Sweet Rides from the Middle Kingdom

Since I know at least one of you out there is a big gearhead I figured I'd post a short homage to a few of the more unique four-wheeled rides here in Beijing... so here goes!No idea what this one is... cute though!
Trying a little too hard to look like an older Mercedes... very popular too (whatever it is).
Heh... this one is just way too cool. Probably more of a "Saturday night chick magnet" than "everyday transport"
The wildly popular but snooze-inducing VW Santana.
The Suzuki Wagon R... this one looks especially good in its two-tone paint job.
The Changan (Suzuki?) Alto. One of the most popular cars here, and full of character. Way cool.
Buicks seem to be real status symbols here. Maybe if the American versions had some of that Maybach look about the headlights they might sell better too...
Dunno... kind of a Chinese Renault Twingo... only not as cute.

Anyway, I'll probably do this again when I accumulate a few more pictures. There are way more unique and funny looking rides to document!

Day 5: Breakfast, Bruce Lee and Haggling Lessons

Street Food of the Day: Tamarind Gingerbread
While yesterday's culinary highlight was unquestionably the heavenly Peking Duck (see Andrea's blog), our breakfast was well worth a mention. Purchased from a tiny bakery in our local Hutong, this slightly sweet, lightly spiced gingerbread had chunks of what I believe to be dried tamarind fruit in it. These trees grow everywhere here, and their fruit is collected and dried by the locals, who call it Zhao. It tasted a lot like gingerbread, but was slightly less dense, and the dried fruit had a subtle taste that perfectly complimented the flavor. As we walked down Financial Street towards Qianmen stuffing our faces with this stuff, locals made sure to take a close look at what the laowais were eating. In fact, almost everything we buy, or bring home in plastic bags is scrutinized with real curiosity, as if it holds some clue to the nature of our strangeness.

Bumper Sticker of the Day: Bruce Lee IN CAR
Learning Experience of the Day: Haggling
While we were waddling home from Qianmen in a roast-duck induced haze, we noticed a large market that we hadn't yet visited. Walking in, we saw that it was primarily a clothing market, consisting of hundreds of tiny stalls hawking everything from traditional outfits to track jackets to shoes and handbags. After completing a full lap of the first floor, Andrea decided that there was something that she couldn't live without: an olive green sweater with a vaguely military look, but executed with a level of subtlety that many Chinese clothes lack. So, we went back to the stall, where she tried the thing on, and found out to the delight of the middle-aged ladies running the stall that it fit perfectly. Then came the hard part: haggling. They wanted 280, to which I fanned myself against the heat of the place, laughed and shook my head. Then I made my first mistake: I gave them a price I could live with (100). They put on their best looks of outrage and shook their heads furiously, coming back with an offer of 250. I then made my second mistake by revising my price upwards by almost twice what I initially offered, to 175. Smelling blood in the water, the ladies insisted that they wouldn't go below 210. Embarassingly enough, we only had 190 between us after getting ripped off for our roast duck, which they took, but only after giving us a long look of pity and sadness.

As inexperienced as I showed myself to be, I was glad to get the practice before heading to the cutthroat Panjiayuan market this Saturday. I had read in several market guides that you should wait for the vendor to give you two prices before giving them your price, which should be somewhere in the range of 10% of the initial asking price. Then you should revise slowly upwards in small increments, possibly even walking away in disgust to make it clear that you want a reasonable price. In short, you have to play hardball in these situations, which sounds easy on paper, but is actually pretty tricky in practice. Shopping in the west is a fairly genteel process, where high prices usually ensure good quality, good service, or some kind of status. Here, prices are all over the place, and everyone seems to enjoy a good haggle... it's all kind of a big dance. Not only do we have bullseyes on our backs because we are laowai, and people assume we have tons of money to throw around on junk to bring home as souveniers, vendors are also very adept at using high pressure sales tactics that take advantage of our language deficiencies and ignorance of the culture.

Oh well, lesson learned. Andrea got a sweet sweater that would easily cost $40 or so in the US for about $20, and we got our first real taste of market hardball haggling. Here's hoping we keep our nerve a bit better next time.

You might Beijinger if...

1-You like throwing stuff at the animals in your super-depressing zoo. Check out Andreas blog for more on that. It's a sad story.

2- You love getting awards. I mean, you really, really love getting awards. Beijing has tons and tons of these little awards/trophy shops all over. In fact, if you see one of them, chances are you'll see at least three more before you get to the end of the block. There are even some streets that have upwards of ten shops selling plaques, trophies, cups and other awards and awards paraphernalia. Why? Who knows. Maybe in the absence of a truly free market people need trophies to stay motivated at work. Maybe used plaques commemorating the 25th City Games of Hangzhou are status symbols. Then again, I have yet to see any business transacted in one of these stores...



3- You make your kids wear assless pants. Seriously, you see little kids walking around the streets in pants with the ass cut out. I try to avoid wondering why.

4- You smoke cigarettes while riding a bike. Experts might even talk on a cell phone at the same time.

5-You know how to add those little touches that make a car look truly classy. Booyakasha!

I'm a little bit XiDan Shopping District, and a little bit TienAnMen Square...

Another exhausting day, of about 8 hours of walking (we have got to start using the subway!), some MegaMall shopping, and mingling with about a million of our closest Chinese amigos in the Forbidden City and TienAnMen on the National Holiday. It's getting to the point where we need to seriously start pacing ourselves, because we still have over 30 days left and we don't want to run ourselves ragged!

XiDan shopping center was the first stop of the day, after our Jiang Bing breakfast (we are becoming fast friends with our neighborhood tricycle vendor) and the walk there was an event in itself, taking us down the impressive Financial Street. XiDan is actually composed of several connected malls and street-level shops, and is a massive monument to China's burgeoning consumer culture. We arrived before the stores even opened, but we got to see a cell phone outfit's morning pep rally, complete with fist raised slogan shouting.

In fact, a whole level of the XiDan is devoted to cell phones, and it takes high-pressure marketing to extreme levels of sensory bombardment... we lasted about 15 seconds before hightailing it to a less stressfully stimulating environment. The majority of the mall was devoted to clothing and shoes, which tend towards uber-trendy looks featuring countless rhinestones and nonsensical english phrases (very, very popular: "boxing match between you and me." Your guess is as good as mine.) Some of the more mature fashions were very nice, but we held off from buying anything untill we hit Shanghai, the capitol of the textile industry. Also of interest:

Maoist/Traditional Chinese doodads. They weren't so fond of my taking pictures (or maybe the fact that I wasn't buying), but this was only a tiny fraction of the store. Hopefully we'll find more Commie Kitsch when we hit the famous Panjiyuan Flea Market later this week.







LED Flashlights. You don't see these much in America... I'm kind of an LED-head (thanks to a fruitless project I wasted countless hours on for my hapless former employers) and these looked pretty cool.


Playboy brand shoes. You can actually find Playboy brand of almost any kind of apparel, including children's shoes(!). There's nothing special about them... in fact most don't even have the brand anywhere on the shoes themselves. Still, it's pretty hilarious considering that obscene images are technically illegal, and the government blocks obscene websights (er, I hear).Anyway, I wasn't hugely impressed by XiDan. No fake luxury brands, no cool kitsch or weird finds. The whole experience was a sort of unintentional parody of a western mall on a huge scale, and the prices weren't even that impressive. It seems that we're going to have to try a little harder to really hit my consumer funnybone.

Since we struck out on the capitalist front, we threw in our lot with the People's Republic and joined the masses in celebrating National Day at the Forbidden City and TienAnMen. Andrea covers the whole thing over at her blog, so I'll just leave you with this little taste of the action:

Take it easy comrades!

Day 2: The List

Must Have Item To Make You Look Like Less Of A Dumbass Tourist: The Tea Jar

Tea (Cha) is the national drink of China. It's everywhere, from restaurants, to convenience stores, to highly specialized Tea shops which are often the nicest store on the block. You get tea for free with your meals at nicer restaurants (where it costs upwards of a whole $7 to get two people stuffed with food), but if you are rambling the hutongs and living off of street food, you need to get your caffeine kick somehow... which is where the Tea Jar comes in. Everyone carries these here, especially cab drivers and shop owners (ok, that's like 70% of the population) and because they are all clear glass or plastic you can check out all the different brews, the leaf style and color. Basically they are like Eugene's omnipresent Nalgene bottles, but usually a bit smaller and almost always clear. Because our hostel charges a whole 40 cents per cup of tea (!) we bought a bunch of jasmine tea and brew our own using the handy water boiler, and hike around town with a constantly-caffienated spring in our step.

Street Food Of The Day: Jiang Bing

Imagine a paper-thin crepe with an egg, a piece of fried dough, a savory soy-like sauce, a spicy chili sauce, green onions and cilantro all rolled up and made right in front of you... for breakfast. Our vendor was delighted to rip us off by charging us 5 yuan instead of the usual 3 (60 cents instead of 40... oh damn), and was even happier to see us swoon at the delicousness of it all. It made our noses run, and our tastebuds tingle, but it kept us full all morning. Guess what we are having for breakfast again today?

Must Have Item That Will Definately Make You Look More Like A Dumbass Tourist: Faux-Tiger Skin Rug

I had this idea a while ago, and although I was thinking of something a little more kid-friendly, this would definately do. Now, how the hell am I gonna get it into my suitcase?







Cutest Beijinger Of The Day: Kitteh!

Pets are hugely popular here, and we've already seen cats, dogs, rabbits and several different bird species. None came close to this little guy in terms of sheer cuteness, though.









Smell Of The Day: Seed and Nut Stands

Beijing is a never-ending olfactory experience, and often times smell will be the most stimulated sense as you walk around the streets and hutongs. One of my favorite smells has got to be the shops and stands that sell a wide variety of nuts and seeds. Chestnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, hazlenuts and much more are very popular in Beijing, and these stands often have long lines of customers. It's not at all surprising, as the smell of these nuts and seeds slow-roasting is delicate, complex and totally enticing.

So, as I'm sure you can tell by now, Beijing is an amazing city with an endless amount of things to see and do before you need to even consider going near a tourist spot. The only downside is that you can only physically walk so many hours in a day before you simply collapse from exhaustion. The benefit to this is that you reach a point in the evening where you just have to go home, regroup for a few hours with some tea and always-tasty Tsingtao beer before heading back out to check out the wild and crazy hutong night market scene. This provides the perfect opportunity to practice the Mandarin (people seem to love it if you make any effort at all, especially if you don't mind joining them in a laugh at your expense) and write down a few thoughts. Hopefully you all enjoy reading them.

Bye for now!
(picture: me and the bell tower, taken from the drum tower)

"I take two Benadryl in times of peace, and two in times of war..."

Ahh, Jetlag. We were so exhausted after a day of tramping around the city that we broke the cardinal rule of jetlag management and passed out around 5pm local time. We woke up at about 2am, and with nothing to do we decided to watch the Duck game stats update on gametracker. Not wanting to stare at a computer for 5 hours waiting to get word about our lost bags, we made a party of it and had a couple of Benadryl each, washed down by a shared bottle of Tsingtao. 15 minutes later, we were both passed out again like a couple of freshmen. We woke up around 7am local, read the thrilling (but disappointing) finish to the Ducks game.

Whatever is in that Benadryl stuff saved our jetlagged asses from several long hours of waiting, and another day of out-of-syncness. Now, it's off to score some Hutong breakfast, and then on to meet with the Friends of Old Beijing. The only problem now is that we still have no cameras, and we smell just like the locals... but maybe that means we get the local price on baozi and bing.

Safe Landings...

Well, we finally made it. After a flight delay, a rerouting, several "WTF" moments at ticketing counters, and having all our luggage lost on the way, we are finally in Beijing. We arrived at 5:30 a.m, waited for our bags, realized they weren't coming and filed the necessary paperwork with the airline. We went through immigration and customs, and in a jetlagged daze we walked out the doors of the terminal to the taxi queue. We were instantly accosted by a man who said "taxi" and beckoned us to follow. As we passed the line of waiting cabs, it suddenly occurred to me that we should just get into the first livery cab, and not follow the seemingly well-intentioned gent to his undetermined location. We hopped in a cab, to a chorus of disappointed wails, and started driving into town.

I have never witnessed anything quite like Beijing traffic before. It is truly a testament to the engrained cultural value of social harmony that everyone can so totally ignore the rules and act solely in self interest and yet avoid any accidents. Our driver straddled lanes, merged and generally navigated the chaos like a fish swimming in a giant school. Several times I was convinced we would be sandwiched between cars, hit by bicyclists, or run off the road by larger, faster cars. He even managed to call our hostel on his cell and get updated directions, all while negotiating traffic that would make a NASCAR driver blanch.

After checking in at our hostel, we had little choice but to walk around for a while, as our room was not yet vacated. We explored the neighborhood hutong (alleys) for a while, and were delighted to find them as authentically rustic (read: smelly) and full of character as we could have expected. Clearly the Olympic development has not totally destroyed old Beijing. After getting thoroughly lost in the winding hutongs, we finally got our bearings and headed to BeiHai park. Exhausted, jetlagged and overwhelmed by the enormous city bustling around us, BeiHai was the perfect escape. People were dancing, knitting, practicing TaiChi and playing cards along the edge of the lake, and the high-rises around us were smothered by a layer of smog so that we practically forgot that we were in a city at all.

We walked past the Forbidden City to Donghuamen street where we had a delicious meal of Fujian tea-smoked duck and SiChuan beef and onions with beer (for like, $8). We checked out some of the shops in the Wangfujing shopping street, but we were beginning to get pretty tired, and had a long trek still back to the hostel so we headed back. Now we are hanging out in our tiny but charming room in our siheyuan (courtyard-style) hostel. We both stink like the dickens, but have no clothes to change into and very limited toiletries due to our luggage being lost (this is also why we have no photos yet). Hopefully the bags will arrive tomorrow, and we can show you all some of the sights of this amazing city.