Dear friends and family,
Today we survived a hair-raising taxi ride from the Yue Xiu hotel in the centre of Beijing where we were walking distance from Tiananmen Square, to the Xi Jiao hotel in the Haidian district where all the universities are. Haidian is about 45 minutes drive northwest of downtown, maybe about as far as North York is from downtown Toronto. We'll be based there for the rest of our stay in China.
The Xi Jiao Hotel is less expensive than the Yue Xiu, and better set up for long-term stays. It has a swimming pool, piano bar, tuck shop, several restaurants, and even a bowling alley within the hotel premises. In fact, it feels a lot like a university residence. The Beijing Language and Culture University (where Kim and I will be studying next month) is a few minutes walk from here.
The taxi ride was as exciting as any amusement park ride I've been on. We swerved in front of oncoming buses, cut across lanes of traffic, narrowly avoided bicycles and pedestrians, and missed scraping other cars by inches. After one religion-inducing left turn, the taxi driver turned to us and said "Tai hao le!" which I would translate as "Pretty good, eh?"
Here are some of the things I've learned over the last week, in no particular order.
On the subject of Snack Foods:
So far I've tried smoked goose flavoured potato chips (not bad), tomato flavoured potato chips (not as good as the smoked goose), mustard-flavoured lima bean puffs (Madeleine was disgusted, Kim was indifferent, and I kind of liked them), and millet crisps. The latter were clearly the best deal at 1 yuan per bag (about 16 cents Canadian), and came in an informative package:
SUN MILLET CRISPS (from the Xi'an Sun Food Group Co.)
This instant crisp, which can go with wine (I'm serious, it really says that), is nutritious and good for both young and old.
(Then there are the scenarios explaining how to enjoy them.)
- With your favourite drinks (little cartoon picture of people enjoying cocktails)
- Cook (little cartoon picture of two happy people waving a spoon)
- On the travel (cartoon picture of a happy couple sitting on the grass outdoors and drinking something)
About the local booze:
Beer is by far the most popular alcoholic drink in China (Tsingtao and Yanjing brands - both watery but inexpensive). But when something harder is called for (for toasts at lunch and dinner, banquets, and so on), the Chinese drink baijiu ("white liquor") which is basically like jet fuel. Madeleine decided to buy a bottle of it, and chose the irresistibly named brand "Old Headhunter". From a distance it smells okay, but as you get closer there is something seriously repellent about it. I'm pretty open minded about these things, and like virtually all liquors including Poire William, Akvavit, and even Chartreuse, yet I couldn't stand the taste of Old Headhunter. A glutton for punishment, I decided to try a more expensive brand called Jingong. It wasn't bad! It had the same flavours as the Headhunter, but more of the good flavours and fewer of the bad ones. I actually sort of liked it. It cost 11 yuan (just under CAD $2) for 100 ml of the good stuff (about half a water glass). Given its insanely high alcohol content, it would be a very inexpensive way to forget my troubles, if I had any. (I did have a mild headache a few hours later - a small price to pay.)
Random oddities:
In an earlier email I mentioned that the Wangfujing shopping complex contained - among other things - a Paleolithic Museum. We decided to check it out. It's a tiny museum in the basement of the shopping mall. There are two rooms - a small one and a large one, and the small one contains a strange collection of items including images of Chairman Mao and a set of artistically designed Chinese playing cards. The large room contains a large roped off dirt floor area covered with labelled Paleolithic artifacts. We thought the whole thing was pretty lame until we realized what it was all about. Apparently the surveyors of the Wangfujing site found a number of Paleolithic artifacts when they started digging to build the shopping complex in the late 1990s. This museum is an attempt to preserve some of those artifacts at the original site where they were found. So it may not be much of a museum, but at least there is a point to it.
On another occasion we were wandering through the Forbidden City (our second visit there), and roughly in the centre of the palace complex we stumbled across... a Starbucks cafe. Two hundred years ago we would have been killed instantly for daring to enter the premises, but now we can waltz into the middle of it and order a grande nonfat latte. Weird.
Another one: There is a beautiful park called Zhongshan, nestled between the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. It's a serene, classically designed park with attractive pavilions, interesting trees, and roofed pathways with paintings on the support beams. One path leads to a small pagoda at the top of a hill. When I got there I heard a loudspeaker saying something about cars. I looked down the other side of the hill and saw a bumper car ride. No ferris wheels, roller coasters, or cotton candy. Just a bumper car ride in the middle of a quiet park.
About Internet access: It took me several hours to figure out how to get dial-up Internet access in Beijing, which is what we'd been using to connect to the Internet from our room at the Yue Xiu hotel. One day we went for a walk, and when we got back to our hotel room we found it wired for high-speed Internet access, with a brand new Ethernet cable dangling from the wall. We're constantly reading in the news about how quickly China is developing and building infrastructure, but that one hit close to home. So we've had a nice high-speed setup for the last few days. The Xi Jiao hotel has free high-speed access in each room too.
About Beijing duck: We had our first Beijing roast duck last night at the Hepingmen Quanjude restaurant. Woo hoo! Mouth wateringly delicious. The Quanjude group of Beijing Duck restaurants is famous. Many political leaders have eaten there, although not at the Hepingmen location which is relatively new. Zhou Enlai (famous Chinese Premier and Foreign Minister) is reputed to have eaten there 27 times, once with Henry Kissinger during his secret trip to China in 1971 to plan Nixon's visit. President Bush senior ate there in the 90s (there's a picture of him on the wall). They have a special procedure for roasting the duck and making its skin juicy and crispy, and at your table they slice it into thin pieces which you roll up in thin pancakes with spring onions and hoisin sauce. It's delicious, but very rich food. I guess we'd better limit our visits to once or twice a month.
About haircuts: Kim and I both got haircuts. The hairstylists were very nice and friendly, but naturally they had to make some educated guesses about what we wanted, since we couldn't communicate with them. Kim's came out great. Mine will grow back.
Today's Chinglish example is sponsored by Mr. Pizza, where we had our first non-Chinese meal since arriving in Beijing. There were some strange pizzas on the menu. We had a "Bulgogi Pizza" (veal, onions, green peppers, and mushrooms). We could have ordered a "Potato Pizza" which was listed on the menu as including potato, sliced pork, beef, bacon, corn, mushrooms, onions, and mayonnaise (Yech! I really hope that's a typo).
A big poster on the wall read:
LET'S CHECK THE TOPPINGS WHEN YOU EAT DELICIOUS PIZZA
No more effortless topping! See the effort we put in to
make each and every good-looking Mr. Pizza.
You can tell what they mean, but I still think it's funny.
Take good care,
- Joe (and Kim)