What's Your Form of Entertainment?

Everyone has their own form of entertainment, especially when abroad in another country. Many of my classmates enjoy very different types of entertainment such as frequently visiting Suzie Wong aka 苏西黄 located in Chaoyang Park 朝阳公园. At first glance, I was told that this place looks like a very international bar but apparently after 11PM it turns into a full on brothel house. Awesome. Apparently Suzie Wong attracts 18-60 year old men looking for much younger women and the meat market of course converts to a full on brothel house later during the night. Though this place does sound intriguing, I seem to have nerd disease. I get very uneasy if I go out without finishing all my homework first. Yes, nerd status but I can't help it. Luckily, my form of entertainment consumes less time than a brothel house. Despite previous warnings from my Department Director, I enjoy searching for the shadiest looking restaurants located in dirty alleyways! 

I like to start my food adventures on the street only after I've finished all my homework of course! I like getting some kabobs from places like the cart on the left and getting some freshly peeled pineapple from carts like that on the right. Is it the healthiest thing to do? No. But is anything in China really healthy?

This picture actually doesn't accurately describe how shady this place really was. This restaurant was located in a very dark alleyway that was practically hidden. I had to bust out my mini flashlight in order to make it in here. It like the beginning of a horror movie. And yes, I am in my pajamas. I was tired from studying and just decided to run out to get a snack at the closest, shadiest place possible. 

What attracted me to this particular place? Their light up 串 signs! 串 stands for kabobs. Doesn't it look like meat on a kabob?

So this place had a really shady enterance, but looked pretty legit from the inside. There were also a bunch of Chinese people watching the World Cup.

Even their menus were nice!

I ordered a sweet dessert all for myself as a reward for finishing my crap loads of homework. Fried banana! I don't understand why they placed it on top of tomatoes for decoration then again I never really understood Chinese decorations. This is basically candied banana. It comes out super piping hot and you get a bowl of water to dip it in which keeps it from sticking together. Yum!

Happy Eatings whether you prefer brothels or eating at shady places!

Uyghur/Muslim Restaurant in China Plus Lebanese/Turkish Snacks

So there's been a lot of buzz about this amazing Muslim restaurant at the neighboring Beijing Language University. In a welcome packet I received from orientation it said "one of the best Uyghur places in Beijing." It was also described as being "very un-chinese, somewhat Middle Eastern food and is cheap and tasty." All of which sounded good to me. Since there are over 20 million Muslims in China, according to my pamphlet I thought it would be a great idea to pay this place a visit and make my awesome friend (Wehebers) proud! When you arrive at Beijing Language University, you have to really search to find this place. It's hidden within some shady ass alleyways Aladdin style. If you haven't been kidnapped by the time you find it, you'll see people clad in traditional Muslim attire manning the tandoori oven for the nang bread and roasting the lamb skewers.

First to come out was their nang flat bread. It was hot from the oven but kind of tough to eat. I prefer my nang super crunchy and soft. 

This was their highly recommended lamb stir fried rice. It was pretty good. Unfortunately these dishes literally look over an hour to come out. The service was also nonexistent. I yelled at 2 servers to hurry our food up. It was horrible. 

We also got this chicken stir fry dish, which I know wasn't traditional at all. One of my classmate's roommates went with us and this was entirely his fault. His dumb ass was also stupid enough to ask the staff if he could drink alcohol in the restaurant. Uh... hello we're in a muslim place! I take no responsibility for stupidity since he wasn't my guest. He was from Nepal. I thought he'd know better.  (Sorry I know this picture is blurry.)

Their lamb skewers were amazing though! The meat was so juicy and cooked just right. This definitely beat out all the other Chinese style lamb kabobs I've had.

We ended our dinner with an order of a candied apple dessert. My choice of course! Yum! I've had banana before but not apple. It tasted awesome. Probably going to give me at least 5 cavities though. 

I also wanted to post a picture of a late night snack I had about a week ago at Kebab Republic. 

I had a Lebanese Chicken Kabab Roll. It was like a delicious burrito of awesome meat and sauce rolled into one. yum! 

For the most part, I think I wouldn't go back. The place is located in super shady alleys and the service is non-exsistent. I'm going to be on a quest to find better lamb skewers though so that I don't have to return to this place! By the way, if you want to try this place out its actual name is Muslim Restaurant at Beijing Language University. Apparently, the university I'm staying at also has an amazing Muslim place but people have to get pre approved to eat there because its a state enterprise. I have to literally go into an office and tell them I am Muslim or that I would like to eat Muslim food. Then I need to bring them a paper that certifies that and also my own bowl to this Muslim cafeteria. It sounds like a lot of work. I'm intrigued though!

Happy Eatings!

Student Life

Buying my first used bicycle in China and getting my Chinese school ID were what I thought would be my rites of passage into adapting to Beijing life. Well, I finally got my university ID "card" and thought it would be good to celebrate with lots of good, cheap, street food. I actually also wanted to show you guys how creepily awesome and well, creepy Chinese IDs look like.

Note that my school ID actually looks like a passport. Not very conveniently made. They also managed to spell my last name wrong. It's like having to carry a passport anywhere you go because you might be subject to random security checks to make sure you are indeed a student. But becoming an official Chinese University student was reason to celebrate at 老馬拉麵 with some yummy food. Technically any reason is a good enough reason to eat good, cheap food. Aside from the student dining halls at Tsinghua, laomalamian has become my other frequent lunch spot. It's roughly a 5-6 minute bike ride from my department building at the outside of tsinghua. 

We had some kabobs from the guy who was roasting them on that little grill for the whole restaurant. When I say restaurant, I actually mean the 10 tables outside with random cars and bikes running into you during your meal. 

Noodles, peas, potatoes, & cucumbers were all good as well. Not as good as the other dishes though!

Like this amazing tofu dish.

Or this cold radish dish. 

But their best dish had to be hands down their eggplant. This was caramelized goodness all in a bite. 

So I have my bike, I've been to the Great Wall, & I now have my student ID. I can finally say I'm officially Chinese for the next 6 weeks. 

Happy Eatings!

Trip To The Great Wall 長城

(After going up countless number of stairs and wishing for death to hit me, I finally reached the Great Wall at Mutianyu.)

There are many parts of the Great Wall that tourists can visit, but Mutianyu is the only part of the wall that is surrounded by mountains and beautiful scenery. In fact, over 95% of this section is forest. The whole section of the Great Wall stretches like a flying dragon if you look closely. Mutainyu is in the Huairou District of Beijing. It has more enemy towers in comparison to the other parts to visit and has the most historical significance. Perfect for Asian history lovers like me! Mutianyu is also the least touristy of the great wall sections, so if you want to avoid a lot of the people selling you crap or avoid having loads of people showing up in your pictures, then this is the place to go! It was a 2 hour drive from Tsinghua University to Mutianyu, but the longer ride was worth it. 

But let's get to the food first. We ate 5 minutes from Mutianyu.

This restaurant's food did not taste good. I didn't catch what type of Chinese food there were serving, which didn't really matter because the food was overall BAD.

Our group took up 3 tables full of teachers and students that wanted to participate in the field trip. (Our summer program plans 2 field trips for us. One every month because the rest of the time we are slaving away at our Chinese homework.) The steamed tofu in the first picture was tasty. Nothing I'd go back to this place for though. The Japanese do it much better. I also picked out all the chestnuts in the second dish because I thought everything else did not meet my expectations. Little did I know that I should have ate more... because I was going to have no energy for climbing that great wall.

Their fish was actually pretty tasty. Everything else wasn't worth noting. The bread seriously tasted like cardboard. Whatever Chinese ethnic food this is, needs to seriously stay put because I did not appreciate their overall craptastic food. I also was forever scarred from their "bathrooms," aka non-flushable holes in the floor that were going to suck me in at any moment. After forcefully chowing down on some not so great food, we got on the bus and arrived very soon at the Great Wall where we were greeted by this:

A woman wearing and holding everything she was selling & some awesome "English" signs. This one reads: "Enjoying Chinese Great Wall Also Mr Cao's Camel." I was also greeted by a gazillion stairs that had no ending. You don't just walk in and go straight to the Great Wall. Apparently you go up hundreds of high, thin, bee-infested stairs forever before you finally reach part of the wall. As you can tell, I was not a happy camper. I thought I was fit. I wanted to die. The last time I visited the Great Wall was well over 10 years ago, but since I was with my mom who was wearing heels, we ended up just walking for 10 minutes, taking some pictures and leaving. Mutianyu was not the case! 

When I finally made it up, I had to choose between the easier route or the harder route that had better scenery. Figuring I wouldn't be back at the Great Wall for awhile, I took the harder route with some classmates. Upon reaching the top, we were faced with a decision as well as with some confusion. We could 1) go back down the way we came up (Hell No!); 2) ride a cable car down; or 3) ride a "wiegand" down. The most confusion was trying to figure out what the hell a "wiegand" was.

I'm guessing that "wiegand" meant "wagon." This contraption did not look extremely safe, but since safety is never a big concern in China, I figured why start worrying now? From reading the Chinese, we deciphered that the signs were for the widely popular method of returning down from the Great Wall called the "Shibide Slideway," which was basically a sort of slide/dry bobsled that took you down on a scenic route down the Great Wall. 

Let me help you make sense of their signs in case you are not an expert in Chinglish like me. I will retain their original spelling and grammar mistakes. 

Sign #1 reads: "Dotice to visitors: Toboggan is a dangerous sport, You must follow the notice of the Tobogganto drive, If you don't follow the rules, it will be at your own risk,Our company is not responsible."

Translation: Notice to all you people stupid enough to try this ride. If you die or seriously hurt yourself, don't bother suing us because we don't care and are not responsible. It's dangerous, yo. 

Sign #2 is completely misspelled but tells you that you pull the handle towards you to brake and away from you to go faster. 

(Here's a picture my friend took of me on the "wiegand" and also a picture I took while going down the slide. I also took a live video of my ride down so I could show off the scenery, which I'll post when I'm allowed to go on Youtube, aka when I'm out of China.)

And of course after reading all those informative signs, I thought it would be a great idea to plummet to my death on the Great Wall and promptly bought my ticket. Once we got down, one of our other classmates was recounting an argument he got in with the woman that was selling the slide tickets. For the record, all my classmates speak perfect Chinese to each other even though most of my them are not Asian. It's actually quite impressive to the point where Chinese people are taking pictures of them all day.

Classmate: (In Chinese) "How much are the tickets? Do we leave from here?"
Woman: (In Chinese) "I don't understand you."
C: "What do you mean you don't understand me? You're answering me!"
W: "Oh.. well I just don't understand you."
C: "You're only saying that because I'm white and you're pretending you don't understand me!"
W: "Oh... well...Whatever. The ticket is $50."
C: "See you didn't understand me, you wouldn't be answering my question! Stop lying- it's cause I'm white!"
W: [Turns around and ignores him.]

And there you have it, Chinese hospitality at its best! I think it's best to have no standards when dealing with Chinese people, therefore you are never disappointed.

Haha. I think the woman was a little dumbfounded that my classmates were totally not taking her crap. China definitely has issues getting their customer service or tourism down. They really aren't foreigner friendly. I really don't know how they pulled off the Olympics, especially looking at their horrible English signs. Wasn't there some law that encouraged people to report any misspelled signs or anything to the government before the Olympics? Major fail. 


Other than that, the Great Wall was the most exercise I've done in at least 4 years. I would definitely recommend visiting the Mutainyu location over any other location. The pictures we got were great because there were not a gazillion people in the background. The food.... was definitely no bueno though!

FYI, don't forget to bargain for drinks or snacks on the Great Wall. Yes, they even try to rip you off for drinks cause they know you need it. 

Happy Eatings!

IUP Welcome Dinner

The summer program that I'm at had a welcome dinner to let us mingle with our classmates for the next 2 months. We had a total of 51 students that showed up for the meal. The dinner was on campus at Tsinghua University at a restaurant called Xichunuan that served "upscale" Hangzhou and Sichuan cuisine. The program directors decided to feed us a good meal since we would be giving up our next 2 months to solely hammer Mandarin into our heads 24/7.

This place was pretty fancy considering it was on campus excluding the slippery floor signs of course!

They had a map of the Tsinghua University campus on the floor, which reminded me of the Getty Center in L.A. Too bad we weren't back in L.A...the land where toilets were clean and toilet paper was provided for you.

This was a pork appetizer dish. It was basically a cold cut dish. Yum.

This was some sort of egg appetizer. I didn't like it. No bueno.

Cold Noodles. Something you can't go wrong with!

I forgot what this was called in English but it was tasty as well unlike the next dish...

Mash potatoes with blueberry sauce on top? Uh... no. Pancakes would have been a much better choice or IHOP.

Then we had a whole fish marinated in tomato sauce and spices.

This was like a corn and pea "pancake." Not my taste, but it wasn't that bad.

This was the most "normal" dish we had. Beef and peas. Reminded me of good ol' Panda Express. I wanted a fortune cookie after eating it.

Shrimp was a little bland.

More celery. This is my grandma's favorite dish. It's too healthy for my taste.

More meat! This wasn't bad.

Yay! They served us kao ya. Wasn't as good as 鴨黃 from the other day, but it was good enough for the moment.

Clams and steamed egg didn't hit the spot for me. Some of my classmates really enjoyed it though.

These made me miss the San Gabriel Valley. Shallot pancakes weren't good. They were squishy and not crunchy enough.

Please no more veggies!

And of course we had to have a soup! A real Chinese family style meal wouldn't be complete without one.

大餅. Score! This was what I stuffed myself with. I guess I'm a cheap date since I stuffed myself with all the bread and didn't really eat much of anything else.

Overall, this was a good place to have a welcome dinner since we had so many students. The food wasn't horrific. The best advice is to go in with little or no standards and you will never be disappointed! Kidding aside, this place wasn't bad. I was just ready to leave campus and start searching Beijing for more 地道的菜 (authentic street food). Little did I know that our Chinese program was going to be kicking our asses so badly that I would not have ample time to go out and explore good Beijing street food everyday.

Happy Eatings! More Beijing adventures to come!

Bye or as they say in mandarin 拜拜 (bai bai)!

Today... I Finally Become a China Woman!

There's like what- 4.5 billion trillion people in China? Everyone and their mother rides a bike because... that's just how they do...

This is a picture of people waiting for the train to pass at Wudaokou Street. If you look on the streets, you'll see huge entire areas filled with parked bikes. It's actually a pretty scary sight. So it was obvious, that if I was going to make this China transformation complete, I  had to blend in like a local by doing none other than purchasing a 2nd hand bike!

Apparently the rule of thumb is to get a crappy bike with a really good lock or else someone's going to steal your bike. That's me trying to be excited. Helmets are not sold frequently in China. It's not like your head is important. Also, crossing the street is like playing a game of Frogger. Cars come at you at all directions and drivers do not make eye contact with you. They just assume someone will halt... 

So what did I do to celebrate my rite of passage of becoming a China woman? I rode my bike to find some good food. I found an amazing chuan [er]. 串 I love how the chinese character of 串 looks like meat on a kabob stick. This place is so yummy. It's my new favorite place.

2nd floor of a street called 好吃街 aka Delicious Street!

Chicken wings! Very good!

I believe this was chicken knee.

Duck heart and lamb perhaps?

The amount of garlic and seasoning that went into this just make it that much more amazing!

This was my order of cold noodles. It had peanuts, garlic, peanut and sesame sauce in it. Soooo good!! That's why it's awesome to ask what's their signature dish at every restaurant is. Our whole meal was about $26 RMB so divide that by around 7 and you'll get the US price. 

Yummy & Cheap!

Happy Eatings!