Travel experiences, memories and stories about exploring this great planet of ours

My coworker asked me yesterday why I would walk past the supermarket to get fruit at a street stand. I think I said something about it being more Chinese, but I didn’t really have an answer. Yes, the fruit carts are a little less expensive, and the prices becomes cheaper and cheaper as the laowai [...]

Tonight, we celebrated Moon-Viewing Night by trying out a street hotpot place. It’s a hole-in-the-wall during the day, but at night, they set up portable tables with propane burners and vats of boiling soup So we get a table, and a menu, and I THOUGHT I was ordering a chicken broth. The waiter said something [...]

Vegetarian And Tea Restaurant 103 West Dianmen St. (DiAnMenXi DaJie) XiCheng District (In the second ring road, just outside the north entrance to Beihai park) The outside is nothing special, just a light-up sign saying “vegetarian restaurant”, but the inside is a wonderful haven away from the crowds of Beijing. The dishes are simple glazed [...]

Vegetarian And Tea Restaurant 103 West Dianmen St. (DiAnMenXi DaJie) XiCheng District (In the second ring road, just outside the north entrance to Beihai park) The outside is nothing special, just a light-up sign saying “vegetarian restaurant”, but the inside is a wonderful haven away from the crowds of Beijing. The dishes are simple glazed [...]

Last night we went to a little restaurant a few blocks from the school. From the Arabic on the sign, and the lack of pork on the menu, it’s probably a Muslim place. (This is always reassuring to me because they tend to have really clean kitchens, something that is not always part of the [...]

We may have a new Juice Aunt in Beijing. Juice Aunt is the woman who sold bottled drinks outside my apartment in Yantai. She and various members of her family would be outside my house with their cart, all day, every day, which left Juice Aunt with lots of time to help me with my [...]

Yesterday, we decided to catch the bus into central Beijing and do a little exploring. It was touch-and-go whether we’d get out at the right bus stop, it seems that in Beijing, all the streets in the neighborhood are variations on the same name. We found ourselves at what seems to be the intersection of [...]

Most of the time, I can get around on my Chinese. I can read simple signs, I can ask basic questions, and I can recognize both foods I like and foods I won’t touch on a menu. But sometimes, everyday things remind me that I’m really living in a non-English world. A sign appeared next [...]

Beijing still feels like Wonkaland, but I kind of love being in Wonkaland. I’m having huge issues with the language, though. Since this summer, I’ve been doing ChinesePod lessons, which I would totally recommend to anyone trying to learn Mandarin. They’re much shorter than typical language tapes like Pimsleur, so I don’t feel like I’m [...]