10/28 Saturday

I decided to go to Tian An Men square to look around and to do some photography. It was a nice day with a surprisingly blue sky. The square was crowded as usual, but it was packed into a slightly smaller space to make room for 2008 Olympics exhibits. There were two massive models of some of the Olympic Complexes, as well as two massive displays for the 5 Chinese mascots, all Panda Bears, with the names BeiBei, JingJing, HuanHuan, YingYing, and NiNi. All of their names combined say “Beijing Huanying Ni” which means “Beijing Welcomes You”.

Also occupying the square was a large billboard advertising the Africa Summit in Beijing. The Chinese are courting the Africans for their untapped mass of natural resources, which China is currently in need of. Throughout the city, lights have gone up, displays and billboards have been erected reading, “Africa: Friendship, peace, cooperation and development".

I met the mayor of Columbus, Illinois for a dinner of Peking Duck with Colm. The dinner was held at a Famous Peking duck restaurant called Chuan Ju De in Wang Fu Jing. The family that started the business used to prepare Peking Duck for the emperor. Because the mayor was a Foreign Dignitary, we were able to get a special room designated for government officials. Columbus is interested in doing a sister city program with a city in China, and the mayor toured about 7 different cities during his stay. The sister city program is one that encourages cultural exchange and understanding.

After saying goodbye to Colm, the mayor, and his entourage, I joined up with the Cummins interns, Terry and Caroline, as well as their friend Lak, who is Vietnamese. We went to a Halloween party at an apartment owned by a couple of British guys working in China. The apartment was really hard to find, and after getting off the taxi, we accidentally ended up looking in the Korean sector of the area for a good half an hour. Addresses in China can be really confusing, and most security guards at the gates have no clue of their surroundings. They are only there to stop and question suspicious looking people trying to enter into the apartments. Finally, after having 4 security guards collaborate, unsuccessfully, to figure out where we were going, one of the owners of the apartment found us.

The party was fun, and people had some really funky costumes including a straw/grass man who was wearing, well, straw and grass, a guy who had strapped a functioning fog-maker to his butt and was wearing a gas mask, and a guy who had dressed up in Cultural Revolution gear. Yet again, we were costume-less, but I had my Mao bag which was good enough.

After the party, a bunch of us went to an underground club called Vix. The music was decent, and the place was packed with costumed dancers. We got too tired to dance at around 5am, and returned to our homes by taxi. Outside of the club, my ears were still ringing and I was half deaf for a while (I think I will give my ear drums a break for a while). On the way home I could already see people starting to work at construction sites, and opening up their small shops. I tried not to wake Colm when I got to the apartment.