Goodbye China

2. May 2008 by ilanamong.

Everything is packed up and ready to go. We just went out to our last lunch. We ordered a meat dish and the waitress asked if we liked horse, because that dish was horse. We didn’t order it. Later, we figured out that she was probably saying hot, as in spicy. I’m glad we didn’t take the chance though. They did have donkey and snake on the menu. We got a chicken dish that came out in a little pot that sat on top of a burner to heat it up–it was yummy. We also had some noodle soup and vegetables.

I have to turn off the computer because we are on our way to the airport. Our first flight to Chicago is 11 hours long.

Goodbye China. We had a great time!

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Olympic Village. Not!

1. May 2008 by ilanamong.

Today we went to see the olympic village. We thought it would be cool to see the Olympic stadium. We went and ended up about a parking lot away from the stadium. It is really awesome, but I wish the construction work wasn’t there and we could get closer or possibly  go inside. After being disappointed about the stadium we went to go get a bite. We went into a restaurant in a hotel. We got spicy chicken, spicy beef, and dumplings with vegetables in them. The whole menu was in Chinese but the waitress spoke a little English and helped us pick the dishes. All of it, even the dumplings, were pretty good. Then we went home and rested for a long time. Doing homework, practicing on my musical instrument (hulusi), and playing toss with my brother’s stuffed animal dog. Sadly the toy I brought here was a panda and got lost. We think that when they went to clean the covers they took the panda with it accidentally. Now h’m about to go to the roast duck restaurant again for the last time. Today is my last full day in Beijing.

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Bei Hai Park and Shopping

30. April 2008 by ilanamong.

After a big dumpling brunch, we went back to Bei Hai Park to explore it more. We rented a paddle boat again and we also saw some big jade statues. It was very hot and humid, so we didn’t explore too much.

Afterward, we did some shopping and munched on things from the market stalls like squid on a stick (my mom ate that). I liked the fried dough balls dipped in sugar the best. I bought a traditional musical instrument called a Halusi. It is a kind of flute with a gourd-shaped bulb at the top end and three pipes coming out of it. It’s not too hard to play. My brother Alex bought a chess set.

When we got back to the hotel room, there was a birthday cake waiting for my dad. I don’t know how the hotel knew it was his birthday, but it was a yummy surprise.

Today (Thursday) is our last full day here because we leave tomorrow.

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The Forbidden City

29. April 2008 by ilanamong.

The Forbidden City is a huge complex with about 800 buildings and 8,000 rooms. It is located right in the middle of Beijing, across the street from Tian’anmen Square. The emperors during the Ming and Qing Dynasties lived here from the 1400s until the last emperor in the early 1900s. It is surrounded by a moat and has huge wooden doors so enemies could be kept out. The roofs are all yellow tiles that symbolize royalty. As we walked through, you pass through lots of different gates and large spaces called things like Hall of Preserving Harmony, Palace of Heavenly Purity, and Hall of Mental Cultivation. A lot of areas are setup like museums with different things that were in the palace, like jewelry, pottery, weapons, clothing and crowns, and bowls and plates used during ceremonies and everyday.

You are not allowed to take pictures inside, but I saw a whole lot of jade statues–I liked the dragons the best. I also really liked a golden tea set that was really, really fancy. In one area, they had really cool huge model cities set up with hundreds of people, buildings, and animals from ancient times. There were also a bunch of big stones called drums that had Chinese writing and pictures carved into them. These were from around 300 BC and you could still see most of the carvings. On the wall, they showed the Chinese characters from the carving and what those same characters look like today–a lot of them were very much the same. There was a marble pathway down the center of the city that only the emperor was allowed on. Everyone else, even the empress, had to walk on the side pathways.

When we finished up with The Forbidden City, we took a taxi to a noodle restaurant. We had a difficult time finding an empty taxi and it was really hot out today. When we finally got one, we were stuck in traffic for a long time and then the taxi driver couldn’t find the restaurant. Finally, at 2:30 in the afternoon, we arrived for lunch. It was worth the wait. We ordered little chopsticks, which are long, thickish noodles that are thicker at one end and thinner at the other end like a chopstick. We also had cats ears, which are little noodles shaped liked cats ears. The restaurant was the most modern place we have been yet. If we had arrived during the regular lunch area, we could have sat downstairs in the bar area where they make the noodles in front of you. That would have been interesting.

We are getting a little better at communicating with people, but it still is mostly just pointing. Sometimes nodding your head yes does not mean the same thing here as it does at home, so even that doesn’t work all the time. I know how to say hello (Ni Hao), thank you (pronounced like shay shay), and tea (cha). I know the characters for Beijing–there are two of them. I can’t really read any of the signs, even though they have the pinyin (spelled out–not Chinese characters). There are some signs in English, but not too many. In the tourist areas, they have all the signs in Chinese and English. If you don’t read either of those, you are out of luck.

When you get a menu in a restaurant, the waitress waits at the table for you to tell her what you want. There is no time to look through the menu and sometimes it is a really big menu. So, it’s best to have an idea of what you want before you even go into the restaurant. We’ve learned that it’s not rude to make the waitress wait while you take your time.

The high school kids all want to speak a few words of English to us. They ask where we are from and if we are enjoying our trip. The school kids all wear bright colored sweat suits as their school uniforms.

Also, wherever we go, people want to take pictures of us with them, especially my brother Alex. It happens about 5 times a day. Sometimes they just have their video camera on us as we are walking around. They are always very nice about it and it doesn’t seem rude, but I don’t think we would take pictures of people who look different at home. There are not too many Americans or Europeans here, even in our American hotel. A lot of people are surprised that my parents have two children because in China they can only have one.

Today was really hot and humid, about 88 degrees. The rest of the week is supposed to be the same. Luckily, there hasn’t been any rain since the first couple of days. Tomorrow is my dad’s birthday and we are going out for a big dim sum brunch–I can’t wait since we skipped dinner tonight because we had a late lunch.

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The Great Wall of China

28. April 2008 by ilanamong.

The Great Wall of China is not anything I expected it to be. I thought it would be a regular wall, but it ended up to be a big long stair wall that is on top of mountains and winds around like a snake. Instead of walking next to the wall, you actually walk on top of it. Since it follows the curve of mountains, there are many steps, both up and down. There are really big steps, little shallow steps, not many, but some normal sized steps, and ramps in some places. This is the first time I have ever climbed so many steps and all of our legs hurt. I read that the wall might be as long as 4000 miles. I’m glad I didn’t have to walk that far today. Luckily, since the wall is on top of the mountain, you can ride on a chair lift to the top, otherwise you would have to first climb the mountain, then you wouldn’t have any energy for all the stairs. It was fun and the sights from the chair lift going all the way up the mountain were so beautiful. The only thing that wasn’t great was the bees. I’m not sure why, but there were so many bees that you couldn’t count them all. There was also a few stink bugs.

 

After walking back and forth on the wall for about two hours, we had to get down. There is a really cool tobaggon ride that you can take down the mountain. You sit in a little car with wheels and go zooming down a long chute for about 7 minutes. Luckily, the car has a break–you pull back to stop, and push forwards to go faster. It was so much fun. I was afraid my mom and brother (who were together) would bump my dad and me (who where also together). They didn’t.

At the bottom, there are a lot of people selling fruits, vegtables, tee shirts, hats, post cards, and more. We bought a few things. My dad is a really good bargainer–we walked away a few times and had people chasing after us. We were glad to find that our taxi driver had waited for us, otherwise we didn’t know how we would get back to the hotel. We asked the taxi driver to find us a restaurant along the road for lunch. We found a little place and we all ate together. The taxi driver did not speak any English, so it was a little difficult. We came home had a rest and went out for a nice light dumpling dinner at our dim sum reataurant. It was a very fun day at the great wall and I’ll never forget it.

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Summer Palace

26. April 2008 by ilanamong.

Since I’ve been here, I’ve wanted to try dim sum (pronounced dian xin). Dim Sum is where people push carts around with food and you pick which foods you want off of that cart. In China, dim sum  is a little different because they don’t have the carts. We went to a really big restaurant that was four stories high. We sat on the third floor because the first floor didn’t have tables for four, the second floor was having a wedding party, but the third floor was perfect. We were seated in a private room with walls on three sides and a curtain (that stayed opened) on the other. We had piles and piles of different kinds of dumplings. Some were pan fried, some deep fried, and some steamed.  We ate all dumplings except for one order of sticky rice. It was delicious and I want to go back before we leave.

Once we left the restaurant, we got a taxi to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is the grounds of the old emperor’s mother. It’s big and beautiful with a big lake, lots of interesting buildings, like a big temple, a theater, and a naval training center. When the emperor’s mother lived there, no one could come on the grounds unless she invited them.  At the Summer Palace there were so many rocky hills and I loved climbing them. I would always get to the very top. On the huge lake, there were hundreds of boats. We rented one of the boats where two people pedal to make it go. We all switched on and off. My favorite part was going to the very front point of the boat and seeing the mountains and things from the view of the boat. We all had a great time. We spent about 6 hours wandering around the grounds and we didn’t even see everything.

Later at night, we went to a roast duck restaurant for dinner again. Can you guess what we had? That’s right, the roast duck. They bring out the whole duck and carve it up right in front of you. Then they serve it with pancakes that you add some sauce and wrap the duck meat up and eat with your fingers. They serve every part of the duck. My mom ate the brains. My dad dared my brother and me to eat the duck tongue. I was pretty nervous, but we both ate a bight and it wasn’t bad at all. I didn’t eat the whole thing though. While you are eating the carved up duck, they take the duck bones to the kitchen and boil them to make a broth. We might have to have roast duck one more time before we leave.

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Some questions and answers from the comments…

25. April 2008 by ilanamong.

Evan wants to know how the birthday cake was and the rest of the class says HELLO!!!
–Ms. Shaiman and the class
Ms. Shamian the cake looked great and the icing tasted good, but I didn’t like the cake part so much. It was a double decker cake and before they put the second layer on they put a pineapple cut into pieces on it. I didn’t like it, but my parents did.
–Ilana

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Who would win in a dumpling-eating contest: your Dad or your Mom? China is the place to find out!
–Dave Dunkle
My dad, he is a faster eater.
–Ilana

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It’s good you like Chinese food. Any Italian food available?
–Ed Mong Sr.
We haven’t really looked, but there is Pizza Hut, Domino’s, KFC, McDonalds, and a few Italian food restaurants. We won’t go to any of those because there’s too much exciting Chinese food to explore.
–Ilana

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Sasha would like to hear about any animals you’ve seen. Does Beijing have squirrels? And Michael wants to know if you are all eating with chopsticks.
–Andrea
There aren’t any squirrels, but there are some cool looking birds and I saw a butterfly. Do bugs count? There’s not so many at all. Only gnats.We also saw a bunch of animals at the zoo. Yes, we all are eating with chopsticks.
–Ilana

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I imagine it will take you some time to adjust to the time change. So, what do the Chinese serve for breakfast?
–Andrea
I searched for “chinese breakfast” on the internet. Apparently, a bowl of “congee” is just the thing to have on cold, rainy mornings. I would let your Dad try it first.
–Dave Dunkle
I refused to try the congee because it looked really gross. It’s mashed up rice with some mixtures in it. Who knows maybe I will try it and like it.
–Ilana

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Zoo

25. April 2008 by ilanamong.

Yesterday I really wanted to go to the zoo, but my mom didn’t want to–we ended up going anyway, yay! First we went to the panda exhibit. The pandas were so cute, it looked like I could just go up and cuddle with one. One walked around, going this way and that, one slept in a really cute way on top of a jungle gym with its arms hanging down, and one ate in the corner of his cage. The pandas had nice big cages with large play areas including jungle gyms, slides, and platforms that go up and up.

Next we went to the big cat exhibit. The cats like lions, tigers, jaguars, black leopards, and more were so cute, but the enclosures they were in were so small that the cats could just barely move. Those were their indoor enclosures, but the outdoor enclosures that only had three or four animals in them had huge beautiful outdoor enclosures that actually looked like habitats. We also saw fox and wolves, birds of all kinds, elephants, hippos, and rhinos. I even got to ride an elephant (a statue of one that is). There was an aquarium that we didn’t go in and we also couldn’t find the monkeys, giraffs, or bears. Construction was probably blocking the entrance. Then my mom decided it was time to go.

We went to meet my dad at a park called Beihei and it was beautiful. They had food stands just opening because it was 5:00 and boat rentals just closing. We only had time to walk through it because my feet were getting tired from walking all day and I was getting hungry too. We will definitely go back and explore all the different houses and temples there. We also saw a woman taking her wedding pictures in a red dress.

We walked out of the park and started looking for a restaurant my dad read about in his guide book. Oh no! My parents never find anything from their guide book. But, for the first time we found the restaurant. We ordered a pork casserole called bairou because that’s what the restaurant is famous for. The restaurant has been there since 1741 and they have been serving bairou the whole time. We also got a small, whole, roasted chicken, and seasonal vegetables like tomatoes, yuck. The chicken was good and the pork and broth of the soup was good, but there was something green in the soup that didn’t taste so good. Once we finished dinner we got a cab home and ate some more of the birthday cake (icing for me). We went for a quick dip in the hotel pool and then we were all ready for sleep.

Today, we are thinking about going to the Summer Palace. It’s already getting late, so I have to go get ready to go out.

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Exploring

24. April 2008 by ilanamong.

Yesterday was a day of exploring and going on adventures. We went to the grocery store to get some things for breakfast. While we were there we saw big fish, little fish, and everything in between with eyes on them and the rest of their body parts. They were bloody and didn’t look the least bit edible. We got orange juice, Ritz crackers, apples, and oranges. We came back and did some of our homework. My brother Alex was having a breakdown because he couldn’t think. I did three pages of my math and some of my book project.

After the necessary chores were done, the fun began. We went out to a little restaurant on a street that was playing Christmas music in english the other day. It was a nice little street. The three of us went in to get something good to eat, we got a vegtable dish with an underwater plant and some strong cucumber. My mom loved it, but I didn’t. We also got some sweet and sour chicken–pretty much the same as at home. For dessert, we had some sweet, sticky, buns that were filled with a sweet bean paste (I think). They were okay.

We walked around in the afternoon near the Forbidden City, but we’re waiting until my Dad is done with work before we go in so we can all see it together. On our way to explore a new neighborhood, we got caught in a sudden downpour. Luckily, we were in a touristy area and people are always selling umbrellas–we got two for $3.00. Things are very inexpensive in China.

Once the rain was over, we met up with my Dad and headed off to find a restaurant we read about for my birthday dinner. We walked up and down a few alley neighborhoods called Hutongs. In the Hutongs, we saw people selling meat on a stick, old men playing board games and drinking tea, people fixing shoes, public restrooms, restaurants hidden behind walls in courtyards, and of course, lots and lots of construction. All of Beijing is under construction.

We could not find the Hutong where our restaurant was supposed to be and we were getting pretty tired and hungry, so we gave up. We found a little hot pot restaurant in a small Hutong off a main street. A hot pot restaurant has a big pot in the middle of the table and you order meat and vegetables that come raw and you cook it yourself by dipping it in the hot pot. Our hot pot had two sides, a spicy side and a plain side. We ordered beef and we got mountains and mountains of raw, thinly slice beef. We also ordered some clear noodles, some big scallions, and some cabbage. You throw everything into the pot and just scoop it out and eat it when it’s cooked. I didn’t eat the scallions or cabbage, but the noodles were really good. It came with a peanut dipping sauce that you mix little scallions and cilantro into. I didn’t think I would like the green stuff in the dipping sauce, but it made it really good. The owner of the restaurant had to show us how to do everything–she was really nice. I’m getting pretty good with chopsticks now, which is a good thing because outside of the hotel and touristy restaurants no one has a fork. I enjoyed my birthday dinner.

 

After dinner we walked down to a bakery and bought a birthday cake. This was a little difficult because they had a lot of sample cakes to choose from and we weren’t sure if we could get one to take with us. Luckily a girl about 12 years old came in and was happy to try her English out on us. We managed to pick a cake with pandas on it and they decorated it right then and we took it back to the hotel with us. They even gave us candles.

Today is my dad’s last day at the conference, so now we can start doing all the things we’ve been saving up to do with him, like visit the great wall, the forbidden city, the summer palace, and more. Right now, I’m hoping to go to the zoo to see the pandas, but we haven’t decided yet.

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Happy Birthday

23. April 2008 by ilanamong.

Happy Birthday Ilana! Yesterday was my birthday. I opened my big present from Alex (my brother) first thing in the morning. It was a really cool 2008 Olympics backpack with one of the Olympic characters on it.

My dad had to stay at the conference until 5:30 pm, so we asked Monica if she wanted to go around with us. Again we went to the shopping district and Tian’anman square. It was pretty much the same thing as last time at the square except more crowds–lots, and lots of people everywhere. Everybody was taking pictures of me and wanted me in their pictures because they’ve never seen anyone with blond hair. I thought it was pretty odd when somebody asked my mom if we wanted to go to the museum with him–we didn’t go.

At lunch time, we found a little dumpling house that was a small little room on a side street. The entire menu was in Chinese and the man only spoke a few words of English. This was definitely not a tourist restaurant. Luckily my dad printed out cards that have the symbols for foods like chicken, beef, and fish. My mom pointed to the chicken, he nodded his head no. She pointed to the beef and he said beef dumplings. My mom said yes and ordered 2 plates. We had no way of knowing how many dumplings come in two orders, so we ended up with an estimate of 25 dumplings on each plate. That’s a lot of dumplings! We must have been hungry because we ate all but three of them. Alex only ate one, I ate about six, and Monica and my mom ate the rest. Later we were glad we got there so early because the place was piling up with buisness men on their lunch break.

Later, Alex got hungry so we took him out to a little outside marketplace. Luckily there are no bugs flying around in China. He got a plate with six pieces of ham on it. My Mom had a beer and I had a soda. We went home and went to sleep–we ended up sleeping 14 hours! Unfortunately, we all slept through my birthday dinner, so we’re going to have my dinner tonight.

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