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  • Beijing Day 11: A Whole Lotta Terracotta.

    View of the housing complex across from our hotel in Xi'an

    The ashtrays are cleaned and freshly imprinted with the hotel stamp throughout the day

    That morning, Tino and I went back to the skewer vendor in front of the hotel from the previous day. For breakfast they had an assortment of soup dishes. I went for this one. It's not spicy, surprisingly, just a ridiculously cheap, filling breakfast including the asian breadsticks. The taste is pretty difficult to describe in that it was a little oily in taste and mild tasting, but nothing really comparable to what I've had in the States. It was probably not sanitary either, but hey, it had everything else going for it. When you order, they pull out a little mini table that seats about four and a very short stool for each person. Two random girls were seated next to us and as we ate, they kept looking over at us and smiling. I can't tell if it was the combination of hairy legs, facial hair, or the fact that I'm left-handed and it looked like Tino and I were obviously foreigners, but I suppose we looked all sorts of wrong and stuck out like sore thumbs from everyone else sitting down to eat on that sidewalk.

    We hired a tour guide to take us to the terracotta warriors. She had a degree in tourism from the university and gave us some background on the city of Xi'an. People in Xi'an describe living there in location relative to the city walls. You live in the inner city walls or live in the outer city wall, which in Houston would be the equivalent of living in the 610 loop or outside of it. If you consider China in the shape of a rooster, Beijing is the throat and Xi'an is the heart of China. Enemies in the olden days only invaded from the east, so the terracotta warriors faced east.

    She dropped us off here first, a place that makes clay figures in a process similar to the terracotta warriors back in the olden days. We didn't ask to be taken here, but tour guides get a cut for bringing tourists to these places, I found out later.

    A small scale replica. There are 4 basic types of terracotta warriors- the common foot soldier, the general, the archer, the officer and the gentleman (ok, not the gentleman part). You can distinguish between the different types by the headpiece they wore, but the generals and officers also had more intricate ornamental attire.

    The paints they used for the non-terracotta warrior figurines they made.

    The place also specialized in lacquered pieces and furniture.

    Solja boy.


    And now, terracotta warriors! jay kay, jay kay, folks. This is still the shop. But I guess looking at these photos, maybe that's enough. I don't know how they sell all of these.

    The entrance to the shop. It's obviously a tourist trap (we didn't buy anything here) and tour guides always take you to these places because they get a cut and they get a percent of sales from the people they bring too.

  • Beijing Day 10: Touch down.

    After the Great Wall that morning, the group got in the van to head to the airport- Ed and Tini's friends heading back while the family would be heading off for more adventures in Xi'an.

    On the ride to the airport, I slit open my finger on a beer can tab. Rather than assist in grabbing a tissue to staunch the bleeding, Tino grabs my camera. The blood flows a lot faster than I expected. This trip, I am just injury-prone.

    On the plane to Xi'an. A sweet bun, a muffin, and some delicious apple chips.

    About an hour and a half (or was it 2 1/2 hours?)  later, we're there.

    They put incense sticks in the restrooms. Nice. I was told they were to ward off mosquitoes.

    Maximizing bike use.

    Tino and my room in the Atravis Executive Hotel in Xi'an. Pretty spiffy.

    The dimly lit restroom.

    Tino and I go exploring prior to dinner and give the random meat stand outside the hotel a chance.

    You choose the meat, they deep fry it. You can get other things too, but we didn't know what was going on. But meat on skewers = automatic deliciousness.

    We stop by KFC and I give their "peking duck" Dragon twister a try. It's kind of like the twister wraps they have here, but with hoisin sauce. It's not bad.

    For dinner, the family heads out to the muslim part of town (who knew there was such a large population?). Also, because it is muslim, they don't serve alcohol of any sort out here.

    Everything looks good out here.

    We tried a hot pot place out here. They charge per skewer you get. They start off with the vegetables on skewers. Kind of weird, but okay, sure.

    I love this hotpot. I normally don't like hotpot, but man, that red side is awesome- nice and spicy. I haven't had hot pot this good since.

    My random skewers I picked up. Not that great, but when I got the meats, that was pretty good.

    Each person gets a dipping sauce bowl filled with a lot of something. They make the sauce dishes pretty meticulously, all in a row.

    A powdered dessert stand on the way back.

    Chinese tv is really weird. See, watch:

    After dinner, at the end of the first night in Xi'an, rather than exploring the city, I read until I fell asleep, the sounds of the city filling the room through the slightly open hotel room window.

  • Beijing Day 10: Cool Runnings.

    On our final day at the Mutianyu Great Wall section, I decide to screw my busted knee and take that toboggan down, once and for all (all taken with my tiny cruddy compact camera- the SD780IS).

    We'd be taking the cable cars up today.

    Pretty neat.

    Great Wall entrance from the cable cars.

    That morning, the view was pretty nice.

    Me, standing on the Great Wall.

    Ed and Tini wanted to take some portraits in traditional dress out on the Great Wall. Here they are making fun of the cheesy poses they had seen other couples at the park use.

    Tino at the far off guardhouse. Yes, he's that speck on the roof.

    Tini calling her dad.

    Me sitting on the Great Wall.

    Tino doing... something

    "my future x husband"

    More cheesy shots. Don't worry, there are some for reals ones in there too.

    Ed with Tini and her family

    And now... time for tobogganing! I had no idea what to expect- ideally it would be in Indiana Jones mine carts and you get to whip the cart in front/behind you.

    It's really rather simple.

    But, man! It was definitely the highlight of this entire trip (ok, aside from the wedding)! It was a fantastic ride lasting maybe 5-10 minutes (you definitely get your money's worth). I would totally do it again, but we had a flight to catch that afternoon. I'll post video of it some day.

  • Beijing Day 9: Park Place.

    Day 9- Tuesday- starts off with a visit to the Mountain Resort in Chengde, apparently the summer getaway for the emperor. It's a World Heritage Site and the largest imperial garden in China.

    The emperor loved deer and they roam freely about the park.

    Melon-flavored popcorn. Mildly sweet like kettle corn, just more melony. Pretty good.

    Now that's a garden.

    So there's a guy with a cart with little peepholes you can look through. You give him a few yuan and sit down for the show.

    It is rather old timey and I like it just the way it is- he sings a song telling some sort of story in Mandarin, and the pictures accompany the song. As the song progresses, he gradually pulls a lever and the picture raises, revealing another picture behind it to accompany the story. I couldn't quite get my camera to take a proper shot through the peephole, but you get the idea.
     

    We got a situation here.

    Ever since the fall the previous day, I'd been hobbled. Tino lends me his hiking stick and Sofia, not understanding my busted knee, thinks it is all a funny game and later on assists me with planting the stick down with each step.

    Then she wanted me to sit in her stroller.

    In communist China, baby pushes you! (Child labor is greeeeeaaaaat!)

    On the way home, we stopped off at a random restaurant to grab a bite to eat for the car ride. Even though there's a language barrier, the people are really nice.

    They even give us free salad in a nifty sealed cup. Chinese people, so nice, despite our constant in-jokes about organ harvesting and "The penalty is... DEATH" throughout the trip.

    For dinner, we ordered takeout from the nearby restaurant again and settled down for a night of conversation. The party consisted of my cousin's family and some of Ed and Tini's friends, all thrown together for the wedding and sharing their life experiences and anecdotes well into the night. My uncle told the story of how he met my aunt over dinner. Alan remarked that Ed's articles about China in the New York Times are probably filtered up the chain and read by Obama himself (there's a big demand for news out of China and the Ed's work in the New York Times supplies that demand).

    Alan, as I had mentioned before, also runs around shooting a Rolleiflex for fun. SLR = single lens reflex. There's also the twin lens reflex camera, and this here's one of them. So awesome.

  • Beijing Day 8: The Great Fall of China.

    Map of the Mutianyu Great Wall- there are 3 ways up: ski lift, tram, or by foot.

    The first day, we took the Step-Way of Moun-Ting the Great wall

    Pretty basic. You're hoofin' it up for maybe 15-20 minutes up an endless flight of steps. Kind of tiring.

    The view all the way back down from the Great Wall, with the ski lift kind of showing how far down it is. Also, you can see the slide to guide the toboggan at the bottom of the picture.

    View from down one side from the stair entrance. Looking back, I should have gone exploring in that big guardhouse right there. It's a pretty steep slope down though, with shallow, uneven steps. We headed in the other direction.

    The first guardhouse we rendezvoused at with the group that took the ski lift. Everyone headed up to the roof.

    Taking ridiculous video at the top of the guardhouse.

    Tino, silhouetted. Someone has to show the photographers some love some time.

    In one of the numerous guardhouses. I can't imagine what life was like living as a guard in these towers.

    One of my fave pics from the trip.

    Like I said, the steps were ridiculously shallow, and at some parts fairly uneven, making walking a little difficult. But I was told it was made so that horses could traverse the wall section (I'm not sure how they got them up there to begin with).

    It was here that I made my great fall of china that busted my knee and rendered it inoperable for far too long (it still hasn't fully healed to this day).

    So how did that happen? Tino thought up an idea to show Vincent and me running all around various landmarks in Beijing in a "marathon" race starting at the Olympic Stadium. So we continue filming and this is a particularly steep dip and subsequent incline in this section. I took off running down and at full speed due to the momentum. As the wall began swinging back upwards, I couldn't keep up with the uneven surface and completely wiped out with a fairly loud thud. Needless to say, the video shooting ends with this clip. The video stops immediately because Tino is laughing so hard his thumb accidentally hits "stop recording". What you didn't see is that I thought the video was still rolling, so I got up and continued running. All for naught. Anyhow, at least it was caught on tape so it wasn't like I was making it up or anything:

    Sunset.

    If I lived out here for a week, I bet I could pull in some amazing photos of the Great Wall. Luckily, the entire time we were out there, there was hardly anyone else there, so I could take a lot of tourist-free shots.

    I laid down on the roof of the guard tower and Tino jumped from one side of the brick to the next.

    Tino's 2nd jumping attempt (I like the little plane in the background).


    It turns out the toboggan back down the Great Wall was closed, so we were forced to take the ski lift down (I'm a bit afraid of heights, most likely due to my lack of coordination: see video above). It's a nice long ride though. This here's my uncle and Tini at the end of the day.

  • Beijing Day 8: Mutianyu Great Wall.

    Monday morning for breakfast, I decided to give Mcdonald's another shot before we were scheduled to head off on a van ride to another section of the Great Wall.

    This time I went with their teriyaki chicken burger. It was actually pretty gross- the chicken patty was a bit floppy, teriyaki sauce unsettling, and the vegetables didn't work well. But man, that pineapple pie was somethin'!

    After McDonald's, I wandered around other streets I hadn't explored yet and walked into a convenience store and drank what I found out shortly thereafter was expired soy milk. Fantastic. I rendezvoused back at the hotel for the next adventure.

    Tini and Ed had contacted a company that caters to English tourists out at the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall. We got a van chartered from the hotel and rode the hour or two out to the Great Wall section. We rented a house out there for a few nights, which you'll see in a bit. Here's me playing with Sofia once we arrived at the restaurant. She had never run on an incline before, so here we are running up and down and having a generally good time. That's the great part about playing with kids- the novelty and excitement in every new thing they do.

    Having the van take us to the rental house.

    Here's the company- great service if you're ever so inclined to rent a house out at one of the better sections of the Great Wall.

    Coloring before lunch is served.

    Western-style food. I believe I got the "Working Man's Noodles". I think it was 24 yuan (about $4-5) for some marinated chicken in cold noodles.

    Dessert- chocolate balls with a white chocolate dipping sauce. Pretty good.

    The house is surrounded by high walls, but still- a glass-tiled shower? This was for the master bedroom where my aunt and uncle slept.

    Master bedroom. The house is in the shape of a U- plenty of rooms, amazingly nice.

    Foyer/room just outside the master bedroom. Keep walking straight down the hall and there's another room on the right and hook left and you'll hit the another room.

    Statues on the steps leading back to our rental house.

    The rental house at night.

    The kitchen at night. We ordered take out from a nearby restaurant every night and all sat down around the dining room table sharing conversation.

    My shoes next to Sofia's shoes.

    I shared a room with Tino. It looks like a monk's quarters.

    Our bathroom.

  • Beijing Day 7: More than You Bargained for.

    Day 7- Sunday- starts with me heading in another direction near the neighborhood we were in. I ran into some of Ed's relatives on the street and they said this place wasn't too bad.

    Except they were Chinese and I, left to my own devices, had no idea what I was ordering. This was a stuffed steamed bun, but the soup tasted like an extremely bland rice/water concoction.

    For lunch, the wedding party went to a dim sum place that didn't wheel around food on carts- you ordered from a menu. Pretty excellent quality food though.

    Tino using the camcorder for some ridiculous perspective shots

    We headed off to the Temple of Heaven after, which was purposely larger than the Forbidden City, but with substantially fewer things to see.

    There was a band near the north gate playing.

    A man painting Buddhist teachings with a water brush.

    The hall of prayer for good harvests

    Inside the hall

    How everyone should live their life.

    Tina and Miguel

    On the way to the Pearl Market, I heard a crash on the street and watched as a van lightly rear-ended a bicycle cart. The cart did a slow motion fall over onto its side in the middle of the street and the driver fell over. The man in the van got out and yelled at the man and the man, slightly dazed, picked up his bicycle cart and all parties drove off. In the U.S., you can bet there would be police, license/insurance exchange, traffic backed up, and lawyer/medical bill fees months later. Over here, it's a completely different way of life.

    At the Pearl Market, it was a big tourist trap. Ironically, it was here that I encountered the most fluent English speakers during my entire trip. I suppose when your livelihood depends on selling to foreigners, you have to learn up right quick. The market includes every conceivable product, from silk chinese dresses for children to (possibly grey market) electronics to (most likely fake) purses to lighters to shoes to watches to ivory stamps to makeup, etc. The sales people are aggressive, and this is exactly what I imagine bargaining in asia is like. You pay the first price they give you, you're a sucker.

    On the floor with the purses, the sales girls were pleasant and friendly. They don't necessarily strong arm you into buying anything, but they will pull you by your arm into their stalls to look at their wares. I started putting on a show- they gave me a price, I feigned absolute disinterest and walked away. As you walk away, they start yelling out price drops over to you. I had mastered the technique of "the walkaway".

    You'd be amazed at how much the price drops the further you get. My cousin Tina was looking at a purse at the price of 500 yuan. It was ridiculously high, so she started walking away. As she walked off, the salesgirl started dropping it immediately- "250!...125!... ok, 100 no less!" When she had walked some 2 meters away, the girl had dropped it down to some 80 yuan or so, but Tina was no longer interested. But you can see how high they start off. The whole thing is all a hilarious show, and I had a lot of fun haggling over chintzy merchandise like the waving mao watch I got for patrick (only $7 US! Down from $20!). I bought a few other cheesy things that day and for a taste of the true haggling experience, I'd recommend a trip down here.

    But keep in mind that no matter how low a price you paid for something out here, you probably still overpaid. At this point, you're just paying for the fun of the show and if you're happy with the price you got, then it's all good.

    Near the Pearl Market entrance. This seems oddly familiar somehow...

    So you know there are a bunch of stray dogs running around the city- well, people put these wood covers over their tires so the dogs will stop peeing on them.

    These are the best churros I have ever had.

    There is consistently a line here throughout the day.

    I have no idea what "kyrgyzstan things fruit & chocolate" means, but kyrgyzstan is a country. I just had these covered with chocolate. At two-three bucks, these freshly made churros were addictive. I had them several times throughout the course of the trip.

    Later that night for dinner, Vincent, Tinou, Sofia, and I went to a promising restaurant right outside the neighborhood.

    500mL beers, cheap, and served in tiny glasses.

    More eggplant dish

    Spicy peanuts and shrimp

    The chicken I ordered looked good, but it was TERRIBLE. Little bones in it and everything.

    You can't really go wrong with meat skewers though. So good.

    Sofia was being cranky, so Tinou took her back to the hotel while Vincent and I stayed behind to chat over beers. After dinner, I set out in search of stupid items to buy for people back home (there's actually like nothing to buy out here). I walked into one clothing store where I bought a panda shirt for back home and heard a guy playing elvis music on a guitar, which is a nice touch of back home.

  • Beijing Day 6: The Bride from Beijing.

    Saturday morning, I once again went off by myself wandering the nearby area.

    This place seemed promising.

    A relatively cheap chicken congee. A little bland- I had no idea how to order or anything, so I probably screwed something up somewhere. In these random locales, I just end up pointing at whatever picture is on the wall and hope it's good.

    On the way to Tini and Ed's place prior to the wedding.

    Vincent and I headed over to the Wu Mart, which was kind of like Walmart but not even close.

    I am not sure what No Play Tino the Autowalk means, but I tried not to.


    Not sure what this is referring to either.

    So there are these semi gross signs for KFC everywhere, with people dressed up as shrimp for their new sandwich. I had to try it. Shrimp at KFC? Why not.

    They also had these fried shrimp balls which were pretty good.

    The shrimp sandwich was pretty gross. The sauce pretty much ruined the entire sandwich, which was distinctly asian and I can't recall the exact taste, but it did not pair well with the sandwich at all. I tried to eat as much as possible to salvage the meal, but I should have just stuck with the shrimp balls.

    Tini, hours before the wedding.

    Tini's family with Ed.

    The primary photographer Alan. Everyone was shooting film, no digital to be found. Here's the neat non-viewfinder panoramic camera they used for a shot or two.

    Tini with Ed's family.

    Medium format camera for primary, Leica rangefinder as secondary.

    The wedding prior to start. So when I originally got to the wedding 2 hours before start, I realized I had left my dSLR battery charging in the hotel room. No problem, I thought, I'll just grab a cab back to the hotel, pick it up, and be back in no time. I spent half an hour in the neighborhood outside the temple hailing cabs and constantly getting rejected. I got frustrated and started walking in the general direction of the hotel (I didn't know exactly where it was) and trying to catch a cab. After an hour of getting rejected by at least 14 cabs, I headed back to the temple. Now that I think about it, it's kind of funny- before heading off on this trip, people were like, take lots of pics! And now on the big day of the wedding, I didn't have my main camera on me.  So, no pics of the actual wedding- my camera battery was stuck at the hotel room.

    Grandparents

    They moved the lit art sculpture outside and turned it on.

    The ceremony lasted about half an hour, mixing Chinese and Vietnamese traditions. They had worried that it would rain that day as it was an outdoor wedding, but everything went off without a hitch. The food was good and Tino's slideshow went over well. As the evening wore on, they moved into the temple for music and dance. Tini and Ed had practiced a sort of rumba to "Quizas, Quizas, Quizas" (or some other song- I know it was in In the Mood for Love) for the first dance. After, the dance floor opened up, but not everyone was dancing. Tino was determined to get the dance floor to "critical mass" as he called it. The crowd was mid to late thirties, so we could not go with songs like The Knife's "Heartbeats", but we eventually hit critical mass when I told him to put on some "Come on Eileen". Some time during the night, the rain started pouring outside, but fortunately the remaining wedding party was all inside the temple by then. Tino eventually broke out some break dancing (nothing fancy, mind you, but no family wedding is complete without at least Tino doing the worm or spinning on his back). After much dancing, Tinou and I left to go back to the hotel around 1 AM while everyone else stayed behind.

    Oh yeah, Sofia with Tino's wedding gift- that pillow from the Water Cube

  • Beijing Day 5: Well Rehearsed.

    Later in the afternoon, we headed off to the temple for the wedding rehearsal. The old temple had apparently just opened up for public events, so this was one of the first.

    The temple. The wedding would take place in front of it.

    I love the dilapidated look of the place.

    As it's no longer a functional temple, the interior of the temple is filled with art pieces.

    An open room across the way.

    Tino hurriedly working on the wedding slideshow that was due the next night.

    Sofia has taken to running through people's legs for fun during this time.

    Hah, figuring out how this wedding is going to go is tough.

    My cousin Tino is also the MC for the event.

    Ed's sister and her husband. Cute.

    Best man Eugene capturing everything on his Leica. Man, Leicas are pretty sweet cameras to hold and shoot. They're pretty amazing.

    Ed and Tini

    Vincent, Sofia, and Tinou marching off the set

    On the way back, Vincent, Tino and I spotted some girl wearing sweatpants that looked like they said "Tinou", so I chased her down secretly shooting from the hip. Out of a dozen or so shots, this was the only one that came out even remotely okay. Tinou got a kick out of it.

    The rehearsal dinner that night was here.

    Me looking like the usual- a bartender from the 1800's. In this picture is Ed and Tini's matchmaker Jean, who also happens to be AP Chief of Bureau in Korea.

    The rehearsal dinner was a meeting of world travelers, journalists, and photojournalists. When you both work for 2 major sources of news, you can't help it that the people surrounding your life are involved in roughly the same. I met a variety of folks that evening, like a striking reporter for AP who lived in West Virginia and decided to move to Vietnam and, for the past 7 1/2 years, worked as a medical raider. She told me about the difficulty on reporting on the communist government in Vietnam what with its lockdown of information.

    Then there was also Ed's friend Alan, who would be their wedding photographer. He was on the Times's shortlist of photographers to call on and shot Newsweek's coverage of Katrina when it first hit (in digital) and spent the next few years covering the aftermath of Katrina (in film) among other things. I liked Alan- he is slightly curmudgeonly, and I mean that more in that he is pretty opinionated (seeing things in Katrina and the Middle East firsthand, Katrina was as big a mistake in U.S. policy domestically as the U.S. activities in the Middle East). He raised an interesting point regarding the time to rebuild a city like New Orleans when cities like Florida get hit all the time and recover in no time flat. He also covered the earthquake in China for Esquire and noted that the response to that disaster was better than for Katrina. Most of the people I had met that night were people with stories to tell. Not bragging about things they had seen, but offering a glimpse into what daily life is like for them in another country from a matter-of-fact perspective.

    In any case, it was also nice to be surrounded by veteran photographers. In Houston, I've pretty much got to figure all this stuff out by myself, but over there, it was nice to hear people wax poetic about photography. Interestingly enough (and perhaps rightly so), these people preferred shooting film and Alan expounded on the virtues of the color of film (though I don't think I could ever get into it because of the price of developing). People ran around shooting with Leicas or Contax rangefinders. Heck, Alan even shot with his Rolleiflex camera for part of the trip.

    I had always wondered about people with their Leicas, but once I held one in my hands, I knew exactly why- the thing is built like a solid hunk of steel, though smaller than an SLR/dSLR and with a much clearer viewfinder. Focusing is butter smooth. My dad had an old minolta rangefinder back when we were little, so I was slightly familiar with using rangefinders. The only problem is that I'm a terrible judge of distance/exposure so me having one of these expensive cameras would be like giving a supercomputer to someone who only uses it to play solitaire.

    Anyway, after dinner, the party moved to a rooftop bar but I was pretty tired and ended up staying only another hour or so and retired to my room a little past 11.

  • Beijing Day 5: From Beijing with Love.

    Here is something you may not know about cabs in Beijing- you will get rejected A LOT. I have never faced cab rejection in my life, so the first time it happened, I was like, BUH?! But you get used to it. My cousin, who speaks Mandarin semi-fluently now tells me this happens frequently- if you aren't going in the same direction as them? Rejection. They're about to get off shift? Rejection. They don't know where you're going? Rejection. In fact, getting back to the hotel was a huge hassle because most cab drivers didn't know where it was, even with the small map the hotel gave us. As a result, it took quite a few tries (or we just gave up and walked) to get a cab.

    I also have no idea where people got the stereotype that asians can't drive, because riding a cab in Beijing is one of the most terrifying/thrilling experiences in your life. They're much better cab drivers than New York or Chicago cabbies. When you're riding in a cab, there are no rules of the road. They drive like how I play games like Mario Kart- weaving through lanes, passing at dangerously close distances... and yet, no one gets in accidents. Granted, they do obey all traffic lights and they honk to let other cars know they want to pass, but other than that, you could be driving inbetween lanes to pass other cars. Frankly, it's amazing that cars aren't getting hit continuously out here.

    Anyway, all that preface was because the cab we hailed from the hotel had no idea how to get to Tini's place, so we walked some twenty + minutes to reach it.

    Because the end of the week, Friday, starts off with laundry (gym and tanning to follow). Supplies are running low, so we head to Tini and Ed's place to get some loads done.

    Tini and Ed's house. It's mainly glass-enclosed, but the whole property is surrounded by a fairly high wall. The whole place is pretty nice.

    One of Tini's last activities before going to the courthouse and becoming a married woman- playing with Sofia

    Tini's a world traveler and an AP reporter, so her passport reads like a novel while mine's more like a pamphlet.

    Sisters and the best man photographing/recording everything on video. Tinou is an armchair recorder. Being a reporter for AP and marrying a New York Times reporter means that you've got a lot of photographer/photojournalist friends. Your life will be well documented. Here we have digital camera/digital camcorder/Leica film camera.

    Heading for the courthouse.

    See you later, guys.

    But Sofia is ready to go have some fun.

    So Tina takes us to a secluded park relatively nearby.

    This children's playground is pretty creepy when it's empty, but this is kind of neat- you get little water pistols on this ride and get to shoot the targets. I didn't see anyone riding any of the rides this day though.

    We headed for lunch at a nearby place that Tina had eaten at before we had arrived in Beijing.

    The interior is interesting (but fake).

    Fried beef with citronella. It tasted more like it could have been beef with sugarcane? I didn't even know you could eat citronella- I just know it wards off mosquitoes. It tastes a bit like the vietnamese equivalent.

    Onion pancake

    Eggplant. This dish was a reoccurring theme throughout the entire trip. Tina loved this stuff.

    And of course, Beijing duck.

    Presentation wasn't as nice as at DaDong's, but it was still pretty delicious, albeit a little smaller

    .

    A small restaurant that looks pretty cute. Heading back to Tini's.

    Hah, Sofia and grizzly mountain man. Babies eating still strikes me as funny.