I should note the Internet situation is much better at this home over the last home in Beijing. Instead of paying by the minute, they have a proper unlimited service. Still, it is only 1Mbit and I’m trying to talk them into upgrading to 2Mbit downloads. The first day I arrived, the son showed me a wireless 802.11g router stored away in a drawer. It took a while to get it working since it was all in Chinese (TP-Link is the brand). But now I have unlimited wireless Internet, so that has really worked out well. I thought I would have to buy a router at least.
Today the news in China is on the launch of a lunar orbiter that is due to launch today.
In the afternoon I headed to the Haidian District for a concert. I took some time to walk around some of the more back streets. I found a dirty street with a lot of street vendors and restaurants. I even saw a bunch of pool tables under a highway bridge. It was kind of risky, but I tried a restaurant and got a dish for under $1. It was steaming hot, so I didn’t get sick. It is starting to get cold out, enough so I’ll see my breath in the evening.
Outside the concert hall was a 1:1 model of the rocket that launched the first Chinese man into space. Too bad I didn’t have a camera with me. The Arch Enemy concert was pretty wild. I think they had to change the name of their tour from "World Tyranny" to "Holy Live" because their normal tour name was too appropriate for this country perhaps. An English speaking guy started talking to me and introduced me to a couple of his friends at the concert. He said this is the biggest type concert from a foreign band of this style so far in Beijing. There were high priced tickets and low priced tickets corresponding to areas separated by a fence. Barely anyone bought the high priced tickets, so there was a nearly empty area. Near the end of the concert, a bunch of people pushed down the fence and everyone rushed in, and security was unable to stop it. I thought that was surprising behavior for China maybe the reason this kind of foreign (in this case Swedish) music doesn’t gets stopped by the government most of the time.