China Day 6

Today we left Beijing University. We were all very happy about this - the rooms were ridiculously small for 2 people (the sink was in
the shower) and the military presence there was putting everyone on edge. We couldn't have a conversation without a guard coming within earshot. Very strange. Even leaving the place had a tiny bit of drama attached. We left unmolested and made our way with our new tour guide Jane (Wang Jing) and new bus to head for the Best Western.

We all hoped the new hotel would have a hot tub, but when we arrived (to gloriously large rooms - we have a shower AND a bath with a separate sink) we found that the pool, fitness room, and hot tub were being renovated (much like the rest of the city so far) we were very sad until we found out that we wouldn't be having Chinese food for breakfast anymore! The fancier hotels definitely cater to the western tourists so we are waiting until morning! Also, they have pizza, but I can't imagine that it's going to be any good. Plus it's really expensive (65 Yuan ~ $9 - I could buy 3 people presents with that!) and I want to buy something I can't get at home with the money I spend here!

After we got settled in the new hotel, we headed back to Dr. Wen's clinic (the place we got the cupping the first night) to practice a ritual. This didn't exactly go as Shifu planned, but when you don't tell anyone what you want, you can't be surprised when they don't get it right. The people seemed pleased though and we had to bust out of there to head out to dinner (and maybe to avoid something else) once again. The place we were going to reportedly had healthy maybe organic foods and a crazy herb garden. I don't know the name of this place, but waling around was pretty fun while waiting for the food to come. The whole place was indoors which we found strange, but even more strange was the combination of real plants and fake plants. They had a massive banyan tree that got me all excited until I was informed that it was fake. I walked up to touch it and sure enough it was concrete. At least they do a good job with their fake plants. I imagine it'd be pretty difficult to get enough light and whatnot for a whole giant banyan indoors without cracking your foundation or opening up the whole ceiling with skylights (or growing lights the way this place looks to be like in the winter).

As we continued to walk around we came upon tanks of animals that they use for the food. There were crabs, turtles, eels, and then there were these unidentifiable things that I posted the picture of. They looked like swimming uncircumcised penises. Everyone had something to say about them. And then of course every dish that came out during dinner that wasn't readily known as something else was immediately assigned to those strange creatures. We definitely decided that one dish in particular couldn't have been anything else even though someone had said that the dish was actually some kind of bean noodle.

No way said the few people brave enough to try it. That wan't like any noodle they'd ever had. Funny stuff.
Of course, during this meal as with most of the others we've had with people outside our group, at some point one of the local people from Shifu's table or something comes over when a particular new dish comes out. They pick someone at the table (thankfully, it's never been me) and excitedly encourages them to try this new dish. Of course all of this encouragement is happening in Chinese and none of us at the table has any idea what is being said. Usually the person reluctantly tries it while the rest of us look on hoping that it's delicious this time and we can all make this person happy by eating it all up, but inside we are really hoping that the person doesn't spit it out and embarrass everyone. Tonight it was decided that the dish was some kind of fish liver mush or something like that.

After dinner was mostly over another request to sing was partially processed by our group. We all stood up and tried our best to choke out one of our chants in chinese. This was apparently not what they wanted and Shifu finally told someone who spread it around that they didn't want to hear us butchering Chinese.. We mumbled around for a while and then we all got very excited when we remembered that we have our very own Tai Hsuan singer songwriter. Matt rose to the occasion and blew us all away with his own song performed a Capella. It fit the situation perfectly and even those of us who know him were blown away. This led to a few more (traditional?)songs from other tables that we couldn't understand, but we appreciated the quality of delivery.

After dinner, we were ready to go home. A few of us (including me) were starting to feel some kind of sick coming on and were eager to go to sleep before our 630am wake up call to go out sightseeing.