Day 2: I heart BeiJing - olympics, wisdom ... and food

So I woke up early again but stayed in bed trying to rest for awhile, finally got out of bed around 7:30, still early.

[url]http://picasaweb.google.com/angela71/Day2InBeijingCity02?feat=directlink[/url]

The day’s plan was to head to the Bird’s Nest (Niao Tao) and Water Cube (Shui Li Fang), then the Confucius Temple (Kong Miao) and Lama Temple (Yong He Gong). Then lunch somewhere and something else after (tbd). Then back to the apartment.
We headed out around 10something after breakfast. I ate a new fruit – mangosteen. Its got like a hard outer brownish red shell, inside is like these 6 or so white fleshy pods surrounding a seed. Weather was really sunny today. Very unusual.

Beijing seems to have some traffic all the time. Wu a yi was saying that on Tuesdays, b/c of the last number of her license plate, she’s not allowed to enter the city. There’s some cool architecture in the area surrounding the Olympic stadiums – like a skyscraper w/ a torchlike top, and a building that is like 4 brown irregular sized rectangles next to each other, and these two big red square towers flanking one of the nearby big roads.

The Water Cube was 30RMB to enter. It’s just like you saw in videos of the Olympics – big, blue, bubbly. It’s surrounded by a shallow pool of water – jen said it was cold. And inside, the competition pool was all set up for some swan lake dance swim performance sport thing (swans, green jungly tapestries to make it look like the woods – kinda ugly really). You could go into the seating area on the one side. No one was allowed upstairs (which the guard said was just like the downstairs anyway) or in the warmup pool area, and they had some flow control going on (you had to go in one door and out this other door). But it was pretty cool to see the pool and diving towers.
Bird’s Nest was 50RMB. It was cool walking between these two massive structures, and I imagined that it would be fun to see them both lit up at night. Maybe later in the trip. Getting up close to the strands of the nest, you get a different appreciation for the size and amount of work it must’ve taken to build the frame. The stadium basically is open air, which I didn’t realize. Thought there was glass surrounding the base so you had to enter through doors to get to the seating areas. But you just walk in and down, and you’re on the track. But right now the track is covered and they’re laying sod in the center. It was awesome being on the track! I ran a lap, and Jon snapped some photos of me. We hung out there for a bit, just looking around.

Xiao wang picked us up around where he dropped us off, and we headed to the temples. He turned down this tiny little east-west street marked by a small gate, I think just south of Andingmen Xidajie and just east of Andingmenei Dajie. Basically the street that the Confucius temple is on. We had him drop us partway down the street, and we walked eastward toward the temple through the hutong there – small old school neighborhoody feel w/ narrow streets but mostly newer shops – various things ranging from incense to jade to vegetarian buffets. Lots of people on bikes here, w/ a few cars sporadically driving down the tiny road.

20RMB to get in to Kong Miao. Confucius had a lot of scholars honored by having each of their names inscribed in huge tablets just inside the gates. 198 tablets w/ 51,624 names. We found a lot of Wus and a few Lins. In the courtyard there was also some even bigger tablets w/ turtle-dragons as bases. And in the back, a hall for bai-bai that also housed a big collection of musical instruments. Jen and I attempted to collect some wisdom from Confucius through bai-bai.

We continued eastward toward Yong he gong Tibetan Buddhist lamasery, crossing a big-ish road to get there (looking at the map now, looks like Dongsi Beidajie). 25 RMB to get in. Here, we passed through a walkway lined w/ gingko trees, then entered an area for prayer in front of a hall containing a giant Buddha. There were places to kneel, and a big candle to light the incense with, between two big iron containers with fire coming out of them where people put their incense after praying. On either side of this were two big lion dragon guys. Inside the hall w/ the big Buddha, there were four surrounding figures – Jon said he thought they were the gods of wind, fire, earth, and water. This temple has active monks, but I’m not sure if the guys in robes watching to make sure no one burned incense or took pictures in the halls were actually all monks. There were a lot of buddhas to be worshipped here in many halls. Notably, the hall containing the longevity, medicine, and wisdom buddhas. And, there was more of a concentration of white people here than I’d seen anywhere so far.

The temples were pretty relaxing and humbling… thinking about how much wisdom and peacefulness is being/has been nurtured throughout the centuries b/c of the teachings and practices of those following Buddhism and Confucianism, and how magnificent the tablets, Buddha statues, and halls are that still stand here.

Lunch at Din Tai Fung in Xinyuanli, kinda on a small road betw Dongzhimenwai Xiejie and Dongzhimenwai Dajie near the corner of where they branch off from one another, near the Sanlitun area. Jen says there’s like 3 of them in Beijing. And they also have some in LA. The food is kind of a mix of Taiwanese and Shanghainese cuisines. We ordered soup dumplings, hot/sour cucumbers, drunken chicken, noodles (I got sesame noodles – dan dan mien - but not sure what kind jen got), red bean sticky rice, shaved ice with milk, tapioca, and taro sticky things (taro mushed up with sweet potato flour). Cucumbers they have here in china are different from American cucumbers… skinnier, crunchier, pretty yummy w/ a little chili oil and vinegar as prepared here. Dan dan mien was tasty (thin rice flour noodles in a sesame paste sauce, w/ some green onions, served cold). They brought out a soup, and we were confused. Apparently they have xiao long bao and xiao long tang bao, and they’re different. The latter is what jen ordered, thinking that that would have the soup inside like normal, but in fact here that means you get the smaller dumplings w/ extra soup for dipping. I’ve never been to a place w/ both kinds, and jen said she’d ordered xiao long bao at a place in NY before and they turned out to be the wrong ones so she was trying to avoid that mistake here. However, the nomenclature is apparently reversed at this restaurant. They were trying to close up for their break between lunch and dinner, so they wouldn’t make us new ones. But the manager gave her a coupon for free xiao long bao. Oh, and you can go to the window and watch the chefs make the dumplings, but I was too hungry. They take a flat piece of dough, spread a little meat on it, twist. Pretty fast. The xiao long tang bao were tasty. They are smaller, no twist on the top (instead it’s on the bottom). We had 2 orders of 20. They were tasty, esp w/ the dark vinegar, soy, ginger, hot pepper oil I mixed for dipping. The extra soup was really bland so I didn’t use it. Drunken chicken and sticky rice were good, not my favs of our meal but good. Shaved ice – chua bing - came out in a big bowl. I’m not a huge dessert person, and I’m sure I’ve had this dessert before in Taiwan but a billion years ago so I wasn’t prepared for how big of a mountain of shaved ice it was going to be. Jon and Jen said it was actually smaller than some of the others they’d had this trip. Jen tried to order the almond jellies w/ shaved ice, milk, and tapiocas, but they wouldn’t let her. So she got this, which was awesome.

Then we went to Ya Show Clothing Market (Yaxiu) in Sanlitun, a big bar/shopping area pretty nearby. I needed some sunglasses and to practice haggling. I ended up getting some “Armani” stuff – a white button down for 50RMB(it ended up being a bit big, but we’ll see what happens w/ a wash – I tried to exchange, but she had nothing smaller), and some sunglasses for 65RMB. I feel like I could’ve gotten the glasses for less, but ah well. Jon got a couple Polo shirts 2 for 100. Jen got a max & mara jacket for 200RMB. We did some good work w/ the bargaining. On our way up to the 4th floor of this crazy big market, I spotted (on 3rd floor next to the escalators) a t-shirt shop w/ the shirt Jen had told me about yesterday that’s like the I heart NY shirt – except it’s I heart BJ… Brilliant. But I forgot about going back there to take a look. I might have to go back to bring some back as souvenirs for people. Outside the market, we picked up a copy of Terminator: Salvation for 10RMB. Tried to get 2 for 10 but he wasn’t going for it. They’d been looking for this movie and had only found this really terrible “The Terminators” movie.

We got back, watched most of Terminator, then went to dinner at a restaurant a few doors down from the Din Tai Fung we went to for lunch – Xiang Men Lo maybe the name (pic of it at the end of the Day 2 album). Wu a yi brought us here for the Peking duck (Beijing kao ya). We also ordered hot sour cukes (shuan la huang gua, sliced long ways and more sweet than the ones we had at lunch), vegetarian duck (shu yia, tofu skin stuffed with chopped mushrooms), duck hearts w/ hot pepper (jiao yian yia xin, cooked w/ lots of dried chilis and cilantro – this was an awesome dish that must’ve taken a ton of duck hearts, which were sort of butterflied, probably decoratively as well as for ease of cooking), a kind of bean (si lin dou, sauted in garlic – it looks more like some other kind of veg rather than a bean, and was basically plain and crunchy – a good palate cleanser for the other flavors), and some desserty type bread. Whew, a lot of food. Jon and I also each got a mug (xiao za) of beer. They have two brews here – black and yellow – like a chocolate stout and a mild almost creamy golden ale. Not your typical Chinese pilsner type beer.

The peking duck is sliced in front of you. It has a crispy yet tender skin. You’re supposed to take a wrapper – like a tortilla but chewier and made w/ rice flour, take a few pieces of duck including some skin, dip it in the duck sauce, put it in the wrapper w/ some slices of cucumber and onion, and wrap it and eat it. Or just eat the duck w/ out all the other stuff. Whatever you want. It was yummy.

Ah. So full. We finished terminator back at the apartment, then went for our spa time at 9:30pm. Shi tou an mo, which includes hair washing, full body massage, and ear cleaning. Yeah… interesting, I know. Yes, you keep your clothes on. You lay down on a massage table that also has a sink on the end. One person starts washing your hair as your feet soak in a bucket of hot water. A second person starts doing the foot massage as the hair washing/head massage goes on. After rinsing, the hair washer cleans your ears w/ qtips – like they get in there and twist around – kind of a weird sensation not to mention sound, and more uncomfortable for my left ear than the right. they did some really interesting synchronized stuff, like she’d work on my right arm while he worked on my left leg. They did some bending and pulling and she even did some weird thing where she bent my elbow, squished up my hand to sort of cut off circulation, and then applied pressure and let the blood back into my hand. Kinda crazy. But really nice. Lots of pushing and breathing out to relax the muscles. At the end, she did some weird thing where she sort of squished up the skin and muscles on my back from the lower back up to my shoulders, and did that on either side of my spine. And then did a bunch of pressing on my lower back that was good tension relief. Ahh.