The following is a summary of what I’ve been doing, in general, here in China in my free time.
Food!
To sum it all up, food in Beijing is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP! It is absolutely incredible and at the same time terrifying. If I don’t slow down the amount and type of food I am choosing to eat, due to the deliciousness, I am going to come back as two Kevin’s. This cheapness is especially applicable in the Tsinghua University cafeteria that I am eating in for most breakfasts and dinners. I am able to get a large bowl of noodles, three steams buns filled with meat, and two dessert dishes for 8 RMB (~ $1.20 USD)!!! Now this is the extreme, as the cafeteria is the cheapest place to eat, but still, HOLY COW! Eating outside of the cafeteria is a little more expensive, but for the most part, not too bad. Most of my lunches cost about 15 RMB (~$2.50 USD), which include splitting 3-5 dishes with my classmates. Not too shabby for delicious, REAL Chinese food.
There are, however, some places that manage to cost a TON here (not too bad for America). Of course, these are the foreign restaurants; Japanese, Indian, Italian. For example, two going away dinners I have attended were at a good Sushi and Indian restaurants and my bills were about $12 USD and $15 USD, respectively. I know what you are thinking…”That’s expensive!?!?”…and yes, that IS quite expensive here in China. If you spend more than 50 RMB ($7.50 USD) on a meal, it had better be high class. A funny side-note is that, as expected, American fast food (McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut) are more expensive than most Chinese sit-down restaurants. Another funny thing is what they serve at the fast food joints here. For example, the Pizza Hut here offers toppings such as: octopus, bok choy, eel, salmon, wasabi, and egg.
Hou Hai
Hou Hai is a lake that is completely encircled by a long strip of bars. Some friends took me out here on my second weekend in Beijing. After walking around and enjoying the scenery, we settled down at a place with a plaza full of couches outside for you to lounge in. After the waiter offered the usual stuff (food, drinks, forms of tobacco) he offered something I hadn’t expected…women. Yup, that’s right, I am definitely in China now. This bar, along with many others, was openly soliciting prostitutes to its customers, and quite aggressively in my opinion. Luckily, no one at my table indulged in this offer as we continued to be happy with our food and drinks. BUT NO! This would not be China if they had given up that easily. Now the waiter had sent over 3 ladies to try and persuade us to..ehem…purchase their services. After about 10 minutes of saying ‘no’ in English and Chinese they finally gave in. Note: this is not because we succeeded in shoeing them off, it was because another table had whistled them over.
Propaganda
No I am not talking about the Chinese government brainwashing the nation to believe their every whim (although that is occurring). I am talking about a club about 2 km from where I live called, Propaganda. I won’t talk much about this as it doesn’t deserve it. Essentially, I found out the hard way that it is a place that foreigners go to, to find local Chinese girls. And it works. Anyways….enough said, right? Moooovvinnnng onnnn…
Photo Adventure
The weekend after Propaganda, I was finally able to go out and take my “Photo Adventure of Tsinghua University”. I was quite excited; as this was the only occasion I had been able to use my camera besides the Great Wall. (Note: Still no pictures to be posted though…sorry, blog’s fault, not mine) I started my quest at the Western Gate, as I had passed it everyday to get to the bus stop, and no matter what, there were always people there taking pictures in front of it. Then I headed over to the Second Gate. This had previously been the Main Gate, back in the day when the university was much smaller. There were always people here taking pictures, as well. I continued bicycling around campus finding all the beautiful gardens, ponds, temple-like areas capturing what I consider as pretty pictures. There was one particular flower garden that stood out to me, and apparently to every other photographer that day, as there were at least 5 people trying to photograph the same flower at the same time. In addition, I was definitely put in my place, thinking I was hot-stuff with my DSLR camera and prime lens. EVERY other person I encountered on that day had a little red or orange strip on his or her lens. In other words, every one of those lenses alone cost more than both Josh’s and my cameras and lenses combined. But no worries, I was still confident that I was ‘seeing’ things they didn’t since I was not crowded around the same things as them. However, this could just mean I was being too stubborn and dumb to try and get a picture of what everyone else wanted. I rewarded myself on a hard days worth of photo adventure-ing by heading over to the caferia and buying 10RMB worth of food (that’s a lot).
My next post is gonna be a good one…hint: I’m headed south!
Till next time!
-Kevbot
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