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Dongzhimen 东直门

Ni hao!


This day I will tell you about Dongzhimen 东直门 in the Dongcheng District, Beijing.
Dongzhimen is the name of one of the gates in the old city walls of Beijing, it´s now a transportation node in Beijing. The 2nd Ring Road links with Airport Expressway. The Beijing Subway has a station at Dongzhimen, where Lines 2 and 13 connect. Line 13 has its eastern terminus at Dongzhimen. The Dongzhimen bus station is also situated here. For me it feels and seems like the central station in Stockholm! It really is near and we can walk there from home! Talking about minutes! We reach all corners of Beijing very easily from here during our 30 days visit. The subway station is only 8 minutes walk from our own apartment. West of Dongzhimen is Guijie, or "Food vessel street" (Dongzhimen Inner Street), extremely well-known to locals in Beijing as a food street. We go often to the restaurants on this street. There are so many different restaurants there. I think they must be 100 ones! We go and eat Sichuan food walking 7 minutes from home, nearly the same distans for all the other ones. Add a few minutes! It feels like paradise! The prices are very low and the food is very good. Walking our local food street(Dongzhimen Inner Street) every restaurant wants you in and they have people trying to catch you as a customer of the night. You just walk down the block to eat Russian food or what ever! The character for Gui (簋) refers to a round-mouthed bamboo container for food. The name is frequently mistaken for a similar sounding word, meaning "ghost", so some refer to the street as "Ghost street". East of Dongzhimen is Dongzhimen Outer Street, which connects with the Embassy area, including the swedish embassy, and ultimately to the 3rd Ring Road and the National Agricultural Exhibition Hall. 1.5 km from Dongzhimen lies the nearby Sanlitun bar street, well-known to the expat community. If you go here the prices are much higher! All westerners used to go there to celebrate and enjoy themselves. Now everybody(= chinese and laowai) go on their bar rounds to Shi Sha Hai 什剎海 in central Beijing to party! It´s a vey nice hutong area with a very old bridge leading over the lake with very many restaurants and clubs on both sides. I went to Shi Sha Hai with Liping on my first night in Beijing, after sightseeing in Dongzhimen and shoping in Xidan. We found a nice restaurant there and did eat dumplings. I also had my first Tsingtao beer in China that night. And for the first time in my life I tried the local Yanjing beer. I will tell you more about this in my later blog posts! By the way I spent many weeks time trying to catch a girl sitting the way they do when they get a ride on a bicycle in Beijing. You can see my best picture of this taken in Dongzhimen Nei Dajie! Yes it´s right that I went all over Beijing to take it, and found it in our own block! Dongcheng district have many cultural influences from all parts of China. Han chinese, Tibet, Muslim, Mandchu and many more. This area around Dongzhimen has stolen my heart completely. Back home in Stockholm I live here in my dreams every night!

Zai jian!

Peter


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