It Hasn't Been Destroyed

The tires are full, and I take my daughter’s ten speed (in fact it has fifteen speeds, it’s just that I automatically call a “racing bike” a ten speed for some anachronistic reason.)  I have it in my mind to go get lost in the park I can see from my window, across the main road.  The gears on the rear derailleur keep shifting of their own accord.  I fiddle and fiddle and finally they seem content to stay put.  I have a similar round of fiddling to get the jack in my Pixel 3 phone to stay put and play music like it’s supposed to. 

I’m not interested in walking my bike up over the pedestrian bridge and pedal to the corner and across the traffic.  It’s two more blocks, with Eric Dolphy and Ken McIntyre up in the ears before I can turn left and make my way towards where the park must be.  Flying in I hear two guards yelling and turn to see them flailing so I pause and turn their way.  “No, no, no.  No bikes allowed in the park.”  “Is that right?  Well alright then and I return to the street.”  Wang Jing West Road forms a curve that turns into Wang Jing North Road and I just continue along, passing sites I’ve visited for meetings over the years, curving along until about twenty minutes has got behind me and I cross the street and return, just like I would on the rail trail back in New Paltz. 

I’ve agreed to go meet a friend at 9:30AM down in Tiananmen Square so we can visit the National Museum together.  It was the “military museum” for many years there, and I’d always ignored it.  But my wife and I dined with a historian not long ago.  He noted that it was remarkable, which makes sense of course, and I felt silly for never having gone and seen it.  This is one of my oldest friends and he’ll be a fine person to tour the facility with.  I arrive a bit late and ring him from the entrance to the square just east of Qianme, which was as close as the driver could go but he informs me that the museum is closed for the day. 

He proposes a stroll through the old Legation Quarter which is fine for me.  It’s a gorgeous day.  A silly day in fact to spend time in doors and I’d just finished a book set in this very neighborhood from the 1930s so I’m eager to plod around.  This is often such a dead-space in Beijing, that it’s a bit of a void in the city I’ve lived for so long.  Sure enough, there are half a dozen older buildings like St. Michaels Church and the former Japanese Consulate and the former French Post Office all worth considering that I never knew were here. 

By the time we reach Chongwenmen Wai he my pal suggests we rent a bike to continue on our path and shows me how I can easily unlock one of the newly ubiquitous Qing Ju bikes by DiDi with a few clicks and a swipe of my wechat pay.  Simple, but wonderfully liberating its great not to be off in a car but to be pedaling along as I once used to do in this town.  We’re off in search of the “Fox Tower” where my book “Midnight in Beijing” took place.  An old map in the book has it right alongside the Observatory, but when we get there, it’s no were to be found.  Alas we didn’t know it was properly called 东便门 and none of the locals we asked seemed to recognize the picture.  Turns out it hasn’t been destroyed and is about five hundred meter south of where we were searching.  Some other day.

He suggests the old campus of the Yenching University, the original Beida, where the righteous May 4^th students began their march from.  It was closed on this day after the holiday.  So was the Lao She Museum and none of it mattered.  We paused near the east side of Jing Shan at the Chengdu City Governments’ official restaurant and waited twenty minutes to be seated for some fine chuancai. 

Later after a haircut and a iPhone swap for new phone as mine was cracked, I grabbed a few boxes of contact lenses and decided I’d just as soon bike over to my dinner engagement in Jiaodaokou, than crawl along in the back of a cab.  All this reminded me of the days, twenty-one years ago, when I lived over there and biked everywhere.  Lee Morgan’s “The Rajah” sounded fresh, as ever.   

My chums suggested a walk, around and round the old hutongs of Dong Cheng, before we had dinner.  Newly settled in the neighborhood they were waxing in love with the seven-hundred-year-old city lay-out which looked lively and inviting in the late summer evening.  And with all that biking and walking I was damn tired by the end of the day, yawning on their couch after a dinner of lamb dumplings.  I didn’t last more than a minute back home, considering the day’s news on line. 

Saturday, 09/14/19