Hot hot hot pot

Yesterday I rose early (my clock is still off) at 5am and decided that I would check out the Sanjaichuan market. It is Sunday flea market which my guide suggested that you get to early. So I hopped in a taxi and we went out to the outskirts of Beijing (well outskirts might not be the best description, as there are still skyscrapers in the outskirts and then more skyscrapers beyond them). I arrived at 5:30 and before most of the vendors had arrived, but they were all pouring in to set up their wears. Most of the merchants had bicycle rickshaws piled with lacquer boxes, statues, and furniture. I must have been the only person there who was fully awake. Everyone was still bleary eyed as they unpacked their stuff. And oh what stuff it was. Paintings, scrolls, knickknacks, porcelain, statues, brushes, posters, jars, etc... And in every imaginable style and material. From red and black Banpo culture, Shang bronzes, porcelain in three color Tang style, white and blue Ming, and Multicolored Qing, to Cultural Revolution and Mao memorabilia, all brought together by the most capitalist of all venues, the flea market.

I wandered about looking at piles and piles of crap. I guess if you really, really wanted a souvenir this was the place to go (or really wanted to haggle). I said I'd only buy nice little Tang three color vase to hold my pens, or a print of the Qingming festival, but I didn't find either to my satisfaction. I saw pictures documenting that both Hillary Clinton and Denis Hastart had patronised the place. But I came away empty handed. As I left a tour group from some Eastern European country, everyone of them was wearing these big baggy colorful flowing genie pants that they'd bought at some other crap store.


Later that day I went to the Beijing zoo. I took a long hot crowded bus ride out to the zoo. Everyone wanted to go there I guess. It was pretty depressing, especially to see the people feeding the bears soft drinks and buns. I did briefly see the Pandas but you had to push through a crowd ten people deep just to glimpse them before being pushed away. I was glad to hop in a taxi (and avoid the miserable bus) when I left. But not after exchanging expletives with a vendor outside the place who wanted to charge me more for water because I was a foreigner.

Foreigners are generally charged more for things by giving you the English menu at the restaurant which has higher prices. Or just quoting you the higher price when you ask how much something is. Usually I can tolerate it, its all so cheap. But this man was calling out "yikuai, yikuai, yikuai!" (one kuai) when I pulled out my yikuai he said "liangkuai" (two kuai). Not like I couldn't afford it 2 kuai is very cheap. I just couldn't stand for blatant discrimination. I swore at him in English (he didn't understand) only because my Chinese isn't good enough. Daniel Youd (one of my Beloit Profs) said that when being cheated he would tell people (in Chinese) that "he was sorry, that he mistakenly had thought that China was a civilized country" (the government has lots of signs and banners proclaiming that once should do this or that because China is a civilized country). Of course my Chinese isn't that good yet.

That night I went out for Mongolian Hot pot at a sort of chain hot pot restaurant. Perfect for the single eater. Everyone sits at a bar in which there are little hot plate sunk into it at each place. They give you a pot full of your choice of base (spicy is really the only way to go) then you choose from a menu or ingredients to order. I ordered mutton (a must for hotpot) and veggies and little sausages which tasted exactly like those little party wieners. They then bring these out to you on plates where you cook them in the pot a few at a time then fish them out with your chopsticks and dunk them in a small bowl of sesame sauce before eating. Every one sweats profusely when eating, as a sweaty foreigner (most Chinese people don't sweat as easily as white people so) I came away pretty wet.

Why go get boiling spicy food on a boiling spicy day, well aside from being tasty, I guess the Chinese believe that when it is hot out it is best to induce sweating by eating hot things. When in Beijing, do as the Beijingers do.