The Wrap-Up

Wednesday 4:00 AM. It has almost been a week since i left china. I have come back to the land of fast internet and good hamburgers, but I am still stuck in the chinese time zone. My ipad region is still set to china, and my watch is still 15 hours ahead.

10 weeks go by faster than you think, than i thought at least. I am the kind of person who rarely feels surprised, and to feel pleasantly surprised is, well, a miracle. But this summer had been very good to me, it was busy, new, and different. I never thought i would meet so many cool people i would click with in such a short time, nor did i think i would end up in an amazing architecture office. I didn’t expect to like beijing, to dread coming back. I didn’t expect the bittersweet goodbye (70%bitter that is). I didn’t know what to expect, but definitely not this.

Here is a short list of the things i miss about beijing:

The old and historical

The new and flashy

The new mixes with the old

Houhai during the day, relaxing and family friendly

Houhai at night, PG-18

My adopted son (i spent about 2 dollars).  i hope he’s doing well.

The overpass i used everyday on my way to work.

The office. Blood has been shed here.

Office parties (no, that is no tsingdao beer i am helping myself to…).

Office work sessions. damn good interns.

Making renderings with pictures of my friends (oh hey blake).

Eating with coworkers/friends (and then lying about how long we took on our time sheets).

My best black friend, yea that’s how i roll.

So there you go, my life in beijing in a nutshell. These are the little bits and pieces that made up my 10-week long excursion. But it’s time to put them away and place a bookmark at the end of this chapter in this book. I’ve always had trouble sticking to a book, so it’s time for a new title. Eurotrip anyone?

The final chapter (part 2)

Finally, what’s a trip to seoul without some authentic Korean Barbeque? We asked our cab driver the day before for a good bbq place in the area we were going to be, and he told us this really fancy restaurant.

This place only served beef, and i think they specialize in the spinal part of the cow.

There were also these traditional korean side dishes. I never knew there were so many ways to eat a cabbage. Like japanese cuisine, korean cuisine is also very keen on the whole presentation. Chinese food, on the other hand, is more about piling as much food as possible on to a plate.

But my favorite was of course the MEAT. it was delicious, and the coal grill really made a difference. I personally prefer the marinated meat, more flavor.

After we fed ourselves, we decided to feed some fish. This little fish pond is located inside a cafe called dr. fish, and the fish you see not only eat normal fish food but also the dead skin from people’s feet. Mmm

But this is what traveling is all about, trying new things. There were four of us, and i have to say the fish liked me the best (whether that’s a good thing or not). It definitely takes some time to get used to the feeling of a group of little fish nibbling on your feet. However, there were two things i couldn’t stand during this process: 1) a fish sliding its slimy body between my toes 2) the albino fish staring at me. All in all, the ticklish feeling was pretty easy to get used to, but my feet did not feel smoother afterwards.

After three long days and three long nights at seoul, i said good bye to “Soul of Asia” half asleep at 7:00 in the morning. (To compensate for my early flight, i got to wait in the business class lounge, have breakfast, and take a nap in the massage chair.) It was definitely a nice getaway filled with friends, food, and Cass. At the same time, i cannot wait to get back to beijing and enjoy the last two weeks i have in china. 안녕히계세요

The final chapter (part 1)

My last day in Korea started with a trip to Seoul Tower. After a cable car ride, and 40 oversize steps, we reached top of the mountain. You might think korea has the best weather from these pictures, but it was scorching hot that day.

It was said that lovers would stay together as long as the their locks stay locked to the fences near the Seoul tower.

Okay so the the view on top was totally worth all the heat we had to endure. This view reminds me of the view of the bay at Lawrence hall of science. The river in the distance is called Hangang, which runs through seoul and is our next stop. I’m not even trying to be rude, but korea really looks like japan. I would often correct myself thinking that i was in tokyo.

On top of the observation deck, there was a wall dedicated for more lovers to express their eternal love for each other. People can buy a tile to decorate and stick it on to the wall. We wanted to get in the action as well but all the small tiles were sold at the bottom of the tower.

So we took out the photobooth sticker pictures from the night before and stuck over some creepy girl’s face. At first we thought she was a real person, but then we saw her picture everywhere and figured out that it was like a filler tile for the awkward empty spaces. i’m sure she doesnt mind.

After getting lunch at this famous restaurant for its ginseng chicken soup (which came with a shot of ginseng soju), we went to Hangang park for some water sports.

At first i really wanted to jet ski, but then i found out that i couldnt drive it myself. Instead, some guy would take me on the back of the seat. Because i didn’t want to do that, we did this thing called banana boat (you can see it in the middle of the picture). All you do is straddle the flotation device while a speed boat pulls you. Sounds safe and not exciting right? but it was actually really really fun.

The boat pulled us really fast and the captain made this really sharp turn in the first minute without telling us how to steer. So we all got wiped out in the water. It was such a surreal feeling, to feel yourself losing grip and then thrown into the water, and you think to yourself, “how the fuck did that happen?!” . But then you slowly emerge from under the water, and open your eyes to this:

It was such a cool sensation to be swimming in the middle of a river that runs through seoul. There was an immediate sense of elation and that was the highlight of my trip. Afterwards, the captain instructed us when and how to lean to avoid falling in the water, but we still had a couple of close calls.

Later on, we just sat at the dock to dry ourselves off. The people that worked there offered us to have a beer with them, and my friend told us that our captain apparently just won some jet ski competition and is having a party later on. These people really reminded me of Californian surfers. Their job is to have fun and do what they love, and when they are not working, they are just chilling. I wish i could’ve talked to them, but just being there in that atmosphere was so relaxing.

Day 2

After 5 hours of sleep, i started my second day in japan-look-alike (just kidding). After a small lunch, i was coerced into going this Hello Kitty cafe in the district we went to last night. One my friend told me that Koreans love cafes. If you walk down any street, there are more cafes than actual restaurants. Girls here would skip lunch to spend money on a cup of cappuccino.

And i guess this would be mecca for them, sugar, spice, and pink barf. The inside actually felt like a cat house, everything was kinda small but really over the top.

The food was really nothing special in my opinion, not bad, but not worth coming if you don’t give a crap about this mouthless cat. Nonetheless, it was an interesting experience, that’s one thing off my bucket list.

After tea time, I wanted to go see Ewha Woman’s University. Designed by Dominique Perrault, the project was appropriately named “The Campus Valley”

Man, this place really puts Wurster to shame. It’s hard to imagine the scale of this building from this picture, but the ramp goes 4 stories below ground level and changes into stairs that people can sit on.

The inside is just as cool as the outside. The glass facade provides an ample amount of sunlight and the horizontal nature of the building makes it less confining. The two sides of the “valley” are connected by a giant hall beneath the stairs you see on the outside. All the furnitures inside are very ikea-like, minimal but practical. Walking through the corridors, you will see stickers that suppose to read “classrooms” are changed into “ass”, “ass roo”, “ass room”. Korean girls are hilarious.

This is the equivalent of telegraph ave.

Naengmyeon for dinner. That thing was so hard to eat, it came with scissors so we can cut it.

Food Drunk

Around 1:30 pm, after spending 6 subway stops drying myself off, i finally met up with my friend near the Gyeongbok palace for an authentic Korean lunch. The interesting about korean restaurants is that unlike Chinese or American restaurants, they rarely have a booklet of dishes. Instead they have about 6 or 7 different dishes posted on the wall or printed on a single sheet.

This woman with a huge mole under her left nostril took our order of handmade noodle clam soup, and thanks to Julia, i had a very tasty first korean meal in korea.

After lunch we went to see the palace. If you think all asian people look alike, then you will probably think all asian palaces look the same.

“First constructed in 1394 and reconstructed in 1867, it was the main and largest palace of the Five Grand Palaces built by the Joseon Dynasty. The name of the palace, Gyeongbokgung, translates in English as ‘Palace Greatly Blessed by Heaven.'” Because everything was pretty much destroyed by the japanese, all the palaces in seoul have been reconstructed, which is a main difference between Chinese and Korean palaces. There was also a lot less people, so at times we felt like we were just strolling in our backyards .

And because there really wasn’t THAT much to see, we entertained ourselves by taking pictures with the guards (i’m pretty sure his mustache is glued on).

After a quick round in the palace, we went to the arts-craft district in the vicinity called Insadong. After getting lost several times on the way to Insadong, neither of us wanted to walk any further, so we decided to go to a famous tea house to have some tea.

the tea-house/building was separated in to three levels: store, cafe, and premier tea tasting lounge. We sat on the second-floor next to this plant wall.

So we didn’t really go the traditional tea-drinking route, and instead we had green tea freddo and green tea waffles with honey, red bean paste, and green tea yogurt. When in rome, eat what romans eat. And yes, they were as good as they look.

To walk off those sweets, we went to this famous in door mall-ish market in Insadong. It’s a cool place because it continues the idea of a street market out on the main road to this side courtyard by wrapping the shops in a continues ramp…

… all the way to the top, where there was a roof garden.

At night, we went to one of the bar districts near Hongik University. First stop, a korean restaurant for this traditional bombtastic chicken dish. Second stop: Ho Bar (ho means good) for a surprise birthday cake and some Cafri and TsingDao beer. Third stop: Soju restaurant/bar where new friends are met and one birthday girl got wasted. Fourth stop: a karaoke bar, which entailed Cass beer, korean songs, and “party in the USA”. Fifth stop: a korean restaurant where i struggled to keep my legs crossed on the wooden floor (that was the only table big enough for our group). At that point, i can no longer look at food, because we had been eating consistently for 7 hours. Sixth and FINAL stop: 5:30 a.m, after a very silent cab ride with a lot of hand gestures, i made it home. Hallelujah.

Conclusion: vacations sometimes can be way more exhausting than work.

Mode of Transportation

Yesterday, i left Beijing to go to Seoul for a short vacation. Because work has gotten so tiring and monotonous, i really wanted to go to a new environment for a change.

On my way to the Beijing Capital Airport, Terminal 3 i thought about trains. I have taken a lot of trains in my (short) life, amtrak, shinkasen, eurostar, china railway. Unlike airplanes, trains operate on ground level so the view outside is constantly changing and moving.

When i’m flying, i lose interest in the cloud formations after the first 2 minutes, and i turn my attention to the crappy in-flgiht movies. There’s something to be said about taking a train. It is not the fastest mode of transportation, but i always feel “something” when i take one. Yesterday when i took the airport express train, i finally figured out that “something” is a mixture of satification,  happiness, nostalgia, and helplessness.

Because trains give a visual connection to the outside, you get a heightened sense of movement. As the trees or houses pass by you in a flash, you feel like the world is racing by. However, you am not moving. It feels like the train compartments act as some sort of time machine that tranports you through time instead of space. You are been taken from place A to place B in a constant speed, in a protected bubble. This is where the feeling of satisfaction and happiness manifest. You are been taken through the slums, farms, mountains and over rivers. You are been delivered to where you want to be in the time that was promised to you. There’s no surprise, no hardship; life is a breeze. This feeling of being taken care of reminds me of childhood, when my parents used to make all the decisions for me for what’s best for me. Everything is taken care of, i just need to be present for the ride. This is where nostalgia comes in.

You can almost think of a train ride as a metaphor for predestination, but in this case, you know where you’ll end up. However, many people have trouble accepting the concept of predestination because you are no longer in control. This is where the sense of helpless comes from. Unlike driving, where you can make a pit stop at a vista point or go around a ghetto neighborhood, the train tracks have been laid out ahead of time. Not only is the route permanent, the speed is also unchangeable.

On a less pensive note: Norman Foster’s Terminal 3 is a beast, a beastly oriental dragon (that was his inspiration).

This is what i had at Pizzahut in the airport: green tea ice cream cake and seafood rice, not your usual fast food pizza and breadsticks.

It’s 11:00 am, I am about to go explore korea in a thunderstorm. So far my impressions of korea from last night are: it is very clean, it looks like japan, and too many drunk people take the subway at night. I saw this one girl passed out across three seats, and three people in the cart were trying to help her by using her phone to get someone to pick her up. This old man kept trying to talk to me in a mixture of english and korean. I wonder what other things i will encounter today, im crossing my fingers for THIS.

Saturday Super Post (part deux)

After visiting the forbidden city, i was starving. So i took the bus to this street filled with all sorts of cuisines in the most famous shopping district in china, Wang Fu Jing. This place is one of a kind, you can taste cuisines from all parts of china/asia here. some were authentic, some were scary, and some were down right disgusting. The following is a compilation of what went down my stomach that afternoon:

grilled lamb sandwich. 3.5/5 stars

bean sprout in corn tortilla. 3/5 stars

i think these were pigeons, they look a even grosser in picture… (no, i did not eat this)

weird drinks with smoke coming out of them, is this FDA approved?

i’m not going to ruin the delicious taste of this traditional beijing cuisine by describing what it is. 4.5/5 stars

octopus balls (not like that) with cheesy sauce and onion flakes. bombtastic. 5/5 stars

lamb kabob. mmm juicy. 4/5 stars

an assortment of kabobs (starfish, cockroaches, scorpions (small and grande), seahorses, bats (??), etc). i’ve had the small scorpions before, they were just very crunchy and high in protein. 3/5 stars

traditional beijing homemade yogurt. 4/5 stars

fried ice-cream. good idea,  looks like a piece of lard, and tasted like shit. 0/5 stars

honey glazed haws. This holds sentimental values for me like a huge Tootsie pop has for a fat kid. 4/5 stars

Saturday Super Post (part un)

2:30 pm: Forbidden City.

I remember going there when i was very small, that was before learning about chinese history, before studying architecture, and before becoming an architect. Knowledge makes you see things differently, and life makes you experience places differently.

I initially decided to go to the forbidden city because i had nothing to do and it was one of those “lonely planet” must-sees. All my friends left me last weekend, for Guilin, for France, for Shanghai, for eye infection. I wanted to get in and get out in under an hour, but i ended up spending three hours inside this imperial palace.

Like Versailles, the forbidden city was home to royalty. When we think of Versailles, we think the hall of mirrors, the lavish beds, and the elaborate gardens. However, the forbidden city is the opposite. It is a demonstration of power through emptiness and open arena.

Yes, it had detailed gold leafing woodcarving and artificial mountains, but the overall planning and atmosphere was meaningful, powerful, and simple.

After visiting all the important halls on the main axis, I roamed into the courtyards on the right side. Because this side route is generally not listed under travel groups’ agenda, there was less traffic and more authenticity.

Like central park, these courtyards transport you into another realm that makes you forget that a contemporary city is on the outskirt. However, this place not only blurs your spatial sense but also time perception. Besides the occasional trash cans and signs, the place is devoid of modernity. It’s organic and surreal. With a little imagination, one can easily imagine what it feels like to live in “the old world of beautiful concubines and priapic emperors, ball-breaking (and broken) eunuchs and conspicuous wealth hovering over the lush gardens, courtyards, pavilions and great halls.”

Dinners

One of the culture differences that i have noticed about China and America is the concept of dinner. In America, dinner is just another meal, maybe a bigger one, but it is still something people do instead of enjoy. Yes, you can enjoy the steak you are having for dinner, but to enjoy this particular activity of eating as a recreational activity is something that I haven’t really experienced in America. We always schedule dinner as a prelude or preparation for the main events that come after. Dinner and movie, dinner and drinking, dinner and whatever, we always set a time limit on this activity because we don’t believe that it is entertaining enough to be going on and on.

In China, dinner is dinner. It is the totality of an evening plan. It could go on for an indefinite amount of time, and restaurants become a venue for interactions and exchange. Food becomes a source of energy, a topic of discussion, or even decorations. It is in the culture to welcome, send off, congratulate, and celebrate through dinner.

The other night, Cruz took Reed and me to this Mexican restaurant called Amigos in GuLouDaJie. It took us an hour to get there, and the food was as authentic as it would get in China. We were joined at the restaurant by Cruz’s girlfriend (French), Phillipe (Ecuadorian), Debra (Chinese), and whatshername (Finnish). I am becoming less and less surprised at people coming from exotic locations, because China is the new melting pot. We talked about a lot of different things over nachos and margaritas, from football to architecture to pretentious people that wear scarves that match their shoes.

Last week, the third principal of the firm arrived in the office. Portuguese, middle-aged, female, Claudia looked slightly arrogant and snoobbish. Since most of the people at the firm have only seen her picture, her arrival was like the Devil Wears Prada, and everyone got a little bit nervous. To welcome her, the other principal, Zhang Ke, took a few of us to his restaurant to have dinner with her. She opened a bottle of red wine that she brought over from portugal to accompany a table full of Chinese cuisines. She told us about her dissertation and teachings, and we told her what we were individually working on. Maybe it was the wine, but i felt like for the duration of the dinner, we were just friends coming from different backgrounds. Positions didnt matter, age didn’t matter, language didn’t matter. I’m really enjoy these kind of dinners, because  i always learn so much about the world from people that have seen it all (or at least more than me). From cardboard steamed buns to Russian WWII replica watches, the conversations are just as tasty as the food.

Urban Backyard, designed and owned by my boss. The main door swings shut like the movable hinged facade of the Steven Holl storefront project. (sorry for the pixelation, i got these pictures from the website)

七九八

After a busy and tiring saturday, i would normally relax and take it easy on sunday. But since i’m in beijing, i wanted to make the most out of my time here.

In the morning i met some new friends for lunch at a korean restaurant before going to 798.

“798 Art Zone is a part of in the Chaoyang District of Beijing that houses a thriving artist community, among 50-year old decommissioned military factory buildings of unique architectural style. It is often compared with New York’s Greenwich village or SoHo. The area is often called the 798 Art District or Factory 798 although technically, Factory #798 is only one of several structures within a complex formerly known as Joint Factory 718.”

Maybe because i am currently designing the interior space for an exhibition museum in tibet, i was more interested in the renovation effort than the actual art pieces.

I personally thought the art was slightly below my expectation from what i had read about. The pieces were too eclectic and experimental. The themes of revolution or cultural commentary are redundant, and many artists lack a more refined way of illustrating that would connect more effectively with the general public. However, the factory-style galleries present a nice backdrop to the paintings and give the space a rare sense of cultural identity.