I already wrote about my Monday in the last post. On Tuesday, I met up with 王尧 to treat her back for a meal, as well as treating her for her birthday...we had lunch at a Japanese place near Peking University, which was pretty decent. Lots of good sashimi and roasted eel, as well as a nice chat and funny stories.
I then went to the Haidian Bookstore and bought some books and CDs. For dinner, I went with my gym/eating friend 范聪 to the Yunnan Provincial Government Office restaurant (云腾宾馆), for the third provincial government office restaurant for my trip. We had a mint salad, mashed potatoes (of course), and fish head soup. It was very interesting to eat a salad of just mint leaves (and stems), but it was also pretty tasty. The potatoes were of course quite good, and I am glad I finally found a friend who likes to eat fish heads! I have only recently begun to appreciate the meat that is on fish heads (especially the cheek and eye), but I don't think most of my other friends have the same taste, so this was the first time I had actually eaten a dish that consisted of mainly fish heads. It was really good, with a tomato-based, sour-tasting broth.
I then tried to call up my grandma's tour group leader, but he was grumpy and told me to call back tomorrow. So we walked home (took about 45 minutes from the Beijing Railway Station area). My grandma ended up calling me, right as I took my phone out to check the time...I hadn't even heard my phone ringing! Talk about having a premonition....
Wednesday, I met up with 王凤丹 to go to Zhongshan Park, which is just southeast of the Forbidden City. It was a really nice park, filled with lots of greenery and flowers, especially tulips.
We looked in an exhibition hall in which they grow many different types of orchids, which were all really pretty. There was also an area where they raised many different types of goldfish, but mostly those types that Chinese people like a lot: they often have large red bumps on their heads, or air sacs under their eyes. These fish were bred specially for the literati, and not saying that my dad belongs to that class, but he used to try to raise those types of fish in our home. They definitely would not survive in the wild. Both Fengdan and I think they looked pretty strange or 恐怖, but there was one Chinese lady who walked by and said (in Chinese), "Oh! Look how pretty those fish are!" I'm not sure how the fish with the air sacs under their eyes got selected for, but the bumps on the other fishes' heads are apparently sarcomas (soft tissue tumors). =(
Afterwards, we tried to find a snack street in the Qianmen area, but failed. We ate at a decent-looking place, but the food turned out to be not-so-good. I packed during the afternoon, and then met back up with Wang Fengdan, Lin Yicong, and Jia Yuan for dinner. We ate Korean BBQ. A LOT of meat, but decent-tasting. We had a good time chatting and laughing about different things.
I finally got in touch with my grandma and I went to her hotel to meet her, just as it started to pour (I had been too lazy to bring my umbrella). I met up with her and her Chinese-from-Korea friends for a little bit in their lobby. It was really nice being able to see her in Beijing! =D And I can now communicate with her, hehe. I even understand the Shandong dialect pretty well!
Later that night through to the next morning, I went to overnight KTV (karaoke)! It was a lot of fun, and I definitely got KTV out of my system for at least a few weeks. Six hours of singing will do that to you. It was fun going with someone who has a similar taste in music, so I was able to sing all the old Chinese songs and Stefanie Sun songs I wanted to, without feeling (too) embarrassed or like I was wasting other peoples' time. Oh, and the best part was that it was only about $8.50 USD each person for those 6 hours! We had Cantonese dim sum afterwards. I took a nap for a couple of hours, continued packing, then had lunch with Wang Fengdan and Lin Yicong for the last time in the cafeteria. I finished the rest of my errands (returning my cafeteria card, which had 0.05 RMB left on it, and my white coats) and finished packing. I then went with 范聪 to a place called HaiDiLao Hotpot (海底捞火锅) for my last dinner in China. The wait (as expected) was long, but the service there makes you feel like a valued customer. They set up a waiting area outside the restaurant, with small tables, board games (Go, Chinese checkers, playing cards), snacks (nuts, lemon water), and other entertainment (movie, KTV booth, manicures for the girls). We ended up waiting 2 1/2 hours. I was really hoping the food would the worth the wait. It pretty much was. We ordered tofu, some veggies (spinach, dou miao (the young bean sprouts)), pig feet, beef balls, tender beef, and noodles.
The tender beef was really good, and it was interesting, in that it got more tender the longer one cooked it, rather than getting tougher. The noodles were the highlight of the meal, and I was sad they came at the end. A guy comes to each table with noodle dough, and he proceeds to stretch it out into a noodle by performing a dance with it! It was really interesting and impressive.
Oh! The other best part was that there is a sauce station that allows you to mix your custom dipping sauce. There are probably around 35 ingredients, including green onions, cilantro, peanuts, satay sauce, sacha sauce, sesame sauce, vinegar (范聪's favorite, haha), hot sauce, sesame oil, etc, etc, that you can mix as you like. It was much better quality than at Coriya Hotpot City in the Bay Area.
We felt so full afterwards that we decided to walk home, all the way from Xidan to Dongdan (and via Beihai, not along Chang'an Avenue). I just mapped it, and it was only four miles, but it felt like much longer, probably because we set out at 10:30 pm and only got home around 1:15 am. Beijing is pretty safe at night, and I'm glad, haha.
So that was my last week. It was filled with friends and food, which I think are the best things in life (family is there, too, hehe), and I'm glad I stayed in Beijing for that week. I will definitely go to Taishan in the future, but with my mom, since she hasn't been to Shandong before, either.
I will write a couple more entries about my travels immediately following Beijing, but after that, my entries will surely tail off.
