China, We Meet at Last

We were fortunate enough to have someone to stay with in Beijing.  We stayed in Beijing for six days (five nights) and every one of them was made better because of the generosity and introduction to China we received from our wonderful hosts.  We stayed with a friend (we'll call her PL here) and her two daughters.  PL and her family (her husband was in Seattle on business, so we didn't meet him this time) have lived in Beijing for two years, so they knew the right places to take us for food, shopping, and unique cultural experiences.

PL picked us up from the Beijing airport and took us to her apartment near the center of the city via taxi cab.  For a number of reasons we didn't use cabs much in Japan or South Korea (though automatically opening rear doors on Japanese cabs impressed Jeff for the full three weeks we were there).  PL told us that Beijing cabs are a cheap and reliable way to get around the city and we used them quite a bit because of the introduction she gave us upon our arrival.  (That, and the handy Beijing taxi guide she lent us that had top destinations in the area written in Chinese, Pinion, and English.)  Cabs are more expensive than Beijing's very cheap metro system, but they are also quite easy to catch and often more convenient.  We used a combination of cabs and the metro to get around ol' Peking, but riding in Chinese cabs turned into one of the highlights of our entire month-long stay in China. We didn't know it at the time, but riding in and studying Beijing traffic was an excellent way to learn about and begin understanding Chinese culture. We'll dive into those observations more in future posts, but the important thing to note now is that PL taking us from the airport to her home in a cab, and encouraging us to use them to buzz around the city, helped open our eyes to an aspect of China and Chinese culture we might have otherwise missed.

Jeff shopping for DVDs

In addition to the gift of Beijing cab rides, PL and her wonderful daughters also introduced us to the glory of cheap massages and pedicures, several local restaurants we would have missed on our own, the utterly disgusting, must-try Chinese rice liquor (Baijiu), and the art of shopping (read: haggling) in China.  Neither of us are really bargainers or hagglers by nature. PL took us to a market not far from her house called Yashow on our first night in Beijing.  It was four floors of noise and haggling.  It wasn't the calm, relaxed shopping mall setting most Americans are used to (though there was one of those across the street, where everything was three or four times more expensive).  We tried some delicious street dessert from Tibet that we still don't know the name of, browsed insanely cheap (i.e. counterfeit--shhh!!) DVDs in a shop that looked as if it could be broken down in a moment's notice, and got terribly cheap massages on the top floor. We didn't do any shopping, but

Baijiu?  Ew!

Annette got her feet wet with the haggling we would come to enjoy by the time we left China when we returned to the market a few days later.  There was a certain shirt that almost every little shop offered in one area of the market.  On her first attempt , Annette was thwarted by a grumpy gal who refused to haggle with us below a certain price.  Presumably because she had a corner spot near the entrance, where green tourists probably pay her way too much for her items all day long.  Slightly discouraged, but still determined, Annette approached another vendor, got the price she wanted, and popped her haggling cherry.  We walked by the first gal defiantly, proud of ourselves and our first successful bargaining experience.

We enjoyed all of the hints, tips, and personal experiences PL and the girls shared with us, but one of the coolest gifts they gave us (besides a free place to crash for five nights) was taking us to the wedding of a friend.  We most certainly would have never experienced a Chinese wedding without the help of PL and the girls!

The Chinese (bride)/Korean (groom) ceremony and reception was held in a restaurant above a shopping mall. The wedding was most interesting in its informality and the excess of food. The ceremony started with a Jib-Jab video of animated salsa dancers with the faces of the bride and groom pasted on., the bride walked down the aisle to a song that we're pretty sure was a version of the Rocky theme song, and the music and the M.C. (yes, there was an M.C.--for the ceremony too!) stayed hilariously and heart-warmingly cheesy throughout.  Everyone does the wedding thing a little different, but the single biggest factor lending to the informal vibe was that the room stayed loud through the whole thing.  The guests talked boisterously during the ring ceremony, special guest speeches (yes, there were special guests:  the bosses of the bride and groom gave speeches during the ceremony!), and vows.  The whole room continued to smoke and talk as the wedding went on in front of them, seemingly uninterested in the ceremony itself.  There was even a dude on his cell phone during the vows.  No joke.  We found out later that it is typical for Chinese people to talk during entire movies in the theater, offer no applause after performances, and conversate at louder-than-normal volumes right through dance performances, operas, and plays. So the loud-talking, cell-phone using, drinking, smoking guests didn't seem to throw off the bride, groom, or the ceremony.  Just us!

We had read that Chinese banquets and dinners are supplied with far more food than the number of guests in attendance could possibly eat, because the host of the event suffers great shame if they do not provide enough food for their guests.  Clean plates mean the host is stingy, so they attempt to provide as much food as they possibly can in order to ensure a successful meal.  Our table of 10 received dishes including, but not limited to, one whole (large) fish, one whole chicken, half a pig, several salads, at least two soups, beef and seafood dishes, mixed variety Chinese dishes, several plates of desserts, noodle dishes, endless drinks, three packs of cigarettes, and several rice dishes.  A couple of teachers from the girls' school (the bride is a secretary there) sitting next to us were kind enough to help us determine some of what we ate, which helped us with the identification portion of the lunch-time feast but not with the shock of seeing so much food in one place.  There was probably enough food at our table for 20-30 people and not one dish was finished.  We would have still had way too much food even if we had Glen O. with us!  Now, the wastefulness of this approach to dining is undeniable. We also can't deny the effect bringing so much great looking, great tasting food has on two foreigners at their first real Chinese meal.  We were awe struck. Dumbfounded.  Jeff talked about the amount of food, and the tastiness of a few of the dishes, for days afterward.

 We went to a fabulous duck dinner with PL, the girls, and a friend of theirs for our last dinner in Beiing. And since we started our time in Beijing with the wedding feast, a duck feast seemed like the right way to end it.  Peking duck is a big deal in Beijing.  Peking duck is on most tourists' must-see list along with the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square.  We would have ended up eating our Peking duck at one of the hundreds of overpriced, just-for-tourists duck places had it not been for, you guessed it, PL.  Instead of having a ho-hum fake duck meal with a gaggle of other tourists, we got the real experience at a place not far from PL's house, at a restaurant the father of a Chinese friend once told PL he considered to be one of the best in Beijing.  We ordered WAY too much food to go along with our duck, but when we looked around the room

The duck man carveth

we realized we fit right in.  We had noticed just after sitting down that the restaurant was loud.  Not just kind of loud, or noisy.  But really, really loud considering the number of people in it.  Once we ordered and began getting more comfortable, we noticed that every table had a mountain of food on it.  Every single table had a duck, or two, but each group also had so many extra side dishes we thought we were back at the wedding. Upon opening the menu, which was half as thick as the Bible and had mouth-watering photos of just about every dish, we understood how food could stack up  in such a tremendous way on the tables around us.  And soon, it did on ours too.

The wedding, the shopping, the tips, and fascinating stories about adapting to and living in Beijing made staying with PL and her girls one of the best decisions we've made on our trip.  It is really eye-opening to experience the warmth and kindness of others in this way. Our following three weeks bouncing around the rough, abrupt land of China would prove that having that family atmosphere first thing when we arrived was a very, very good thing!