Back in Beijing

Well, that was quite the adventure. So I'll sit here and eat my jianbing (a big scallion-y, spicy crepe that I finally had my first of last week. They deserve a post of their own) and finish the description of my trip.

You've already seen quite a bit of it thanks to the 'Top Star' hotel's wi-fi and the 3 网吧 （wang ba, or 'net bar'. I've taken to just calling them net ba.) that I visited during the weekend. Just like bicycle accidents, net bas seem to be much more visible in the smaller cities.

A major task yesterday turned out to be finding lunch. Three restaurants turned me away because I was by myself. After the last one, I found myself trying to put together a sentence that would say 'can I stay if I pay for enough food for 4 people?'. I am almost positive that the final guy said "你自己。 在路吃。 快吃 " (You are by yourself. Eat in the street. Eat fast food.)

I just couldn't do it. I had no idea how long my train ride was going to be yesterday, and with recent experiences in mind, I'm still a little queezy about certain things. Besides: I wanted a meal.

(Keep in mind I'm typing this with my street crepe sitting next to me.)

So it was fast food fried chicken again. Not KFC, but something Chinese. I have to admit to being tempted by the fried tofu on the street, but in the end an indoor kitchen won out.

As the afternoon grew warmer, I sought refuge in a cafe. This was a cafe of a particular type (chains such a Also Milo, UBC Coffee, and C Straits) that offers a few types of Western Food, some small Chinese dishes, and an array of coffee, and fancy drinks like smoothies, fresh juices, and milkshakes. I think they might be trying to be Swiss or Austrian cafes, but I'm not quite sure. The drinks are expensive by anyone's standards, which is probably due to the 2:1 staff to customer ratio. They don't seem to mind if one hangs out for a while, but linger too long reading gets you a cold stare. But I've discovered a little trick. If I do a little Chinese homework, the fuwuyuan are fascinated and want to talk to me. I'm not sure if this works in Beijing, where foreign students are not at all uncommon, but in Shijiazhuang and Jinan I had new best friends complimenting me on how well I speak Chinese. And, this is the best part, if I didn't know how to say a character, all I had to do was call the waitress, point to the character, and say "zenme du?" And the answer was given. Maybe it was the novelty, or maybe it was just preferable to the middle aged business man complaining about his food (a ubiquitous phenomena whenever I'm someplace with high prices. These guys tend to have young girlfriends and table manners that would make a Beijing granny blush), but it was pleasant enough that I'm willing to try it here in town.

As it turned out, I didn't have to worry about the train: it was was a high speed model, nonstop all the way to Beijing.

More later. For now you can enjoy the photos:

Long weekend