After staying directly opposite Beijing Railway Station, waking up in our courtyard hotel in a quiet Hutong backstreet is pretty idyllic. The clouds from yesterday have gone and the room in dipped in sunlight. We set off early and wander down the street to see if the Nike exhibition is open. It isn't. Instead, we buy some breakfast from a little hole-in-the-wall and eat as we walk to the nearest subway entrance. We take the train and then a taxi to the 798 art district.
The Dashanzi Art District (know as 798 after the name of the factory that sits in its centre), is an area of Chaoyang in the north east of the city. It used to be an area of factories and military buildings, but now the whole area has been turned into art galleries and cafes. It's a little bit like areas in New York or London, but totally art related. There is graffiti all over the walls of the buildings. Plants and weeds push up through the cracks in the pavements. Old industrial cogs lie around the streets and huge pipes, now rusty, form a web above.
We wandered round for a while, taking photos of everything, people, walls, graffiti, statues, buildings, trees, and then found a cafe. Thinking it was about 11, we had a nice coffee and cheesecake and then realised it was actually 1.30. Strange lunch. After, we walked round some more. Stairways lead to strange design offices and tiny galleries. Fasionista girls sat looking bored waiting for customers. We found a bright shop where Eri bought some notepads. We saw a massive fist in the ground, the size of a car.
The biggest gallery is the 798 Space, in the old factory that gives the area its name. The building is pretty stunning - clearly designed practically, it is nonetheless pretty aesthetically amazing. Old Maoist slogans are still painted in massive characters on the walls. Glass windows in the floor show old industrial equipment. Old drills and lathes still stand around the space, like exhibits. The only exhibition on when we were there was some artist's (whose name, I annoyingly can't remember) stamps. They were politically pretty radical, mainly about the Chinese population living on their knees, depicting scenes like migrant workers forced to sell pirate DVDs on the streets of the capital to feed their children. The were really interesting, but you couldn't help notice the irony of the largest gallery in the whole area being used only to display a few sheets of stamps.
We left the area to go back to the centre of the city and try to find the Pyongyang Store. According to Lonely Planet, it was a store in the centre where you could buy stuff (t-shirts and the like), fresh from the Axis of Evil. Unfortunately, it had only been an exhibition and was long since finished. It's annoying when guide books make mistakes like this, confusing an exhibition for a store seems like a relatively easy distinction, but whatever. Back to our hotel's area to try out a restaurant for lunch (about 4.30pm) that we had seen the day before.
Not having a clue what we were ordering, we got far too much, and I was a little worried by what the Cow Balls was. Quite tasty though. Salty. Next Eri went for a massage and I went to buy myself some new sneakers! Yeah! It seems recently that wherever I go in Asia I can find sneakers in my size, just not in midget Japanland. Oh well. Got a nice pair of new Dunk for a little cheaper than they would have been in Japan (if they even had my size).
Evening and we went off to Nanluogu Xiang, a really cool little hutong street near our hotel and had a lovely coffee in a nice cafe that Eri's guide book recommended. A very nice family run place that did an excellent apple pie. Wandering down the alleyway, with little shops and bars, beautiful wooden lattice work in the windows and walls, the light from the shops is the only thing lighting the street outside. The end of the trip, back to the hotel to pack up and get to bed for our 4.30am start. Must come back to Beijing soon...
