Our taxi came at
7.30am this morning to take us to the station for the trip back to
Beijing. Unfortunately, when we got to there, we realised that we had
left Zoe's hat atop one of the stone lions at the gate to our hotel
(if you look closely at the photo below you can see it there).
The train arrived
right on time at 8.43am. There were quite a few people getting on and
we spent some time in a big crush at the entrance to our carriage
trying to get to our seats. They were right at the far end, but
thankfully we had a four-set row to ourselves. Oddly, there were
clearly a number of people who had been able to buy tickets without
assigned seats, and they spent the whole of the four-hour journey
standing in the vestibule.
We arrived in
Beijing just before 1pm and caught the metro to the hotel. Walking to
the hotel was hot work – the temperature was somewhere around 35C –
but at least we knew where we were going this time and the streets
are well shaded. We had planned to use the afternoon to go to the
so-called Dirt Market – a big antique/flea market – in the hope
that we could buy some clothing/hats/etc, but when we did a quick
online search, it became clear that it really was an antique market
and as we weren't in the market for a big stone lion, we changed our
minds. Instead, we walked up the road to an ATM to cash ourselves up
again, visited good old Holiland for an air-conditioned coffee and
some pastries and then hung out in the hotel. I stayed in the room
while Kate and the girls went downstairs to the hostel's very
pleasant communal area. After a while, Sarah excitedly knocked on the
door – Kate had seen some sort of small mammal climbing around in
the climbing plants that blanketed the windows in the communal area.
Sadly, it was gone by the time I got down there, but we checked
online and discovered that it was a so-called hutong weasel. Actually
the Siberian weasel, these small mammals (they grow to a length of
about 40 centimetres) are well known among hutong dwellers. In
Chinese, they're called huang shu lang – literally ‘yellow
mouse wolf’ and their fur is sometimes used to make paintbrushes.
In the evening we
returned to our favourite restaurant, where we dined on pepper beef,
pork spare ribs, stir-fried veges and sausage fried rice.
No comments:
Post a Comment