Wanderlust

Ravi

One of my closest childhood friends, Ravi, passed away last night in India and I am extremely distressed. Will be going out of town this weekend and hopefully will allow me to collect myself together. No updates until Wed of next week to the blog.

Windy City

In a way, I am glad I have regained all of the poundage I lost during my brief flirtation with the Atkins diet in Feb or I would have been blown away on my way to work today. Ok, it wasn't that bad but it was still quite windy. It's getting warmer these days and yesterday it reached the 90s and the hottest it's been since I came here. Zhou Yun took us back to a Hunan restaurant that we had been the week after we came here and we had more of donkey meat. Ed was impressed with that and his introduction to Er Gou Tou. No broadband connection at home yesterday which meant I had to come back to work around 1am to do a bit of work before heading back home. It was nice to cross the road without any of the usual cacophony in the wee hours of the morning. Today, I went to McDonalds for an early lunch and successfully ordered a McChicken Sandwich without the help of anyone.

Newbie

There is a new guy in town from California. Ed arrived yesterday to take the place in the rotation cycle of Frank. A few of us took him to one of our favorite Sichuan haunts for lunch. I am planning on taking a couple of days off next week and this weekend, we are traveling out of Beijing for a 4 day trip to Shaanxi and Henan provinces. We will be definitely visiting Xi'an, where the terracotta army of the incredibly egotistical emperor Qin Shi Huang is located. There are other places in mind such as the Shaolin Temple in Henan province but we are going to play that by ear. Can't wait for the weekend.

Guests

Been very busy the last one week due to having guests at home and a hectic work week as well. I was also a bit sick at times, all contributing to a total lack of updates to the blog. Tanny & Zoof had a great time sightseeing in and around Beijing with Eug while I was at work and in the evenings, I joined them for outings to places in the city. Zoof took off for Guilin on last thursday evening after they visited the Badaling section of the Great Wall. Tanny left back for the States on Sunday.

On Saturday, Eug, Tanny and I went to a beautiful place called Shi Du, about 110km southwest of Beijing. It's often referred to as the Guilin of the north but I didn't think it was that pretty. It was decent enough for a day trip though and we did a small hike there. We also got to ride on horses which was painful in the private parts for both Tanny & I but it was still fun. At night, we had Beijing duck for the first time in a restaurant called Li Kang. I was a bit disappointed by it though Eug and Tanny liked it.

We spent most of last week's nights showing Tanny & Zoof some of the restaurants that I/we have been to but we also got to check out new places (for me) such as the Sanlitun bar district which is a bunch of western style bars with outside seating and having western food on English menus with western prices. Almost all of them had live bands, most of which consisted of 3 people (2 girls and a guy invariably) singing pop songs. There was one place where a 3 person band, who looked Fillipino, was singing very good. Thursday was the last night for Frank in Beijing and we went to a Hubei restaurant for his farewell dinner. After we said our goodbyes to Frank, Eug went home and Tanny and I hit the bars in the neighborhood partying till the wee hours of the morning.

Weekend Update Vol 3

My friends Tanny and Zahroof came on Saturday to visit. We spent most of Saturday at the Temple of Heaven (Tiantan) before heading off to the airport to pick them up. It was as beautiful as the literature mentioned. This was the place where the emperors would conduct imperial sacrifices. Right next to the Tiantan is the Beijing Natural History Museum where we came across a room full of gruesome exhibits including 3 dead bodies, one of them a man with his skin completely peeled off. The bodies were preserved in glass cases. Obviously no photos were allowed in this room. The rest of the museum was actually quite good and comparable to others I have been to in the West.

On Sunday, we spent the day at the Summer Palace, the largest royal garden in China. It was a spectacular place and was incredibly crowded with both local and foreign tourists. At night, we went to another Karaoke place where we had a jolly good time. At this rate, maybe I will start taking voice lessons. There are some teaser photos in the adjoining gallery.

Lazy

Been quite lazy in the last few days about updating the blog. Last week itself was quite uneventful unless you count eating more exotic stuff and drinking more bai jiu. On Friday though, we went out to check the underground bar scene in the student district that we live in (Haidian) and were pleasantly surprised. We did a bit of early bar hopping where we were the only people but later on ended up in a place which transformed itself from a Karaoke place when we entered, to a hardcore techno place by the end of the night. We got in around 8:00pm after being promised about the availability of food which never materialized but we started having serious fun here and ended up staying till 11pm or so. There was a good live rock band singing Chinese songs and even a fabulous opera like female singer. No photos of the place though.

I have, however, put up another gallery online which was our Karaoke outing for Zhou Yun's birthday:

http://photos.donaji.net/2004/cathy_bday/index.htm

Eug's Birthday

Yesterday was Eug's birthday and Zhou Yun helped me organize a small dinner outing with Yuan Yi, Andrew and Frank for us to a Sichuan/Cantonese restaurant near the Yonghegong or Lama Temple. We had gone there a few weeks ago. It'a nice 3 storey restaurant and we had lots of fun trying some new dishes and rice wine. We took a few photos which can be seen at:

http://photos.donaji.net/2004/eug_bday/index.htm

Today is a beautiful day and spring definitely seems to be in the air!

Weekend Update Vol 2

This past weekend, we decided to stay in town and see some local sights rather than going on an excursion outside of Beijing as in previous weekends. On friday night, we went back to the Xinjiang restaurant, A Fun Ti, this time with many more people. One of my colleagues from France, Serge was on vacation here with his wife, Ann and they joined Andrew, Frank, Eug, Zhou Yun, Yuan Yi, Alvin, George and Max for a night out at this place. The performances were quite similar to what we had seen earlier. The food wasn't as good though this time because we ended up ordering a set menu. I did get to taste horse meat though.

On saturday, Andrew, Frank, Eug and I went to see Tiananmen Square. It's quite easy to get here by subway. The square is quite impressive when you see it for the first time. Mao's portrait hanging over the Tiananmen gate is gigantic. There were a lot of Beijingers, tourists, hawkers, people flying kites, couples and plenty of both uniformed and plain clothes police. We also got to climb on to the gate itself. It was from here in 1949 that Mao proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic. The view from here of the square is quite impressive. The security was quite tight for going in here and you have to leave your bags at a counter. We then had lunch at a famous hot pot restaurant that Eug recommended. Apparently this is the place where the likes of Hu Jintao (the President of China) entertains guests.

After lunch, we went to the entrance of the Forbidden City though we didn't go in and then walked to Wangfujing street, a famous shopping area in Beijing. There was a street market here selling all sorts of exotic stuff including baby snakes, insects, starfish, etc. We resisted the temptation, mostly because we were already full.

On sunday, both Eug and Frank decided to stay at home and Andrew and I headed out to see Gugong or the Forbidden City. We spent about 6-7 hours insiide the place. It's a magnificent place and we got to see most of it including all the palaces, the relics (some of the ceramics and bronze sculptures date from 6000 B.C.) and even a clock collection of the Qing Emperor, Qianlong. The most out of place thing here was a Starbucks but we ended up having lunch here because we didn't want to go out and then come back again. We were extremely tired by the time we got ouf of the North gate (Shenwumen) and the couple of nice cold beers we had next to Qian Hai was so refreshing.

Bull Frog

You guessed right, I am indeed talking about what we ate last night. Having eaten frog legs before, this wasn't that much of a leap but the taste was really different. The bull frog was much softer meat and almost fish like. This was at the same Hubei restaurant where we had the medicinal liquor a few days ago. Andrew and I took Eug there last night.

I have finally put up my first full photo gallery of the China trip. It's of the Mu Tian Yu trip. You can see this at:

http://away.donaji.net/2004/china/mutianyu/index.htm

Shui shang de yan

Ritchie Blackmore wasn't there and nor was Jon Lord but Steve Morse and Don Airey, their replacements, rocked Beijing last night along with other original members of Deep Purple. Cui Jian opened for them at the Worker's Stadium and performed a few numbers before Purple came on stage. They started with Highway Star and gave a solid performance especially towards the end. As they started Smoke on the Water (the Chinese translation is the title of this entry), the crowd was up on its feet and sang along. There was one encore performance and they sang a bit of the Ray Charles classic, Hit the Road Jack, and then smoothly segued into Black Knight. The final song was Hush from their first album in '68. Even though I am well past my Purple loving days, it was great to see a band that I grew up on. And it was definitely interesting to see a rock concert in China! The mosh pit was very amusing as there was none. One caucasian woman tried to get into the big empty space in front of the band to do a little jive but was removed immediately by security.

We took the subway for the first time with Frank as our guide. The trains and stations are well maintained and it seems to be a clean and efficient system. They announce the station names in both Chinese and English.