MC Hotdog

One of my favorite Mandarin artists is Taiwanese rapper MC Hotdog. Here are my two "most played" tracks of his at the moment:

我爱台妹

西門町老人

The second song sounded catchy, and the more I listen to it the more I understand. MC Hotdog is famous for his vulgar lyrics. I have a hard time picking up on them (I don't know a lot of vulgar words). Translating part of this song has given me a better idea of what he's up to.

Coming up later, a translation of 西門町老人.

刘谦 (劉謙)

Last week I had the opportunity to see Liu Qian, a famous Taiwanese magician, at the River Rock Casino in Richmond. The tricks he performed were amazing and he was always humorous to listen too. I especially liked one part where he made up an embarrassing scene with an audience member, and then found the whole thing transcribed in a scroll hanging from the ceiling.

The best part was that the entire show was in Mandarin. I was able to follow along most of the time (missing some details here and there). I'd love to find more Mandarin shows in Vancouver to go to.

上个刑期四我去看一个魔术表演在RiverRock赌场。这个魔术师是从台湾来的。他在中国非常有名。我跟我女朋友都很喜欢他的魔术。表演以后，我在电视说一些东西。我用中文，但是觉得说不懂。每问题！魔术很好玩。。。

我们中国的第一个火锅

朋友们，好久不见。这个是我们选的东西在一个火锅的酒店。这个酒店是在北京（九月十六日）。

2x 清汤锅底 － Clear soup base （qing tang guo di）
2x 麻酱调料 － Sesame paste condiment （ma jiang tiao liao）
1x 大虾 － Large shrimp （da xia）
1x 土豆 － Potatoes （tu dou）
1x 鲜藕 － Lotus root （xian ou）
1x 冬瓜 － Winter melon （dong gua）
1x 白豆腐 － White Tofu （bai do fu）
1x 香菇 － Mushrooms （xiang gu）
1x 面筋 － Gluten （mian jin）
1x 豆皮 － Tofu skin （dou pi）
1x 大白菜 － Large bok choy （da bai cai）
1x 生菜 － Lettuce （sheng cai）
1x 拉面 － Hand pulled noodles （chen mian）

This was our first attempt at hot pot in China. We ordered way too many things - as you may have noticed. It was a busy place but the taste was only OK. Some of the items were difficult to translate not knowing the characters or the pronunciation. Some useful vocabulary though.

More China receipt translations to come!

望德楼清真餐厅 - Wangdelou Halal Restaurant

This is the first of several posts in which I will translate receipts or other things from my recent trip to China. This translation comes from Wangdelou Halal Restaurant, near the Hutong district in Beijing.

I couldn't remember what restaurant this was, even after looking at the food and the date. After searching for the address it was a little clearer. The food was just OK, which explains my fuzzy memory of the place.



宫保鸡丁 - gongbao jiding - Kung pao chicken.
荷兰豆 － hé lán dòu － Beans (from Holland?). I don't recall this dish.
米饭 - mǐ fàn - Cooked rice.
番茄虾仁 - fānqié xiārén - Shelled shrimp balls in Tomato sauce.
可口可乐 - kě kǒu kě lè - Coca-cola (I think it was Sprite, but who's counting).

Total: 103 Yuan.

Future posts will include more detail.

Taiwan photos (台北照片)

Tomorrow we leave Taiwan and head back to Vancouver. Here are a few brief photos from our stay.

1. Taipei 101 at night. This is the second tallest building in the world. We visited the observatory Thursday morning.

2. Fresh mango ice cream with brown sugar. Delicious - and great on a hot day or night.

3. The night market our hostel is located inside. We spent many evenings shopping here.

4. Teppanyaki dinner in the night market.

5. A view of the North from Taipei 101.

Fixed posts from the past month

I had some time today and I fixed all of the broken posts from the last month of travel. Everything that was missing was in the bottom area, and I've marked it all in italics so that it's easy to see what's changed. Here are links to the posts that I've updated for your reading pleasure:

1. Fireworks in Chengdu
2. Hangzhou and Beyond
3. Goodbye Suzhou (再见苏州)
4. 熊猫 Research Base
5. Missing photos
6. Sichaun Hot Pot (四川火锅)
7. On to Xi'an
8. Shanghai Expo (上海世博会)

These changes should answer some of the questions I saw in the comments (that made no sense to me at the time).

I will try and post about Taipei before we leave on Saturday morning.

Arrived in Taipei

We have arrived in Taipei and are already enjoying it a lot. Amy's family has been amazing!

From Taipei we can access all sites so I took a look at my blog and realized that most of my posts have been cut off. Everything after the first picture is lost so the last month of travel has been lacking in descriptions. I'll try and repost a few.

Off to Taipei

Our time in China flew by really quickly. We are on our way to the airport heading to Taipei for 5 days before coming back to Vancouver.

More pictures to come when we get to Taipei.

Shanghai Expo (上海世博会)

We have arrived in Taipei and are already enjoying it a lot. Amy's family has been amazing!

From Taipei we can access all sites so I took a look at my blog and realized that most of my posts have been cut off. Everything after the first picture is lost so the last month of travel has been lacking in descriptions. I'll try and repost a few.

Here's the Shanghai one in full:

I knew Shanghai was a big city, but had no idea how massive it really was. The China book I have reports 18 million residents and 5 million migrant workers. You can see a glimpse of one area of the city here:

This is a view across the Huangpu river in Shanghai - we are on the west side of the river just a block from this walkway. We hope to go to a restaurant in the large Pearl Tower for lunch tomorrow as it has great views of Shanghai.

We've spent most of our time visiting the Expo grounds here. Our bodies ache from the last two days of walking. I think there are between 300,000 and 600,000 visitors per day! There are pavilions to see from nearly every country, and some have 3-4 hour lines. The good ones have restaurants with local food and drinks, and all of them show you unique things from each country.

On day one we had lunch at the German pavilion. They had pretty good food and great beer.

We noticed many people collecting stamps from each pavilion in an expo passport and decided to get on board. I went from not knowing something existed to obsession really quick. In two days we filled up most of our passports with 40-50 stamps. It's fun to collect and a unique souvenir but some people take it too seriously. In a few cases I saw people with up to 100 things getting stamped in a row at each pavilion. They resell pre stamped passports for a markup. I can't imagine that would be fun. What's worse is the poor guys who get stuck on stamp duty. We don't think many people are saying thank you to them because when we do they always look surprised.

It's not all bad though. We did find the Canada pavilion. The line was pretty big but our Canadian passports let us jump the queue and get right in. It felt just like home inside. In the evening they invited us back for a show where Dashan was performing (a very famous Canadian in China who speaks better Mandarin than many Mandarin speakers). We had plans already so couldn't make it.

Argentina had a cool pavilion and on the second floor there was a wine bar. We relaxed for a couple glasses of wine and a nice break from the crowds.

Here is the Spain pavilion at night. We didn't find time to go inside.

At night we met up with a coworker of mine and his brother in law for dinner at a nice Shanghai restaurant. They treated us to some amazing food - I tried some Octopus and Shanghai style Xiaolongbao (pork dumplings with crab). After dinner they took us around town and pointed out many of the local sites including a really popular bar street where we stopped for a drink. We wouldn't have been able to see that much of the city without their help so it was great.

Today was day two at the expo. We had a later start and got there after lunch. A lot of time was spent in the massive China pavilion which usually has long lines but today had no line. We had dinner at a Belgian restaurant and some Belgian waffles for desert.

The expo is massive and lots of fun but I think we are too tired to try it for a third day. Tomorrow we will try and see some local Shanghai sites.

Chinese Beer (中国的啤酒)

在中国很多人和啤酒，但是中国的啤酒太淡。我觉得他们不可能和很多，不然的话很最了。我们需要和中国的白酒。

The beer in China is very plentiful and very cheap. I've mentioned before that we could get 600ml bottles for 3 yuan (about 50 cents). The problem is that this beer is too weak, most of it around 3-4%, some even in the 1-2% range. We originally thought we were drinking 8-10% beer but found out quickly how mistaken we were.

Last night at dinner we ordered a bottle that was 1.5%. This is essentially non-alcoholic beer. Amy yelled at the guy (you have to do this in China - it's still friendly), basically saying you are joking me. He brought us something that was 3.5% and we settled on that.

Meanwhile we watched a group of Chinese guys with tattoos sitting around a table challenging each other to chug small glasses of the non alcoholic beer. After a while one guy knocked over a few full bottles smashing glass everywhere. It was surprising how drunk they seemed to get off of what is not much more than water.

That being said, 白酒 (white liquor) is popular here and is much stronger - 30-40%. It looks a lot like vodka and we are planning to try some in Shanghai before we leave China.

Goodbye Suzhou (再见苏州)

Our two nights in the city of Suzhou flew by too quickly, once again reminding us that 2 nights in one place is hardly enough time to see everything. That being said we really enjoyed ourselves.

On the first day we took a taxi into the center of town to find a place for lunch. We tried a couple different dishes here including 臭豆腐 - stinky tofu - a dish that smells terrible but tastes great. The smelly tofu slices are dipped in a spicy sauce. Amy says there is better stink tofu in Taiwan.

After lunch we trekked over to a 500+ year old garden called "The Humble Administrators Garden", or tongue in cheek "Incompetent officials garden". Like most sights in China this place was massive. As usual we wandered around without a map or guide and took photos of things we liked. The gardens were full of plants, rocks and water features. It was a lot like the Sun yat sen garden in Vancouver only much much bigger and nicer scenery.

In the evening we treated ourselves to a western buffet. We mostly ate the meat and fish but I also had some comfort food in olives and cheese. The smoked salmon was good too. In China everyone drinks dry wine, mostly red. The restaurant had a large selection of Chardonnay (I know some people would REALLY enjoy the variety). We ordered a bottle of the one white wine that wasn't Chardonnay.

Our hotel had a large indoor and outdoor pool so we went for a swim after dinner both nights.

On the second day we set out to find the canals that we came to Suzhou for. Surprisingly there was nothing in the city like we originally thought, so we had to take a one hour cab ride to a village. It was worth it!

We had a private boat tour of the canals for only 100 yuan (about $15). It lasted 30 minutes and was really cool. It's something I'd like to do in Venice if I ever make it.

Here's me on the boat. The only disappointing thing was our paddler guy was continually pestering us to pay him to sing some songs, and continued even after we said we didn't want it. He then begged for tips at the end but we just ignored him.

More canals.

Here is a view of our hotel - Pan Pacific Suzhou. We were both really amazed by everything. The service was phenomenal and even included a delicious breakfast buffet. The total cost for 2 nights was about $160 quite a steal compared to what we paid at some hostels.

We could see this Pagoda from our window and on our last morning today discovered that we could enter another massive garden from our hotel for free! We only had 20 minutes so we rushed around taking some pictures. We both wished we had more time in Suzhou and at the Pan Pacific.

I'm writing this from a fast train taking us from Suzhou to Shanghai. We are in Shanghai for 4 nights where we plan to checkout the 2010 expo sites and do some shopping. This is our last 4 nights in China before we move on to Taipei on Monday.

Hangzhou and beyond

It's been a few days between posts and we've changed cities twice, and are moving on again tomorrow.

On our last night in Chengdu we went to a restaurant in the ancient street. Many of the restaurants here also include shows - so we were able to see some live music, dancing and more traditional face changing. I have a video of the face changing to post later.

The next day we flew from Chengdu to Hangzhou (a city a couple of hours south west of Shanghai). We also made a transition from nice hotel to terrifying hostel. We spent a lot of time executing bugs. Needless to say we didn't spend too much time in the room.

Hangzhou is another big city, but what it is really famous for is the massive "west lake" right next to the city. There is tons to do both on the lake, and around it - many restaurants and bars. In particular there is a famous chain of restaurants called 外婆家 (The Grandmas). I'd heard about it through work before leaving and figured it was something we had to try. The first night there we got out front and found hundreds of people waiting. We got a number for a table for 2 and the ticket said over 87 people waiting for 2 person tables ahead of you. After an hour there were still over 50 ahead of us. We gave up and went for Thai food which was mediocre.

We hadn't been totally defeated, and tried again for lunch. We figured we would go early and get in no problem. Well at 11:20 there were already 30 groups ahead of us. We wandered around for a while and came back and a few numbers had passed. We repeated this a few times until somehow it had moved 30 past our number and we lost our table. Amy yelled at them and we were seated right away.

The place didn't disappoint. It was good food at very low prices. We had a mapo dofu (tofu in spicy sauce with pork) for 3 yuan (less than 50 cents). We also ordered a spicy green pepper dish which ended up being a plate full of fried peppers similar to jalapeños. This was very spicy. Overall good food for good value.

After lunch we took a boat to the center of the lake. There is an island there with 4 mini lakes inside it. It was quite amazing and I'll have pictures later that can do it justice. We spent the rest of the day exploring here and walking down a several kilometer long causeway through the lake.

At one point a group of younger people were staring at me and then tried to take a picture of the crazy foreigner. I wasn't too impressed and yelled back at them. Amy kicked the girl in the back of the leg and we both felt better. I guess I do standout a bit but I didn't think it was photo worthy.

At night we saw "Impression West Lake" which is a big performance on one section of the lake. It was compared to cirque de soleil but I think it was more artsy and the not a lot in terms of acrobatics. There was a very large number of performers on the lake, sometimes hundreds coordinated very well. As you can see in the photo parts of the water stage rise up for effect. The show was great but it was a little short - only one hour.

Now we've moved on to Suzhou - a city sometimes called the Venice of Asia, famous for the canals and magnificent gardens. We are staying at the Pan Pacific here and it's a very nice place to relax for a couple of days. We even had a nice western dinner here last night which was a nice temporary change of pace.

I'll update more on Suzhou later - for now we are off to see the canals before moving on to Shanghai tomorrow.

Fireworks in Chengdu

As I mentioned before, tonight we were going to see the national day fireworks from the 34th floor patio of our hotel. Before we could do that we had to check with the front desk to get our key card activated for that floor. This is the exchange that happened:

Girl at desk: Good morning sir, how can I help you? (I was going to try mandarin but figured this would be easier to explain in English)

Me: Hi. We'd like to check out the fireworks tonight from the top floor balcony.

Girl: Ok. What's your room #?

Me: 1805

Girl: and your name?

Me: Jordan

Girl: Ok. (she then picks up the phone and makes a call. I'm curious as to what's going on now)

Sorry, there's no answer.

Me: Yes - we are here. (I looked at Amy and we were totally confused with what had just happened - I switched to Mandarin)

She understood right away and activated our card. I'm still not sure why she called our room, but we had a good laugh before heading out for the day. I've found Mandarin immensely valuable here even if my level is fairly low. It's quite encouraging!

Anyway, after we had dinner we headed up to the 34th floor with a bottle of great wall red wine. Here is the view, red wine et all:

We got there at 7:45 and the fireworks were supposed to start at 8:00 at the end of the main road in the picture (there is a large public square with a giant statue of Mao). At 8:15 we saw small fireworks way off in the distance. Around 8:30 someone from the hotel stopped by and said they had wrong information and there would be no fireworks. As consolation they gave everyone free beer and snacks to take back. We were a little disappointed but it was still nice up there.

Instead of fireworks we have been watching Disneys "Up" in Mandarin. This is one of the movies I bought in Beijing. I've seen it in English before and have been looking for the Mandarin one for ages. As with the other Disney movies it is really well dubbed. I'll probably write about it more when we get back.

Pictures from the last week

Here are a few select photos from the past week:

1. I think this picture was missing from my previous post. This is the deep fried mushroom, eggplant and kung pao tofu dishes we had in Beijing.

2. "Suzhou street" at the Summer palace in Beijing. They charged admission and we didn't end up going - we figured we would be seeing Suzhou in person pretty soon so it wasn't needed.

3. A view across the lake at the Summer palace. This was a stunning view on a hot day, and we relaxed and took it all in for a while.

4. Another view of the same structure from a long bridge covered in dragon and other animal statues.

5. The "all you can drink" beer selection at the buffet in Xi'an. There was also a fridge of cold beer available. In China it seem to be more common to drink things which aren't chilled, as they always ask if you want cold or warm beer.

6. At the same buffet. There are live eels in the bowl on the right, and you move them to the left hand side where you can boil them before taking it to your table. The same thing was available with live crabs - and we saw several people with live ones at their tables trying to escape.

7. This is the south gate to the wall around Xi'an. After paying admission you can go through and access the stairs to the top where bike are available to rent.

8. A view from the north side of the wall as we biked around. This side was full of floats and things that looked like they were used (or to be used) for a celebration.

9. Us with a real live Terra-cotta warrior at the bottom of the Xi'an south gate.

10. Amy and her panda friend are finally together.

11. In Chengdu, this is one of the squares where there will likely be national day celebrations today.

12. I have my ears cleaned by long metal rods at Jinli street in Chengdu. We were told it felt amazing by a girl ahead of us but I beg to differ.

13. The intro singing at the Sichuan opera last night.

14. Part of a comedy act - which was fully in Chinese. I got weird looks from an English speaking family sitting next to us when I laughed at some of the jokes. A lot of it was in the Sichuan dialect though which made it quite hard to follow for us (as it is basically a totally different language).

熊猫 Research Base

Yesterday we woke up early and made our way to the Panda research base which is about 20km North of our hotel. This research center is quite large and is home to many pandas of all ages. Jackie Chan even adopted two here for 1 million yuan. They seem to treat the pandas well and we liked how close you could get to them.

These two guys were trying to get to the other side for bamboo. One took the short way through the bars and the other climbed over the top in acrobatic fashion. We have a video of that somewhere.

Amy had been looking forward to meeting a panda for a long time. Fortunately this is one of the only places in the world where this is possible. She paid a pretty penny but had two minutes with a young panda on her lap. They took lots of photos and videos and Amy left with a smile on her face. I'll try and post those later.

The Panda center also is home to a large population of red pandas, which are basically red raccoons. After half a day with the 熊猫 (bear cats) we headed into town for some ramen lunch.

Today we got a late start since we aren't feeling too well. We asked at front desk for a nice Sichuan restaurant nearby and it did not disappoint. This was the fanciest place we have been to in China - the service was great. They started off by giving us two fruit plates, some edamamme, and a spicy pork dish.

We ordered Kungpao Chicken (we've had this a lot but it's an authentic Sichuan dish so we had to try it here), Dandan Mian (a pasta like noodle dish with pork), spicy wontons, and a mushroom clay pot. The mushroom dish was rated two peppers spicy - potentially out of our comfort zone.

When it came, it was a noodle soup with mushroom slices. I thought it was fantastic - but most definitely spicy. Amy liked it too but found it a little too hot so I finished most of it.

At the end we were so impressed with the service we tried to tip but they refused. Ahhh China. Here is the web site: http://www.yinxing.com - Chengdu Gingko Restaurant.

It was 3:30 already so we wandered over to an ancient street that was very impressive. It was full of bars, tea houses, restaurants and shops. The weirdest thing was the street side ear cleaning. It takes about 5-10 minutes and costs 20 yuan ($3). While you sit in a chair a guy with a headlamp cleans your ears with a bunch of tools. I'll post pictures of this later since it will be easier to understand. Amy and I both did it and our ears are now spic and span.

We had dinner in the area and after running 3km we made it to the Sichuan opera show on time (but exhausted). If only we had found a taxi. The show was more like a variety show with all kinds of Sichuan acts - music, comedy, tricks and most impressively the famous changing of faces and clothes. We stared in awe as performers masks and clothes changed before we could blink. I have no idea how they do it but we left the show fascinated. This is a must do while in Chengdu.

Tomorrow is the start of National Day in China (this is a weeklong holiday for most of China. We plan to watch the fireworks display from the rooftop of our hotel. Should be exciting!

Happy National Day!

邮局 vs 游戏

This blog was originally about language learning. Here's a post that revisits that.

One of the biggest language mistakes I've been making so far is one that has been following me since I started learning Mandarin. An early addition to my vocabulary was 邮局 (post office). In all of my pimsleur lessons I could never remember this.

Well it's caught up to me a bit. There's another word (游戏) which means "game". They aren't too similar - both the tone and the sound for the second character are different, however I've said the wrong thing twice.

Situation One - Trying to borrow Jenga from the hostel bar in Xi'an:

Me: 你们有没有邮局？ (Do you guys have a post office here?)
Bartender: huh?

Situation Two - we were at an arcade and the skeeball machine ate our tokens. I had to go find an attendant.

Me: 请问，在那边一个邮局坏了你可以看一看？ (excuse me, over there a post office is broken can you come take a look?)

I need to get these two words sorted out. I think I'll learn from the two mistakes.

Today I got a haircut. I just kept pointing and saying shorter here. It seemed to work out but it reminded me that I have a lot to learn.

Sichaun Hot Pot (四川火锅)

We have now made our way to Chengdu in the Sichuan province. This city is a breath of fresh air. So far it seems cleaner and more organized, although part of that may be our nice hotel room.

After we got settled in from our trip, we headed out for dinner. One of the Sichuan specialties is hot pot. We had tried hot pot in Beijing but it didn't compare to the place we went to tonight. This restaurant claimed to be Chongqing inspired but we don't really know the difference.

Hot pot itself is quite simple. You just take raw veggies, meat, seafood, etc and boil them in your own pot until it is cooked. The guide book said the two things that make a hot pot place good are the sauce and the broth.

In Beijing the sauce came from a packet and was ok but nothing special. Today we got to make our own sauces from a self serve area. Mine had oil, peanuts, black pepper sauce, vinegar, some chillies and a bunch of other things. We each made two different sauces. The cooked food is dipped into the sauce before you eat it.

Here's all of the food we ordered. There's a big mushroom plate, potatoes, shrimp balls, crab, lettuce, and tofu. We went kind of light on the meat as there are some pretty interesting choices available.

Now the broth. You can choose between some plain (ie not spicy) options like chicken, vegetable or beef stock. Amy tried the Chicken one. Sichaun is known for the spicy food so I had the lowest spicy broth. This was a recommendation by several people before hand - the lowest level of spice is still insanely hot. As you can see from the picture it is a very red oily broth. It was delicious but I did shed a few tears. I think I lost weight from sweating too. I don't know if I'll be able to try the middle level of spice while we are here.

My pot cooking some Tofu and mushrooms. After this meal I see why hot pot is so popular! We will have to try and do it again while still sampling the other Sichaun cuisine.

We came to Chengdu with the intention of seeing (and meeting) some pandas. Tomorrow we will try to do that by heading north to one of the panda sanctuaries here. Amy is really looking forward to this so we may spend two days at different places to see the pandas. I'll write about our 熊猫 encounters as they happen.

谢谢你们告诉我生日快了！Thanks for the Birthday wishes.

The safest place in China

在中国，最安全的地方是在公共汽车上。如果你走路的话，每个开车人无所谓。他们开车很快。我觉得开车人觉得他们比走路人好。如果你在公共汽车，一个车不可以打你。我们很高兴在中国没有车。

The safest place to be in China is on a bus. If you are walking - no one stops for you. Bikes don't stop. Cars don't stop. This is the opposite of what happens in Canada.

To cross the street you need to spot a gap and make a run for it. Or you can get enough people together that you can force cars to stop. This rarely works as you need a LOT of people. Sometimes they will honk but usually they will pretend you aren't there at all and just expect you to move.

I think I've seen hundreds of cases where people have nearly been hit or fully run over by busses, taxis, cars and bicycles. But no incidents.

It seems to be madness but beneath it all there is some kind of order (I'm starting to get a feel for it). It's extremely dangerous and chaotic. But somehow it works. People get where they need to go quickly.

I still can't help but think that with some order it would be more efficient and a little safer. Then again maybe I'm wrong.

Missing photos

Here are a few photos from my iPhone (this is much easier than using public computers to upload pics):

Part of the terra-cotta warrior army. This is from the first pit with over 1000 warriors excavated.

More warriors in pit one.

Close-up of more warriors.

Tonight we went to a KTV place for some karaoke. Actually there are quite a few here in xi'an. We ran into at least four while looking for a place to eat dinner.

We finally settled on one and sang karaoke for three hours. This is three hours more karaoke than I've done in my life. The above picture is from the tv in the room we had while singing "hero" by Enrique. Strange choice of video.

Overall it was a fun experience. The service was great and you could hear tons of other people singing loudly in the other rooms. This is a much more popular past time than I'd originally thought.

The dinner we had was at a new Taiwanese restaurant. The family that owned it just moved here about three months ago. The food was delicious. I especially liked the yansuji (salty peppery chicken). If this was any indication of what Taiwan would be like the I'm quite excited.

We've almost covered all of Xi'an so tomorrow we will probably check out a goose pagoda and some more stuff in the muslim quarter before going for dinner. Tuesday we fly to Chengdu!

We are both looking forward to a nice hotel and lots of sichaun food.

Terra-cotta Warriors in Xi'an

Here are some more updates now that we are on our third day in Xi'an.

 

Yesterday we rented a double-person bike and rode around the city wall of Xi'an. It's elevated by about 10-15 meters, and I think around 18km in length. We biked the whole thing in about 1:40. It was some much needed exercise. For lunch we ate at a small restaurant in the Muslim quarter. We had 3 dishes and 2 bottles of water for 40 kuai. In the evening we found another small restaurant and had some new dishes - deep fried eggplant, and some spicy green beans (stir fried). Of course - we also had Gongbaojiding (Kung pao Chicken). We've had some form of that dish almost every day (either Chicken, Shrimp or Tofu).

 

Today we took the bus out to see the Terra-cotta warriors. The tours were supposed to be 180+ each but we took the bus for 14 round trip and paid our own entry - a much cheaper option. This site had thousands of warrior statues that were from the Qin dynasty and were uncovered by accident by some farmers about 30 years ago. The first "pit" had well over 1000, inclding some horses and chariots. It was quite cool.

 

Tonight we are thinking of heading to a KTV place (for some Karaokee). We'll see how that goes!

 

There are computers here so we can upload + resize pictures, but it's unbearably slow for now I'll limit it to a few pictures:

 

1. Some dishes from a Sichuan restaurant in Beijing. Clockwise - Deepfried mushrooms, Spicy eggplant, Kung Pao Tofu

 

2. The city wall we rode around in Xi'an. There were some decorations on one side of the wall.

 

3. The hutong district of Beijing. This is where all the bars are that the foreigners drink at. Lots of restaurants too.

 

4. Careful!

 

5. One area of Beihai park. We rented boats here on the lake.

 

6. A view of the main pagoda of Beihai park from our boat. It was really peaceful out there.

 

That's all for now. Maybe more pictures next time when I can find a better computer.