We ride the high-speed bullet train from Shanghai to Beijing. It was a little dizzying watching the smaller Chinese cities and country side whiz by at 300 km/hr. The bullet train turns out to be a great way to travel: lots of leg room, space to get up and wander around, no 3 oz liquid restriction and outlets for your iPad. It's much more relaxing than airline travel or even driving. I'm looking forward to riding the US version when we get home... oh wait...
Off the bullet train and onto the metro. Holy cow! The Beijing metro is so crazy busy I lose an earring! We arrive in the city the evening of their national holiday (yes, we hit yet another holiday crowd).
We arrive in our little section of town and find it packed with locals on holiday. Kind of like landing in Washington DC on the 4th of July weekend. It's obvious they are all very use to these kind of crowds - but we definitely are not. Yes, this is the street to our hotel - and we get to push through that mass of humanity wearing backpacks.
We're staying in a neighborhood that doesn't see too many international tourists. Down a side alley from the maddening crowd we check into a great traditional Chinese style hotel with a peaceful courtyard.
The front desk staff speaks very good English and welcomed us with the delivery of our Siberian train tickets. Yes! Of all the logistics we had to organize for this adventure, Brian was most nervous about the Siberian train tickets. There weren't many other options if our reservations didn't pan out. Whew! What a relief to now have those tickets in our pile of travel docs.
Our neighborhood has a state fair weekend atmosphere so we get in the spirit and eat some festival food. All the cool kids were eating fried squid on a stick. We are evidently not able to hang with the cool kids and pass on that delicacy. I'm sure you'll find it at the Iowa State Fair next year.
The other hot item are these hair sprouts that guys and girls of all ages pin to the top of their heads. Unfortunately Brian doesn't have enough hair left up there for the clips to work for him. Maybe next year they will introduce a suction cup version that he'll be able to wear.
The most unusual food item we ate in Beijing has to be Thousand Year egg. It's a regular egg that's been preserved in a limestone slurry for several months (not a thousand years). Very weird - kind of like a jello hard boiled egg. We washed it down with some normalish spicy soup with noodles and (yes, more) dumplings.
We spend our first full day in Beijing heading up to the Great Wall of China - one of the big bucket list items on the trip. Once we got out of the sprawling city, the countryside was beautiful - mountains, lots of trees and clear blue skies. We had a perfect day for a hike in the mountains - it felt great to see the sky and get out of the city. In an effort to avoid the crush of tourists, we went to an area of the wall that's a little further out from Beijing. The length and steepness of the wall is incredibly impressive as it winds it's way along the mountain ridges. I'm sure this is the model for the Mexico wall that Trump will start building next year.
We play the tourist and ride the alpine toboggan down to the bottom of the mountain. Wheeee! Our guide said we were the fastest he's ever seen anyone go down it. I'm ready to start training for the luge competition at the next Beijing winter Olympics.
The food here in China has been very good. If you peek in the back of the restaurants and food stands you see real ingredients cooked up fresh right when you order. There's no Sysco truck unloading a delivery of frozen and vacuum packed factory food that is just rewarmed and served. Maybe that's because so many of their stir-fry dishes can be prepared so quickly and not in a microwave. Maybe it's because they have such a strong food tradition here.
To take a deeper dip into that food culture we enroll in a Sichuan foods cooking class. First, we tour a local market to pick up ingredients for our dishes. While the chef barters with all the produce stands we gawk at the diversity and unusual varieties.
Wanna be Chef Brian finally gets his chance to cook on a real wok with a real wok jet engine burner. No, Brian, we can't install a wok burner in our kitchen. All the dishes we cook come together very fast with power like that. Plus we learned the couple of ingredients needed to make our typical stir-fries much more authentic. Ancient Chinese secrets!
While there are definitely modern sections, Beijing has a very old, more traditional Chinese vibe. A turn down every alley leads to tiny family-owned eateries, tasty bakeries and trinket shops. We didn't hit all the main tourist spots like Tienamen square because they were jammed packed with Chinese tourists on holiday (oh, and Putin was in town too). But we did stumble onto a wonderful garden to get a few classic pagoda shots.
The weather here has been fabulous. The locals tell us the smog clears out in the fall, so while we ran into the holiday crowds, we did get lucky with the weather. To enjoy the weather while avoiding the nuttiness of the packed streets, we hit an alley rooftop patio to enjoy a couple cold ones (well, more like luke-cold ones). Hey look! Beijing has mass-produced yellow fizzy beer too!
One of our favorite memories from Beijing will be the several kids that ran up to us to practice the English they're learning in grade school. "Hello! How are you? I am fine!" When we'd respond they'd get big smiles on their faces to know their English really worked. Their parents were equally proud. Their English was way better than our Chinese.
After a week of great Chinese food and big city bustling we're starting to look forward to a little bit of quiet time with the Kindles. A seven-day train ride across Russia should provide lots of it. And time to break out the extra layers... the extended forecast shows snow in Moscow when we arrive.
"I love places that make you realize how tiny you and your problems are." - unknown
More food shots - if you're in to that sort of thing (which we obviously are)
Real deal Sichuan beef with real deal sichuan peppercorns. A keeper! We will definitely try and make this again when we get home - even without the real deal wok burners.
Sugar glass covered crab apples on a stick - kind of like carmel apples
Noodles and soup, spicy smashed cucumbers, dumpling soup and thousand year egg. Yes, we finished all the egg.
More state fair-type food - cotton candy flowers. It's art and calories on a stick!
Brian called this Boomerang Chicken. A Chinese version of the Chinese-American version of Kung Pao Chicken. Photographs well, but that sauce was very sweet and goopy.
Sesame bun glamour shot at our hotel. You know it's a keeper snack when you buy one, devour it, and then go back to the stand to buy four more for afternoon and train ride snacks.
Cold spicy noodles - very tasty. We are definitely starting to really crave and seek out more fresh salad-like dishes. Good thing Russia is known for their light and healthy cooking (NOT).
