Day Six: Wangfujing Street and the Night Market
We’re noticing that the most popular Tshirts are the ones with a big block of English words. Not an English phrase – Just a bunch of seemingly random words strung together in no particular order. For instance, we saw one with a picture of a skull with the words “I like you” written below it. Inside the skull was a circle with the words “ice cream.” Also, pink is a very popular color. But only for the men (women are more likely to wear yellow).
Tonight we hit the infamous night market featuring gross creatures on sticks. (I think everyone saw this on the Travel Channel.) Alas, we had just eaten dinner, and weren’t too hungry. We had every intention of going back some night for starfish on a stick, but then we found Houhai and Nanluogu Xiang, and let ourselves get carried away with truly good food.
Day Seven: Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square and Dinner on Nanluogu Xiang
Tiananmen Square is big. Really big. Everything in Beijing is big. Take the size you would expect it to be, and multiply by a factor of Texas.
Day Eight: Houhai Lake, The Drum and Bell Towers, Liulichang District, Nanluogu Xiang
“Hallo? Rickshaw?”
It’s always nice to feel like you have a neighborhood. We now have a routine of heading to Houhai every morning for americanos and whole grain carrot muffins at Starbucks. (Yes, the barista here now knows our order – these are smart people.) And for dinner, we have discovered that our formerly dark and creepy hutong is half a block from Naluogu Xiang, a.k.a. the Disney Hutong. Fine with us. Over the course of our stay in Beijing, we have some delicious tapas, Indian, French toast, pizza…
Day Nine: Summer Palace, Behai Park, Dinner at Houhai
Where’s the breast? It seems like Chinese chefs are primarily skilled at using all the wrong parts of the chicken. Ordering “chicken” at a restaurant will get you a big bowl of feet and eyebrows (or, more likely, a huge bowl of chilis with a couple feet and eyebrows tossed in for flavor). So far, the only place we have found actual chicken meat is at KFC. At least we hope that’s what it is.
For dinner, we decided to try out a restaurant featuring traditional Imperial delicacies of things like deer lip soup with fried frog’s ovary or sea cucumber with deer tendon. (Note: I don’t think this was in any way representative of how ordinary Chinese eat. This was strictly for tourists. The Chinese were all at McDonald’s.) In the end, neither of us was brave enough, and we went to Houhai for some tasty hotpot.
Aside from Fangshan, food is much better in Beijing, but they could definitely use a Panda Express or Pei Wei.
Later tonight, Kelly decides to stir up some trouble by asking our bartender at the 12SQM Bar (yes, that’s its size) about China’s current views on homosexuality. After trying to make the bartender feel slightly less uncomfortable about the questions, she finally opened up a little. And, as it turns out, she had a pretty moderate view on the whole topic of her gay and lala friends. About what you might expect someone from the heartland to say. She does think it goes against the natural order of things, but is willing to let people make their own choices. She’s probably at a reeducation camp somewhere by now.
