Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

Our first real Chinese meal was overall quite nice. I really enjoyed it. It took us a while to settle on a restaurant but when we finally ordered the food was plentiful and delicious. We decided we would have a nice noodle dish, some fried dumplings, and Kung-pao chicken. Brynn also enjoyed the meal but I think she would have prefered if I hadn’t told her that the chicken pieces were actually the ‘ass’ – that was why the ‘meat’ seemed to melt in your mouth rather than having to chew. I think it was Brynn’s first experience with chicken-ass whereas I had encountered it a couple of times in Korea. If you are ever lucky enough to try it yourself you should know that it is supposed to be soft and melty not chewy or crunchy.

The hostel we stayed at while we were in Beijing was great. It was comfortable and clean and a great value. The first morning as we were leaving I saw a man walking his dog along the alleyway in front of the hostel. The streets had just been swept so there were little piles of debris along the sides. The dog was having lots of fun sniffing each pile. In the pile just in front of me was what turned out to be a crumpled bird. The dog sniffed at the bird and the bird moved – seeing this the dog’s owner bent down and scooped it up in a plastic bag. I’m not sure what his plans were for the bird but I have a pretty good idea it may have involved a kitchen.

We went to Tianamen Square one morning for the viewing of Chairman Mao. Tiananmen square is a ‘spit-free’ zone. If you are caught spitting on the ground there you will face a hefty fine. This poses a problem for some people while they are winding through the line for at least an hour. Luckily there is no need to worry because there are many spit bins along the way. When you see the Waste Watch sized bins start snorting and choking so when you get there you can be good and ready to help fill that can. Garbage is welcome too but be careful not to get hit.

The Beijing train station is one of the busiest places I have ever been. It was definately an experience in itself. We went in to try to book tickets so we stopped at the customer service desk for directions to the English ticket counter. The service desk was the only place in the building that was not queued or swarmed. The service man held up a roll of paper with a tiny ’16’ written on it. We decided this meant to get in line for wicket 16 – there were at least 40 wickets visible in the room. We waited in line for a very long time only to find out that our train was fully booked. Our ticket agent did speak some English but seemed to repeat ‘no’ to all questions. We left defeated. Luckily for us our hostel offered a train ticket booking service. There is a young guy who sits in the lobby all day and most of the night playing the same video game and his job is to call the train station and book tickets and have them delivered to the hostel for the next day. So we did some more searching and found an alternate route. This guy is serious about his game so you have got about a 30 second window of opportunity to distract him and give him your information for him to place the call. It took a couple of attempts but we eventually got him to book us a pair of tickets and as compensation for the distraction we pay him 30 RMB per ticket.
The day we left Beijing we decided to taxi to the station from the subway because it was pouring rain. The cab ride would normally cost 10 RMB or less but in the rain the price apparently doubles. Luckily we found a cab to share with another lady so she paid her ten and we paid ours. The train station was chaotic again but this time even more chaotic due to the rain. Rain has a funny way of exponentially increasing chaos. We were early and had no trouble at all finding our train so that was great and unlike our previos encounter with the station this time we were victorious.