12 November 2011
Beihai park and military museum
I doubled up on activities this morning. First up though, I went to Starbucks for coffee. This was an interesting visit, as the boss man was there, and had an extreme dislike of me.
He never once took his eyes off me, and barked orders at the young girls he had working there who seemed concern as to what he was up to.
The guy literally sidestepped around the store staring at me for the full 10 minutes whilst I was there.
If his issue is he dislike westerners, then it seems a bit weird to me that he owns a starbucks franchise.
Next up, the walk to Beihai park, this is just past the forbidden city and is mainly a lake with an island in the middle. A guy on a tricycle with a seat for a tourist about to be ripped off followed me the entire way telling me in good English that eventually I will admit that its too far to walk and require his services.
How wrong he was, a 20 minute walk is nowhere near my limits of walking.
The park itself is quite nice, parks in China have lots of restaurants, activity areas, temples etc. This one had a lot of temples and the drum tower on the top, the purpose of this tower I am unsure of.
Next up, I had to walk to a different subway line to get to the military museum, I had to use the facilities along the way (generally public restrooms are every 200 metres or so, with an attendant and are spotless). This particular one was the first one with multiple squat positions and no cubicles. As a bonus, you can see right in from the street, into both the mens and ladies side. Thankfully I was the only one using them and they had a single urinal at the end of the mens one.
The military museum was quite good, a massive building, with half of it closed off. It is also free and full of domestic tourists.
There is lots of interesting reading about Chinas victory against Taiwan, USA, South Korea, Japan etc.
On my way to the park, I came across a statue shop. I have purchased this marilyn monroe statue for our front yard, it should arrive in 3 - 5 days.
Passing the forbidden city, which is encircled by a moat. People seem to fish in it.
A random gate to nothing.
An army of retired volunteers on leaf sweeping duty, they have their radio going and seem very happy.
Just after I took this photo, this car flipped over for no reason at all.
View of Beihai park, the lake, the bridge, thr drum tower.
There is a 'imitation imperial restaurant' in the park, which seems to have a non stop lion dance going.
The view from the top.
I did my best to get the sun behind it to make for a more interesting photo.
There are many fat, extremely lazy and presumably happy cats resting in this park. They dont seem to fear being turned into lunch.
My lunch, possibly cat who knows! Dim sum, 2 savoury dishes and also some sweet steam buns. I ate 2 out of 3 of everything.
The impressive military museum building. It is bigger than it appears in this photo, having 50 foot high ceilings on each floor.
Tanks and stuff.
Jets, most of them surprisingly tiny. All labelled with their Chinese name despite being copies of soviet designs.
The only large Shenyang jet they had, annoyinging these are roped off so you cant walk around them and very dusty and in a poor state of repair.
A giant Mao greets us upon arrival.
The gift shop was great, this is some knock off lego brand, but the jets and ships and whatever are better than any lego I had.
Under maintenance, much of this museum was closed off. Nice rocket.
Submachine guns, everyones favourite from computer games, when the clip sticks out sideways it makes it cooler.
Anti aircraft machine guns. I could have taken a lot more photos of the museum, but I know people find them boring.