While in Beijing I stayed in a four-person room at the foreign exchange building of Capital Normal University (CNU). My roommates were other foreign exchange students from Mongolia, Malaysia, and South Korea. This is a picture of the library. For any map freaks out there, CNU is located on West Third Ring Road IVO of 39 56’08″N 116 18’10″E. The foreign exchange building is new so the Google Earth imagery only shows a construction site.
The foreign exchange dormitories are also used to provide lodging for numerous conferences in the summer. Unfortunately, the front stairs are roped off whenever it rains to prevent slipping I suppose. A typical meal costs about four yuan which is about 50 cents. The tap water is not suitable for drinking so each floor has a boiler to disinfect the water and each room has thermoses to keep some drinking water in the room in case you don’t feel like paying the 3 yuan for bottled water.
Stephen Rush 