Polaroid of the Week: November 2007 Archives

The Moscow Restaurant near the Beijing Zoo and Beijing Exhibition center is the first western restaurant in Beijing. Built in 1954, it was built to demonstrate the brotherhood between China and Soviet Union. Similarly, Moscow has a restaurant called Beijing Restaurant.

I first got interested in this place from watching the movie "in the heat of the sun" (阳光灿烂的日子) in it, it was portrayed as the ultimate symbol for luxury and power during the tumultuous 60s in Beijing.

The food is actually not bad, I went in with low expectations as I was told by my dad that from his memory as a child, the restaurant was an over rated place that sold crappy food. I did enjoy my food, however I think it IS on the pricey side. Its worth going just for the atmosphere trust me.

Randomly felt like visiting the National art museum of China. Architecturally, it is one of the first waves of major construction in the city along with tian an men square and people's great hall, but often neglected for some reason. I saw Li Ke Ran's Chinese paintings, its alright. His son has fresher ideas I thought. Think Wang Nan and Meimei had better time than me though.

Polaroid of the week, for this week and last week. Two encounters on my way back from work. I saw a bunch of Migrant workers just having fun watchin the traffic, there were four of them, absolutely captivated by the traffic going under Jian Guo Men. The other one is a lonely singer, sitting in the cold pedestrian underpass, singing his songs away in a deliberately, pretentious lonely voice.