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Beijing has an eclectic art district, known as 789 Art District. It’s set in a large industrial park, and there are small art museums, cafes, and outdoor sculptures spanning a large area. The art was rather dark and disturbing, but we had a semi-normal breakfast and real coffee! We spent most of the day there, and ate at Laker’s Pizza (Toby, this picture’s for you). Later that day, we figured out how to order McDonald’s online and have it delivered for free. We ordered all the stuff you can’t get at home – chicken rice wrap, curry tonkatsu rice wrap, spicy wings, taro pie, pineapple pie, etc. It was delicious.
The next day, I went shopping for souvenirs at the Pearl Market and haggled over price. I got a Bluetooth speaker for $5, which I’ve already gotten my money out of just using it here. If it breaks tomorrow, I’ll be ok with that. For dinner, Christina, Ashely, and I ventured out to the beer garden on campus, but we never found it. Instead, we ended up at a hot pot restaurant that had a ton of beer. Who knows – that may have been the beer garden
and we just couldn’t translate it. On our way there, we asked a police man for directions to the beer garden in Mandarin, and he responded, “Chinese only.” OK, I get it, I don’t have the accent down. We used the international sign for beer, pretending to drink a pint, and he pointed us to the hot pot restaurant. Good enough. When we sat down, the menu was in Chinese and there weren’t any pictures. The sign on the wall said ‘Food Safety: C,’ with a face that didn’t look happy. Since that was the first time I had seen that sign, I figured that must mean it is better than the other places I had been eating. We used a language app to try to order, hoping for the best. It turned out ok. We kept trying to order noodles, and they would tell us no. Finally we saw some noodles go to a nearby table of 5 middle aged men, and we called over the waiter overenthusiastically pointing to the noodles, saying ‘jyega, jyega!’ The men tried to give us their noodles and baiju (strong Chinese liquor). We politely declined and waited for our own noodles. None of
us got sick, but we found out the next day that 2 other students went there the day before and were sick for 2 days… guess we got lucky that time!
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