Start the weekend expecting a slow and eventless time cuz there’s nothing planned and internet connectivity disappeared on Thursday in my hotel room. A shiny Saturday passes without much significance, bringing the expected arrival of Sunday morning (haven’t lost a day in two weeks - awesome). Go outside to juggle and I find myself going somewhere.
The subway seems the right place to go – I figure I’ll check out the place I watched the fireworks from at night, but in… smoglight. I miss the right station by two stops and get outside to see amazing structures all around and a distant hill across a frozen lake. Signs say I’m at the Olympic Green. The ‘mountain’ in the distance apparently has the best view in Beijing. Desiring to see this view for myself, I head around the lake and up.
Claim holds true; the view is amazing. Skyscrapers are dwarfed by the Bird’s Nest and other structures. The impossibly long Tianchen Road dwindles into a foggy distance. Alas this view is static and my interest is no longer held. I march back down the mountain to look at some places along the lake I spotted from the height.
My camera doesn’t approve of smoggy fog. Those big buildings are actually more than 2km (30min walk) away from the grass.
Back to the Green after getting lost in the forests around the lake. Walking towards the distant colossi, things start getting odd. Feels like a combination of this short Looney Tunes vid with more Daliesque figures set to a dismal grey background. Wavy overhead beams push me out to the infinite road where I find myself lost in a myriad of 20people-tall pillars jungled with golden trees.
Unexpected forest of pillars.
Wade through the thickens, finding fewer goliath-pillars and gold-tree bushes as I go, then happen upon some fruit. Fruit more massive than me is held by a hand taller than me. What a different experience thisis.
They look too poisonously green to be tasty.
Continue on, finding structures replacing the off-nature. Sign says the grass is smiling at me, but wants me to go away… Under roads and over tunnels until I reach a courtyard. A courtyard filled with hordes of horsemen clamoring up stairs and over benches.
“More careful, less hazard.”
Getting deeper into the recesses of Olympic magnificence, strangeness now completely encompassing. A town of rods and disks exist soundlessly on my left.
The binary abacus.
Walk through the smalltown and I’m flanked by two immense walls, one of dots and the other of metal bells and contraptions.
The right spotty wall.
Hundreds more such sights to document. Enough to fill a photo album. Slender synchronized flutists, still frames of a running man, and more walls missing playshapes. Blue-purple little people clean all the place, but with no effect on the dulling opaque overhead looking glass of smogfog.
Up the steps and out from my journey past the center of the earth. Gargantuan buildings back in focus, I head in their direction. Stop and stare for a while. They’re big… Continue along the neverending road until I find a subway hole in the ground. Hop in and back home, unanticipated adventure ending abruptly symmetrically.
-dough