Promenade Nº5

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Beijing – 北京
3 December 2013
From 9h54 to 15h41 (5h47min)
18,6 km
跟随护城河第一集 (following the moat, first episode)

Departure at 09h54.

10h37, the first stack of bricks of the day.

At 11h00 I reached the Yuan Dynasty City Wall Ruins Park (元大都城垣遗址公园) which is situated approximately 2,5 km. south of my house. The park is following the 2nd north moat. The moat was built during the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) and is followed by a hill which is the remains of an old city wall. I read that as they were digging the moat, they used the earth to build the city wall. I decided to walk east following the water.

Walking along the river I noticed a lot of dirt paths that were going up the hill. I found it to be a very interesting place and decided to walk along it.

I quickly realized that I was not the only one doing this and that I was actually being followed. I went down and kept on walking along the water. I found out later, after observing more strange behavior in the trees around the hill, that the ruins of this Yuan Dynasty city wall had been turned into a gay pick-up spot.

After a while, I found myself in a place where I think that the foundations of an old tower were rebuilt. Here, the wall is crossed by the axis that goes straight from Tiananmen to the Olympic Village at the north of the city. The top of the tower was turned into a nice quiet platform.

A huge stone was in the middle of the platform with some ancient Chinese characters carved in it (and some contemporary Chinese graffiti written over it).

A few meters away from the stone, in a bush, I spotted the remains of a sticker. On it was written the word “justice”.

The sticker was still sticky and I immediately though about a place to stick it.

I thought it was hilarious to transform that stone into a monument to Justice…

… in China.

I had a good laugh and walked down back into the park.

I found that rock inside a plastic container. It could be from an animal feeder and the rock is probably used to protect it from being collected by the cleaning service.

More animal feeder activity. This one had a very interesting aesthetic. It served as inspiration during the Promenade #7.

In a empty pond, I found a lot of leaves that were pushed on the edges by the wind.

I decided to draw a great wall in the leaves and the result was not convincing at all.

At 13h13 I started heading back home. A few kilometers later, waiting for a traffic light to turn green, I played again with some leaves on the floor. That time I simply drew a line, even if here the result was quite insignificant, it will become very interesting in its third attempt during Promenade #6.