Other than waking up around 5:15 w/ a grumbly stomach, which taking a bathroom break seemed to settle, I slept til about 9. Yay! I think it was a combination of a lot of walking, my workout, and eating a ton of food. And starting to be more adjusted to the time change.
http://picasaweb.google.com/angela71/Day4BeijingSummerPalaceTempleOfHeavenBeihaiParkAwesomeFood?feat=directlink
Plan for the day: w/ wu a yi and uncle, Summer Palace (yi he yuan), Temple of Heaven (Tian Tan), Beihai Park, dinner.
There was abnormally huge traffic. I slept some. We made it to the summer palace, but I think it took us like 2 hrs. 30RMB to get in. This place is essentially a huge lake surrounded by some houses, a temple, bridges, pagodas, and pavilions. Many big and small boats sail across the lake taking people to different points. You can also rent paddleboats to ride around yourself. There’s a big pretty bridge near the entrance we came in (south I think) that leads to the lake’s little island. We walked across it. Then took a ferry (like 8RMB I think) across to the area near the temple. You come to a port where there’s a huge marble boat that they lifted out of the water. Wu a yi said you used to be able to go on it, but not now. We stopped at a diner on a boat. Got some seats on the roof to watch small boats go by, and got instant noodles (fang bian mian – literally, convenient noodles). Wu uncle was happy to be eating, and I didn’t realize I was that hungry, but I ate all mine pretty fast. I think when it comes to noodles of any sort, I can pretty much eat them anytime. I came to understand that the place wu a yi and I went for lunch yesterday (niu ro mian) also makes/distributes this brand of fang bian mian as well as bottled water. We talked about entrepreneurship and MBAs… being able to “smell the money” (wu uncle’s words)… sort of a continuation of the “why do people not get paid enough” conversation that started when we were getting ready to leave.
So we then walked along the lake. saw the entrance of the miao but I didn’t feel like walking up any steps to get to it. Walked down the Long Corridor (chang lang) which has individual paintings on each beam (and between beams on the sides) and 4 pavilions w/ different themes. I saw a lot of dragons, some phoenixes, and a qilin (dragon head with deer antlers, ox hooves, lion tail).
Nice place for the emperor to play. So much green space. Beautiful lake.
Wu uncle dropped us off at Tian Tan b/c he needed to go back and do some work. This place is also organized in a line, like Forbidden City. The architecture here is unique. It’s the only existing example of this type of architecture in china. The main temple has 4 main circular posts for support in the center representing the 4 seasons (flowery), then 12 plain red posts around it to symbolize 12 months in the year and 12 hrs of day and night. It was built in an unusual way, like w/ locking pieces, w/ no nails. There are a lot of other buildings designed for worship around the main temple. And there’s a whole worship process that the emperor leads to pray for good weather, rain, and harvests that involves praying in a couple different places, changing clothes, and a sacrificial calf. The last temple building to look in had a huge line, but we endured it to take a look. And then the last place in the park was a circular monument to the heavens (9 layers = 9 rings of marble blocks starting w/ 81 on the outer and 9 on the inner most, w/ one center stone that I stood on for a picture).
Took a cab to Beihai park. Inside the cab, an ad for the 24hr McD’s delivery. 4008-517-517. The words for five, one, seven are like the words for “I want to eat” if you use the pronunciation of one that’s commonly used in china which is different than Taiwan. Funny.
This park contains the White Pagoda and the Nine Dragon Screen, plus a lot of green space and water. It’s a huge park (though smaller than summer palace). We basically walked the whole thing. I was pretty tired at this point. Muscles ached from yesterday’s workout. Hamstrings were feeling it, so I was actually happy about that. But I was starting to get a little headache and some joint achiness too. And a little sleepy, though less than when we started at the temple of heaven. But it was a cool park w/ a lot of trees, water, water lilies and flowers, and there were some stray cats there. We saw one walking away from one of the vendor storefronts with what looked like a sausage hanging from its mouth. The white pagoda was cool but required climbing up some stairs, whew. And there was a good view from there – you could see the top of Jingshan Park plus the river in Beijing. The nine dragon screen was big, colorful, and cool looking. It started sprinking a little, but didn’t last. After that, we got an ear of corn to split, and walked towards the north exit on our way to meet wu uncle for dinner.
Hehua si chang I think is the area we went to. Right on the river – an area of lots of bars and restaurants. We went to this hunan style restaurant, Yuelu Mountain Dining Place. All spicy stuff. We got some eggplant (chie ze – served cold, mashed up a little in a mortar bowl w/ a lot of garlic, some chilis, some green onion), frog (fried in a chili sauce w/ some peppers and garlic, served in what looked like a little iron wok shaped bowl atop a burner), a baby turtle (bie), cabbage, fish head (which after we ate a bit of it they came w/ noodles and put them in the sauce). The baby turtle… They provide some thin plastic gloves for you to use while using your hands to eat it. They cut the meat part into quarters… there’s not a lot of meat, and there were chilis embedded in there. Flavored w/ anise I think, but my mouth and face basically felt like they were on fire after a few bites. Meat is like duck or chicken. Prob more like duck. Little bones. Some meat in the neck and head, but by that point I couldn’t eat much more. I saw some other people eating it and I think you’re supposed to eat like the tissue that joins the shell to the rest of it. It was actually super tasty and I wanted to eat it all but I couldn’t feel my tongue anymore, and everything that I ate or drank was spicy b/c of it. I had a bunch of noodles, some fish, some cabbage, and some beer, and then a bunch more noodles (they were tasty btw – like somen noodles but a little thicker and more flavorful, but that could’ve been the sauce the fish was in). And then, the fire in my mouth subsided a bit to a tolerable level.
After about an hour or so my stomach hurt a little from the spiciness, and I think I’m about to start my period. Yay. But besides that I didn’t do much else tonight. Wu uncle went to the sauna for awhile after we got back. Wu a yi made a list of some stuff for me to do in Kaohsiung and Taipei. I just heard a bunch of thunder outside, so I guess it’s going to rain. And we have to be out of the house at 6:15 for me to get to the airport for my 7:30 flight to Xi’an in the morning.
Something else I wanted to note: I’ve seen only 2 FJ cruisers since I’ve been here, but more than a handful of Jeeps with the off-road package… a bit strange I feel. Also, McD’s is doing great here, some stores w/ separate ice cream counters for you to walk up to. But, Pepsi is smart – tons of KFCs and Pizza Huts. I guess Taco Bell wouldn’t do that great here…
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