Beijing baby beanie
I feel to give this a title of blog would be misleading, so this is no longer a blog but a diary because I will not be editing it. I am now in China, I have met so many wonderful people and am having lots of fun. I have a cousin who moved to Beijing 11 years ago and just had a baby so I thought I would knit the baby a hat. I have never knitted a baby hat so it came out so janky.
This is what I have been doing while I knit this hat:
Hanging out in Friendship Complex
I am staying at this place in Beijing called the Friendship Complex that I would compare to Collingwood yards in a sense that it is a courtyard with little stores and places to eat and there are lots of hot people around.I Knitted the beanie using the yarn from the gloves, mostly in coffee shops in the Friendship complex and in the little courtyard.
I arrived not having slept for 20 hours looking fucked and got so lost and there were so many people out taking photos. Sometimes it’s all a one-woman show and they have little tripods for their phones, but my favourite is when there are a couple of friends, sometimes taking photos of each other, or sometimes there is one very glammed friend and one friend who is in a comfortable outfit who has come along to take the pic. so sick. Some girls also seem to have hired photographers. I need to get on Rednote, I assume that’s where the pics are posted.
I was staying above this viral second-hand designer store, the lifts were always filled with people going to the shop. I did go in. It was very overwhelming and they made you wear these gloves. They also had a camera section, I wish I brought that strange selfie camera, would have been good for Rednote.
Riding City bikes
I have been riding the city bikes everywhere, it is like $1 AUD per hour and the bike lanes in Beijing are so wide. It is so much fun, the city is huge and you can see so much by riding around. I found some vintage stores in one area of the city while on my bike. I brought a fluffy hat.
On my second day, a local guy called John pulled up next to me on my bike and said he wanted to work on his english and invited me to an Irish pub for a quiz night which he liked to go to to practice. So I met up with John at 8pm at the bar and we joined his friends for the quiz and it was the strangest night.
Drinking at pubs, Mango and the North Korean Embassy
At the Irish Pub quiz night, one of John’s friends was a drama teacher/ex-aspiring actor from Tanzania. I think he mentioned he was a drama teacher like 7 times in 1 hour. He also played us a Chinese movie that his son acted in on his iPhone. He related his son’s part in this film to Sofia Coppola’s role in the God Father. He then tapped me on the ass and apologised. He also kept implying that he had a large penis which I acted confused about every time he brought it up.
“In my family you get either the height (he was like 5”6) or the you know what”
“curly hair??”
He did say one thing that I liked. I asked him what makes an actor good and he said the best actors are the ones who you can see are having fun and enjoying themselves and I thought that was sweet.
After the quiz ended, I ended up biking to this other bar with this guy from Texas and we ran into one of his friends who was playing cards, so I ended up playing crazy 8s which was like another version of scum. The guy from Texas left but I kept playing for a while and ended up licking a girl’s toe. After the card game finished, I said goodbye and went to find a city bike to get home. While I was getting on the city bike, a scooter with three boys on it pulled up, I think they were from Portugal, and invited me to Bar martini which I had heard about.
So I got on the back of the scooter and we went to bar martini. It was a Wednesday night but one of their friends was throwing a party, it was a small dance floor then a group of people drinking and smoking. It was 2am, I was tired and the vibe was super horny, too horny. There were a couple girlfriends of the guys there, one of them was upset because she thought I kissed her boyfriend. He asked me what boy there was my type, I was like oh I am not interested, then he asked me if I was trans and said it was ok if I was. I stayed a little longer and then left the club and got on my bike.
What really sucked was that I had a container of left over noodles that I forgot in the club and still thinking about those noodles makes me sad. You can see the bag on the table. The next day I was so hungover, I sat in the friendship complex and knitted. It was weird there were kids with ducklings, so many little dogs and so many Rednote pics getting taken.
My cousin and his wife also took me to the funniest Russian restaurant/bar called Mango. Each night at 8pm and 12am they have a show. It’s insane and the food is so yum. If you’re in Beijing, go to mango and watch the show, apparently one time they brought out a large snake. My favourite performer was this man who looked like the guy from the movie enchanted. He also look me to the North Korean Embassy for a look.
I then went to another Irish pub on Saturday night (idk) to go to my cousins after rugby match, I haven’t seen binge drinking like that in a while. That was interesting, it was a bunch of ex-pats. One of my cousins friends was really nice. His brother actually played for the same rugby team my dad had played for in Dunedin. I wish I could have told him. I then went to an electronic club called Dada that a friend recommended.
Eating
I went out for Peking duck and opted for the smaller choice on the menu but then my server suggested the bigger option so I was like yeah sure and then it came out and I laughed and she laughed and said too much food and I was like yeah this was your idea haha. John also took me out for dinner on his electric scooter and talked about the difficulty of finding true love as a divorcee with a child in his 40s.
I have now left Beijing city and have gone to the Great Wall of China and maybe had my dumbest moment yet. But thankfully people here are so so kind and I made my way to Xi'an. Lol. Making my next project now, hopefully it works out.
Likes
Citybikes
Dumplings
bubble tea
cheap beer
Chinese people
Muscle dog body building gym
Dislikes
leaving Beijing
