so yesterday, i went to the old beijing wall from the ming dynasty. so it's only 500 years old or so. pretty young in terms of chinese time. there was actually a really cool gallery housed within one of the guard towers in the wall. it featured pictures of all of the gates of the city throughout the past 120 years or so. unfortunately, due to progress, only one or two parts of the city wall still exist including the towers. my companions were two of the staff at the hotel, colin and his friend. how i got into going on an outing with them is still beyond me. i mentioned i might go to a park near my house on monday and somehow colin invited himself along. totally fine--just a little weird. fortunately, he and his friend did most of talking in chinese. so i just wandered along with them.
however, when we started going through the wall and tower exhibits colin said something very interesting. he asked out loud why most of the city's wall and towers had been destroyed and seemed somewhat upset by it. i said with the city growing and new buildings being built, older parts of the city were torn down. his response, however, was much different. he said you know about the time in the 60s and 70s, the cultural revolution? i said yes and he continued with i bet a lot of the city especially the old parts were destroyed during that time. my parents were 10 years old during the cultural revolution; they didn't have to go to the countryside, but there was much destruction because mao was old and therefore wasn't able to control what happened. now this is interesting on two levels--one is obvious: his response about mao; the other is his remorse about the lack of preservation. chinese are not typically very preservation minded. with a history of 5000 years, really, how can you be? trying to constantly preserve would take even more man power than china is willing to use. of course, if there ever becomes a shortage of work, preservation would be an instant source of jobs!
then there is the remainder of the outing. we went to this bakery and got some goodies. after eating those, colin still wanted to go and eat beijing roasted duck. mind you, he is originally from beijing, but he said that there are two types and he had never tried one. so he picked the restaurant. we went in and sat down. then they looked at the menu--which i think was a bit more pricey than they anticipated (it is in a hotel in my district--which is a little on the expensive side for a chinese college kid). they sort of whispered as such and while my chinese isn't great--i definitely got the jist of the convo. but of course, face had to be saved...so we ordered or more accurately, they ordered. i'm not a huge fan of duck, but i certainly couldn't say no. so the food came. one dish was duck, which i recognized. the other sort of looked like meat, but i couldn't really tell. and guess what stupid me had to go and do--ASK what it was! hate myself for that. so it's stomach. still not sure what kind of stomach, but who cares--it's an animal's tummy! however, i HAVE to eat it. you just can't refuse what "the host" has ordered. so i do and while the flavor wasn't horrible, the texture was very very chewy. imagine really bad calamari times FIVE. it kept growing and growing. so thought i wasn't going to be able to swallow, but i did and kept eating a few more bites to save face.
now speed ahead twenty four hours into today's lunch at the staff cantine. so i've eaten my lunch--some pretty good shrimp stir fry and some yummy green vegetable. it's customary to always ask if you can get the people you're eating with anything. they literally share everything here--well, at least with each other. i'm foreign--so no dice for me. i, however, always ask if i can get anybody anything. most of the time, they say no, but finally, i've started to sort of, kind of, but not really fit in. doris, however, took me up on my offer and asked for a coke--to which i, of course, obliged. so i walk over and get her a coke and my a hot coco (they don't have coffee in the staff cantine--only nescafe--yuck). as i'm walking back...whoop...there go my feet...both of them. i land flat on my back and proceed to spill an entire coke and coco all over myself and the floor. meanwhile, 100 chinese people are staring at me and several asking if i'm ok. doris shoves me out the door and tells me to go clean up after checking if i'm ok. so i go to the locker and try to sop up all of this sticky liquid off of myself. then i have to go back upstairs. back into the office i go and of course i start to cry. doris comes in to check to see if i'm ok and i'm crying. and she is telling me not to cry and to take a rest. now, i'm sure everyone is laughing right now as i would be too if it wasn't me that fell and busted my whazoo. i am mortified. i'm the only whitey that eats there. i'm going to get so many looks tomorrow. i was also asked if i wanted to go to the hospital. these people go to the hospital for everything. when i was sick last week, they thought it very strange i didn't immediately take myself to the hospital. don't they have general practioners--you know just your regular doctor? obviously not.
anyway, so in the past two days, i've ingested something else's tummy (didn't get sick though--immune system is definitely kicking it up a notch in china) and totally lost what little pride i had left. so moral of the story...they all think that i'm a stupid foreigner; i need to just give in and accept i am just a stupid foreigner that can't even walk. no wonder they have me standing in the lobby all day--it's amazing i'm able to carry out that simple task.
i'm going to eat meat loaf now at grandmaw's kitchen. yep, that's the name of the restaurant!
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