These days I spend a lot of time eating.

7/5

Thursday night I went home after work, showered, then headed right back out the door to meet people at Guijie, or Ghost Street. The area is famous for its food, everything from high-end restaurants to people frying things on the street. There are some specialties, like spicy crayfish, and the whole place is lit up with red lanterns. I met Linda from work, who I'd invited, and then we joined up with Scot, Catlin, and a number of people they'd invited from couchsurfing.com. There was Ru Shyan, who's a visual arts major working for the Chinese Olympic Committee and helped with the torch; Spring, a sophomore from Harvard doing... something; Matt, engineering major from Cornell working for GE; Bill Bowles, who quit his job and is traveling the world with a video camera and a satellite modem keeping a video blog; and Aaron, a Chinese national who works as an editor for the People's Daily. In a huge coincidence, we all (minus Aaron) had ties to Massachusetts. Catlin's from Wellesley, Scot and I from MIT, Matt had gone to high school there, Spring and Linda were from Harvard (and knew each other, but didn't know the other was going to be around), Ru Shyan's from Wheaton, and I can't remember Bill went to... Amherst, maybe? But it was strange to pick a sample of westerners in Beijing and come up with all MA types.

We picked a big hot pot place. They have two kinds of broth to cook in, sort of like fondue. One was garlickly and almost like a chicken broth, the other was oily and spicy. We ordered trays of raw lamb, beef, bok choy, spinach, mushrooms, etc. and started cooking. The hard part is to either hold the thing you're cooking in a boiling pot filled with flavor-adding... chunks, or to drop it and try to find it and fish it out later. The other difficulty was trying to fit cups, plates, trays of food, bottles of beer, etc. all on a table with a big hole in the middle for cooking. Dinner was great, and I had fun talking with the others; there were a lot of shared interests, but fairly different backgrounds.

Afterwards we started walking. We found some good hutongr, Beijing's narrow, winding alleys, filled with courtyard houses and small businesses. We bought popsicles (yogurt flavored for me again... I'll branch out soon) and explored the area in the dark. I don't know how safe I would have felt doing it alone, at least carrying valuables, but we were rolling like 10 deep, so it wasn't an issue. We bought a couple of bottles of beer to drink as we walked, one of the few liberties I feel like the Chinese can enjoy that we in the land of the free are denied.

I had broken my nail clippers, so when we found what looked like a closet with the contents of Wal-Mart jammed in I asked and managed to buy some for 40 cents. How, you may ask, did I break my nail clippers? I broke them trying to trim my beard. Sort of. See, the beard trimmer I brought was new, specially bought from Kohls for the extravagant price of $15, chosen for its portability. It has these different attachments for trimming different lengths, as such devices do, but I seem to have left certain parts necessary for their use back at home. So I decided I'd just whittle the large attachment, which I could use, down to size. Rather than hack at the outside, which would have meant pushing the jagged bit against my face, I cut the underside where the attachment locks into another plastic bit on the trimmer. This process took, over the course of 3 days, at least 2 hours, a different nail clippers, 2 different steak knives (ineffective), a pair of scissors (absolutely useless), and finally a box cutter I bought at a 7-11 on Ghost Street. The box cutter did the trick, resulting in an intricate sort of terraced piece of plastic, and now I've finally trimmed my beard. Of course, the charger for the damn thing is 110 volts, so I still need to buy a voltage converter, but I've saved myself from buying a new trimmer.

Anyway. Nail clippers at the closet Wal-Mart, then since the buses had stopped for the night I caught a cab home.

7/6

Friday I skipped work. I wasn't feeling in peak form, maybe in part because of the food the night before, but I think it was mostly the result of a long week and not really having felt rested in a while. So I slept until noon, then I woke up and went out to find some lunch. I went to a Chinese fast-food place near my apartment, which was probably the first truly bad meal I've had here, then I got some corn flavored yogurt at the grocery store to wash it down. Corn flavored yogurt's very tasty, and fits well into my campaign to try to eat the weird stuff. I bought some fairly expensive grapes on the way home, which a few days later as I write this are mostly uneaten. I should get on that.

I studied some Chinese, watched Lord of War, and hung out a bit waiting for Scot and Catlin to come over. They got lost trying to get there, so I went downstairs and walked a couple blocks to meet them. We got dinner at a restaurant near where I'd had lunch, the highlight of which was the catfish soup. The wisdom of eating bottom-feeders while in China is questionable, but I think that I'm probably going to poison myself to some extent no matter what I do, and we didn't really think about it until after we'd ordered.

We went back to my place and had some beer and baijiu, but at that point everyone was exhausted. We had decided to go to Shanhaiguan on Saturday to see the spot where the Great Wall comes out of the sea, so we were trying to arrange that trip on my slow and feeble pirated internet while endeavoring to not falling asleep. Well, Scot passed out sitting on the floor and leaning forward with his head on my couch, Catlin and I wrestled with the intertubes. At the end we didn't really have a plan, we just knew we were meeting at the train station at noon. Bobby, my flatmate, came back just as we were finishing and told us that they'd shut down the elevators for the night, which was unwelcome news. Apparently they do that at a certain hour, which I wasn't aware of. Since it's a little bit hard to get to the street from my apartment I walked Scot and Catlin down the 14 flights of plaster-covered and crumbling stairs (currently undergoing renovation), then, of course, had to climb back up the 14 flights. There are no floor numbers, so I tried to count as I went. It didn't work very well, so starting on maybe the 11th floor I was leaving the staircase to try to find apartment numbers on the doors. Most apartments aren't numbered, either, so that was a bit hard.

Anyway, I made it back, showered, and crashed. Showering is rough right now because the fluorescent tube in the bathroom is dying and not so much a light as a dim. It's a weird shape and we haven't found a replacement yet. So I've been showering and shaving with my bike headlamp sitting on the shelf for a little bit of extra light. I've been showering a lot, too, since it's hot and humid and I walk around in dress clothes all day. Because of the weekend trip I still don't have a bike. I have to get on that, too.

7/7

on Saturday I got up at maybe 9:30 to get to the bank for cash to pay some of my rent before I left town. I'm still finding my way around the neighborhood, so the errand took maybe an hour of walking around looking for a bank and getting back. I packed, then caught the subway to the Beijing train station. Scot and Catlin got off the same train from a different car, so we met up immediately and went to find tickets. There are about 5 different places to buy tickets, depending on where you're going, but after some searching we found our counter. Fortunately Scot had checked the railway website to get our train's number, otherwise we might have been in trouble. Tickets to Shanhaiguan on the T11 (T for Tebie kuai, or extra fast) were 47RMB, or about 6 dollars. They were standing tickets, though. To get a seat you generally have to buy in advance. We had time to kill, so we found lunch in the alley next to the station: a big bowl of noodles with meat and hot peppers.

We made it to our gate, running to make the departure time, but it turned out that the train was delayed and we ended up sitting around for about an hour. The train station is massive and crawling with people. There's nowhere near enough seating, so we sort of found a corner and squatted to avoid sitting on the filthy floor. I checked out the bookstore (Esquire in Chinese and a magazine about Chinese military hardware), saw the huge internet bar, and tried unsuccessfully to find a deck of playing cards for sale.

When we finally got onto the train it wasn't too full; we had plenty of room to stand. When people get up to use the restrooms and such the standing people sit down to rest their legs for a moment. We chatted with some other passengers and as a result ended up sitting maybe a quarter of the time. The main problem with standing is squeezing to the side to let people pass, and people do pass. They go to the area between the cars to smoke, they use the squat toilet restrooms that empty onto the tracks, they wander around, who knows, but there are constantly people coming and going. The train workers come through with carts of as wide as the aisle, which are hard to dodge, they bring brooms and sweep up trash on the floor, they adjust baggage on the overhead bins, and they sometimes checked tickets. A few standing passengers had tiny collapsible seats that they'd unfold and sit on in the aisles, which after a while seemed like a great idea.

It took probably 3 hours to get to Shanhaiguan. We left the station to look around and were immediately set upon by hordes of touts trying to get us to take cabs or go to certain hotels or eat at the touristy restaurants. We remembered to go back into the station to buy our return tickets, and when we got out we heard, "Look, white people!' and were approached by the only other caucasians around, who didn't speak Chinese. It turns out, believe it or not, that they were from Johnson City, Tennessee. Small world, folks. So we took taxis with them to go check out the cheap Lida hostel we'd read about in the Lonely Planet. In Beijing they use a meter to determine your cab fare. In Shanhaiguan we negotiated a price with the cabdrivers ahead of time. The base flag drop price in Beijing is 10RMB, we did the trip to the hostel for 5 per cab. Small town living, I guess. The hostel had acceptable beds for $2.50 each, so the 5 Johnson City folks and I got two triple rooms. Catlin and Scot had brought camping supplies and were going to try to camp on the Wall. I didn't have camping gear, but I was game for roughing it with them until it started to rain just as we arrived at the hotel.

After dropping off bags we all headed out to get food nearby. Scot and Catlin and I have gotten into the habit of checking menus before sitting down at restaurants. We have a couple of criteria, a sort of basket or index like you'd assemble to measure cost of living or inflation. Our basket includes Gongbao Jiding (Kungpao chicken), eggplant strips, and a 600ml bottle of local beer. I'd like those 3 items to be under 30RMB combined, or about $3.75. So we turned down a couple of restaurants (one proprietor scoffed, "But where are you going to eat?" when we told her it was too expensive) before finding an acceptable place. We ordered a few dishes off of the menu, then Scot and I headed over to the seafood chill chest to point out things we'd like but didn't know the name for. So we ended up with mediocre squid, strange sea cucumber (which we're glad we tried but probably won't get again), and exceptionally good scallops in addition to our land-based food. Restaurants also don't seem to like to bring you rice early, the philosophy here being that you eat the good stuff before filling up on rice at the end, so we've also had to ask them to bring the rice early so that we get to eat it with our food. I haven't decided whether I should try to get used to the Chinese way or keep my portable America in this situation. I don't think it's a particularly important philosophy, as no one's really thought the rice request strange, so I might keep eating it throughout the meal. I talk about food a lot, sorry.

After dinner Catlin and Scot headed off towards the coast to find a spot to hide and camp, which we presume is illegal. The Johnson City people and I bought some beer at a corner store and, since the rain had stopped, decided to try to get on top of the wall somewhere in town just to hang out and drink. We got distracted, however, walking by a park where they were playing music and there were a ton of people dancing. There were also these multicolor lights in rows across the plaza, changing colors and blinking. It looked sort of like a runway. We decided to walk across their dance floor and check it out. We were immediately approached by a couple of people who wanted to dance with use, and then once we got through the crowd and sat down on some benches we were still attracting attention. I had a bottle opener, but I decided to be social and approach a couple of older people nearby and ask to borrow theirs. I chatted with them for a bit, then tried to make my apologies and rejoin the group, but they suggested I bring the others over instead. So I did, and after a few minutes the 6 of us were surrounded by maybe 30 Chinese all trying to talk to us. I was the only one who spoke both Chinese and English (besides on 16 year old kid who claimed to be 28 and spoke a bit), so I ended up running around and translating. The rockstar effect is apparently pretty common in China, but since I live in Beijing, I'm dressed like I'm not a tourist, I probably walk around scowling, and I'm not blond I haven't really gotten any of it, yet. So it was fun for a while, and my sense of humor does apparently translate, at least to some extent, but I can't imagine living like that. I think I might really like to try to live somewhere farther west at some point, so I might have to learn to deal with it. We bailed after a bit to make it back to the hostel before they closed the doors for the night, and just hung out in the room for a bit.

Ok, so the next day was much more exciting, but I'm really sick of typing right now and I'll leave it to post sometime tomorrow.