rumour is that all building works will stop mid July for two months to reduce pollution during the Olympics which should bring some relief.

Legation Quarter

Built following the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Beijing's Legation Quarter was established by foreign powers who forced the Qing government to accept the creation of a 'state-within-a-state'.

This 200 acre compound - just a kilometre or so south of the Forbidden City - was out of bounds to the Chinese and housed British, French, Russian and Japanese legations, amongst others, as well as banks, hotels and other trappings required to provide a home-from-home for the 500 or so foreign business and government personnel living there.

Today, because of its central location, much of the Legation Quarter has been taken over by Chinese government departments. The Supreme Court of China building is here as well as the office of the Major of Beijing. The original buildings can only be viewed at a distance through guarded gates. One of the remaining, accessible, buildings is St. Michael's church which still houses an active Christian community and opened at the end of 80's for regular services.

During our walk along the pleasant streets of the quarter, full of mature trees and gardens, we came across the Beijing Police Museum, a four storey building - originally the Bank of New York - tracing the history and heroics of Beijing's finest. Entry was a modest 5RMB (50€ cents), but for an additional 15RMB (1.5€) you got a smiling policeman key ring, a lapel badge and a go at the police laser shooting range - a full Dirty Harry experience with video clips of villains jumping out from behind buildings and firing at you. This was a opportunity we couldn't miss!

Are you feeling lucky, punk?

Beijing urban planning

Model of Olympic centre
Just south of Tian'anmen Square is Beijing's four storey Museum of Urban Planning. Here you can see what Beijing looked like in the past and what it should look like in the future. Highlight of the numerous exhibits is undoubtedly the huge model of the city - a patchwork of satellite photos mixed with scale models of town sections.

Walking through extensive exhibits covering the preservation plans for Beijing's hutongs (alley ways that made up the old Beijing) and traditional architecture, a visitor might be forgiven for thinking that Beijing urban planning is sensitive to the city's past, but they'd be wrong. Urban planning in Beijing has been driven by a passion & drive for rapid modernisation on one hand and, unfortunately, greed on the other. Real estate development has created vast fortunes in China over the last 10 years and it is no coincidence that that the country's 'rich list' is dominated by real estate moguls. And not much gets in the way of property developers and their projects - including city officials. Only last month Zhou Lianglio, former head of Haidan district in Beijing, & his wife were convicted of accepting more than $4M in bribes from real estate developers in the city over the last few years.

Only time will tell whether the noble intentions espoused in the museum for Beijing's city planning will match the realities on the ground.

Tac standing on the corner of Donzhimenwai Dajie