Islam: I could be in it for the food.

Sunday, we made our way to the Xi'an Great Mosque, a lesser-visited attraction in Xi'an, but one of the largest mosques in China. (Other more popular sights include Big Wild Goose Pagoda, City Walls, and the Forest of Steles Museum.) I'm so glad I chose this as my one Xi'an city site, as it was totally beautiful, a peaceful respite from the obnoxious honking and shouting from outside the mosque walls. The architecture was distinctly Chinese, but with Islamic influence. There was a gorgeous garden in several sections, a minaret:

Beautiful carvings everywhere:

And a grand worship hall that gave me a great sense of reverence:

Afterwards we wound our way through market stalls selling local (and maybe not so local) handicrafts. I dropped $20 on two pairs of intricately cut-out shadow puppets, and then another $30 on two beautiful Vermeer-esque oil paintings, portraits of Chinese minority-tribe women. There was something haunting and gorgeous about the paintings, and I knew if I didn't buy at least one, I wouldn't be able to think of anything else.

We then wandered down the Muslim Quarter, this bustling place filled to the gills with street food vendors, handicrafts stores, and a lot of hustle and bustle.

It was here that I cemented my everlasting love of Chinese Muslim food. I could eat it every day: sizzling lamb skewers, hand-pulled or knife-cut noodles, beautiful and tasty breads, and much more.

One dish to note is a local favorite called yangrou paomo, involving a savory lamb broth over which you break little shreds (or in my case, cubes) of bread, garnished with clear noodles and wood-ear fungus.

Also delicious hand-pulled noodles:

Upstairs, after we went to the bathroom, we discovered a small back storage room claimed as home by a gigantic macaw parrot! She was a very good parrot, who didn't squawk much but kept gnawing on the door:

We bought lots of edible goodies, including fried dried persimmons, dragon-beard candy with peanuts and walnuts, and lots of delicious fried things stuffed with savory meats and veggies. Oh, it was glorious.

City of Western Peace?

Over the weekend we went to Xi'an. Started with a day off, during which I slept in, and then went back to Kiev for some delicious Russian food and Ukrainian opera-singing. Took Garry to Houhai, where we were immediately accosted at every turn by rickshaw drivers wanting to give us tours of the hutong. Finally, we caved, agreeing to pay Y60/each for a 1 hour drive around the hutong. It turned out to be pretty interesting, but we didn't really get to go inside any of the notable sites like Prince Gong's Residence.

Wandered for a bit around Yandai Xiejie, poking into some pretty interesting shops selling stuff from Tibet, Yunnan, and other minority provinces. Caught a cab home, then packed frantically to catch the 9:36 train to Xi'an.

We went with the hard sleeper. Anyone who owns a Lonely Planet guidebook probably knows about the 4 classes of train seats in China. The hard sleeper is probably the ideal, and I found it a really pleasant way to travel, even if it was an 11-hour journey. You get a bed shelf with pillow and blanket, and you basically just sleep the whole way, and when you get up in the morning, you've arrived. It was reasonably comfortable, not too crowded.

We got picked up at the train station by a nice girl who spoke decent English and took us to Ludao Binguan, the hostel I'd chosen from Lonely Planet's glowing recommendation (Y188/night for a standard room). It was clean but definitely not fancy - no bathtub even, just a shower head attached to the wall, so you basically just showered in the bathroom. Weird.

We took our time getting breakfast at a mediocre dimsum place, then caught bus #306 (Y16 roundtrip, lots better than the USD$50 they charge on organized tours) to the Huaqing Hot Springs and the Bingmayo, or Terra Cotta Warriors. The hot springs is really a palace build around a bunch of hot springs. It's as lavish as the Summer Palace in Beijing, but perhaps more beautiful because the old architecture looks more authentic (as in, has not been "renovated" and painted garish colors):

For Y1 we got to feel the hot springs for ourselves at these fountains:

PG-13 statue of some well-endowed Chinese concubines (something you def. don't see every day):

One of the springs backed by mist-shrouded mountains:

We then hopped another buss to the Terra Cotta Warriors, the highlight of any Xi'an trip. They were, in a word, awesome. We went a bit backwards in viewing them, but I thought it was the best order: Pit #2, then Pit #3, then Pit #1, the grandest of them all. It started with just the excavation site, where all we could see was pit after pit of broken statues, some recognizable, others just shards of pottery. It was awe-inspiring but more than once I thought it looked creepily like a mass grave:

Pit #3 is quite smaller than the other two, and almost courtly in its layout and feel. I thought it was funny how they left some of the warriors headless, all lined up in neat rows:

Finally, Pit #1, which most people see first, and even then we went in the exit, so we literally saw everything backwards. It was a gigantic building, as big as a hangar, full of terra cotta warriors in full battle formation. Quite the exhilarating sight.

The day was cold and miserably rainy, so after these two sights we decided to go home and turn in early. It would have been a fine day though, except as I walked past the train station in the cold, wet night, I felt something behind me, and whirled around to catch a thief (a kid really, probably 13 or 14 years old), who had unlatched my knapsack and was in the process of taking my wallet! I couldn't believe it, I was so shocked, and all I managed to do was yell, "What are you doing!?" as if he would really understand me. He just looked at me and walked away. Of course I wanted to yell at him in Chinese but my vocabulary failed me.

Oh well, at least he didn't get to any of my valuables (incl. my wallet, phone, and SLR camera!).

Great Wall all over my @$$.

I decided to get all the uber-touristy Beijing things out of the way in my first month, so I took the day off yesterday to visit the Great Wall. I asked around and everyone told me NOT to go to Badaling, a fully renovated section of the wall crawling with tourists and hawkers trying to squeeze every dollar/pound/yen/euro/RMB from them. We opted instead for Simatai, purportedly one of the more “authentic” Great Wall experiences.

It took just over 1.5 hours to get to the parking lot, and then another half hour (walking…slowly…) just to get to the Wall from the parking lot. I’m sure there are enough people who have expounded on their Great Wall experiences, and so suffice to say that it was not easy climbing up, but it was a heck of a lot harder coming down.

6 watchtowers took about 3 hours, as I’m considerably out of shape and the Wall was steep. The first watchtower was a great milestone, empty and windy as it was. Only a few patches were somewhat level, and after the third tower, there were no side walls, so one misstep could potentially send someone tumbling down into the valley below:

Halfway to the sixth tower, we decided to head back.

On the way down, I resorted to sliding down on my butt, hands and feet, crawling like a spider while the other tourists stared and chuckled in amusement. I didn’t care. The closer to the ground (or stones), the safer I felt. Finally, to get all the way down the mountain, Garry and I decided to take a chance on "The Flying Fox," this rope-and-harness contraption that would send us barreling over the lake adjacent to the wall. It looked hellsa unsafe/scary, but we'd seen someone do it earlier that day, and both felt this need to do something crazy. So we paid the Y35 each and got our tickets. No one else wanted to do it. So the ladies strapped us into our harness and told us to "sit!" And off we went--it was faster than I expected, but much more awesome than I expected, too, flying through the air with nothing but a fabric strap holding me up from certain death--or at least, a cold swim--below.

It took 2.5 hours to get back to our apartment because of traffic. =P But at least we could enjoy some stunning autumn color-changing:

Bananas in more ways than one.

Friday night my boyfriend arrived from California (via Tokyo) and I went to fetch him from Beijing Capital Airport. The drive was very quick, but it was so late when we got back that few things were open. I had spent some time that evening poking around thebeijinger.com for late-night eats (you'd think they would have created a separate category for this!). But when we showed the cab driver where we wanted to go, he was like, (in Chinese) "No food there! What do you want to eat!" And we told him, really, anything as long as it was tasty, maybe jiaozi (dumplings).

So he took us to this little hole-in-the-wall place that only locals obviously go, and, of course, the menu was totally in Chinese characters. We stared blankly and helplessly at it while the server, a doll-like thing with an easy smile and dimples, gave us all these choices that we didn't know anything about. I think she was asking, 'What kind of meat do you want?" "What kind of vegetable?" "Do you want pan-fried or steamed?" At the time, I didn't even know the Chinese word for "steamed" so we were in a world of trouble. Ordering 3 dishes was an ordeal, and she kept laughing at us, but in the end the lamb pan-friend dumplings and steamed egg-and-chive dumplings were great, as was this salad made of raw napa cabbage.

Saturday, got up not so early and missed breakfast, then went straight to Tiananmen to meet a friend. By the time we got there it was too late to get into Mao's Mausoleum, which I have identified as the one thing I can't leave Beijing without seeing (weird, I know--I've wanted to see it ever since I took a Cultural Revolution class in college). Walked around the square, which is ENORMOUS, walked north to the north gate and the Chairman's benevolent portrait overlooking the whole scene.

The Forbidden City is also ENORMOUS. I can't get over how many millions of stones must have been laid out by the hands of hardworking Chinese laborers. I was disappointed to find that the most important buildings were under intense renovation, but the Imperial Garden was totally lovely.

Afterwards, grabbed some snacks at Wangfujing Snack Street, where we had lamb skewers, some kind of puff pastry like thing, a kind of Uigher bread stuffed with lamb and leeks, and this amazing invention: a pile of french fries with fried egg on top. And when we ordered it, the guy dunked it in hot oil to be fried AGAIN! It was delicious. We gawked at the availability of starfish and other strange sea creatures impaled on skewers.

Then, still hungry, we made our ways over to Li Qun Roast Duck Restaurant in the Dongcheng district. It is tucked away into some back alley that is really hard to find except for the crude, stick-figure drawings of ducks on the walls and arrows leading us further into the courtyard.The duck was delicious, though probably on par with Quanjude.:

Went to Tom's Shop for DVDs afterwards and bought:

• Lilo & Stitch
• Pan's Labyrinth
• Paris J'taime

Dropped by The Tree again for drinks before meeting up w/ coworkers to check out Block 8 (some fancy schmancy club that was inexplicably un-busy for a Saturday night). Ducked out early to go to sleep.

Sunday, got up relatively early with the intention of going to the Summer Palace. However, the Beijing Marathon thwarted our plans, and we had to settle for Yuanming Yuan, the Old Summer Palace which turned out to be pretty cool in its own right--a huge park with lots of lakes and trees. The most interesting part though, were the ruins of the old summer palace of Emperor Qianlong. The emperor had built many Western-style buildings which were all burned to the ground by the "8 Countries Army" - basically a force of many European countries + Japan, and I think the Chinese still feel some serious rancor towards the Japanese for this hairy incident, among others:

My favorite part was the maze the Emperor has built for his guests and concubines:

Afterwards we went to this nearby restaurant serving, I believe, Shandong food. It was a kind of hot-and-sour hotpot made of some tomato based broth, onions, ginger, etc. We steeped a whole catfish (yummy!), lotus root, seaweed, and tofu. It was eaten with many delicious condiments like ground peanuts, fresh garlic, cilantro, scallions, and some kind of nutty paste I couldn't identify.

Spent the afternoon at the new Summer Palace, the one overrun with tourists. Saw the Empress Cixi's chambers, then strolled along Kunming Lake:

Then clambered up some seriously steep stairs to the Tower of Buddhist Incense, this gorgeous temple perched atop a high cliff. From the top, we saw the Thousand-Handed Guanying statue, and a beautiful Beijing sunset in the distance.

Ode to the '90s and a bottle of Jack Daniels

The other night, went with a couple Beijing coworkers and had sushi and ramen at Isshin, this little place tucked away in a back alley of Wudaokou. Food was solid, though not extraordinary. Had potato salad, fried tofu in shoyu, 3 kinds of rolls and spicy miso ramen.

Last night, I joined Aki for Quiz Night at Lush, this Wudaokou joint stuffed to the gills with Americans and other foreigners (mostly students at Qinghua). I went in prepared to suck, because I'm never really good at these things. Had a pretty boring-tasting chicken burger and fries, but the ketchup was too sweet, as was the ranch sauce I asked for.


We sat down with a group of girls because there wasn't enough room to get our own table. All of them were from the college of William & Mary in Virginia, and all were studying Chinese at Qinghua. They were soooooo young, class of 2009! Sheesh. We decided to do the quiz as a group, naming ourselves "Quizmas."

Anyway, at 8pm, the quizzing began. There were 15 groups total, with more than 100 people total. The theme was "the 1990s," and there were five rounds: Movies/TV, History/Events, Countries, Popular Fads and Music. I was like, hmm, ok, I was a child of the '90s, so maybe we'd have a shot.

We ended up kicking ass on the first round, scoring 12 when the other teams averaged 4! The most memorable question was something like, "What 2 movies have the highest number of obscenities per minute in the 1990s?" I knew one of them HAD to be a Tarantino film (I guessed Pulp Fiction, which was correct). Our other guess was Goodfellas, but the actual answer was the South Park Movie. Other questions included stuff like "What was the popular hangout in 90210?" and "What actor said he was "the first post-Heston non-biblical action star in sandals.'?" (John Cusack--I was so sure of the answer because that's when I'd developed my crush on Mr. Cusack, watching every movie he was in and reading every article I could get my hands on).

The second round we scored a strong 11 points, correctly naming the Unibomber, Amy Fischer, Loreena & John Wayne Bobbit, the year of the Columbine massacre, etc. The one we missed was the Solar Temple sect that committed mass suicides in Canada and Europe.

We went a bit downhill from there, scoring 8 points on the countries (most of them obscure Eastern European), then 6 on the Fads (luckily the girls we were with were young enough to remember the Furby and Beanie Babies really well). The guy asked what the name of the Akita in Rent was, and from which story the dog leapt to its death as Angel played his drums (I was convinced it was 21st, but it was actually the 23rd). Finally, the music was the hardest as we had to name the artist and year it was released. But it was great to hear some old 90s hip-hop like Snow's "Informer," En Vogue's "Never Gonna Get It," 2pac and Dr. Dre's "California Love," and even Us 3's "Cantaloop."

Anyway. WE WON! First place! I couldn't believe it, I never win these things. But here's the proof:

And the bottle of Jack Daniels we won as a prize:

And my comrades-in-arms (excluding myself, as I was taking the picture):

Hou to the Hai

It's late so I'm going to make this quick.

It was another beautifully clear day yesterday (I guess Sundays are good for un-smoggy air). Went to church at BICF. Impressed with the international-ness of it, met a very nice couple from Camaroon, one getting his PhD at Tsinghua and the other in the midst of her fourth year at Beida medical school. I would expound on some of the embarrassingly unapologetic racism in this city but that would be opening a can of worms. Hopped a cab and headed to Houhai, where we dined at S'Silk Road, a Yunnanese restaurant right on the lake. Very pleasant.

Silken tofu in chili oil with 1000-year-old (preserved duck) eggs

Walked around Houhai for a bit, marveled at the tourist-trappiness of it all, considered taking a rickshaw ride, got teased for being such a "high-maintenance" guest b/c of my queasiness about squatty toilets and desire for more efficiency and convenience. I say that my issue with squatty toilets is not that they are gross but that it is nearly impossible for me to maintain my balance without missing completely and... well, I guess that is TMI. Ducked into a Tibetan decor place, where the stuff was obviously well-made by hand and very beautiful, but very pricey.

Ate stinky tofu for the first time - raw, it smells rather like a great quantity of pee that has staled on the sidewalk. Freshly fried, however, and dusted with spices and hot sauce, it is quite delicious:


Got tired of walking around in my cheap Silk Alley hiking boots, so we decided to get foot massages. Hour-long. Second only to food, massages and other spa-like services rank among the very pleasant things to be had in Beijing for absurdly low prices (in this case, 60 Yuan). We entered a room that looked like one of our friend's parent's living room, dimly lit with comfortable couches to sink into. We were each given a tea soak for our feet, during which we got a brief backrub, and then our masseuses got down to the business of working the soreness out of our tired feet. We were, how you say, spoiled.

Afterwards, dinner at Bellagio, this fancy place with amazing decor on the top floor of a really posh Japanese mall. They are known for their Taiwanese food, but to be perfectly honest I couldn't tell the difference. We had a number of yummy things followed by delicious desserts of shaved ice, fruit and coconut ice cream. Mmm.

Fried baby oysters and basil

Broiled spareribs

Blended mango with shaved ice, coconut pulp, and pomelo bits on top

Today, not much, just dinner at this place called Gangguoju in Wudaokou, where the gimmick was stir fries cooked on a burner at your table. We found the food amazingly spicy, though tasty, and not particularly filling. But it was cheap - we got like 9 dishes for 161 Yuan. Only drawback for me was that the stir-fry we got was not exactly chicken, but all the random, gristly, boney, gross parts of the chicken that you normally don't want to eat. Half the time I had no idea what part of the chicken it was, but I'm pretty sure I chanced across some of the head, and there was most definitely a foot in there (no, I don't like chicken feet. Gives me the heebie-jeebies. I know what you're thinking--I'm not really Chinese. Sue me).

Suspicious chicken-parts stir-fry

The other things we ordered were really good:

Soba noodles in chili oil and chilis, with boiled peanuts in the background

Went shopping at the Lotus Center (kind of like a Chinese Wal-Mart), browsed the clothing shops (Chinese fashion = another can of worms I don't want to open) and spent almost half an hour trying to decide what kind of shampoo and laundry detergent to get, as I couldn't read the labels and it was anyone's guess what they meant.

Not Snoopy but "Sno Opy."

And lastly, some random pictures I took around Houhai.

Paddle-boats on the lake, taken from the bridge.

Strange still-life at the side of a store.

Mural on a door.