In the whole tourist experience, what interests me the most is to be able to answer the question: “what do they do over there in everyday situations?”.

On the second evening that I was in town, my friends Fiona and Scott, American and British expatriates living in Beijing, took me to Tesco, a large British-based international grocery and general merchandising retail chain, with branches in China.

Going to Tesco may not be your “average citizen” experience yet (it seems like small mom&pop grocery stores are still very popular), but it is another interesting view of how it is similar back home, yet with Chinese (or populous country) peculiarities.

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Last week, when I arrived in Beijing, I bought a SIM card from China Mobile to put in my cellphone. It is widely considered as the best brand in China. The SIM card (for the number) cost me RMB280, as well as an extra RMB50 for a first voucher (the time money is not included in your original SIM card purchase with China Mobile). The price I paid for my SIM card was vastly above the normal price, which is around 100 RMB (at most 150 RMB), that I was given or that I found on the web. I suspect that I either fooled myself, because I knew the market price (but had a brain cramp in RMB<->CAD conversion), or that the market price is changing because the Olympics are coming. It needs verification. Special numbers do cost more – usually those with lots of 8s. Mine only had 2 eights out of 11 possible numbers.

There are several plans, and I did not explore them all unfortunately. My hosts suggested that I got a M-zone, specially marketed to young people

The first 50 RMB lasted me a week and a half. This is the second 50 RMB refill that I bought from a nearby florist, and which you can safely buy from anywhere that isn’t necessarily a China Mobile shop. It is a voucher that you tear open for a refill code. In order to refill, you just call the number on the voucher and bear with the heavily accented automated service’s English. For some reason, my voucher in fact gave me 60 RMB worth of time-money.

On Thursday, while walking in the Peking University area, we felt a storm looming upon us. Darkened skies, winds rising. It however never materialized: a few big drops, and a fear of golf-size hail later, a bright light appeared away on the horizon, between the buildings at 1 o’clock in front of us. It reflected messianically on the newly built office towers just across the ring road.

Ourselves Beside Me’s Li Yangfan

On last Friday, we went to the D-22 in Northwest Beijing, near Peking U and Tsinghua, to catch the You Say Party! We Say Die! show. Perhaps more well-known to the Beijing audience was the opening band, Ourselves Beside Me (sic), a girl trio formed in early 2008, notably by ex-Hang On The Box bassist Li YangFan. I first heard of HotB last summer, in Beijing Bubbles, the documentary film I always quote when talking about the Beijing rock/punk scene. It was only after reading up on Ourselves Beside Me that I realized that one of its members was with HotB. The name of the band in fact comes from the last track of the last album released by HotB in 2007, prior to its demise.

>> Listen to the entire Ourselves Beside Me show at D-22 on 2008-04-18 – 14 Mb.

Their music is not as loud as HotB, if it is a measure for comparison, and it actually reminds me of stuff that I used to listen to way back in 2001, like Buffalo Daughter. From what I gather through the articles, OBM is so new that they don’t sound the same at each performance that they had so far.

In fact it is. Based on what my expat friends said, and the Korean music that was being played inside, cafe/bakery chain “Tous Les Jours” is in fact a Korean-owned business. The bakery section resembles the self-service places that you find in Hong Kong, and to a certain extent, Chinatowns around the world. The branch that I went to was outside the Wudaokou subway stop on the 13 (the stop you use to get to Tsinghua and Peking U), where there is also a relatively large population of Korean students.

It is basically a cafe like would find in Asia. They serve you sandwich which bread is sub-par for the tastes of a Montrealer (it’s like sliced bread, but slightly sweet), but which fillings are familiar (ham and cheese) yet exotic (something else that tasted kind of sweet). It’s a little pricey for the average Beijinger, but totally affordable for the visiting Canadian (32 RMB for a lunch).

The interesting anecdote with Tous Les Jours, was that protesters against France’s stance on China and the Olympics, who protested in front of the many French businesses in China like supermarket Carrefour, were also seen in front of the Wudaokou branch of TLJ, as testified by one Beijing expat blogger, and another satirical blogger (who had a picture – which indeed shows the plaza facing Wudaokou station, where Tous Les Jours is, with full of people on the street + security guards).

One of the bizarre things with the Beijing Subway‘s interchange stations, like Xizhimen (西直门) in the northwest of central Beijing, is that you need to walk an incredible distance between the stations on both connected lines. Xizhimen is the station that connects Beijing’s original circular line, Line 2, or the Blue Line, with its new Line 13, or the Yellow Line, which is a city rail line that takes more than an hour to semicircle to Dongzhimen (东直门), its terminus near the East corner of Line 2 (also future hub for the Airport Express to be inaugurated in June 2008). This previous photo shows the station at rush hour, on a Thursday evening at around 5:30 PM.

The Line 13 and Line 2 stations of Xizhimen are actually separate stations. From the newer (inaugurated 2002-03) Line 13 station, you have to walk a good 10 minutes to get to the Line 2 station. below a shopping mall, outside through path like you find at amusement parks). If it’s rush hour, they would also make you walk outside, across the Xizhimen interchange/overpass to get to the subway stop’s opposite eastern exit.

If you don’t have to walk across the overpass, like I did on Wednesday, you then go through tunnels that seem to belong to an old or undeveloped interchange station. These are a little eerie, and may’ve been useful in case of a nuclear war. In fact, whereas the new subway lines make you feel like if you were in Hong Kong, the old ones (especially Line 2) definitely make you feel like if you were back in the Cold War era.

Two Chinese-Canadian Montrealers visiting Beijing… who were big enough fans of the Montreal Canadiens to carry their jerseys with them across the world!

A new residential area old of 3-4 years built near Chongwenmen station on Line 2.

We had two beautiful blue sky days on Tuesday and Wednesday, after two days of rain. A quick look now indicates that the haze is starting to come back.

A friend living here says that Beijingers love it when it rains, because it usually means that a strong wind on the next few days would carry away the pollution. Pure blue skies are a rarity in modern-day Beijing, for entirely different reasons than Hong Kong.

Yes, we won! 5-0 in Game 7.

I am in Beijing right now. They are honking outside the apartment, but I doubt that it is for the Habs.

There may not be a part two to this post… I have been following hockey from Beijing as well. On Sunday morning, I watched Game 6, with a distant relative, also a Canadian-born Chinese from Montreal, and another Quebecer expat. It was pretty awesome, even though it was slo-mo at times, and even sound-less in the last part of the third period, when the Canadiens lost their grip on the game.

Tomorrow morning, I will be watching Game 7 of the Bruins-Canadiens series.

I was told that the Rickshaw bar is open 24/7 and might be willing to switch you to a channel showing hockey. But, unverified info, and I am not going to verify it tomorrow morning.