I am sooo tired!! My appologies for not writing sooner, but I wanted to make sure I could adequately describe things for you. Had I replied yesterday it would have sounded like this, "uuuhhhh China ungh good." I've had a good nights sleep now, so I should be able to get you all caught up.
First of all Chinese food is really amazing. So many fresh vegetables. At this point we've been to several restaurants. As much as we can we eat where the menus have pictures because if they don't then we have to mime what it is we'd like to eat. However at many of these restaurants we've been able to order whole plates of spinach and mushrooms, or a whole plate of broccoli. They tend to have much more interesting meat selections then in Korea as well, so there is a danger to pointing to a menu item that has no picture. You might end up getting some Cow blood soup, or pig intestines, or calf testicles. All that being said, we have been feasting like kings for the same price as a bowl of bibimbap. If we want to eat cheaply food can be found for as little as 75 cents for a bowl of noodles.
The day following our wall excursion, we decided we would try to find the silk market. Michelle and I woke up around 10, and by the time we left it was already 11. We left our hostle, and decided to walk to our own local market first and see what we could see there. We trotted past the first big bar street, and then past a supermarket (we didn't realize that at this point we had already passed our market as well). Soon we found ourselves at Worker's stadium which is quite large. There we found a map, and another traveler that informed us that the silk market would be closed until March. So we decided to go to the Pearl market instead. Hopping into a taxi, we showed him our map and pointed to where we wanted to go.
Riding in a taxi is a little strange here. Cars in general are much older, so typically a taxi looks to be about a 1983 or maybe a 1987 model of some kind of hatchback or station wagon. They usually stink of exhaust leaks and are significantly more expensive than taking the bus or the subway. Inside the taxi cab there is a kind of barrier wall that separates the front seat passenger from the driver, but it's a somewhat superficial barrier. In other words, it wouldn't stop a bullet, or someone passing a piece of gum through, but I guess it would stop someone trying to reach through and wring the drivers neck (I don't know if this has been a problem for them in the past or not).
We arrived at a large building across the street from the Temple of Heaven and dodging bicycles went in. What an opposite experience to shopping in Korea. In Korea with the same kind of layout, usually venders either won't look at me, or wait quietly for me to ask a question. The chinese however give new meaning to the term "the hard sell." As we passed by booth after booth of dolls and silk and sporting goods and shoes and pearls and...and... and... we were constantly being asked "which one you like?" "I'll give you best price" and so on. However if you stopped and asked they typically gave some very high price. I wasn't too shaken by it. I love to bargain so it just took me a couple minutes to adjust to the visual and audio stimulus. Bargaining went something like this.
"how much for this?" I say
"I'll give you very best price" They then type a number into a calculater and show it to me and it would say anything form 100 to 290 Yuan.
"That's more than I want to spend" Says me
"Make me an offer, how much you wanna pay" says them.
"I'll give you 15 Yuan" says me
They chuckle for a moment but this is just part of the act, they are not offended by my fraction of what they're asking for. They type in their counter offer--60 Yuan.
"No" I say "thanks but I'm not really interested, just curious"
uh oh, they think, I'm losing my customer"Ok friend, I'll give you friend price" They type in a second counter price--55 Yuan
"I'll tell you what" I say, "I'll buy it for 20 Yuan"
" Ok friend, final offer" they say and now they are not typing they are talking "40 Yuan, very cheap good price."
Now I give them a suspicious sort of I'm-gonna-walk look. and they say "Ok friend, what's your final offer?"
I make my offer and they either agree or I agree to the next counter offer. I give them 30 Yuan, and I leave wondering if my little treasure is worth the effort if it's not worth the initial price. Lucky for me I'm happy with the few purchases I've made so far.
Michelle on the other hand was overwhelmed, and bought two overpriced items, but she likes them so that's good. She really didn't like the noise and the aggressiveness, so we left and got some noodles. Since we were across the street from the temple of heaven we checked it out. It really is quite beautiful. This was where they used to make animal sacrifices to heaven. Somehow I felt that it would be much more interesting to see the place if they were still making their sacrifices.
Yesterday was of course the biggest day in Spring Festival (the Chinese New Year). Along with two friends we've made at the hostel, we visited two parks and therefor two festival fairs. The first one was an international fair. We met some nice french canadians there and answered some canadian trivia. It was quite embarrassing how little we knew, but they gave us the prize of a stuffed animal anyway. We didn't stay there long, althought the music was great. We were on the hunt for a traditional chinese experience. We got in a taxi and went to Di Tan park. Later we found out that the taxi really took us for a ride. It turned out that we had only been two subway stops from where we wanted to go, but he drove around long enough to run the meter up to about two times the price the ride should have been. The festival fair at Di Tan park was as traditional chinese as I think we could ever hope for or want. We wandered in past the leafless trees where red paper flowers had been hung, and down the walkway under a rooftop made of these paper sculptures. Halfway down the walkway we hear the traditional drum and crash of the chinese dragon dance. This was an amazing site. They had ten men acting as five dragons, and their relaxed yet intense control of their movement made these yellow and red dragons with gold heads look like puppy dogs, shaking their ears, and scratching. Jumping and rolling. Spinning as a group or doing acrobatics with their dragon partner. I couldn't see over the crowd and so one of our new friends was kind enough to lift me up onto his shoulders. From there I had the best view in the house!! Unfortunately I was unable to get any pictures with my own camera, because we had left without taking it out of the Hostel's safe. Luckily Michelle found herself a perch on a wall and was able to snap a few shots and get a short film as well. The Dragons were followed by martial arts students who showed us their skills as they flew across the stage kicking and flipping in their shining silk garments. Some of them showed fierce technique with weapons others showed their concentration and control by braking objects like metal rods or bricks with their heads or hands.
We walked around looking at the booths. Although it's called spring festival, make no mistake about it. It is not spring in China. I have been experiencing the coldest weather of my entire life. It was so cold I thought I might actually lose a limb to frost bite! Walking from booth to booth it felt as if the very blood in my veins was slowly forming an icy chain that would just freeze me to the spot. Fortunately that didn't happen. It was like any other fair in that they were peddling food and trickets from these booths but the sheer number of booths was more than I had ever seen anywhere. We decided we didn't have the energy or strength to see them all. The difference was all of the beautiful wind catchers and red paper decorations the filled the park with. It was a really neat sight.
Following that we went into the first resaurant we saw with a teakettle on it. We were desperately in need of a hot beverage. The word for tea in chinese is "cha" which is great because I already know that one from Korea. We sat down and they brought us some tea. Michelle fell asleep in a nice leather chair near our table. Martin a welshman from the UK succeeded in miming eating noodle soup and so they brought that to eat.
I was exhausted and needed a rest, but Michelle had her nap in the restaurant. So Michelle and the Russian-American Alex went on to try and find the taoism temple, and Martin and I went to catch the subway. On the way we passed the Lama temple and tried to catch a glimpse inside the gates of the stunning archtiecture and painting. We then came home and I got as much rest as I could.
For dinner last night Michelle and I splurged we went to a middle-eastern restaurant and had hoummos and lamb and fatoush nad chai tea. We also ordered some apple tobacco and a Nargila after dinner and relaxed in the curls of smoke as we digested out food.
Today we are tackling the forbidden city, Tiennman square, and we are going to try to do some more shopping.