July 16

_____________________________ BIKE RIDE HAIDIAN DISTRICT there is a park across the street from tsinghuas north gate. its actually more like a man made forest than a park. ive never seen anyone there and most of it is blocked off. i like to imagine what beijing will be like years from when young trees like these have become a real forest.

_____________________________ we started off heading north on shuangqing road through what only a year ago was a neighborhood i'd pass through on my bike everyday.

_____________________________ now just ruins under the shadow of cranes in the distance, some of the demolished houses are already being developed. this spot is now a nursery for flowers and other plants.

_____________________________ unfortunately my camera does not really capture the scale of development here. seeing this many cranes in once spot is really overwhelming.

_____________________________ in this poster posted on the wall you can see the new apartment building rising out of a diamond.

_____________________________ this strip a few months ago was all restaurants servicing the people now forced to move somewhere else.

_____________________________ we run into a market which, while not a farmers market, has much fresher produce than the much more expensive stuff in the large supermarkets.

_____________________________ unfortunately trading nice convenient neighborhood markets for large chain supermarkets like this wumart is the price of development.

_____________________________ three wheeled stuff is really big here

_____________________________ i like the fact that they saved a little corner of an old single story house when they developed this spot. really curious what it was about that dilapidated little spot that made them save it.

July 8

_____________________________ 2:15 BEICHANG STREET west of the forbidden city there is a tiny bar. having just finished watching hedghog's secret guest performance there we empty out onto the broad tree lined street outside. after exchanging few words i separate from the group and start wandering.

_____________________________ 2:20 i turn left and start heading west under the glare of the classic tiananmen style street lamps.

_____________________________ now i'm sitting with a whole bunch of older men perched on the side of the road dangling fishing lines into the darkness. i talk with them for a moment. apparently the water beneath us is beihai (north sea), they are fishing for very little fish, and there really aren't any fish to be caught at the moment. "when can you catch fish?" "only after it rains." it hasn't rained in a while, and the thinking behind lining up on this spot en masse (there were about 40 guys) at 2:30 am suddenly seemed questionable. i bid them farewell.

_______________ BEIHAI 2:30 AM

_____________________________ NORTH ENTRANCE OF ZHONGNANHAI 2:35 i run into a scene of an endless train of huge trucks moving what looks to be soil in and out of a flood lit gated entrance. i walk over and ask in passing one of the men milling about. "where is this?" "zhongnanhai," one of them replies with twinkle in his eyes, pleased it seems with the fact that he is at the headquarters of the chinese government. he flashes me a smile as i stumble along and asks, "you wanna go in?" in general i try to make a point not to trespass on party leader property. while wandering drunk with a camera in the middle of the night, i'm not in any hurry to make an exception and i don't stop. "of course i can't go in!" to which he laughs under the growl of the trucks as i continue on.

_____________________________ theres an eery stillness and cleanliness to the scene around zhongnanhai. the wall shines with a repainted weekly gloss.

_____________________________ BAOZI SHOP 3:00 AM its time to refuel so i stop in a baozi shop to grab some steamed bun goodness.

_____________________________ ? 3:30 AM its been an hour now and no sign of big apartment complexes. its all still hutongs and traditional style architecture.

_____________________________ ? at some point i walk past a castle

_____________________________ AFTER 4:00 AM the scenery starts to change. and as i sober up from the beers at the show my camera starts to become drunk and lose focus. at this point it can no longer be called a wander as i've decided to walk all the way back home to wudaokou. not really a wander if theres a destination.

_____________________________ NEARING DAZHONGSI 5:00 AM the suns finally up. camera dies.

July 1

_____________________________ 10:00 PM, NEAR WUDAOKOU SUBWAY STATION we started walking from up by the bar street, deciding an aimless stroll beats being cooped up in a bar. cooping ourselves up too often is a given. theres a tatoo van that marks the mouth of the bar street. tonight i noticed that, for the first time in the almost two years I've lived here it appears to be open for business. there's something unsettling about any mobile tattoo station. this one is no exception.

_____________________________ We head down chengfu road towards the east gate of peking university. the dense humid atmosphere adds a buoyancy to our drifting. we pass a "punk" hair saloon which, while anything but punk, offers a wide variety of hairstyles all too underrepresented back in the states.

_____________________________ 10:30 PM, CHENGFU ROAD OUTSIDE 13 CLUB when we hit the crowd outside 13 club and d-22, I dipped into a corner store to buy us some beers for the road. another reason not to bother with bars is that unlike in the U.S., drinking on the street is completely acceptable. inside, dabiao snuck up behind me to say hi, and I noticed that this local fixture, the wudookou vagrant who has been blessing the streets here with his presence since before there was a here, had cleaned himself up a bit.

_____________________________ 10:50 PEKING UNIVERSITY EAST GATE we decide to head north, and i've begun to build up some excitement around our walk. while i've been as far as tsinghua university's north end, past that is all new terrain for me. we pass the ruins of alien totem poles ominously communing in the neon saturated smog.

_____________________________ hannan finishes his beer first as a man riding a typical chinese motorized bycycle cart stops at a trash can to sift. hannan tosses his bottle to the guy, who hair standing on end, flashes me a christopher lloyd in back to the future style maniacal grin, which somehow manages to be more endearing than terrifying, and apparently excited to see a foreigner, offers hannan a cigarette for his bottle.

_____________________________ hardly an even trade, hannan politely refuses. he repeatedly pulls ahead of us to the next trash can and we repeatedly catch up to him as he sifts endlessly in the hum of the night.

_____________________________ after we pass tsinghua's west gate, we pass through a stretch of restaurants, including a "lamb scorpion" spot. hannan and yangkun discuss where the dish, a lamb's spine stewed in a hot pot, is from, concluding xinjiang.

_____________________________ finally we hit a stretch of highway which connects us with the unknown. it's quiet on the road. only one or two cars pass in a minute. i enjoy taking in the ugly yellow color of everything. even the pink roses planted on the side of the road absorb the yellow street lights toxic radiation.

_____________________________ 11:50 SUMMER PALACE EAST GATE the nothing that lines the highway is finally broken by a flashy karaoke club and hannan helps me remember that i've been there before. it was the scene of a late night fight over a cab. it was christmas two years ago and hannan still talks with a tinge of pride about the bloodied lip he recieved. the other guys got the cab.

_____________________________ next to the karaoke club we find outdoor food stands and people screening the expendibles. clearly the place we should post up for a while.

_____________________________ 5:30 AM, WUDAOKOU BAR STREET we had made our way back to wudaokou some hours ago for a kind of sending away party. the bar street at dawn is a particularly grotesque scene of foreign students and rich chinese mingling around career beggars and stumbling in and out of overcrowded dance clubs and one of the filthiest 7-elevens in the world.

_____________________________ after coming so close to accepting the end of the night, we get sucked into one of the most popular spectator sports of this block, bar fights. this fight was between a large group of kazaks and a couple of guys from which african country i'm not sure. by the time we were standing in the midst of it the parties involved had already deteriorated to the most base comportment.

_____________________________ at some point dabiao reappeared with his trademark grin and assorted incomprehensible hand gestures signaling that its finally time to head home.

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