New apartment in Jishuitan, Xiaoxitian

I got a new lock put on the door a couple days ago. The locksmith did a really good job and I was very pleased. I was a little concerned because I have heard stories about owner's having keys to their rooms and coming in when the renter is not there to check on the place sometimes. Especially since I am not on the best terms with the owner of this place, I want to be the only one with a key to the room. So I better not lose the key!

My address has changed: Click here to see the new address. I also have not heard anything from the agency about taxes so maybe they have given up after the police gave their guys a long lecture. I hope so.

I live in an area called Jishuitan near the central part of Beijing. The name Jishuitan came into use starting about 700 hundred ago in the Yuan Dynasty thanks to Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan. After Kublai's Mongol hoards invaded and conquered China from the North, he used Beijing as his capital. He used the area where the Forbidden City is today, just south of where I live, to establish his palace. However he needed fresh water and had his hydraulic engineers divert water from around the mountains to create a fresh water lake near the capital. Jishuitan literally means "the place where water accumulates", because it is at the head of where the canal meets Hohai Lake behind the Forbidden City. That gives you some idea how close I am to the old city center.

This canal is still in use today. Matter of fact I can see it from my apartment. It is relatively clean and I see people swimming in it. Today was especially hot and muggy so there were plenty of people diving in.

I went out to lunch this afternoon with the girl who used to rent my apartment. She helped me go to the China Telecom office and have the Internet connection in my room put into my name instead of hers. She is from southern China and invited me to eat some spicy southern food. The restaurant was very nice. We had many kinds of delicious food including spicy snails! They are really hot. You need a thin stick to get the snail out of its shell. You pull the meaty part off of the guts and eat. Once again, my stomach and taste buds were put to the challenge, but made it through!

I remember how picky I was when I was a little kid. Geez, if only I could show that kid what I eat now, he would ask how the heck I became able to eat that stuff, or maybe he would just faint.