Wangfujing - exciting place for your wonderful pleasure!
I am now living near Wangfujing, one of the most famous tourist spots in Beijing. People come from all over China, and from around the world, to walk down a street with a few shops. Exciting! Wangfujing shopping street is mentioned in every guidebook, making it a “must see”. Because it is near Tianmen Square and the Forbidden City and is for pedestrians only, it is easy to visit. In the end, convenience is its only real attraction. I overheard this conversation between two Aussies on the main road, Chang An Jie, last week:
“Hey, Edith, lets walk down a shopping street. It’s very close to here.
“What’s there?
“Nothing but shops, just like the streets we walked down yesterday. And the day before.
“That doesn’t sound too exciting…
“But it’s in the guidebook, so we have to go.
“Well, I suppose you’re right. Which way is it?”
This famous tourist spot has nothing of interest, but it does have two major drawbacks. First, there are no good restaurants. There are plenty of places to eat, but nothing other than “Mian Ai Mian” that I would go to more than once. (”Mian Ai Mian” is a noodle restaurant whose name is a play on words, of sorts. The expression “mian dui mian” means face to face, but “mian” also means noodle, so does “main dui mian” also mean “noodle to noodle”? That would probably be funnier in English than in Chinese, considering “noodle” in English is a slang word for “brain”! For a restaurant in China, though, it is better to change “dui” to “ai” which means “love” so that the name becomes “noodles love noodles”. Or is it “face loves noodles”? Or “noodles love face”? Okay, something may be lost here in translation.)
The other drawback to Wangfujing is all the touts trying to get me to part with large amounts of money. I have to go past Wangfujing on my way to work, so I get accosted by them almost every day. Art “students” frequently want to take me to see wildly overpriced art (my friend’s parents visited Beijing and paid $100 for a small painting worth about $5) or take me for drinks, “just to chat - we want to practice our English”, but then the girls have no money and the bill for three drinks comes to several hundred bucks. In the evenings, there are plenty of women trying to sell themselves, but without much luck, as far as I can tell. All in all, Wangfujing is a wonderful neighborhood - my home, sweet home.
Recently, I’ve been trying to get the art students to “upgrade” their name. I tell them that, since they are working with a teacher who is a real artist, they can use the Spanish word “con”, as we do in “chili con carne” (chili WITH meat). So they are really “con artists” because they are studying WITH artists. I’m hoping they will eventually adopt this much more appropriate title and if you ever walk down Wangfujing shopping street and meet some students who say they are studying art, you too can say, “Oh, you are con artists!” and they will happily agree with you.
If by chance someone is reading this and planning to visit Beijing, you should visit a more typical “hutong” such as Nanluogu Xiang or behind the Drum Tower (Gu Lou), or go to the west side of Hou Hai away from the touristy spots, or visit Dongzhimen Neidajie also known as Ghost Street (Gui Jie) for the restaurants open 24 hours. You’ll have a much better feel for what life used to be like in Beijing than by visiting Wangfujing.