On my short 3-stop bus ride from home to work I have begun to see another side of Beijing different from that of Beida.  There are still the regular hang-abouts roaming the early morning streets, but unlike Beida, professionals (also known in Japan as buzinesu-man and in China [via Taiwan] as 上班族) are added into the mix along with all of the peripheral services that go along with them.  There are the 北京早餐 or Beijing Breakfast stands that go with every bus stop along Chaoyang Park Road South, the volunteer bus stop wardens with their yellow shirts and red flags, making sure that people don't get run over and that the buses stop at the right places...and then there are the rollerbladers. 

 

Not along my route, but at the end, in front of Junwangfu (the palace that I work at, which was moved from Xisi in the west of the old city), there are always rollerbladers, and quite good ones at that.  There are old ones, young ones, ones with helmets and ones without.  They go in circles around the central ring or up and down the ramps at the small platform on the side of the park.  I'd never taken China as a place for rollerblading, but I am becoming more and more convinced that China is a place of lasting fads, and I say lasting because there are just enough people (because of the sheer number of the whole) who remain interested that the fad does not entirely fade away.   I see rollerblading as one of these, added to the list of outdoor ballroom dancing, outdoor pingpong and other outdoorly visible activities. 

 

Interesting.