I’ve completely moved from Nanjing and am spending a week in Beijing. Goodbyes were hard, but it’s nice to move on.

It was a long journey. From my apartment to the Nanjing South Railway station with the help of a friend, then to Beijing by fast train, then from Beijing South Railway station to a residential community in the northeast of Beijing where my friend stays. I was carrying with me a backpack, a rolling suitcase with broken wheels, and a 20kg sack of clothes, so it took a toll on my body to lug all this stuff around! I’m really sore now.

After I got back it my friend, his girlfriend, and I went to a famous, chain yet upscale Beijing Duck restaurant (四季民富烤鸭店) where we had the best kaoya in a great format where a chef cut up the duck and showed us how to eat the parts: Skin in the sugar, meat in the plum sauce, and how to prepare the rolled portions.

Today we went to the most touristy part of Beijing west of the Forbidden City which had the typical Chinese “mall hell” and some food street with lots of ‘food on a stick.’ It was still fun seeing all this!

There was also an event happening at the Great Hall of the People (全国政协十三届二次会议) so there was a big police presence on the southwest end of the Forbidden City where we got off the subway. It’s not the most important of Chinese political events but it was interesting to see how the blockaded the area.

Afterwards we cooked at my friend’s place and watched some of The Office with a beer. It’s great spending time with a friend I haven’t seen in a long time, and luckily he has a spare bedroom that I can crash in. Their apartment is a bit remote yet really big, providing a lot of space for activities. It’s a foreign-style community with lots of foreign white-collar workers living there, so I’m considering it a way to acclimate to western life again. The internet is really fast too, at 190 Mbit/s upload and 22 down (within China’s borders) which is a lot faster than I’m used to.

My friend speaks German, English, and Chinese (in order of proficiency), his girlfriend speaks Chinese and German, and his roommate speaks German and English. So it’s interesting to hear code-switching as we have conversations. For example when talking about more intimate conversations like personal events specific to the two of us back from Nanjing in front of his girlfriend, my friend and I will switch to English but stay in Chinese for most of the conversation. He might speak German to her to clarify something he can’t express in Chinese. Also when him, his roommate, and I are all in the room together talking, as soon as I am outside the room to say go to the bathroom, they will immediately switch to German until I get back. It feels very natural but isn’t something I’ve experienced nearly as much as in China or America.

There’s still a lot to do before I leave China: Finishing up what I can for job applications, finishing some blog posts, getting last-minute souvenirs, and getting all my money from China to my US accounts.

Although a lot happened I’d love to write about, this is going to be short since I’m waking up tomorrow to see Bejing and Qinghua University with a friend from Nanjing who lives in that university area. Both universities have been in the top 3 universities of China since 1996 (according to Wu Shulian and popular opinion) so I’m excited to see what it’s like there. She’s pulling some connections to get me on campus during school hours so it’s important to get up on time!

Things I’m Liking

• Understanding Real-World Concurrency Bugs in Go: A good read about common concurrency bugs in Go, using examples from real-world projects like Kubernetes and Docker. Although the syntax is simple, it can lead to some differences in how goroutines act and how a programmer might expect them to act.

Misc

I got a cold – Stuffy nose, headaches, and a bad cough. Bad time for sickness, but a good time to try out traditional Chinese cold medicine like 风寒感冒颗粒.