Biking in Beijing!

Finding myself in Beijing for the third time within a span of 6 weeks, I decided to try something different - not the usual starry eyed touristy stuff. So I ended up renting a bicycle and started riding around Beijing - especially around the Forbidden city area. With this experience, I have come to realize that this is the best way to enjoy a city! Oh, the only problem with the bicycles was that they were all girly looking ones! All that were missing in my girly cycle - a bunch of pink ribbons and flowes in the front basket! :) Still it was awesome!

Riding randomly with no plan in mind, I saw some interesting sights and places. I rode through countless Hutongs. (Hutong is an area that has been preserved over a period of time, where you can see old buildings and normal people living in clustered houses and narrow roads.) I saw interesting sights where people sat around tables playing a chess-scrabble like chinese board game. I even saw a bulldozer that squeezed itself through one of the narrow roads!

Another interesting place I ended up in was a hotel called Courtyard 7. The specialty of this luxury hotel was that it is in a building that is 700 years old. So this building is a traditional Chinese quadrangle building with 3 courtyards. Ofcourse this place caught my attention only because there was a cute chinese maitre-d'! :) She spoke decent English and I got to practice my Hanyu! She gave me a private tour of the place, gave me a primer on Chinese history when I had coffee in their café and definitely brightened my Beijing trip!
After that, I found myself in some random road, which opened itself into a huge vegetable market. The market was probably the size of a football field. Rows and rows of open shops that sold fresh vegetables.

Ohh, and this you need to see. I found myself around the Houhai lake area. I was riding around happily, and I sensed I saw something weird. Couldn’t put my finger on it immediately. So I turned around and started riding back looking at the buildings. Then I realized what was so interesting. There was a very very authentic Chinese building (ofcourse its absurd to say that since I am in the heart of China!). But still this building was the old style chinese building. And the interesting part, which had caught my attention in the first place, was a banner just above the door - glass doors - that said "NFL Evenings"!!! It turned out to be a bar for expats that showed the NFL world series!

The best part of going to Beijing three times is that I have seen all the three popular sections of Great Wall around Beijing - Simatai, Mutianyu and Badaling! I probably have seen more of Great Wall than 98% of Chinese! The famous words of Mao Zedong about Great Wall: "Bú dào Chángchéng fēi hao hàn" loosely translated as "You are not a real man if you haven't climbed the Great Wall"! So my Chinese friend has conferred upon me the title that I am a "tri - hao hàn"… "three times a real man"… hee hee, some achievement that is!!! :)

Scintillating Chinese experiences!

Some interesting experiences .....
- Getting kicked out of my house!
- Having frog legs and dog meat!
- Verbal joust with the taxi driver - in Mandarin and winning it!!

Getting kicked out of my house…
So my company employs a rental agency and this agency finds a house for me to live in. My company pays the rental agency and the agency pays the actual house owner. Simple, right? You wish! The people in this rental agency is one of the most incompetent in this whole world, no strike that, if there is intelligent life form anywhere else in this universe, then I should say they are the worst in this whole universe!
What makes this experience more scary and interesting is that my friend was visiting me when this happened. I convince my friend to visit China telling her that China is so awesome and she should not miss it. To be true to that word, I put her through this experience and helped her become that much wiser! :) So she was home when the house owner barged in demanding that she vacate immediately or he would throw us out. I was at work at that time. Imagine, she was in China for 4 days and there are 4 Chinese people sitting inside the house and threatening to throw her out. I guess she is better than me in handling bad situations like these, she managed well, didn’t panic and called me at work. Luckily one of the guys spoke good English, understood she was new in town, so gave us time till I could come back home and get things sorted out.
The worst part of this story is that the agency kept lying to my friend to get her out of the house before the owner could barge in. One of the agency people calls my friend at home saying there is an electrical emergency and she needs to vacate immediately. My friend wonders whats wrong, everything seems fine. Funny part is right when the owner was sitting inside the house saying the agency didn’t pay any rent, the agency manager calls and says, "Oh, there is a water emergency in your house and we need you to vacate immediately". My friend replies, "What are you talking about? What water emergency? Your colleague just said electrical emergency." The manager tries to cover up, "Ohh, actually the water emergency caused the electrical emergency." My friend gives up and says, The house owner and his 'gundas' are sitting here and telling me the actual truth that you didn’t pay the rent!". And the managers goes, "Ahem….".

Moving on to more happier experiences….

Having frog legs and dog meat…
(hah, this post is out of order with the 'scorpion' post… still will leave this as is…)
On my list of interesting meats to try in China are Frog, Dog and Snake, for now. Of these, 2 are down 1 more to go. But after going to the Donghuamen Food street in Beijing, I think this list is agonizingly inadequate. I will have to add Centipedes, Beetles, StarFish and other exotic foods to this list.
Hearing my interests in these interesting meats, Mrs. Y took us to a nice restaurant in Shanghai and ordered Frog legs for us (us = the Nigerian Mr.J and myself). Hmm, I should say as long as you don’t think you are actually eating frog, its actually quite tasty. A bit crispy. On another occasion, Mr. X ordered dog meat specifically for me. Though I was happy to try it, I should admit dog meat was bit of a disappointment. It tasted like shredded chicken, that’s it. No drama to its taste whatsoever. Looking at my behavior, my colleagues and friends here have decided that I am the only Indian who has no reverence to my culture or religion. But hey, come on, enjoying God's creations is not irreverent!

Verbal joust with the taxi driver…
This happened in Beijing. This taxi driver tried to cheat me with a "sudu vacha" meter! For those who don’t know that phrase used for the Auto(3 wheeled Taxi) meters in India, it just means that the meter in the taxi runs as if it had a shot of caffeine mixed with a shot of Red Bull mixed with a shot of adrenaline! So the taxi meter showed 50 Kuai (Chinese Yuan) instead of the real rate of 20 Kuai! When he asked for 50 Kuai I started my joust using all the words I have learnt in Hanyu(Chinese) till then. I kept on arguing though I perfectly knew some of the sentences didn’t make any sense in that context, or any context for that matter! And since I didn’t know how to say 'Police' in Hanyu, I ended up saying that in English. Somehow he seemed to understand that word and finally gave up after arguing for a while. So there it is… my first verbal joust in Hanyu and winning it, though not convincingly!

The Joys of Exotic Chinese Snacks!

This post definitely doesnt need too many words... Look at the following pictures (at your own dietary risk!)... Silk Worm, Fish sleeve, Scorpion, Starfish... Yummy... ofcourse gulps of Sprite in between every mouth helped!


Silk worm...

Scorpion...
Starfish...


Best moment of the evening... we didnt know how to eat the starfish and we started eating it as is... While eating, we realized a chinese girl and a guy were curiosly looking at us... We turned and smiled and they taking pity at our stupidity, stopped and taught us how to actually eat the starfish... this is how you eat it....


Ohh well... live and learn... 'how not to eat starfish' adds on to the list as one of those many 'Aha' chinese moments!