Merry Christmas, Great Wall of China

Firstly, belated Merry Christmas to everyone! Also, Happy New Year! I sent some Christmas cards to friends and family at home, but I sent them really late.  I hope you liked them.  I think the last one finally arrived (poor Amy.)

For Christmas, Alice and I headed over to Beijing (just across the Yellow Sea from us.)  It was only for a long weekend, but omg was it ever worth it.  Becuase I’m at school this week I can’t post most of my pictures, but I can direct you to some of our videos.

(Oh creepy, I just checked them right now, and after having uploading them an hour ago, two have already been rated. By strangers.  Rated highly.  Maybe they think Alice is hot. How do things like this happen??)

Day 1: Shiniest Airport in the World vs. Beijing International Airport.  Swindled. Christmas Party.

This video was taken in Incheon International Airport. We were so shocked that on Christmas Eve the place was pretty much deserted. Oh, also? The MOST pleasant airport experience I’ve ever had. Loved it. Loved it.

We were really giddy about the whole trip.  I didn’t get excited until I left my apt at 6:45 that morning.  Literally, stepped out the door and started shaking (wasn’t the cold, I promise.) Alice kind of had to prod me into agreeing to the trip at first, but I soon saw the light.  The whole process of getting a Chinese visa wasn’t too bad, and the flights were pretty cheap.  Overall, for planning the trip about 8 days before we left, things went hitch-less.

After the 1hr 45 min flight (during which we became even happier because we had a conversation IN KOREAN with a lady sitting next to me.  Turns out she was Chinese and returning to Beijing for the first time in 3 years.  She didn’t speak any English, we didn’t speak any Chinese — although after the conversation we did — and we came together … WITH KOREAN. HANGUKEO, SARANG HEYO,) we took a shuttle bus downtown as per our hostel directions told us to.  Turns out the directions were pretty roundabout, but we didn’t care. It gave us a good opportunity to see some of Beijing.

The 24th was really foggy and we were afraid that the fog was really the air pollution, but thankfully it was not.  This next video is after the bus and after a short subway ride.  Riding the subway in Beijing is dead easy. And dead cheap. The tickets cost only about 40 cents CAD. Less, really.  And all the signs are also in English. Thank you, Olympics, thank you.

We found our hostel (Tian An Men Sunrise Hostel) with no problems.  It’s located in a traditional area of the city called a hutong.  What “traditional” means here (“traditional” is one of my least favourite words because it is so often used to entice foreigners in tourism spots. I am just bitter I guess.) is that all the houses are low, one-story, stone-shingled buildings built around small courtyards.  Hutongs (which, btw, is almost exactly one of my high school nicknames) are narrow and grey, and don’t stink of rich neighbourhood, but the one we were staying in is apparently.  It lies along the east wall of the Forbidden City.  Anyway, we found our hostel, which I would recommend to anyone, it was so great, and settled into our room.  Our PRIVATE room! In a hostel! With an ensuite bathroom! Luxury, thou art a private room in a hostel with an ensuite bathroom and a heater on the wall.

The video features more ukulele playing.  God, I love that instrument.

The first thing we did was to sign up for a Great Wall tour.  We chose the Jinshaling-Simatai walking tour even though it left the hostel at 6 a.m. because of many recommendations (thank you Amy and Albert!) We found out there was a Christmas party that night (the 24th) at the hostel with free Peking duck and TsingTao beer (which reminds me of my dad) and games, but we also wanted to go out and wander and see touristy things (get them out of the way.)  Most touristy things are closed at night, so we decided to wander first, Christmas party later, and go out to the Night Market late late.  We stayed in the hostel for a little bit, unwinding and soaking up the hostel atmosphere, until we became too impatient and promptly put on all our warmest clothes and walked to the Forbidden City (10 min.) It was really cold. And by this time, it was also dark.  People aren’t allowed at Tiananmen Square or the F.c. after dusk, so we thought, we’d just walk along the broad broad street and enjoy the lights and people.  Alice is a city person and likes these things.  I am tolerant.  (I’m kidding, I was pretty pumped too.)

Ok now, this is where it gets really embarrassing.  Please pay close attention, so you don’t have to read it twice.

We are naive. We got swindled. True story. Let me set the scene by relating it in present tense:

We are bundled up against the bitter humid cold, but pink-faced with glee and pride at actually having made it this far.  We are happy to wander around such a famous and imperial part of the city.  Alice is pleased with the straight lines of the streets and buildings, and we agree that the size of grandeur of the complex is so different from Korean cityscapes.  We just begin taking touristy photos by the F.C. outer gates, when two young Chinese people approach us, a woman and a man.
“Do you want us to take your picture?”
We pause and look at each other for a moment, “Ok, thanks!”
They take our picture a number of times, while they chat us up about being students and studying English and wanting to talk with us longer.  The woman’s name is Michelle, the man’s Joshua. Finally they out and ask us if they can walk with us and practice English.  We agree, and start walking back towards our hostel because we don’t know where else to go.

We walk into the hutong neighbourhood, and after passing a few tea shops, Joshua asks us if we want to go in and get a beer or some tea.  Alice and I agree that some tea would be really nice, so we walk in completely trusting our new Chinese friends to take care of us.  It did not once cross my mind that anything was up, and in fact, it didn’t cross my mind until Alice pointed it out to me days later.

We were led into a private room with a beautiful carved chunk of TREE serving as a table, and stump stools for the four of us.  I had expected them to just bring in some tea and assumed the private room was to Western tea shops as Korean noraebangs are to Western karaoke.  A woman in touristy-”traditional” Chinese clothing walked in and started performing small tea rituals and teaching us how to hold the delicate little cups and how to sniff the tea and passing around glass jars full of interesting-looking dried plants.  To make a long (horribly embarrassing) story short, we had a great time, talked about a lot of things, drank maybe 25 different types of “traditional” Chinese teas, ate many tiny snacks, and soon 3 hours had passed.

When the tea woman brought us the bill, we were shocked.  We still aren’t adept at yuan-dollar-won conversions, but even then, we realized something was up.  There was an extra zero on the bill.  We asked about it, but no, it belonged there, and she brought out a small paper that had sat cleverly behind her with prices carefully laid out.  We were paying per CUP of tea.  We payed a LOT of money for that tea time.  Much much much more than we had planned to spend.  Alice and I exchanged many looks and subtely thumbed through our money belts in dismay — we would have to change more money in a day or so.  Michelle and Joshua spoke in rapid Chinese to the lady.  They couldn’t pay it seemed, but there was NO WAY Alice and I could foot their bills too.

We were little rattled, for sure, but we agreed that money is just money at this point in our lives.  We’re more the well compensated at our jobs in Seoul and in the long run, yes we could have bought 3 new outfits in Seoul for the price of this tea experience, but we value experiences above clothing.  We mostly felt horrible about Joshua and Michelle having to spend so much money just because they wanted to speak English with us.  We left the tea shop and said bye to our new “friends” and went back to our hostel.

In our hostel is hung a large hand-written sign that says: BE VERY CAREFUL OF CHINESE PEOPLE OFFERING TO TAKE YOU TO TEA HOUSES OR BARS. THEY ARE SWINDLERS.   Of course, we didn’t see this until a day or so later.  Tea houses in the area hire young Chinese people with some grasp of English to lure rich tourists into their establishments so that they can charge them lots of monnnay.  That is what happened to us.  I am so embarrassed.  When we finally figured out what had happened to us, we were pretty upset.  Not because of the money — we’d already worked that out — but because we had trusted these people and they were only using us for our currency. Kudos to them, I guess, they worked hard for their money.

LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES! DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!

Moving on, the Christmas party was already underway when we came back.  We were welcomed to a row of tables where sat many Canadians, mostly from Montreal (which pleased Alice to no end.)  Two girls we met taught in Busan, one man was travelling around Asia for kicks, and the other two gentlemen, Pierre and Trevor, had just finished a 2-year stay in Belgium where Pierre had been teaching French, and were making their way back to Montreal.  Their 5-month-long way.  Awesome.

We ate roast duck (although we weren’t all that hungry after all that tea,) and drank lots of Tsingtao and wore cheap Santa hats and listened to bad Christmas music and played party games (no wins) and the others at the table comforted us with tales of their being swindled too.  Pierre and Trevor seem to have been all over the world, and Alice and I tried to siphon as much information from them as possible.  After a few hours of this, we retreated to bed to prepare for our day tomorrow.

Day 2: The Great Wall of China. Pleasure Boat. Banana Ice Cream.

We woke up at 5:20.  Our room was so lovely and warm.  Alice is not a morning person.  Unlike me, who is fully awake at the first sound of an alarm, Alice takes sometimes a few hours to feel real.  I knew that motivating Alice into getting ready would be a special chore this time, so I put on my chipperest face and loudest voice and jumped on her a few times before I went into our ENSUITE bathroom and took a very hot shower.  Then we put on all the clothes we had brought to China and went went into our hostel’s lounge.  The hostel was asleep, staff on the couches and all the lights off.  A man came into the hostel and pointed as us and said, “Two girls for Great Wall?”  We nodded, me bright-eyed, Alice blearily.  He didn’t introduce himself, but motioned for us to follow him outside.

It was cold.  Colder than the day before.  It felt about -17 Celsius, and Alice and I whispered to each other that we weren’t looking forward to the mountain temperatures.  Our guide led us to the main street where a large white van was waiting.  There were already 2 couples sitting the dark van and we hoped that there would only be the 6 of us for the OPTIMAL ALONE ON THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA EXPERIENCE.  It was not to be, and two-by-two, we picked up 10 more people from various hostels. Rocky muttered into his puffy coat every time someone was a little late. We also picked up some breakfast in the form of dry sandwiches and orange sugar-drink.  No one really spoke to each other at this point; it was far too early.  We all konked out.  I like the idea of an ummarked white van driving around rural roads of China filled with a Chinese driver, a slightly irate tour guide, three French girls, one Irishman, a Canadian and his Chinese wife, a Thai girl and her American ex-G.I. boyfriend currently living in Herat, two Americans working in Seoul, an English couple working in Nepal, and Alice and I, all asleep.  All sorts of potential for comedy (or DRAMA *gasp*).  It could be the beginning of a very funny, very long joke.

The man we followed into the van, woke us up after about 30 minutes,
“HELLO! I AM ROCKY. I AM YOUR GUIDE.” I won’t transcribe his accent, because that’s just plain mean, but it was classic and made me very happy.
“HOW ARE  YOU?”
“Merry Christm–”
“WE ARE GOING TO GREAT WALL.”
“…”
“YOU WILL HIKE JINSHALING PART OF WALL TO SIMATAI PART OF WALL.  IT IS VERY VERY VERY COLD AND SLIPPERY PROBABLY AND I THINK MAYBE IT IS NOT A GOOD IDEA. TODAY IS VERY COLD. MAYBE MORE COLD THAN YESTERDAY AND SLIPPERY AND PROBABLY WILL FALL OFF WALL TODAY. IN THE COLD. VERY WINDY. VERY COLD.”
“…”
“I THINK IT IS MAYBE BETTER TO GO STRAIGHT TO SIMATAI PART, NOT GOING TO POINT A, AND NOT HIKING TODAY. JUST GO TO POINT B AND WALK AND TAKE PICTURES.  SAFER AND MORE COMFORTABLE I THINK.  YOU CAN CHOOSE. I THINK IT IS BETTER TO GO TO POINT B. IT IS SO COLD AND WINDY. MAYBE SLIPPERY ON WALL.  YOU CAN FALL OFF.”
“Wait, what?”
“WE CAN MAYBE NOT GO TO POINT A. UP TO YOU. YOU HAVE 5 MINUTES TO DECIDE.”

We were a little confused, and Alice and I considered for a full minute, going straight to Simatai.  I wasn’t feeling the most confident with my hiking abilities, especially as the hike itself is 10 km and takes around 4 hours. And Rocky was right, it was cold. Maybe he was also right about falling off the wall. That sounded unpleasant.

Then,
“We can still do the hike though?” It was the Irish guy, Mike, at the back of the van.
“IT IS VERY COLD ON THE WALL etc.”

And,
“We paid for a hike, I’m still going on the hike. I could have gone a different tour to take us straight to Simatai, but I’m hiking.” This was from one of the French girls, Justine.

And so it was decided for Alice and I: we’re doing this hike.  We’ll kick this hike in the face and spit at its feet.  And as for slipping off the wall: BRING IT. We have strong winter boots and no backpacks and an adamantine will to say we hiked the great wall.  BRING IT.

Rocky was put out that all but 3 decided to do the hike, but true to his word, we turned at the fork towards Jinshaling.  Rocky went back to muttering to the driver, and we were left for 2 hours to sleep hard before our hike. Alice passed out on my arm and squished me against the icy window, but she was warm and I was feeling generous.  I fell asleep after eating my paper-tasting sandwich and sugar water.

When I woke up, I scratched a small hole in the ice on the window and gasped.  The sun had risen and the part of the great wall was running along the highway in the mountains.  I shook Alice awake and made her peer into the ice-peep-hole.  We had a silent fit of giggles for being where we were, which somehow woke the ex-G.I. behind us, so we talked together about Afghanistan.  G.I.s get a really bad name in Korea, but all the G.I.s I’ve met this trip, especially this one, have been really interesting, considerate people.

We got out of the van at Jinshaling, dancing and moaning for the cold and were ushered to a restroom (the last before the hike).  There were two stalls in the womens bathroom and I thought both were squatters, but mine turned out to be a toilet, but I didn’t tell Alice because she was already resigned to popping a squat.  We started walking towards the gate and started talking with Mike, who was cleverly wrapped up to his eyes.  My nose felt like a solid block of fleshy ice at that point and we’d only been outside for 5 minutes.  We handed the guard our tickets and started up the stairs to the Wall.  There were a few local farmers dressed in spring jackets who started walking alongside our tiny group.  Altogether (farmers included,) we numbered about 20.  We saw 5 other tourists on the Wall, and THAT WAS IT.  The Wall was ours! Coldly and beautifully OURS!

THE FIRST STEPS

We realized that this would be a long walk. We praised Korea for its exemplary stair-climbing-training.

When we got up the stairs to the Wall Proper (it only took about 10 minutes,) we were greet with the magnificent sight of misty cold winter mountains.  They were so beautiful.  Winter-beautiful, but beautiful still.  Everything was brown and beige and yellow and grey, and everything was soft-looking.

Was anyone else forced to sing that song in grade 8?

It's hard to give you an accurate idea of the colours that were there. And the cold. And the SPACE.

The Wall itself is pretty much impossible to fall off unless you are maybe heavily intoxicated, blind, or suicidal. But it would take a strong combination of all three to be enough for you to “slip off the mountain” as Rocky was suggesting.  I don’t know what his deal was.  Maybe he wanted to get home early? I mean, it WAS Christmas.  We asked some girls at our hostel if he had said the same thing the day after we did the tour, but he said nothing like it.  Rocky: WTF?

The Wall is made of large stone bricks. Most of the Jinshaling portion is renovated (at least for the first 3 or 4 km) and the parts that aren’t are still very walkable.  Sometimes it gets a little steep, but it just adds to the variety of the walk, I guess. It’s all stairs and doors that go nowhere and towers every few hundred metres and red lichen and arrow holes. Instead of typing and typing and just delaying this post even longer (it is now March 3 as I type. I wonder if it’ll actually post today,) I’ll just post a bunch of pictures.  ENJOY!

Note red noses and cheeks

Some of the many stairs.

Sometimes they got pretty steep. There were many redundant "dips" in the Wall: stairs going descending and ascending steeply for no reason.

The views made the stairs worth it.

In one of the towers with two stories and a roof.

Another vista for your viewing pleasure

You'll notice Alice's gloves are off. "Why!?" I hear you cry, "It's cold outside." True, my friends, but climbing thousands of stairs warms you up. It got the point where we would unzip our coats or rip off our hats every half an hour or so.

The part was not restored. There is a farmer woman who followed Alice, trying to sell her things. She left after 2 km.

Towards the end of our hike, after we had entered the Simatai part of the wall (I almost lost my ticket and nearly peed my pants in anxiety, although I easily could have just paid the guard again,) we came to one of the last peaks in the Wall, and one of the highest.  It was maybe 10:30 and the sun was burning away the mist.  We could see a glacial river where it mixed with the hot springs, turning the water turquoise, and could see the silhouette of another part of the wall running along the ridges of the highest mountains in the region.  It was stunning.  We were with Mike, the ex-G.I., and his girlfriend, and without a word, we started sitting along the wall and there we sat for a good 15 minutes, just sunbathing and looking. These pictures are from that spot.  Alice and I both agree that this is one of our favourite places in the entire world.

Mike is the one perched like a pirate, ex-G.I. is full out lying on the Wall.

Alice. All happy.

I admit this is a little bit posed, but the glowing joie de vivre oozing out of my pores is not forced, I assure you.

The view.

After My Happy Place, we came to a suspension bridge across the hot springs.  Then we ZIP-LINED DOWN THE MOUNTAIN! For realz. It was so rad. The zip line was over the hot springs and I suspect that it would be even more pleasant in the warm months. Amy has confirmed this.

there was no office.

Coldest job ever. He was singing.

Thank goodness there's a sign.

We found it!

After the zip line (and the pleasure boat,) we got into an unmarked van which drove us to a small restaurant where we ate lunch in a room that was colder than the outside.  I could hardly maneuver my chopsticks.  We settled back into our van ready to sleep the 3 hour-drive back to Beijing, when the Chinese wife of the older Canadian gentleman told us that there was a toll highway that would take us back in only one hour, but the tour didn’t want to pay for it.  So we all payed the  equivalent of 3 dollars to take the toll road back. It was worth it, because it gave us 2 extra hours in Beijing on an already brief trip.

We used those hours to chill with our ukes for a bit, rave about our life-changing hike to our hostel-mates, and plan a trip to see Beijing Opera that night without a tour group.  I looked up an opera house, and had the hostel call them for directions.  The directions were as follows: “Take the subway to so-and-so stop (I forget now) get out at exit 2.  You will see a giant Peking Duck restaurant.  The opera house is located in the alley behind the restaurant.”  We diligently followed the intructions and found ourselves in an unlit small alleyway with nothing at all that looked like a touristy opera house.  We walked back a forth under a light for a while until we realized the building we had been walking beside was painted with Beijing Opera characters.  We found the opera house! It was abandoned.  The doors were open to the cold, no lights were on, it was dusty and covered in graffiti. I don’t know if we called the ghost of the opera house, or if our hostel workers had made stuff up because the line was busy, or what, but we left dejectedly and turned to the warm food-laden arms of the Night Market to comfort us.

The Night Market is a 5 minute walk from our hostel, and is a street lined with red-roofed food stalls selling all manners of delicious and horrific foods and delicacies.  Vendors yell loudly at visitors in their own language (for English speakers, you’ll mostly get “HEY!” “HELLO!” “HI!” “WOMAN!”  ”HUNGRY TIME!” “EAT MY FOOD!” “CHICKEN!” (when it’s not chicken) and “MY NAME IS!”) It’s busy and noisy and smells interesting, and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting Beijing.  Here’s what we saw that night:

There are menus above the stalls with English translations, but often the translations make no sense, or are wrong altogether. Plus, the stall workers usually don't understand our garbled attempts at Chinese pronounciation

BEHOLD! A FEAST!

Things you can deepfry

Most food at the night market was displayed raw and then was deep fried and covered in chili for you.

The first purchase we made was safe ol' mystery steamed dumplings. They were delicious.

Next we tried some "fish balls" which were neither fish (as far as we could tell,) nor balls. But they were deep-fried and covered in chili. And pretty good.

Next on the tour menu of the Night Market, was fried cabbage roll, which tasted exactly like it sounds. The outside was a crisp, oil-slick cabbage leaf. Inside was more cabbage. Alice, who worships at the earthy leaves of the cabbage god, was making a pilgrimmage of sorts by eating this. Note that it is deep-fried and covered in chili.

We went for something a little more adventurous, and not deep-fried. What I thought was a bowl full of delicate mushroom soup with parsley (and chili), turned out to be a bowl of sheep's stomach. I had some problems. Alice slurped away happily.

After that tasty tour into the inside of a sheep, we ate something called “chatang” which began as a misunderstood order for almond cookies and ended with greedily spooning soft, warm, translucent, vaguely sweet, pudding into our gaping maws without speaking much. It was very delicious and by the time I thought of taking a picture of it, it was mostly gone and my camera (which had been dangling, neglected off my wrist, unprotected from the bitter cold) decided it was too cold to work.  It was delicious though.  I think it was “almond chatang” because when we tried to order it again later just as “chatang” it was different.  I put my camera in my pocket after its cold-strike, and it revived enough to take a picture of our last taste-test (and arguably the most delicious.)

Deep-fried and covered in sugar for a change, these little babies were melt-in-your-mouth warm goodness. Highly recommended. 5 Stars.

We had been walking up and down the stalls for a while and had gotten to recognise one man who was selling his food beside the fish-balls vendor.  We had noticed him because he managed to make eye contact with us and yell, “HELLOOO! BANANA ICE CREAM!” We shook our heads politely at his banana ice cream, which looked like a piece of bread with some whipped cream on top.  Unfazed, he contined to yell at passersby,”HELLO! BANANA ICE CREAM!” but his yells became more and more sarcastic, until his “hello” sounded like the “hello” of a daddy’s-girl ’90s Valley girl rolling her eyes at her housekeeper.  It seemed like he was yelling “DUH! HELLO! BANANA ICE CREAM HERE YOU MORONS!  WHY CAN’T YOU SEE THAT IT’S BANANA ICE CREAM THAT I AM SELLING!?”  We didn’t buy his banana ice cream.

After the Night Market, we walked to a large bright mall, where people were playing in street-steam, and drank some Starbucks drink.

Then we returned to our hostel to play ukulele and drink tea in the common room, until we finally, exhaustedly, crawled into our beds and fell promptly asleep.

Day 3: Forbidden City. The Gauntlet. Party in the Park. Hot Pot. Unveiling our Uke.

We had planned to wake up early (read: before dawn) to get into Tiananmen Square for some sort of flag-related morning ceremony, but were slowed by our bleary eyes and lack of will to move around in the cold cold morning.  Poor Alice without her coffee.  We managed to arrive just toward the end of the ceremony and watched from outside the square, because once the ceremony begins, no one can come in or out of the square.  While waiting for the ceremony to end so we could take pictures on the enormous cement wasteland of Tiananmen, we enjoyed the enormous “BE PROUD OF YOUR COUNTRY” style of architecture around the square.  Then we took silly pictures (which Alice is better at taking than I.)

It was the first time since my high school band days that I got up before dawn two days in a row solely for my own enjoyment. (High school band was extremely enjoyable. Even the 7 a.m. rehearsals.)

This is the way we hold up our country, hold up our country, hold up our country ...

The Forbidden City as seen from TS

After Tiananmen, we walked back to our hostel and had breakfast at a tiny hole-in-the-wall place down the street filled with locals.  They found us a spot, and we just pointed at some dumpling soup someone was eating and brought us a dish of succulent steamed dumplings as well.  We ate heartily.  The enormous meal cost us less than 3 dollars together.  I love travelling. Then we stumbled around looking for an exchange bank on a Saturday, eventually found one, and finally tripped off to explore the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City is enormous, covered in smooth paved courtyards, and filled with intimidating red palaces of various use.  I wasn’t moved by it as I have been by other similar types of Asian architecture, but I did really enjoy the garden in the back of the complex. Alice discovered that my favourite type of place is a more intimate, smallish kind of place, or one filled with nature-times.  Give me a bug to look at and I’m happy. Alice is better at appreciating the city and big bustling things.

The maw of Mao

a detail on a door

high-fiving trees

We only spent around an hour and a half in the City, and in my opinion, that was enough.  It’s like going to a museum: there’s only so much you can take before it all blends together and you’re not really paying attention anymore.  I prefer to stop when that happens. And we stopped and headed to the Pearl Market to do some jeans shopping (jeans do NOT fit us in Korea.)

On our way into the market, we saw a sign that looked suspciously like,
Alice: “STARBUCKS! IS THAT A STARBUCKS!??!”
Grace: “No.”
Alice: “Really?”
“Grace: “Yeah, it’s a *peers* Leymo Coffee.”

pause

Both: BAHAHAHA! LAME-O COFFEE!

LEYMO

We obviously went in. I had a lavender latte, which was actually extremely delicious.  The proprietors also spoke good English and helped us find … something. I forget what we were asking about. Alice?

Bolstered by our tasty leymo drinks, we went into Pearl Market to brave the Gauntlet.  The Pearl is a 4-story maze of yelling, English-speaking, pushing, shoving vendors.  If you need to learn how to haggle, this is the sink-or-swim place to do it.  It turns out Alice is something of a natural haggler, and managed to haggle our silk scarves down from $40 to $7.  It was like watching a master at work.  I was so proud of her.  We also found jeans that fit us! I should have bought 2 or 3 pairs, looking back.

From the Pearl Market we met up with Mike from the Wall tour, and headed to the Temple of Heaven (which turned out to be right beside the Pearl Market.)  We entered through the Pearl gate to find that the Temple of Heaven is actually a large park housing various temples, notably the temple of heaven.  We also found a courtyard full of dancing people, a courtyard full of people playing sports and games, and many pavilions full of people singing folk songs with impromptu conductors and saxophone-bands and dancing competitions and karaoke and card games.  Feast your eyes on THESE!

You will find more gems, including a poo-hole-pants-wearing little boy in my other youtube videos. Check them out to kill your precious time.

For dinner, we managed to find a hot pot place right outside of the south gates of the Temple of Heaven park.  Chinese hot pot is not at all what I expected (a rich mix of whatever the kitchen has that day simmered for a long time until it’s all soft and melty.)  It’s actually a brass … pot in the shape of a donut filled with boiling water and some flavour-enhancers (garlic cloves, jujubes, leeks, etc.)  You then order whatever meat/veggie/Asian delicacy you feel like and when it comes, you dunk it in the water until it is as cooked as you please.  Then there’s usually a peanut-chili-green onion dip (DELICIOUS) and you’re on your way.

Blurry. Sorry guys.

We ordered beef tongue (which Mike seemed not so keen on, ) and mutton (which I was not so keen on, but which ended up being so thinly and delicately sliced that it was absolutely melt-in-your-mouth-delicious,) and lotus root, mushrooms, fried things, … oh man I don’t even remember everything we ordered. I remember that while ordering I thought it wouldn’t be enough maybe, but when the food started arriving at our table, I despaired that it would fall under the weight of it all.  SO MUCH FOOD! (so cheap!) So delicious, and the wait staff were darlings to our fumbling Western ways.  I loved it.

From there, we went back to our hostel and on to Beijing Opera (finally!) with a tour (we had learned our lesson.)  The tour turned out to be only the three of us.  We were driven to a hotel with a big theatre in it and prepared ourselves for the intense Chinese sounds.  I knew beforehand what Beijing opera (or Peking Opera) is like, having studied it briefly in university, and remembering that it’s sometimes … hard for the Western ear to accept, I hoped that Mike and Alice would enjoy it.  Alice of course throws herself fully into any experience, but the female roles especially in Beijing opera are so shrill and nasal and different from most Western music standards of lovely tone …  Plus, a show in a hotel? Would it be a quality one?

Well. I had nothing to worry about.  The show was really entertaining.  They only performed three brief sections of larger whole operas.  The first was about a young ex-nun who was trying to cross a river to get to her lover.  She meets an old boatman and persuades him to take her across, but he’s a major joker and teases her a lot.  The best part of it was how convincing their boat pantomime was: they bobbed and swayed as if they were really standing on a small boat.  The second act was a solo aria featuring a rainbow goddess singing about travelling around heaven and earth.  The last was a definite crowd-pleaser.  A woman whose husband was mortally ill decides to steal a magical artifact from a mountain protected by various magical warrior animals (it’s cooler than it sounds) and they have various epic sword-throwing fights with lots of acrobatics.  Everyone was happy.

Finally, we returned to the Night Market to show Mike some of the delicious things we had sampled the night before (he bought banana ice cream,) and topped off the night by serenading Mike with some of the uke songs we had composed the night before while still glowing with the excitement of our day.

The uke.  She makes friends.

We packed in preparation for our 5:30 a.m. departure (or was it earlier?)

Day 4: Goodbye, China.

We woke up too early and shuffled into the sleeping common room.  Our taxi that the hostel had helped arrange us picked us up and we arrived at the airport so early that the check in counter wasn’t even open.  We were DED on our feet, so we dozed on benches for a while.  We agreed through our sleep-deprived fogs that this had been such a rad decision: taking a long weekend and turning it into a grand 3-day exploration of a new country.  We pledged to do it again as soon as possible.  (See next post: JAPAN)

Am I done!? Am I actually finished?!?

GOD FINALLY!

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