Hot Pot, Parks, and Museums, Oh My!

As I was preparing to send this post off into the broader cyberworld, I noticed that though I have put "hot" in the title, I have forgotten to mention something important to every basic conversation with other people - a brief discussion about the weather! It has been in the high 90s to 100s these past handful of days (according to my roommate, Hae-In, we've made some international news for the blistering heat) and then in a strange turn of events, on Friday afternoon it began to pour and has been raining since then. Unfortunately, the rain makes going out exploring much less appealing...but doubtful that it will ultimately stop me. Currently planning on heading over to 798 Art District this afternoon for a glimpse at contemporary art in China and will update more on that later.

---

Wednesday: Had my second go at hot pot in China, this time at an actual restaurant that Bonnie and I picked at random from a stretch of restaurants as both of us sought respite from prepping for an oral presentation. As it turns out, we definitely should have brought more people because the soup pot comes with at least a half a chicken already boiling in it (which made for a highly delicious, if fairly salty broth).  To this we added some napa cabbage (they were out of bok choy) and tofu pieces (picked out from a menu that we could barely read, but did recognize dou fu) and spicy dipping sauce. By the end, I'm pretty sure both our stomachs were on the verge of exploding, but they gave us a card that lets us go back for a free soup base (and then only have to pay for the added ingredients) so while it was the most expensive meal I've had here yet, it was probably worth it.

Thursday: Decided that perhaps I didn't need from 12 noon until 12 midnight to study for tomorrow's test and that after a complicated week of trying out another level of Chinese here at ACC, that I could use a little break, so I chose to go to the nearest park, Chao Yang Park (潮阳公园) since I figured that eventually I would indeed need to return and get to working/reviewing.  Hopped on a bus right across from the school's south gate and took it a mere 4 stops up to the park's south gate where I proceeded to amble around for about 2 hours or so. The park is one of the larger ones in Beijing and includes an amusement park, wedding hall, large pond/lake, cherry blossom valley, and the Olympic beach volleyball courts.  Still, for all that is a perfectly nice park, I found that it didn't have much that was particularly special since I was not into any of the amusement park rides, the cherry blossoms obviously weren't out, and there far fewer quality spots to sit down and rest than at the other parks I've gone to so far. On the other hand, this was the most couples dressed in Western wedding garb taking fancy pictures that I have seen as of yet (probably more than 10 within the time that I was there, and that it is taking into consideration that I probably saw some couples more than once).

Friday: I really ought to come up with a more interesting means of organizing these entries, but alas, I am not fully used to blogging so in the mean time you will just have to deal with the pseudo-blow-by-blow.  After our weekly test in the morning, ventured out for our "Language Practicum" to the Capital Museum (首都博物馆) which is HUGE. I didn't count but I think it has something like 5 floors so we only had time for 1 before heading out to lunch with Du Laoshi. one of the teachers (I think I will try and make time to go back, especially since it is really convenient to get to via subway). Since the section of the museum we visited had a lot to do with traditional notions of family, marriage, and children, we spent a lot of time discussing gender inequalities of that age which was really interesting, also somehow ended up discussing the various stereotypes (some good, some bad) that people tend to have about various provinces/cities in China (i.e. Hebei has very smart people who treat their friends truly excellently, Beijingers are a little self-important, and people from Shanghai feel more worldly than the rest of China, and like aside from the really large cities, everything else is rural - there were tons more associated with all these places, but I've already forgotten some of them...). Anyways, after parting ways with the teacher, I ventured into the expat district with Kirsten to look at a fairly well-known bookstore. Alas it didn't have what we were looking for, but I spent a bit of time browsing through a short stack of Chinese children's books which was something I'd been wanting to do for awhile now. Upon seeing that it had started to rain (of course, when we asked our taxi driver if he thought it would rain, he said no and that the fact that the sky looked so grey had to do with China's fast past of development), we decided to poke around the large, fancy, rather expensive mall - though it was almost all window shopping, it was still fun to see what kind of fashions are "in" right now in China plus some very cute slightly more boutique-y feeling stores in the underground area. On the bus ride back, we passed what looked like a really nice park that is fairly close to the school so if I end up having time this week I might go check it out.