Neighborhood Flowering Peach Blossoms: Both the Plant and the Human Variety!

During my last medical checkup, the doctor told me to get more exercise. So now that the weather has improved, I've been taking a brisk one-hour walk around the immediate neighborhood after getting home from work. I always bring along my camera because you never know when a nice photo opportunity will come up.

The photo above was taken about two weeks ago, during a stroll down the Dongzhimen Dajie—this particular spot on the street is about 10 minutes by foot from my apartment. The two ladies in the photo above are strangers. I saw them sitting in front of a restaurant and since they are very lovely, I naturally wanted to take their picture. As the photo indicates, they were quite happy to be photographed by this laowai.

This stretch of the Dongzhimen Dajie is home to lots of other restaurants and is called the “Ghost Street” or “Guijie” (簋街). According to my Chinese friend Lu Hongyan (路红颜), there's an interesting story behind this name. Beijing's old city wall used to run along this street, and many traders would do illegal just outside of it. Since they conducted this activity in the early morning, just before the sun came up, and also wore white clothes, they literally looked like ghosts.

However, the character in front of “街”, or “street”, doesn't actually mean “ghost”. It is rather the word for the dinner set of a ghost; it can also stand for a round mouthed food vessel with two or four loop handles. Another Chinese friend informs that people felt that “鬼街”, or literally “ghost street” was just terrifying (恐怖). I could add that “鬼” and “簋” have the same pronunciation: both are a rising and falling tone “gui”, so it can be rather confusing!

I spent the last part of that evening's walk doing a brisk walk through the local neighborhood park, Nanguan Gongyuan (南管公园). It's not as large or famous as Ritan Park, but serves as a kind of community recreation center for this densely populated Dongzhimen neighborhood. And from late March through the middle of April, the park has some lovely flowering peaches. Some photos of them and other blooms are below. All of them are now gone.

As this post is short and mainly photographic, there's no Chinese today. The pinyin, minus the tones, is in the text for all of the vocabulary, save for “恐怖”. That word is a falling and rising tone “kong” and falling tone “bu”.