I like being a princess

Last night (Wednesday night) I went in a group of 17 people, mostly interns, for hot pot. Not just any hot pot, the best in Beijing, they assured me. Well, the wait was probably the longest I've had for a dinner... and it was wonderful! There are an outer room and porch just devoted to waiting due to the restaurant's popularity. While in the waiting room, you can sit at tables constantly supplied with watermelon, some sort of seed, tea, and some sort of fresh light cousin of bread. These tables also have cards on them, which some people played until the second cab arrived. Then, we had a couple of large games of mafia. We played with a dozen people, 3 each of mafia and police and 6 citizens. There was a nice structure to it, with the beginning of each waking round requiring everyone to make a statement about their opinion of the situation. And it was all in Chinese, until a Japanese girl (Yuki) joined who didn't speak Chinese. So, it was great for improving my Chinese... it seems that this group plays together a lot, so I'll probably get to play with them again. Also, in the corner of the room were women doing customers' nails while they waited for food, and as a result my nails are much sparklier than they used to be. Anyways, our private room was eventually ready, and we moved on. There was a large table with 4 basins of boiling water, and a couple of waitstaff continually adding plates of raw meat, dough, and vegetables to the table. Some we dumped in the hot water and fished out, others we just needed to dip in. We got to wear aprons to guard against splashes :) Sometimes it's better not to ask what some of the food is... stomachs and magic fish :) At one point near the end of the long, noisy and cheerful meal a new server came in. He did a show with dough, holding two ends of a small piece and flipping it in and out to lengthen it. Then he started to snap it at faces, mostly mine since I was close and he seemed to think he could make me flinch... but he couldn't, not even when he touched my nose with the dough! He had good precision with that stuff. When it was worked thin enough he quickly folded it and tore the creases apart, then dumped it in the hot pots for us. He also let Yuki have a try twirling the dough. I'm going to try to embed a video someone took of that here:





After we were all quite full, we played more games. A lot of it involved passing around cards, one per person, and putting the card face out on your forehead, such that you could see everyone's but your own. Everyone looked around quickly to deduce whether or not they'd drawn a King. Then the 2 who had gotten the Kings would have to do some sort of feat or dare for the general amusement.

Today after work I went to the Beihai/Houhai area of Beijing again to look for the lady to teach me fan dancing. She wasn't around, but I got to walk around some nice lakes and see lots of tourists, including what seemed to be a Senior Citizens' outing to Beijing. I wandered around a hutong again ... I'm beginning to be more comfortable moving about in them.

I really love how, in Beijing, you can be waiting at a bus stop and see some people playing badminton on the sidewalk, or walk by a parking lot and see several people gathered around a game of go. Or see a couple hundred people gathered at the base of a park, doing classical dances to music coming from a speaker system on the back of a bicycle. This guy brings music every night, and for 5 Yuan a month (less than one US dollar) you can come and dance for a month. Not only can you dance, you can be taught... there was a group of 20 or so people off to the side being given a lesson. If only that area wasn't so far (an hour or 2) from where I live, I would definitely have given them the 5 Yuan then and there. Some of those dancers were really good!

I made a new friend while I was watching the dancers, a masseuse from Hebei, Pei WANG. Capitalizing the family name when you're referring to someone in a mixed Chinese/English environment is a really useful convention that seems to be semi-standard here. Then my friend Julia showed up. After a while we went to a restaurant along Qianhai that I'd been eyeing.

And we sat in the window! Not just any window. This window was a huge recessed window. It had beautiful drapes which hung down enough to give a little privacy, but were open enough to let people walking past notice the occupants of the window room. The inside was red and a rich yellow, with a large painting on the back wall and a pair of couches separated by a small round table. The couches were covered in silk pillows of varying sizes and were quite comfortable. Julia and I got some fruit (for me) and whiskey (for her) and lounged about chatting about travel, boys, and the future.

Eventually we left our luxurious perch and went off exploring the neighborhood. We found a hutong where people were filming a movie, and wandered through some little shops. There are these jars of whitish stuff that are commonly sold on the street, but neither of us knew what they were, so we stopped at a small store to find out. Julia asked what they were and got the result "nai3," meaning milk. "nu3 nai3 ma?" she asked, causing much commotion. Now, what she meant to ask was, "niu3 nai3 ma?" which means "cow's milk?" What she actually asked was, "women's milk?" After we sorted that out (it was cow milk), we found out that it wasn't milk itself, it was actually yogurt.

At that point it was late, and I headed back to my homebase, having a lovely conversation along the way with the taxi driver, whose sister lives in Michigan, along the way. Did you know that cabs are supposed to turn the light on top off when they're full? I didn't because they don't actually do it in the US... but they do here! It's useful!

Oh, and one final thing I like about living here: having a roommate who calls to check on me when I'm out wandering late at night. Thanks Kat :-)