All the tour-books warn against visiting China -
especially the big cities - on national holidays,
but unfortunately when you are employed in China you get the same
holidays as the Chinese people do. I have to say, I don't agree with the tour
books. Maybe it's just because I'd been living in China for a month before my
one week vacation in Beijing during the worst time to visit Beijing, but I
didn't think it was bad. Sure, there were a lot of people, and even if you
could get a taxi it just stood still almost the whole time you were in it, and
yeah they blocked off a lot of major streets because of the National day
festivities... and of course there was the fact that they shut down random
metro stations. But other than that, it was pretty normal. I ended up staying
in a hotel out of the main city. At the time I booked it I was thinking about
how I wished it was closer to everything, but once I got there, I was glad it
wasn't! In the outskirts of the city life went on like normal, and taxis didn't
cost a fortune because the highways around the city weren't packed.
If there's one
thing I think you should experience when you go to China it's being stuck in a
big crowd of Chinese people! It's really annoying, but also funny (as long as
you don't have to be anywhere!) My last blog post I talked about how Chinese
people can't be orderly to save their lives, well when there are more of them
it's even worse. I got to the point where I would just weave through groups of
people and run around or through them just because their slow meandering in a
general direction was so frustrating. It was like no one actually had to be
anywhere they were just letting the crowd push them around.
I'm convinced that
Chinese people just go places to say they've been there. They show up, buy the
ticket, then take pictures in front of random stuff and that's it. There's no
gasps of wonder or even much reading of information. They're all about the
picture taking, especially when it involves them standing in front of stuff.
That way they can prove they were there! Another thing they like taking
pictures of? White people! Honestly I didn't get asked to take my picture with
nearly as many people as I thought I would, but it still happened. It was also
very common to get pictures taken of me. There was an especially memorable guy
who I caught taking a picture of me and I started laughing at him, he
sheepishly walked away. As he walked away -with his girlfriend- I saw him show
her the picture then promptly get smacked. People not only think it's okay to
take a picture of me (and my friends) without asking, they
will visibly get angry if you get in the way of them taking the
picture. I was walking around with two friends who are black, that was the
photo op of the year. A blond and black people?! It was like Christmas in
china. I would get annoyed and cover my face with my hand and people would get
pissed at me. Oh, I'm so sorry I got in the way of you taking a picture of
ME!
It was so crowded
that the first time I went to the forbidden city I wasn't even able to get
tickets, the ticket windows closed while I was in line. Wangfujing street, one
of the most famous streets in Beijing was very crowded. Walking down the street
reminded my of the time I tried to walk through time square a few days before
new years. I have to admit though, I didn't get as claustrophobic in
Beijing because the people are so short you can look over hem and forget you're
in a big crowd. This is dangerous, it can lead to collision with the young and
elderly (who are the same size). I think the coolest part was a huge line of
"Chuar" stations set up all down a transecting road. There had to be
hundreds! Chuar is Chinese Kebab, but don't picture a kebab shop you'd find in
Europe or even real Kebab. It's just meet and veggies on sticks all set up and
then you pick what you want and how many and they throw it on a grill and put
spices on it and give it to you. Chuar can be foudn everywhere (well all
over the north at least). It's really delicious too! Especially if you find a
place that does "Qiezi" or "Doufu" (eggplant and tofu).
Though I have delved into the "Yang rou" (lamb) and "cong"
(scallions) and they're also pretty good. There were just people and sticks everywhere!
It was an amazing sight to see.
Another food
related high light of the week was visiting a famous Hot Pot place in Beijing,
it's a chain and there was a restaurant right near the hotel I stayed in. Hot
Pot is a new love of mine since coming to China. You sit at a table that has a
huge pit in it with a burner at the bottom. The burner gets lit and a big vat
or two (this restaurant had two) get put in the pit. The vats look like sinks,
they're really big and filled with broth. At the restaurant in Beijing their
were two types of broth, one was spicy (really spicy) and the other was milky.
In China "La" or spicy doesn't just mean hot spicy, it means that
there is a lot of spices in the dish or a lot of flavor. (Note for French speakers: it's the very same meaning as the French épicé). So the spicy side had not only spicy peppers but also a lot of ginger, I never knew ginger could hurt so much!
So, you get a sheet of paper full of all the ingredients you can add (a lot like a chuar place, though at a chuar place you tell them verbally) and check them off. At this restaurant you could get a full or a half portion of each thing, which was really nice. There are a bunch of meats, fish, veggies, mushrooms, noodles and types of tofu. In China there are a TON of types of tofu, even if you don't think you like tofu you'll find a type you like here. There are also a lot of different types of mushrooms- I love most of them and a lot of styles of noodles. The noodles are different shapes and also made of different things. This restaurant had soba noodles which I have an affinity for after falling in love with the food at a Korean/ Japanese restaurant near my house.
So you order all you want then they bring it too you on plates- raw- even the meet (can you say health food violation?). You get to put the stuff in the water as you'd like. I like putting it all right in so they turn off the burner quickly, because it's so hot when it's on! After observing the chinese people I found out that they place things in the water and eat them much slower. Also, there's a bar with seasonings, you take a bowl up and fill it with sauces and other seasonings and spices. I really like the peanut sauces. It's really delicious! You just pull the stuff out of the water and slather it in sauce and eat. I can't believe we don't have it in America!
Being in Beijing is really nice because it's such an international city. You can get any type of food you want! I've even tried new types of food I'd never tried before coming to China. I got to go to a German restaurant, they're popular in Beijing, there are a few. There are also a lot of areas you can go and meet a lot of foreigners in. This is something that is seriously lacking in my city. In Qinhuangdao I have met a total of four foreigners and two of them work at my school. Getting to speak English with native speakers was wonderful. Though when I had lunch with a bunch of native speakers I kept forgetting the English food vocabulary, which led to them thinking my Chinese was much better than it is and also to them thinking I'd been in China much longer than I had been. I ended up teaching a lot of chinese during my trip to fellow Ciee-ers, I guess living in the Chinese-boonies has its pluses!
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