Alex

Yes dear friends, I know, I've only written once in the past week. I'm ashamed and hope you can forgive me for this.

Amanda, her younger brother Stephen and her friend Elaine left Beijing yesterday. That was sad, I will miss them a lot. That do however mean that I have more time to write my blog. Yesterday I switched from our three beds room to a four beds room, slept there one night, and then switched to another, much crappier, four beds room. That might sound strange to you, but the people in the first room were insanely, painfully boring, and the people in the room I've now switched to are new-found friends of mine.
 
So, how is Beijing. The whole last week was cloudy and rainy, quite nice though, because it kept the temperature down. And yesterday something amazing happened. It was one of those things that only happends once in a lifetime. I got out of the hostel around noon, the sun was shining, I looked up at the sky, and it was blue! All the clouds had cleared away, and not even the usual Beijing sky haze, a result of pollution, hung heavy above my head. I don't think I'll ever see the blue sky of Beijing again. A strong wind started to stir around the humid air a couple of hours later, heavy clouds rolled in and the air smelled like thunderstorm. It started in sunshine but ended in wet wet wet.

My days are lazy. I really need that laziness. I get up in the mornings, eat my breakfast, read, write, think, chat, nap, eat cookies, take a small walk, read and write some more, until the evening comes. The people I've gotten to know and hang out with now are all working, when they return to the hostel we drink beer (or in my case coke or water, since I'm not a big beer-drinker), chat, go eat dinner, drink beer, chat, eat cookies, chat, chat some more, drink beer, chat, and go to bed. I think that I've now been lazy long enough. I'm starting to feel like doing things again. I've rested for a while, that's good. Now it's time to find something to do.

The problem with Beijing is that it's so insanely big. You look up some place on the map, and it doesn't look too far away. But it is. Always. Today I was thinking of going to a daoist temple, called Baiyun guan, white cloud temple. Since the journey is the destination sometimes, I thought that it would be nice to walk. I'm a bit bored by taking a cab whenever I'm going somewhere. I looked at the map and realised that it would take me at least three hours to get there, and I think that's a quite accurate judgement of the walking-distance. Well, walking is fun, but not that fun. So I figured I could hire a bike and bike over there. That seemed like a good idea until I got out of the hostel to eat lunch. The sun is shining again. If I would try to bike over to Baiyun guan now, in the middle of the insane traffic and pollution, under the burning sun, I wouldn't even make it half-way. Maybe I should just choose a closer destination... Or take a cab... Or maybe I'll just read for a while...

You can get far even when you just stay at the hostel though, if you are in the right company. One of the interesting things with living in a hostel is meeting new people and sit around and discuss things and get a glimpse of somebody elses point of view. The thing with discussions is that if you only discuss it with the same people as you always discuss things with, or people who have the exact same point of view as you have, you won't really get far. 

Meeting Matthieu, a young french man, (we called him Frenchie for a while, it was not appreciated, so we continued doing it) has stirred around a lot of things in my head. We are eachothers exact opposite. We talk about politics, I say down with the dictatorship of the Chinese government, he says down with democracy.  We talk about equality, I say it's the most important thing, he says it's bullshit, it doesn't exsist. We talk about feminism, I say people should respect me no matter how hairy my armpits are, he says I can choose for myself, but that I will have to face the consequenses of stepping outside the frame. I'm an idealist, he's just cynical. (Actually, he reminds me of Bror Johan sometimes.) The worst thing is that he do have a lot of good points, I have to admit that his dry cynicism is often more realistic than my utopian idealism. (I don't want to admit it, but I have to.) It makes me think, like a good discussion should. And it makes me reconsider my ideals. Not necessarily giving them up, just reconsider them, test them against these new ideas. So far so good. I'm not cynical enough to give up Utopia. Yet.



Alex

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