Thursday, December 18, 2008

Day 104: December 17th. Perfect Finish

We were on time for Mr Li today! After breakfast we were driven to Beihai Park, which, in keeping with our park experiences, was positively alive on a winter's morning. We saw some impressive music and dancing, fancy sword maneuvers, various sports, intense card games, and vigorous walkers. The park was on the big lake you could see from the top of the hill of Jingshan Park.

There were also some beautiful temples and even a cool man made cave where the emperor used to practice his kung fu. One of the courtyards leading to the temple had bedrooms and living rooms surrounding it filled with what looked like replicas of how the rooms used to appear. This style of display was different from the other bedroom displays we've been seeing where they have the room set up with what's left of the old actual furniture. You get to see the real stuff but its also nice to see what they actually could have looked like.

We had a couple more places to see while we still had the car. So we visited the Cow Street Mosque, the biggest mosque in Beijing. It said in the guidebook that the mosque had Chinese influence, and it was so Chinese looking that you could barely tell it was a mosque except for the Arabic written on the building and the graves. We made another stop just around the corner at the Fayuan Temple. Karla liked this one a lot. The complex was well laid out, not too big or busy, and was beautifully decorated inside and out. The trees must be beautiful in the summertime. Being expert temple goers, we swiftly made the rounds and where on our way to our final drop off point of the day-the Drum and Bell Towers north of the forbidden city.

When we got out of the car we managed to communicate that we would take a cab home from here (we wanted to walk around the hutong at leisure) and would be leaving the following day. With the words tomorrow, bye-bye, taxi and the hand signal of an airplane, he shook his head happily having understood, shook our hands, and pulled away.

We had lunch at a small restaurant, and thought we were ordering the dumpling soup. What came out was a fish soup with the whole tail in it! Karla, with her stuffy nose, loved it, and Alicia could only take so much of the extreme fishyness. Ironic we know.

After lunch, we visited the Drum Tower. We walked up a very large flight of stairs to get to the floor with the drums. We had just missed the demonstration and so walked around reading about the history of drums and time keeping and looking at the great views of the city while we waited. It was short but interesting to watch them beat these huge red barreled drums with great precision. Back down the stairs we went. To get up to the Bell Tower across the courtyard we had to climb yet another giant flight of stairs. Perfect. If we weren't sore from the Wall before, our legs definitely reminded us now. Upstairs was a very large bell cast as one piece. It was quite impressive.

We were still waiting to hear from Shanshan when we started to wander through the hutong. She is Chinese but studied at Alicia's sister's university. We had thought we could meet up with her to walk around but in the end we were going to meet her for a very traditional Chinese dinner. We explored the hutong quite thoroughly and we saw where they sell bicycle and motorcycle hand warmers. They are basically like giant mittens with a hole in the side that fits over the handles. They look pretty hilarious. It's such a great idea though, and all the rage here! Exploration complete, we made our way to the subway (after stopping a an ATM of course).

Dinner with Shanshan was a success. We ate hotpots, a meal that you essentially cook yourself. You pick the broth, the dipping sauce, the meat, the vegetables, and whatever traditional snack you want. She had a lot of fun explaining to us what this meal was all about. Apparently lamb was a warm meat, eaten during the winter. We got a garlic dipping sauce and a peanut buttery sauce as well. We got one spicy and one non spicy broth. We also ordered traditional chinese sweet tea and some preserved mini crab apple things they usually sell on a stick in the streets. Shanshan told us that she loves coming to Beijing because she loves to eat. We now see why- the food is very yummy! One thing we were supposed to have was Peking Duck. We know, we know, but you can't do everything! And we did have tofu Peking Duck with Lucy...

Overall, the meal was delicious. Unfortunately Karla's sense of taste wasn't all there due to another cold, but she enjoyed it if not for its process. Although putting your meat in the boiling pot and then trying to fish it out with chop sticks wasn't the fastest of processes, you still got very full even when eating slowly. We left dinner nearly three and a half hours later!!! It was fun to talk to someone who has lived in China most of their life- another reason it took so long.

After dinner Alicia put on her new biker gloves and we headed home to pack. It took us nearly an hour to get home and Karla even dozed in the subway while Alicia remained vigilant, but upon arriving at the apartment we put ourselves to work packing, listening to Christmas songs, and enjoying our celebratory Dragon Seal bottle of wine (our last night!). Packing took only twice as long for Karla as it did for Alicia (her excuse is that everything has to fit "just right" or else it won't fit at all). Regardless it was late when we finished but we spent a few minutes unwinding in front of the TV before passing out. We had to get up around 630, as our flight was at 10am. It's going to be a looooong day.
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