Jia You! To the Wall and Beyond

Continue to imagine the pictures. They're beautiful. If you want to see them, buy me an internet package and then I'll be able to post them. ;)

Last night, we went out for dinner and drinks with Lauren's friend, Stan, who she met at WashU when his basketball team from a university in Beijing came to visit – she was their tour guide or something. Regardless, they kept in touch. I was eager to meet one of her real Chinese friends, mostly to see that they actually exist. You can never really know with Lauren...

Stan met us at Quan Ju De – this restaurant is apparently the most famous and best place to get Peking Duck in Beijing, the city's specialty dish. I had never before eaten duck so I was excited to give it a try. When you first walk into the restaurant you have to decide whether you want a whole duck or a half of one – everything in China is for the whole table so it's a collective decision. We decided to go for the half so that we could get other sides to go with it as well. It ended up being a ridiculous amount of food and all so delicious – we got eggplant in a bbq sauce with onions, a vegetable, which turned out to be loofah, which is hilarious and strangely delicious, and a pea cake, apparently a traditional dessert. It was alright but I probably wouldn't order it again. We also got some beer, because Stan is Lauren's fun friend. She even drank some – I was very impressed. She probably just partook because they randomly served the beer in wine glasses? Not sure why, but it definitely seemed classier. The duck itself was phenomenal – they first brought out the skin, and then the main meat, and then half of the head to proof that it was truly a "half duck" and finally a broth made from the bones. All incredible (except for the head which I didn't venture to try to ingest as I'm pretty sure was a joke and not to be eaten? Funny, China.), although sadly, I got forked again. So many chopstick struggles in my life. It's getting to be embarrassing.

[After you see this picture, you'll probably want to eat your computer screen, but please don't. At least read the rest of the post first.]

[You'll likely feel a pang of disappointment if you've never personally indulged in a glass of beer out of a wine glass after seeing that it can be done.]

I was worried that Stan and I would have nothing to bond over and that it could be weird, but luckily, since he's a basketball player we were able to talk about Duke. He also just got back from studying abroad in Vienna, so we were doubly bonded by our discussion of Europe, specifically Oktoberfest. By this point, Stan had clearly established he was fun, so we all decided to head out to a nearby bar together after dinner.

We headed over to a bar called Helen's, which literally could have been any bar in America. It's where most of the international students hang out, so there was a lot of English. The walls were written all over; I felt extra at-home when I noted the following message scrawled across it in nice, big letters:

[What did I see? Was it a. I <3 Nicole, b. USA USA USA, c. DUKE, or d. With love all the way from NYC]

After awhile, Stan's friends Sean and Max met up with us to help ring in Stan's birthday which was today. Sean is Stan's good friend, and Max is Sean's roommate who's living in Beijing and working illegally with a traveler's visa. The police had stopped by his job earlier that week and made copies of everyone's passports. He's worried that he might have to pay a large fine, but I'm fairly certain that he's going to be jailed and/or deported. Oh, well. At least he bought us some beer before he's forced out of the country against his will! They also bought some sheep kidney which they encouraged us to try…it was the first thing I've had that was gross. Ew. Seriously. Don't try it. Stan didn't want to go out "too hard" because he had to wake up early the next morning, by the end of the evening he was trying very diligently to persuade Lauren to do a tequila shot. While I was in full support of this decision, Lauren was having none of it, but I must say – she did have a beer or two.

[Don't worry, I obviously have photographic evidence of this momentous event.]

[A picture of the group as taken by our new friends from Cote d'Ivoire. Max speaks French and had asked them to our picture…he got weirdly excited when he asked where they were from – apparently someone important on the "football team" he's a fan of is from there? Whatever – further proof that we make friends wherever we go.]

It was an overall hilarious evening. Stan and his friends were great and I hope he had a wonderful birthday!

Today was our Great adventure! We were up bright and early to meet Lauren's old teacher and friend, Ma, and her boyfriend, Ares, who had kindly offered to take us to the Great Wall! We headed over to where they live to grab breakfast and wait for them to pick us up. We split a steamed bun and rice dumpling type thing for breakfast; I'm continually impressed by the food.

[I'm getting hungry again looking at the picture, which is weird, because as you'll see we ate an incredible amount of food today.]

While we were waiting, we walked around the area and saw a bunch of adorable dogs, children, and stumbled upon a random dance party. Apparently this is a thing in China. Music was playing and everyone was moderately synchronized.

[A casual morning dance party – these are my type of people.]

It was unclear if anyone in particular was leading or if these were just dances everyone knows, but I liked it and wished I could be a part of it. Do you have to be invited to this sort of thing? Regardless, after Lauren guaranteed me we'd see another one at some point, we left and ended up in McDonald's – it's the first one I've been to in China and it was pretty nice looking! We got chicken sandwiches (not the same as the one in the US) to save for lunch at the wall and waited for Ma's boyfriend to come pick us up.

They are awesome! Ma is this sassy little lady who can't be more than 4' 9'', and she cracks me up. Her English is really good! Her boyfriend, Ares, is very nice and generous but was less comfortable speaking in English, although he definitely understood it. It was about an hour long drive to the wall, which we spent getting to know each other. Ma gave me a Chinese name – Peng Ke Ni. Peng because my last name starts with a P, and Ke Ni is sort of Nicole backwards. It also means cute girl or something to that effect so I'm into it.

We got to the wall around noon and decided to have lunch before climbing it in one of the little touristy restaurants before you enter the wall itself. We got noodles which Ma said obviously weren't as good as the local ones but weren't bad. I had gotten a chopstick lesson in the car. I did surprisingly well although to be fair, noodles are the food of champions for the chopstick incompetents like me. There are just so many of them so you can't ever really miss. I also think that my new Chinese identity really helped me connect with my inner-Asian.

[It will be important to note the distinct lack of fork in the picture once you're able to see it.]

…And then we had a second lunch by splitting one of our McDonald's sandwiches…and then we bought Magnum bars for dessert...we needed to get our energy up for the climb that was ahead! Actually, as much as that was clearly trying to cover up how fat we are, the wall turned out to be a pretty good workout! It was a beautiful as you would imagine it to be, and twice as immense. It got really steep in some places, and yet there were definitely people (as in, more than one person) attempting to wear heels and shuffling along holding onto something or someone for dear life.

[Enough people have taken pictures of or with Lauren and me to justify me taking a picture of a random Asian person embarrassing herself in heels and a dress.]

I, on the other hand, was fully Duke-ed out in a bright pink Duke shirt and a Duke hat, with which I wore some running shorts and sneakers so I was good to go. We climbed around for a little over an hour. We were getting pretty tired at one point, but a little girl had her father by the hand and came by us screaming "Jia you! Jia you! Jia you!" continuously, which I learned essentially means "You can do it!" but literally means "Add oil." We all took her message to heart and got inspired to carry on; it was definitely worth it.

[Ares works for a company with a lot of international clients, so he's been to the wall many times. He knew all of the great photo spots; imagine some beautiful mountains with a wall that you can see from outer space running through them. Or just google it, but be sure to come back once the pictures get up and compliment me on my photography skills.]

I was pretty antsy about going down – I don't mind the climb but the descent always makes me a little nervous that I'm going to fall on my face – but luckily we stumbled upon another option! There was this incredibly unsafe looking tram-thing that took you down for a mere $5 – how could we say no? On our way to the tram, we ran into what had to be the coolest photo –op of the trip thus far.

[Lauren and I decided that it was time to whip out the peace signs. And/or that we're champions of the world. I haven't decided which picture I'm going to put in yet because they're both gems.]

[Ma insisted we do some solo shots as well. Submit a guess as to what pose I struck that resulted in literally every single Asian person with a camera in the area to take a picture of me. Hint: it's my go-to.]

While we were buying tickets for the tram, Ares disappeared and returned with dessert number 2 – some Beijing popsicle. It was delicious. I think it tasted like banana but no one really knew for sure.

I was unnecessarily excited about the tram ride, so decided to take a video of the whole experience with my flipcam. I'm hoping to be able to post it here at some point – it's probably worth your 3 minutes and 55 seconds to watch

.

Our tickets said they included free admission to the bear museum. I didn't quite see the correlation between bears and the Great Wall of China, but I'm all about free so we decided to go look for it once we got off. It turned out that there are literally cages full of bears in the middle of this complex. Why? The world may never know.

[You will likely be confused by the picture of the bear in the middle of the post about the Great Wall even though you knew it was coming. It just begs so many questions…]

We left the Wall satisfied and tired. Ares had a Linkin Park cd which we listened to for the majority of the ride back – not sure how/why he had that / how/why Linkin Park seems to be so popular outside of the US (they seemed to love them in Spain as well) but it happened and I liked it.  Ma and Ares were supposed to join us for dinner, but unfortunately Ares got called into a meeting (on a Saturday? Do better, China.) and was unable to come so it was just the ladies! While Ma changed (Lauren and I had to deal with looking like bums the whole evening), we hung out with Ares back at McDonald's. Lauren acted as translator between us so we were all almost able to have a somewhat fluid conversation. I really hope it's clear how impressive her Chinese ability is. Were it not for her distinctive ginger locks, I'd probably forget that she isn't actually Chinese. It's awesome to be traveling with someone who makes it such that I don't need to put in any effort to learn the language because she already knows it. That being said however, I'm continuing to try to expand my limited vocabulary!

Ma came back about a half hour later looking adorable and rocking the new bag Lauren had gotten her as a gift. She took us to a street in Old Beijing called Luonguo Street for dinner and to walk around in after. It was a really cool looking pedestrian street, although since traffic laws don't appear to exist in this country cars would pop through every so often. Vendors were lined up along the street selling all sorts of random things (including his & her shirts, socks, sample perfumes, and more!), and the street was sprinkled with shops, restaurants and bars. We went to restaurant all the way at the end of the road where the waitresses all wore Angry Birds shirts and matching pants as their uniforms. When I saw that, I knew it was going to be authentic and delicious. We ordered some pork and onions wrapped in tofu, a cabbage and garlic salad sort of thing, a spicy soup with fish and these weird jelly-like noodles, and some spicy chicken and peanut stuffed fluffy bread things. We ate so much food today, but it was definitely worth it. ALSO, I handled my chopsticks like a champ. Ma is super complimentary and kept telling me how good my very, very, very, very limited Chinese is and that I definitely should learn the language – I think her confidence boost gave Peng Ke Ni the ability to wield chopsticks like a pro. I'm trying to go forkless from here on out. We'll see how long it lasts without someone as awesome as Ma there to puff up my ego.

[So much goodness. I wish you could taste pictures.]

After dinner, we walked around the street for awhile and headed back to the hotel to have a relaxing end of the night and turn in early. We're hoping to get up and go see Tiananmen tomorrow and meet up with one more of Lauren's friends (she's just sooo popular) before leaving Beijing and starting our tour of Chengdu, Guilin, and Yangshuo tomorrow evening!