Friday, March 10: Lisa's Initiation and Doug's (almost) Speedo

Just call me Goldilocks. At home I often complain that our mattress is too soft. Never again. The mattresses are so hard here that I woke up each time I tried to move last night – my hips feel bruised. I finally used the extra pillows we had as an extra layer and slept on top of those – so then my mattress was “just right.” Doug’s going to recap our day:

Our first full day in Beijing or as I likes to call it, Lisa’s initiation—into proper public restroom use and etiquette (see picture posted for an example of a stall). We set out on a couple of excursions. We began the day at the Temple of Heaven, which is the place where the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties would worship heaven and pray for bumper crops. The highlight, which is clearly evident from Lisa’s face in the posted picture, was the Animal Killing Pavilion.

We followed up our visit to the Temple of Heaven with a trip to the Pearl Market. It didn’t take long to figure out that the price of goods was negotiable - the less you wanted something, the better the price. Saying no automatically meant that the price was cut in half, continued resistance led the vendor to exclaim that they would give you “friend’s price, special for you.” We became suspicious of the legitimacy of the friend’s price claim after hearing it repeated to all other shoppers…either the vendors have many friends or they use the term pretty freely. There were lots of great bargains being offered up, including a super looking Speedo for me – I still don’t know how I found the willpower to resist it. Our final stop on our whirlwind day was at the Beijing Chaoyang Theater Acrobatics World. The trip in the cab ride there was as exciting as the show – it was like a game of chicken the whole way there. The show was great. We have a few pictures below, but they don’t really do it justice.
We returned to the hotel tired and hungry, so we set off to the same restaurant as last night. Lisa’s fluency in Mandarin proved advantageous for a second night as we feasted on “spicy deep fried tofu” again. Tomorrow we are off to the Summer Palace….hopefully we pick up a few more terms before dinner tomorrow night, but it doesn’t look too promising. We also start LWWN – last weekend without Norah.