Beijing Photodiary Part 2

初一

First day of the New Year.

I visited the 庙会 (Miao Hui). It is a carnival of sorts held in the 15 days of Chinese New Year, featuring a staggering array of streetfood and snacks from all over China, and also carnival games, traditional Chinese performances and stalls selling all sorts of knick knacks.Great way to bask yourself in the festivities.

Typically chinese - a sea of people

Guess how this was taken!

Day 2 of CNY
I went to Wang Fu Jing's snack street where they sold all kinds of weird food from all over China. Trust me when I say the Chinese eat everything and anything, because they sold dried seahorses on sticks, starfish, fried crickets, black scorpions among some of the freaky foods. Of course they have the more typically Beijing ones like pigs' organs soup, pigs' intestines, roasted lamb legs, grilled pork knuckles, grilled pigeons...and many more!

Pig intestines - it's actually yummy!

3rd Day of CNY
I went to one of the oldest streets in Beijing where everything was still kept authentic. They had some of Beijing's oldest brands such selling traditional cloth shoes, tea, Traditional Chinese Medicine and silk since the Qing Dynasty period. To top it off, they have a cinema from probably the 30's too!

The original size of steamboats in the past

Old film cameras, with a rickshaw in the background

 

Traditional cloth shoes - 100% hand stitched

Tianan men

I stood waiting in the crowd for 1 hour just to witness this.

Day ?
The first snow in Beijing. Snow came extremely late this winter. Usually it will snow 5-6 times each winter, with the first snow usually in December, but this winter it only came after the new year in Febuary. You can't believe how delighted I was to see the entire city dressed in white. Everything looked so bright, so clean, and so new. I literally danced around the house when I saw that it snowed at night and dashed out to the nearest park to get some photos.

The Water Cube used for Olympics looked stunning at night
I was the only lunatic snapping away
alone while freezing my ass off.

This was the second snow of Beijing, and it was much heavier than the first one. I went out to the Forbidden City to capture some shots.

The small "park" at my grandparents' apartment.

Dad said I looked like a doll in this one.

This was my last day in Beijing. The second day after it snowed, the sun came out and I went out to the Forbidden City again and managed to capture some shots of the clear blue sky.

A mini bunny snowman that an old lady made! She was armed with a DSLR too.

Well wishes for the New Year written by the visitors

Forbidden City, taken from a bird's eye view up a small mountain. The snow on the rooftops has melted slightly...

For the afternoon, I went to a cafe called Sculpting In Time with my friend and her cousin. I simply love the cafes in China, they all have very tasteful decoration with their own unique styles, wifi and great coffee. This cafe came with a vintage clothes and lifestyle goods store in the first floor and had two floors dedicated to its patrons.

This last shot in my camera was taken by my friend's cousin. He is completely a noob when it comes to photography (see the focus is totally off), but somehow he managed to get this shot when the sun just hit my face from the window of the cafe. I didn't even realize I was being photographed.

I like this photo for its spontaneity. Goodbye Beijing, my birthplace. I'll be back to visit again, in maybe 4 years' time.

P.S: Hope you've enjoyed this series! Let me know what you thought of my photography and whether you'd want to see more photodiaries in the future :3

Beijing Photodiary Part 1

Day 1

I went to Nanluoguxiang, it's an alley that has many small Hutongs. Some of the spaces have been converted into shop spaces for entrepreneurs to open their own quirky shophouses, selling collectible matchboxes, leather bound notebooks and wallets, vintage clothes, cafes, pubs and even restaurants. Here, you can get a taste of indie and 'young culture' in China, and also find many many things that are usually not found in China or even in the world. And yes, there are still many families living within these old Hutongs.

The first 冰糖葫芦 I ate in China. It's basically raw hawthorn dipped in sugary syrup.
Some variations include putting sticky rice or red bean filling inside the hawthorn, or sticking
various nuts and seeds outside.

Me

Churros. It's supposed to be an old Portugese snack.
Fried potato fritters with chocolate sauce. Extremely supremely good.

One of the many quirky shops in Nanluoguxiang

These various Coca Cola bottles covered both sides of the walls of this small cafe.
Can you spot the bottle Karl Lagerfeld designed?

The sun sets at 5.30pm, and night envelopes the frozen lake.
Bars along the lake light up while people continue skating. 

After dinner, I chanced upon a small shop that sells various postcards and stationery. It's got an entire wall plastered with postcards, many of those bearing Yoshimoto Nara's art of suspicious students, and many postcards with retro designs. Some of the postcards and notes pasted on the walls were written by the customers and it was fun to read what each of them felt at that time. 

Even better, in the basement, many unsent letters seat quietly, arranged according to the date that they were to be sent. These were letters written by people who wished to send out their messages to themselves or to someone important, one year later. You could simply choose from the staggering array of notepaper and envelopes to express your message on, and write. The shop mails out your letter on the exact date you specified one year later.

Letters waiting to be sent

Day 2
I went to visit China's two top universities, 北大 Bei Da and 清华 Tsing Hua.

Can you believe this is Bei Da's campus?

Day 3
Visited 798 Art District (a post on that alone to be published) in the day, and went to Beijing's newest luxury goods district at night. Their shop directory includes standalone stores of the top labels in fashion such as Lanvin, Armani, Balenciaga, Dsquared2 and Theory. They even have Tsumori Chisato and merci beaucoup standalone stores!

And of course, Comme des Garcon's mega 5 storey complex, I.T. Beijing. Photography wasn't allowed, but I took some when the staff weren't looking anyway. The store was decorated in a minimalistic manner, but with amazing displays of clothes in arched doorways and a series of small "nooks" that held the clothes intimately. The most amazing thing was the art sculptures on each floor, with the first floor holding a gigantic abstract wooden elephant that exuded an artisan air and made the store seem more like an art gallery and the clothes, art exhibits.

A giant polka dotted pillar snakes up Comme des Garcons' I.T market

First look - PLAY by Comme des Garcons

Racks full of McQueen designs, including shoes and bags

Day 4 

A visit to Sanlitun Village, made up of many shopping malls complete with a central plaza. This part stocks mostly high street labels, many of which are overseas labels that are not even found in Singapore. 

Jianwai SOHO district - another shopping district with many indie fashion shops
stocking imported Korean apparel as well as local designer labels.
I bought a brand new Zara fur coat for only SGD30 there from
a shop selling authentic Zara from their spillover stocks.

Day 7

A visit to 圆明园, Old Summer Palace, former playground of Dowager Cixi. Now it lies in ruins after being destroyed by British and French soldiers in their invasion into China.

The maze

Original ruins leftover from Qing Dynasty

Day ?
Skated on the big lake at Houhai. It was beautiful to watch the sun set, illuminating the bare trees and dwarf tiled old houses.

Professional speed skaters in action!

People playing ice hockey

Day 14
Visited Olympics Park - including the "Bird Nest" and "Water Cube". They made the interior of the Bird Nest into a temporary ice & snow festival with people skating, and playing snow games.

Day 15
Went out wandering about the streets of Beijing on my own. Half of the time I didn't know where I was, but I still managed to find my way around by asking people along the way and taking the subway home. A good thing about public transport in Beijing is that their trains and buses come really frequently and all their bus stops have a name, and they'll announce the stop's name very much like the subway so I could find my way around.

I visited the National Film Museum and Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) art museum. CAFA is the top art institution in China and Prada recently held their S/S 11 show at CAFA art museum. I arrived at the museum for an exhibition on self portraits of female artists from 1930s - 2000s. It was interesting to see the self perception of female artists over the years, whereby the paintings changed from traditional oil on canvas painting depicting women wearing qipaos to working class women wearing men's denim overalls and embodying the revolution of the 1940s-1950s to modern women portrayed in abstract brushstrokes and neon pop colours.

National Film Museum

Day 16

Second visit to Nanluoguxiang, this time spotting new things which I didn't notice the first time, including a music cafe and an art cafe. I was one of the few people who was wandering about alone along the alley, so I was afraid to go inside those small cosy cafes and seat down. I went to a backpacker's cafe instead...

A sign on the Cerise, the art cafe read: Trade your photos in for ours! 

So tempting.

Chinese New Year's Eve
The sky exploded with colours on Chinese New Year's Eve. There were fireworks literally everywhere, amongst those some of them were mine (:

Hope you've enjoyed these photos!

Please await the posting of Beijing Photodiary Part 2.