Things We Liked About China, Part Three

The Architecture!

The architecture in Shanghai and Hong Kong took our breath away.  Hundreds of tons of glass and steel rise like monuments out of the earth, reaching for the sky.  Much of the architectural beauty we enjoyed in China was derived from contrasts.

Hong Kong's impressive collection of modern skyscrapers, for example, appear to spring directly from the jungle.  The islands that make up Hong Kong lend drama when seen from above.  It is very much a city of layers: Islands float on murky blue water, a jungle of plants and animals lends deep green and a symphony of bird and insect sounds, and enormous buildings tower above it all - a reminder of the magnificent and stirring art humans can create.

One side of The Bund...

 In Shanghai, the old is sharply contrasted with the new in the area of town known as The Bund.  One side of The Bund feels like old London, while the other side looks like a city of the future.  The historical side has 20 or 30 buildings built in art deco and other European and Greco-Roman styles from the late 1800s and early 1900s.  The buildings across the river are all skyscrapers, and their weight is increased by the old-timey feel of the ones behind you. The contrast is particularly amazing at night.

...And the other!

Shanghai has another area called the French Concession.  This area often felt like Paris or New Orleans, and the sandwiches we had at a popular coffee shop there made us feel like we were back in the States (we white people LOVE our fancy sandwiches).  French bakeries and plenty of Western food also fill the French Concession, and we spent the better part of two days getting lost in and loving this splendid slice of Shanghai.

Lijiang (Old Town = VERY touristy)

Unfortunately, many of China's truly old buildings, homes, and temples have been demolished to make way for its seemingly unstoppable development.  On the one hand, China's largest cities are dazzling in their modernity.  On the other, China has had to artificially rebuild and recreate old cultural heritage sights (see Dali and Lijiang) because they realized their significance too late.  The destruction of such gems is heartbreaking, but, on the up-side, China is getting better about identifying such landmarks and future tourist attractions, so hopefully the older, and even odd ancient, architectural examples that remain will stand the test of China's crashing wave of development.


Notes:


Here are a few photos of some more traditional and Communist Chinese architecture:

Three Pagodas, Dali, China

Dali , China

Bell Tower/Traffic Circle, Xi'an, China

Green Lake Park, Kunnming, China

Chengdu, China

Beijing, China

Honorable mention for "Place With the Most Interesting Architecture from Our Trip thus Far" goes to Macau.  This small island is the Las Vegas of the East, netting more revenue annually than our desert gambling hole.  The Portuguese are responsible for much of the architecture, but many of the buildings made Annette feel like she was back in the Caribbean.  Here are some of our favorite architecture photos from Macau:  

Macau

Macau

Macau

Macau

Las Vegas. Er...uh, we mean Macau. We think...

More of the Vegas-area of Macau

Things We Liked About China, Part Two

The People!

On the surface Chinese people seemed rough to us.  Chinese culture is so much different from ours, it is jarring at first.  The mentality is that if you don't know someone, they don't exist.  The flip side of that is that once you are in the inner circle, you are IN.  An Australian couple who has lived in Beijing for 6 years explained it pretty well when they pointed out that Christianity (the backbone of much of Western society, whether we recognize it or not) often operates from the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."   Similarly, Confucianism says: "Never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself."  The difference between these two are small, but important.  Following the theory put forth by these Aussies, Chinese people go about their business trying not to cause harm, rather than doing nice, or considerate, things for others.  In other words, you wouldn't want to get hit by a car, so you wouldn't try to hit people with yours.  The Christian version, on the other hand, lends itself more to a somewhat more considerate type of internal dialogue: "I really like it when the other people hold the door open for me, so I will hold the door open for other people."

The seeming lack of Western considerations, or what we call "being polite," makes Chinese culture seem rough.  Chinese are often loud and, because they think differently than us, impolite.  Getting on the metro or waiting in line makes you feel invisible.  Chinese people will run right over you on the way to an opening metro door.  They will also step right between you and the person helping you at the train ticket counter, for instance.  If they don't know you, you don't exist.  On the other hand, if you are a friend, you are family.


The few people we were able to connect with, even just a little, were as charming, and sweet and good-humored as any people you could hope to meet.  Despite grumpy looks on many faces, the Chinese people we encountered more informally liked to joke and had quite high smile-to-frown ratios.  We also had the great luck of meeting some very friendly and helpful folks at hostels and hotels we stayed at.  The gals at our Kunming hostel took the "Awesome Hostel Staff Award" for the month of May by helping us retrieve our camera, lost in the airport of another city, and by presenting Annette with a b-day gift of fruit and candy when we checked out on her birthday.  Often a reluctance to use English and a larger language barrier for English speaking Chinese (compared to Japanese and Koreans) made some hotel and hostel employees seem less friendly or helpful than they really were.  We were always pleasantly surprised by the level and depth of help we received whenever we got stuck, needed a big favor, or needed lots of help planning our next leg of travel.


A real highlight for us in China was riding bicycles through small villages along the Li River outside of Yangshuo.  One reason we loved it so much were the broad, genuine smiles we'd receive from farmers and villagers along the path.  Many of these folks looked as if they would as soon feed us to their pigs as say hello to intrusive tourists, but as soon as we smiled and hollered, "Nihao!" they produced heart-warming smiles so big and real we felt like we were at home.  One older gentleman (not pictured)  won the "Greatest Toothless Smile Jeff Has Ever Seen in His Whole Life" award when he changed instantly from a Grumpy Gus to a guy you'd want as your grandfather as we said hello and an enormous smile, containing three or four teeth tops, spread across his face in the most sincere way.

Things We Liked About China, Part One

 The Food!

Fact:  Chinese food in China is as, if not more, delicious than Chinese food in America.  Certain Chinese dishes were exhilaratingly new, while others were different enough from what we were used to that we often felt we were getting new food experiences.  At the same time, Chinese food, with or without MSG, was enough like the Chinese-American food we're used to that there was something comforting about it.  We met some travelers who complained that they grew to dislike the food after a few weeks in China.  The grease did get to our tummies at times and we did break up our Chinese food with Western fare (including some great sandwiches in Shanghai, decent pizza in Chengdu, and a fascinating trip to a Pizza Hut in Lijiang), which went a long way to keeping us happy with our Chinese eats.  The noodles, buns, dumplings, and cheap and delicious street food held our appetites for a full month. And since Jeff loves everything made from dough, he was in heaven. Chinese food uses far less rice than Japanese and South Korean cuisine.  The switch to noodles was a pleasant one for us.  And we still managed to get plenty of tasty rice dishes whenever we wanted (fried rice, anyone?).

One of our favorite Chinese meals was in Hong Kong, which is the place for dim sum, apparently.  Our first full day in Hong Kong was a late start and we didn't eat our first meal until somewhere between 1:30 and 2 pm. Late first meal?  No problem!  We rolled out of our hostel after noon and headed straight for a recommended dim sum institution not far away.  There was about a 45-minute wait and the meal turned out to be totally worth it.  Once seated, we found ourselves surrounded by dim sum carts, locals, and a classic English/Chinese hybrid dim sum ambiance.  In a huge banquet room, complete with enormous chandeliers and a full wall of windows overlooking a marina, we stuffed ourselves with little dumplings, amazing (flaky, and new-to-us) pork buns, and all manner of dim sum delights.  The setting was perfect for an overboard dim sum feast. And feast we did - Annette stopped before the pain of being too full set in, but Jeff pushed it to the limit, reaching Thanksgiving fullness levels. Both of us needed only one meal that day, nuff said!

One of our other most memorable and favorite food experiences in China was our half-day cooking class in Yangshuo.

We started the day with a guided tour of the local market, which included helpful tips, identification of items that had been baffling us for weeks, and a brief encounter with dog as food on the meat side of the market.

In class, we cooked cashew chicken, eggplant with oyster sauce, beer fish, (the local specialty), stuffed and steamed vegetables, and Chinese greens with garlic.  We only had one other person in our class, so our experience was personal and extremely hands-on.  The cooking was simple, as one might expect, but the little details of cooking with a wok and the subtleties of  preparing such simple food made the course and the dishes really fun to make and eat. We loved the class and plan on investing in a good wok, a gas stove-top, and steamers when we get home so we can continue to cook Chinese food and share it with you all!

More Food Highlights in Photos:

Wedding banquet, Beijing

Peking Duck, Beijing

Street pancake folded with sauce, green onions, lettuce, and some crispy things inside (Jian Bing), Beijing

  

Upscale vegetarian restaurant with fake chicken, pork, beef, and seafood (a la Bamboo Garden), Shanghai

Eating delicious homemade noodles on low plastic benches from a grimy street-cart with locals, Shanghai;

 

Muslim restaurant as back-up for lost Lonely Planet pick where the food was even better than the photos on the wall made them look, Chengdu

Excellent Portuguese Food with Macanese twist, Macau

Beijing for Tourists, Part Three

Standing on the Great Wall has been one of the highlights of our entire trip.  (And it remains in the top five, if not the top three, up through the middle of July.)  We have met a few travelers who are not moved by the Great Wall.  It holds little interest for them.  Not us. We were quite moved by it - enough so that we got up at 5am our last full day in Beijing to catch our ride at 6am in an attempt to get to the section of wall at Mutianyu before anyone else.  It worked, too!  We had the wall to ourselves for nearly an hour (spotting only an employee and a woman selling drinks and snacks).  The first tourists we saw were a Chinese couple, the male half of which stopped to light a cigarette before ascending a steep stair case that was almost vertical! (The cigarette this gentleman lit is symbolic for how much Chinese males smoke.  Apparently smoking is viewed as manly, and you are less of a man if you don't.) The next two people we saw (also Chinese) wanted to stop and take photos with us. We never really felt crowded while on the wall and were quite happy in our decision to get up and tackle the it early.

During those first 45 minutes we both felt waves of joy and awe.  We stopped frequently for photos, but even more frequently to muse and discuss the amazement we felt, the energy and flood of emotion, from just standing on the Great Wall.  For us, the Great Wall was always a spectacular feat, a true wonder of the world,  that other people went to.  It was too far, and in a country too difficult to travel in, to be a realistic destination.  Our wall experience would have been less personal and far less powerful if we had shared it a few hours later with several thousand tourists.  It is selfish, but it is also true.  We got to the wall around 7:30 in the morning, and as hard as it was to get up while it was still dark out in order to accomplish our early arrival, it was far superior to the alternative - a lazy morning, a 10 am arrival, and having to compete with thousands of rabid tourists for the best photo op, the best view, and the next cable car.  Because we were alone on the wall we could take our time, while focusing less on framing photos to have as few other tourists as possible and focusing more on breathing in the epic struggle and years of toiling that made the Great Wall one of human kinds most amazing achievements.

The section of Great Wall at Mutianyu is great to visit for three reasons: 

1. It is less visited than the section at Badaling, which is longer and closer to Beijing.
2. Bill Clinton visited the Great Wall here and his red, sweaty face is blown up in several photos around the premises.
3. There is a luge course set up so that one can ride the cable car up (as we did) and sled down a hokey, but extremely fun luge track on the way down (as we also did).

Notes:
We hired a driver to take us to the Ming Tombs (another popular tourist destination just outside Beijing) and the Great Wall.  He was happy, polite, and really friendly.  He even pulled the car over on our way back so Jeff could jump out and find a toilet (there are tons of public toilets in China, which gets a big "like" from us, especial the man with a small bladder) when we were stuck in nasty Beijing traffic. Our driver's name was Gary and he made our trip to the Great Wall even better! (he also gets extra credit for showing up on time at 6am with a big smile and a full case of water in his trunk).

We met two young ladies from Seattle on the Great Wall(!).

The famous Beijing haze is as horrible as everyone says.  The worst smog we saw in China turned out to be in Chengdu, but the foggy pollution in Beijing still made L.A. look downright clear.  This terrible smog could be felt in our lungs and eyes, but it was also irritating when we went to the Great Wall and couldn't see much more than a kilometer or two.  Toxic haze should be hated for many reasons, but we found it most offensive for the way it ruined our great wall photos! (Not really.)

Beijing for Tourists, Part Two

The Forbidden City, Tienanmen Square, and the Summer Palace are three of Beijing's main tourist destinations. We didn't do them all in one day, but the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace did seem quite similar in many ways.  The Forbidden City, though, had more secret police, enormous images of Mao, and tourist gaggles. The Summer Palace was even larger than the Forbidden City, though the latter usually gets recognition for being such a gigantic sight.  Indeed, there were gobs of tourists sitting and laying in any space with even a sliver of shade or a place to put one's rump.  We thanked our hours upon hours of temple-hopping over the previous five weeks for getting us into shape for the marathon that was the Forbidden City,  It was hot, crowded, and never-ending.  The sight itself is made up of hundreds of buildings, all clustered in different areas.  We visited gardens, bed chambers, temples, guest rooms, kitchens, and every other type of room you'd expect to find in one of the grandest palaces in Asia.  We felt good every time we passed a mass of resting bodies without needing a break.  We stuck to ice cream in the Beijing heat, enjoying our first (but not last) ice cream-lunch of the trip.  We saw jewels, recreated living quarters, jade sculptures, photos of later members of royal dynasties, and heard all about the history of the Forbidden City from our lovely audio guide.  There is definitely a difference between an audio guide voice who speaks English as a first language, and one that speaks it as a second.  For instance, it took us a while to figure out that every time the guide said "air-ee" she was really saying "area."

After a full day at the Forbidden City, we crossed the street to walk through Tienanmen Square. It is as big as they say and is supposedly teeming with secret police.  The not-so secret police, or plain clothed police, outside the Forbidden City were easy to spot, so we tried to pick them out of the crowd in the square.  Besides the size, the next two things that stand out about the famous square are the gigantic propaganda screen (playing a pro-China video on repeat that implied that China was the freest, most affluent, happiest, best-looking country in the world - all set to very inspirational music) and the dozens of cameras set to observe the square from every visible post and building.  The cameras were a blatant reminder that China is always watching, as were the two police vans parked behind the propaganda screen.  The whole thing felt very eerie, especially if you turned to face the massive painting of Mao quietly observing from its perch
across the street above the front gate of the Forbidden City. Actually, if you ever missed seeing Mao's face in China all you had to do was pull out any piece of paper money, since his mug is on every denomination.

The next day (after a fine meal at a less-traveled dumpling restaurant with PL and a family friend) we ventured to the Summer Palace. We didn't spend more than a few hours there because it was pretty similar to the Forbidden City, but the sheer size, grandeur, and elegant layout made us fans of it as a tourist stop.  We rode a boat across the (man-made?) lake, traipsed up and down hills and through old, often crumbling structures.  We often felt as though we weren't in a city at all, kind of like spending a day in Discovery Park, only the wildlife and beaches are replaced with scores of tourists, once-gaudy temples and old palace buildings, and many kilometers of paved and stone paths meandering around the lake, over the lake, and through all of the eroding splendor.









Highlights of these two days:

 Standing in Tianamen Square, thinking of the great and terrible history of the bricks under our feet.

Getting lost in the meandering maze that is the Forbidden City.

 Jeff running around the area surrounding the Forbidden City for an hour looking for a cash machine. We were shocked he had to go so far to find one, but it was, less surprisingly, located near a cluster of Peking Duck restaurants for tourists. (More on our Peking Duck experience in a few posts...)

Ice Cream Lunch!!

Oh, The Places We've Been!

You can view this page any time by clicking the "Oh, The Places We've Been" tab at the top of our blog!

Below are all of the cities we have been to and stops we have made since leaving Seattle on April 5th.  We will keep updating this as we travel so you can see where we were, and when.

Japan, April 5 - April 29
Osaka, 5 - 8
Mt. Koya, 8 - 9
Kyoto, 9 - 14
Nara, 14 - 16
Kanazawa, 16 - 19
Takayama, 19 - 22
Hirayu, 22 -23
Tsumago, 23 - 25
Hiroshima, 25 - 29

South Korea, April 29 - May 14
Busan, April 29 - May 2
Gyeongju, 2- 4
Andong, 4 - 5
Samcheok, 5 - 6
Seorak-Dong (Seoraksan), 6 - 9
Seoul, 9 - 14

China, May 14 - June 11
Beijing, May 14 - 19
Xian, 20 - 22
Shanghai, 22 - 25
Chengdu, 25 - 28
Kunming, 28 - 30
Dali, May 30 - June 1
LIjiang, 1 - 2
Tiger Leaping Gorge, 2 -4
Night Train to Kunming, 4
Guilin, 5 - 6
Yangshuo, 6 - 10,
Hong Kong, 11 - 15

Thailand, June 15 - June 28
Koh Samui, 15 - 16
Koh Tao, 16 - 28

Malaysia, June 29 - July 22
Georgetown, Penang, June 29 - July 2
Cameron Highlands, 2 - 4
Perhentian Kecil, 4 - 8
Kuala Terengganu, 8-9
Kuala Lumpur, 9 - 14
Melaka, 14 - 17
Singapore, 17 - 22

Beijing for Tourists, Part One

Staying with PL and family in Beijing made us feel like we were at home.  We saw things we wouldn't have gotten to see, tasted food we wouldn't have gotten to taste, and had a Beijing experience we just wouldn't have had otherwise.  But we also needed to do our tourist thing too. We hit the big Beijing sights, starting with a visit to the Temple of Heaven after the wedding on our first full day in the city. 

The Temple of Heaven is a group of Taoist buildings with great names like, "Imperial Vault of Heaven," and "Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests." The surrounding park was filled with dancing and lounging locals, tourists, and touts who wanted to take us on guided tours and frequently inquired if we had been to the Great Wall yet.  (After two days of non-stop offers for tours of the Great Wall, Jeff finally asked one lady, "What is this Great Wall thing, anyway?"  She was not amused, though she did turn around and walk away from us, which was the intent of the question).

We thought the temples of Japan and Korea had us totally templed-out, but new colors (gold-roofed everything!) and fresh architecture and symbolism in China revitalized our ability to appreciate temples.  At least for a day or two...  There were huge crowds and we found ourselves in heat and chaos simply not present in Japan or Korea.  We really enjoyed the impressive scale of the buildings.  Our visit was some time ago, so we'll let Wikipedia describe the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests for us:

The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (祈年殿) is a magnificent triple-gabled circular building, 36 meters in diameter and 38 meters tall, built on three levels of marble stone base, where the Emperor prayed for good harvests. The building is completely wooden, with no nails. The original building was burned down by a fire caused by lightning in 1889. The current building was re-built several years after the incident.

Yep.  That pretty much sums up the coolest building there.  As for observations of our own, we mainly noticed things that we would go on to see more of later.  Some of these items include:

Our first encounter with the giant propaganda screens that show videos about (apparently) how great China is (we saw more of these at most major tourist sights in China).

This screen is in Tiananmen Square, and had a bunch of police trucks parked behind it

Our first encounter with the Chinese military, who also turned out to be at every tourist sight in Beijing, and often in other cities.  They were usually engaged in some activity, whether it be running around in full gear in the heat or following marching instructions.

"Remember: We are everywhere, always watching!"

Our first encounter with the popular pastime of dancing in public parks.  Other popular activities in Chinese parks include Mahjong, flying kites, Tai Chi, and drinking tea for as many hours as possible while moving as little as possible, smoking as much as possible (men only, usually), and talking as loud as possible.  There was often unexplained loud music, singing, and performances in parks.

Dancing!

People flying kites, like everywhere!!

El Kite!

"Look mom, no crotch!"

Our first encounter with with the completely foreign approach Chinese take to un-potty trained infants and toddlers (as well as fully potty trained kids).  First, we saw a young boy, probably 5 or 6 years old, run over to the side of the main, and totally crowded, walkway leading to/from the Temple of Heaven and take a pee on the edge.  We both chuckled,silently thanking him for not peeing directly on the walkway itself.  Even though he went off to the side, we were amused that he dropped his pants and peed in front of a couple hundred people.  We walked just a few more yards and saw a little girl, probably between 1 and 2 attempting to one-up him.  She was squatting in the middle of the same walkway apparently trying to poop.  Mom was right next to her. Actually, mom was encouraging and helping her!  She didn't actually succeed, at least as far as we saw, but we were amazed that pooping, even by a baby, would be OK in the middle of so much foot traffic.  We told PL about the little girl when we got back home.  She said, "Now you know why I asked you to take your shoes off when you come in my house!"

Extra note about baby and child bathroom etiquette in China:

PL went on to tell us that the public bathroom breaks for kids were totally common.  In fact, Chinese people mostly clothe their children in pants with little slits from the front to rear in the crotch region.  Diapers are not part of the equation.  Little kids are encouraged to poop and pee wherever and whenever the need strikes.  We saw a little boy of about four peeing off to the side of the sidewalk in Xi'an with such joy we couldn't help but smile.  He was holding his thing and twisting side to side with a smile as big as could fit on his little face.  We all should take such joy in using the bathroom!

We also saw a mom holding a small boy's thing while trying to get him to go in a raised tree-bed along a sidewalk.  We saw multiple acts of parent-encouraged peeing and pooping through those cute little pants slits that ranged from "hey, that is mildly inappropriate," to "someone will definitely step in that later!"  We also saw, as you can probably imagine, more baby butts (and other baby bits) than we ever, ever needed or wanted to.

The no-diaper, slitted pants approach led us to ask this very important question: "What happens when your baby decides to 'go' when being carried?"  We saw so many youngsters being carried around while outfitted in the slitted pants that things MUST get messy every now and again. The lack of trash and waste created by not using diapers gets a big "LIKE" from us.  The possibility of getting baby bathroom mess on you at any point in your day, on the other hand, gets a big "UNLIKE." Oh, and there is the little matter of leaving your baby's leavings in the middle of the sidewalk for others to discover.  Although neither of us "discovered" anything truly horrible this way (though we're sure we walked through human pee from humans of all ages A LOT in China), we found the "let the potty rest where it lies" attitude toward baby bathroom functions quite inconsiderate.  This would not be the only thing we would find inconsiderate about Chinese culture.  What appears inconsiderate to Westerners is often just the way things go in China.  People push, shove, yell (on cell phones during weddings), hack, spit, and smoke everywhere, and no one seems to mind.  The mentality is, and it makes sense in a way with so many people in one country and super-crowded cities, "You do you, and I'll do me." We will tackle this interesting aspect of Chinese society in upcoming China posts.

Up next:  Beijing for Tourists, Part Two!

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!