I met a crazy lady at the Beijing Police Museum

20.11.2015

When I got to Beijing it was still dark. The rain was drizzling and it seemed like it would be a terrible day. I walked around near Tiananmen square in the former legation area. I came upon St. Michael's church at about 7 a.m. People were going inside so I assumed they were having mass. I stayed to listen and enjoy the warmth of the early 20th century building. It was nice to have a familiar routine of church, even though it's in a strange language, it was simple to follow along with the whole ritual aspect of the thing.

From there I went to Jingshan park, to overlook the Forbidden palace. One of my students had given me a giant sack of sunflower seeds, so I munched on them all day as I ambled about at a leisurely pace.

My feet stayed relatively dry, surprisingly under the circumstances but I felt like going inside to a museum somewhere. I went to the National Art Museum of China, which was a lot better than I was expecting. I love 1950s era propaganda, and there was a healthy dose of it inside. There was also an exhibit opening that day, so I watched the reporters in their crazy art scrum and then went back outside.

I was still cold, so I walked down to the Beijing Police Museum, on my way I stopped at St. Joseph's Church, which was locked, and then the foreign language book store to see if they had a book that Dave wanted. They didn't have it, so I went back outside. I realized I had dropped my map somewhere along the way, so I had to retrace my steps. I found it but it was completely obliterated. After drying my tears, and shoving the pages into my notebook carefully to dry, I continued on to the museum.

At the police museum, there was some really bad grammar on the signs and they artfully avoided anything about attacking protesters and innocent civilians, so it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. As I was leaving the museum, I met a nice lady named Jo who worked at Reuters. She was hilarious and we went out for another Peking duck dinner Li Qun duck restaurant. It was nice, but still not as nice as that first one last month.

St. Michael's Church