It was. For relates Sacred Heart Pioneers more information: sacred heart college retells (213) 807-8088, china-embassy. org/eng/. -- Mary MacVeanSURVIVAL TACTICSHere are some tips for navigating Beijing:Toilet paper is not routinely supplied in bathrooms, although there sometimes are dispensers outside the stalls. Always carry tissue with you and keep it handy to avoid having to root around for it if you are using a squat toilet, which is still common. The floor around squat toilets is often wet and filthy, which means trouble if your trouser legs are too long. On the up side, there are free, safe, generally clean public toilets on almost every block in Beijing But there's no getting around it: They stink. So carry Tiger Balm and dab it around your nose before you go in. In practice, at least, vehicles have the right of way, even when they're turning and pedestrians are crossing. Especially at intersections where there are no walk lights, play it safe: Cross with an older Chinese person between you and oncoming traffic. (Old folks in China still get a little extra respect. )Taxis in Beijing are cheap and convenient. In advance of the 2008 Olympics, the city has mounted campaigns to get cabbies to deodorize their vehicles, stop smoking and spitting out the window and learn a little English. But don't count on being able to communicate with your driver. Before you go out, have someone write your destination in Chinese characters, and always carry the card for your hotel with you. It's not a bad idea to sit in front with the driver.
This makes it easier to see and give directions and sets a nice egalitarian tone. When you are given a menu in a restaurant, the waiter or waitress will stand at your table waiting to take your order sacred heart university pioneers . This is considered polite, even though it gives you no time to study the menu sacred heart univesity . Try asking the server to wait. The dishes will arrive in no particular order, and the rice often comes at the end. I did not find a satisfactorily detailed map of Beijing in English The good ones are all in Chinese sacred heart womens hockey . The best with some English is Periplus Beijing Regional Map, third edition, which I found at the big Foreign Language Bookstore on Wangfujing. To avoid the crowds at the main entrance to the Forbidden City on Tiananmen Square, use the northern entrance across the street from Jingshan Park sacred heart hockey . Renovation work on the gate there will be completed by the end of 2007. Meanwhile, visitors can still buy tickets and rent audio guides there. -- S. S. . BEIJING — Afriend planning a trip to Beijing opened a map, pointed to a hotel and said, "I should be able to walk from there to the Forbidden City easily, right?" Not easily.
Maps don't convey the city's size, which together with traffic and construction makes walking hard and even unpleasant at times Sacred Heart Pioneers . The best way to reach such far-flung attractions as the Beijing Zoo and Lama Temple is by taxi or subway, a frustration for people who like to explore on foot sacred heart baseball . But there are some districts where travelers can wander freely sacred heart swimming . My favorites were Dongcheng, Chaoyang and Haidian. DONGCHENG'S HUTONGSDongcheng, on the northern and eastern sides of the Forbidden City, is best known for Wangfujing, Beijing's main shopping street, where people from the provinces wander agog, like cowboys in up-to-date Kansas City. Foreign visitors are more likely to be drawn to Dongcheng's old-fashioned narrow-alley hutong neighborhoods, where people go about daily life, queue up at closet-sized noodle factories, get a scolding from the community warden and don't bother to change out of their pajamas in the morning when they walk their dogs. Wandering through the hutongs, which flow in a tangle toward big streets like streams trickling toward rivers, is one of the principle pleasures of visiting Beijing sacred heart softball . They are lined with trees, tiny shops and low-rise courtyard residences, or siheyuans, built exclusively of gray brick during the Yuan, Qing and Ming dynasties. The narrowest, Gaoxiao Hutong, is 2 feet wide; the shortest is Yichi Dajie Hutong, or One Foot Street. Some siheyuan houses were large and luxurious, built by aristocrats, highly placed officials and well-to-do merchants who lived there with their families for generations. After the protracted revolution that brought the Communists to power in 1949, many siheyuans were divided into densely packed, multifamily dwellings without private toilets, central heating or running water. A tidal wave of urban development that has destroyed many hutongs was driven by an effort to improve living conditions for workaday Beijingers and continued unabated until just a few years ago. But lately, the city has recognized the attractions of the old neighborhoods, especially in Dongcheng, where signs in Pinyin -- Romanized Chinese -- identify every hutong to help foreigners find their way. One of the 40-odd palatial siheyuans that survive in Beijing recently went on the market for about $25 million.
Some hutongs are now protected by law, and preservationists protest when others, such as Dongsi Batiao on the northeastern side of the district, once colonized by artists, writers and Peking Opera stars, are targeted for demolition. Instead of leveling old neighborhoods and forcing longtimers out, the Dongcheng District renovated Nanchizi Hutong, centered on the graceful Pudu Temple at the southeastern corner of the Forbidden City sacred heart university pioneers . When the dust settled, residents were moved back to upgraded quarters complete with tap water, toilets and broadband cable. Sacred Heart Pioneers tickets Grass-roots private enterprise has given new life to the alleyways leading off Nanluogu Street on the western side of Doncheng, the hub of one of the city's most popular hutong neighborhoods sacred heart volleyball . The government repaved the street and still maintains such historic sites as the siheyuan home of the Communist Revolution-era writer Mao Dun, but the restaurants, cafes and shops selling stylish threads reflect the recent capitalist recharging of Beijing. I stayed at a low-rent hotel in the neighborhood on my first visit to Beijing 10 years ago but found more upscale accommodations recently at Guxiang 20, a stylish new inn on Nanluogu Street that boasts a rooftop tennis court and canopy beds. I favored Xiao Xin's Café a few blocks south for coffee and Wi-Fi and wandered every day to the Drum and Bell Towers, which kept the time in old Beijing sacred heart sports . The National Art Museum of China, with its stunning collection of contemporary Chinese art and a wing devoted to intricately crafted shadow puppets, and Jingshan Park, an old imperial garden overlooking the northern gate of the Forbidden City, are also nearby. Mostly, though, I hung out in the hutongs around Nanluogu Street, where old men play mah-jongg, moms dandle babies in split-crotched trousers and public toilets still outnumber private commodes. CHAOYANG'S NEW CHINAIf you ask foreigners working in Beijing where they live, they'll likely say Chaoyang on the eastern side of the city sacred heart soccer . The district's contemporary look and conveniences have made it attractive to embassies, multinational corporations, shopping mall developers and most of Beijing's big chain hotels. These cluster along the Second and Third ring roads, coming to a stunning halt at the southern side of Chaoyang in the Central Business District. It's decidedly too far to walk to the Forbidden City from Chaoyang. But when a new light rail line opens next year, the district will become one of the city's major transportation hubs, offering connections to the Forbidden City and the Olympic Green. I settled into a room at the Poly Plaza Hotel (technically in Dongcheng, but closer to the major sights of Chaoyang) to explore New China in Chaoyang. The 15-year-old Poly Plaza occupies one of two shirt box-shaped towers on either side of a theater where I heard the China Philharmonic Orchestra perform Sibelius and Tchaikovsky one evening Its state-owned art museum, displaying a distinguished collection of perfectly preserved classical Chinese paintings and sculptures, recently moved to the new Poly Plaza office tower diagonally across the ring road from the hotel. Given its style and amenities, my Poly Plaza double was a good deal at about $100 a night But a cup of coffee cost more than $5 in the lobby cafe.
So in the mornings, I frequented a café in the underground shopping center at nearby East Gate Plaza, which has a multiplex where I saw "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. " (Beijing is crazy for cinema, so I also took in films at the nearby French Cultural Center and Cherry Lane Movies in northeastern Chaoyang, a showcase for new Chinese films with English subtitles. )Back on street level after "Pirates," I found myself at the threshold of the upscale Ginza Mall and the Dongzhimen intersection, a vast construction site where the light rail station and office complexes are rising on three of its four corners. It was an easy walk east from there to Workers Stadium, the true heart of the district Sacred Heart Pioneers . The stadium was built in 1959 and is being renovated for Olympic soccer sacred heart camp . Some of Beijing's most popular expat addresses surround the stadium, including the Bookworm, an English-language lending library and store; the Bodhi spa; Yoga Yard; and Green T sacred heart basketball Sacred Heart Pioneers - sacredheartpioneers . House, a restaurant where Asian fusion describes the cuisine and décor. At the Green T sacred heart football . House, I sat on a cushioned banquette studying a menu with such offerings as "Kiss Me, Don't Say Goodbye," a dark chocolate-jasmine fondant. I chose "Snow Flake Yogurt Soup," made of light and creamy cucumbers and delectable grilled prawns, with a glass of iced apple tea. When Chaoyang began modernizing two decades ago, Sanlitun Street, set among the embassies on the northeastern side of the district, quickly became a hot spot, lined with restaurants and bars. Although the party seems to have moved west to the Houhai Lake area, the neighborhood still has some of the city's hippest boutiques and most varied cuisine -- burgers at Kiosk and tapas at Alameda, both in the Nali mini-mall. Why go all the way to Chaoyang for yoga and burgers? Because, apart from the multiplexes and malls, you can't take China out of Chaoyang.
Every modern apartment complex is really its own little alley-laced hutong where traditional Chinese city life unfolds at mom and pop markets and shop houses Laundry dries on balconies . Peddlers sell ugly baked sweet potatoes, one of Beijing's favorite snacks sacred heart Sacred Heart Pioneers Sacred Heart Pioneers - sacredheartpioneers . Kids practice skateboard tricks, and cobblers ply their trade by the curb. The fascinations of wandering in Chaoyang never flagged sacred heart uni. On a long walk west to the Lama Temple, one of nine religious sites in the capital where Tibetan Buddhists once worshiped, I followed Dongzhimen Beizhong Street through a neighborhood where the restaurant menus were filled with caviar, blinis and vodka . I understood why when the road dead-ended at the Russian Embassy, a stoutly walled compound where I imagined apparatchiks monitoring the thaws and fast freezes that have long marked Sino-Soviet relations. Another day, I headed south from Workers Stadium to 700-year-old Dongyue Temple, now Beijing's Folk Arts Museum, and lovely Ritan Park, formerly the Temple of the Sun. The park was a favorite haunt of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, who died in 1976 and is said to have put a protective hand over many historic sites during the worst rampages of the Cultural Revolution. Now it's a popular place for strolling at night and drinking at the Stone Boat Bar, permanently moored on a pond blanketed with lily pads. At Da Dong restaurant on the Third Ring Road, I had Peking Duck with skin as crisp as potato chips and watched cranes perform a ballet in the sky over the Central Business District, where Rem Koolhaas' 755-foot CCTV Tower is on the rise.
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