People's Nuclear Wasteland of China - Part 26 - Day 19 - New Year's Day
After our bender night – we got up at the somewhat late (for us anyway) time of 11am. Kip was playing some Xbox, Dan was sporting a hangover (probably from that dodgy free beer last night – I had one sip of it and ewwwh!) and Ant was still feeling sick. So we didn’t leave the apartment until pretty much 3pm…!
Kip served us our first “Western Breakfast” for this holiday with some muesli w honey and yoghurt…. Plus some of her famous coffee too – yum yum…
At the “witching hour” of 3pm – Ant and I headed out via train to the Military Museum. We thought that the train would be really hard from Kip and Dan’s place because they have an aversion to the system – but the train station is only a 2 minute walk from their front door. From recollection from our last visit to Beijing (2003 I think) – the metro is really easy. You just buy a ticket (the one price) and hop on – no different prices for different journeys. The metro system has changed a little bit since our last trip. Instead of just the 1 and 2 Subway Lines – they now have the (lucky) 13 Train Line (not sure why they didn’t call it “3”). Kip and Dan’s place was right next to the Liufang 13 stop – which was just one stop away from the Dongzhimen stop on the 2 loop. The tickets were slightly more complicated – as the 13 has a different ticket system than the 1,2 – but you can get a transfer for 5 yuan and it was easy enough to get it.
The Chinese Military Museum was easy enough to find – it has its own metro stop! The museum itself was an interesting mix of “Communist Kitsch” and “Dr Strangelove scariness”. When you enter the museum – you are confronted by not only a huge statue of Mao but also heaps of massive paintings of the man himself – in all sorts of seasons (Chairman Mao with the Red Army, Chairman Mao in the Motorcade, etc etc)…
But that ain’t nothing until the next room – a massive hall filled to the brim with huge Dr Stranglove-esque missiles, tanks, artillery, and so forth. All set against the red communist flag background of the hall with its retro circular walls… There is nothing that makes the Chinese more proud than a room filled with “antique-esque” bombs and so forth… It was both communist kitsch and communist scary at the same time. You could even pay 1 yuan to ride a tank or move around on a artillery gun… cheap!
The second floor was the “gun floor” – wall to wall cabinets filled with handguns, machine guns, submachine guns, really big f##k-off guns, land mines (Princess Diana would be sad), grenade launchers and did I mention guns..?! I got Ant to take my picture – posing Charlie’s Angles style in front of them.
We then checked out a room that was full of statues of Red Army heroes and Communist Party dudes and dudettes (sometimes posing with peasants). To our amusement – we had discovered that all of the statues were made out of fibreglass (klassy with a “k”). All of it was in Chinese – so we had no clue what was going on…
As we had only got to the museum an hour before closing time – we had to dash through the exhibits on various Chinese wars through history including the revolutionaries getting to power, the whole communists getting to power thingy, the Sino-Japan war and so on and so on. It was all pretty communistic and plenty of tacky dioramas to honour the war dead (and Mao of course).
We continued our fast food shame and headed to McDonalds across the street for a 5pm lunch. Ant and I ordered different things – and we were pretty sure that the McDonald’s caused Ant’s gastro (to happen in a future episode) – because it was the only different thing we have eaten and I didn’t get the gastro…
We headed back to Kip and Dan’s to chill out a bit. They have a “Philippines Satellite TV” hook up so you don’t have to be subjected to CCTV. They even have the “Australian Network” TV Station – a sort of commercial version of ABC with ABC news, some ABC shows and Home & Away. We watched the 7pm ABC News bulletin but it was mostly dealing with Asian news as opposed to Australian News. However – Kip mentioned that they have a 5pm bulletin which only deals with regional Australia news instead.
I attempted to do a bit of blogging but have been having hella problems with the internet since the Taiwanese earthquake of a couple of days ago. Most of the internet is unavailable and some sites (including Blogger.com) only seem to work every now and again…thus the slowness of posting to this site.
Kip cooked us all some pasta with chicken sauce which was all yummy. Ant headed off to bed early as the McDonalds was starting to disagree with his stomach. I watched one of Kip and Dan’s huge DVD collection – Half Light with Demi Moore. Kip spent most of the time trying to figure out how old Demi Moore is and how much plastic surgery she has had to look that good. Kip guessed 47 – I guessed 48, Dan guessed 50 – but Kip was the closest – she is 45 according to IMDB. By the way – the movie was pretty B grade.
Kip served us our first “Western Breakfast” for this holiday with some muesli w honey and yoghurt…. Plus some of her famous coffee too – yum yum…
At the “witching hour” of 3pm – Ant and I headed out via train to the Military Museum. We thought that the train would be really hard from Kip and Dan’s place because they have an aversion to the system – but the train station is only a 2 minute walk from their front door. From recollection from our last visit to Beijing (2003 I think) – the metro is really easy. You just buy a ticket (the one price) and hop on – no different prices for different journeys. The metro system has changed a little bit since our last trip. Instead of just the 1 and 2 Subway Lines – they now have the (lucky) 13 Train Line (not sure why they didn’t call it “3”). Kip and Dan’s place was right next to the Liufang 13 stop – which was just one stop away from the Dongzhimen stop on the 2 loop. The tickets were slightly more complicated – as the 13 has a different ticket system than the 1,2 – but you can get a transfer for 5 yuan and it was easy enough to get it.
The Chinese Military Museum was easy enough to find – it has its own metro stop! The museum itself was an interesting mix of “Communist Kitsch” and “Dr Strangelove scariness”. When you enter the museum – you are confronted by not only a huge statue of Mao but also heaps of massive paintings of the man himself – in all sorts of seasons (Chairman Mao with the Red Army, Chairman Mao in the Motorcade, etc etc)…
But that ain’t nothing until the next room – a massive hall filled to the brim with huge Dr Stranglove-esque missiles, tanks, artillery, and so forth. All set against the red communist flag background of the hall with its retro circular walls… There is nothing that makes the Chinese more proud than a room filled with “antique-esque” bombs and so forth… It was both communist kitsch and communist scary at the same time. You could even pay 1 yuan to ride a tank or move around on a artillery gun… cheap!
The second floor was the “gun floor” – wall to wall cabinets filled with handguns, machine guns, submachine guns, really big f##k-off guns, land mines (Princess Diana would be sad), grenade launchers and did I mention guns..?! I got Ant to take my picture – posing Charlie’s Angles style in front of them.
We then checked out a room that was full of statues of Red Army heroes and Communist Party dudes and dudettes (sometimes posing with peasants). To our amusement – we had discovered that all of the statues were made out of fibreglass (klassy with a “k”). All of it was in Chinese – so we had no clue what was going on…
As we had only got to the museum an hour before closing time – we had to dash through the exhibits on various Chinese wars through history including the revolutionaries getting to power, the whole communists getting to power thingy, the Sino-Japan war and so on and so on. It was all pretty communistic and plenty of tacky dioramas to honour the war dead (and Mao of course).
We continued our fast food shame and headed to McDonalds across the street for a 5pm lunch. Ant and I ordered different things – and we were pretty sure that the McDonald’s caused Ant’s gastro (to happen in a future episode) – because it was the only different thing we have eaten and I didn’t get the gastro…
We headed back to Kip and Dan’s to chill out a bit. They have a “Philippines Satellite TV” hook up so you don’t have to be subjected to CCTV. They even have the “Australian Network” TV Station – a sort of commercial version of ABC with ABC news, some ABC shows and Home & Away. We watched the 7pm ABC News bulletin but it was mostly dealing with Asian news as opposed to Australian News. However – Kip mentioned that they have a 5pm bulletin which only deals with regional Australia news instead.
I attempted to do a bit of blogging but have been having hella problems with the internet since the Taiwanese earthquake of a couple of days ago. Most of the internet is unavailable and some sites (including Blogger.com) only seem to work every now and again…thus the slowness of posting to this site.
Kip cooked us all some pasta with chicken sauce which was all yummy. Ant headed off to bed early as the McDonalds was starting to disagree with his stomach. I watched one of Kip and Dan’s huge DVD collection – Half Light with Demi Moore. Kip spent most of the time trying to figure out how old Demi Moore is and how much plastic surgery she has had to look that good. Kip guessed 47 – I guessed 48, Dan guessed 50 – but Kip was the closest – she is 45 according to IMDB. By the way – the movie was pretty B grade.
posted by NicknAnt @ 4:54 PM
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