Beijing Weekend

Way back in November (yikes, we've been bad at keep up the blog), we decided to hop up to Beijing for a fun weekend. Luckily, we are super close to Beijing, so the train ride was only about an hour long. The train went super fast; Tom acted like a little boy.

Our hotel was certainly "cozy," but was a great location - just a few hundred feet from a subway station. After getting settled in, we headed off to the night market that we tried and failed to go to the first time we were in Beijing. The market was really nifty. It's basically just a bunch of little street vendors lined up that sell all sorts of interesting foods. Some of them sell very average Chinese food, like dumplings, while others sold crazy things on a skewer: small sharks, scorpions, snakes, tarantulas, silk worms, you name it. We decided to share a scorpion skewer. Yum.

The funny thing is that after living in a city where we almost never see other foreigners for the past 3 months, seeing so many other foreigners was much more shocking to us than seeing all these crazy foods. This area was packed with foreigners; I'd say that about 80% of the people on the street were foreigners.

After enjoying our tasty little treat, we kept wandering and happened upon a very touristy, but very fun little market where people could buy all sorts of souveniers. It was a lot of fun.

Then on our way back to the hotel, we wandered around the street that our hotel was on. There were all of these fun red lanterns.

In the morning, we took a stroll down the street to find some breakfast. Well, this stroll ended up turning into our entire morning. The street was just so interesting and it simply kept going. Beijing is a very sprawling city. We came across several music stores, and eventually bought a ukulele at one of them. This was on our to-buy-in-Beijing list, so we were pretty happy. At the end of the street, we came to the Drum and Bell Towers. They were super nifty. Oh, but before we got to those, we found a new Chinese artist buddy who made us a little gift.

So the Drum and Bell Towers are these two very old and very big towers that were once used to keep time for the city. One contains a hugenormous bell ("The King of Ancient Bells"), and the other contains a bunch of giant drums. To get up into each tower, there were monstrous staircases to climb. Whew.

In the Drum Tower, we watched a sweet performance on the drums. The video here doesn't do the performance justice. It was really cool to feel the beat of the drums in this huge open tower. These drums were replicas, but they did have one of the original drums there on display. The rest of the original drums had been slashed and destroyed during some invasion.

Then we walked back to the hotel in the rain. We stopped by Subway for lunch. Delicious. Our first real sandwich (other than PB&J) since we left America. The Subway was almost identical to one that you'd find in America - it even smelled the same.
After a nice little nap on our oh-so-comfortable hotel bed *cough* *cough*, we headed back out into the rain. Boy, was it raining. Because our power was out before we went to Beijing, we hadn't checked the weather report, so we didn't know it would be so cold and wet. I would have brought my rain boots. Instead, our poor little feet got completely soaked. In any case, we weren't going to let that stop us, so we took the subway over to the expensive part of town to find an import store called April Gourmet. We were feeling a tad lost after a while, and had a hard time understanding the directions we were given after asking the locals, so we looked for foreigners. I spotted a coffee shop, and knew we would find some in there. I was right. The cafe was chuck full of them. We spotted a nice-looking couple and went in for the kill. They were British and super nice. We chatted with them for quite some time before we headed off with a much more certain sense of direction.

At April Gourmet we found all sorts of great things. We wanted to buy the whole store. However, it was mighty expensive, and we only brought a certain amount of money with us to Beijing, so we had to choose wisely. The saddest thing was that we had no way to keep food cold until we got home, so we couldn't buy any cheese. We managed to stay cheery enough though, and headed back out and on our way to the Yashow Market.

The Yashow Market is very similar to the Pearl and Silk Markets that we went to the first time we were in Beijing. It's just a bunch of little booths crammed into a huge building, where you can buy all sorts of things - mostly clothing, souveniers, and trinkets. We had quite a lot of fun bartering, and walked away with one souvenier for our family back home. We ate dinner at the food court area in the market, and mentally prepared for a cold and wet walk back to the hotel.

By the time we got back, our feet had been soaked in freezing water for several hours, and we were cold. This was not made any better by the fact that our room's heater was broken. After asking the hotel employees to fix the heater three times (made only more interesting by our lack of Chinese-speaking capability), we ended up with an extra blanket for the bed.

On Sunday morning, we woke up to a cold, snowy Beijing. And our shoes were still wet from Saturday's antics. Yikes. No matter, we bundled up as much as possible, packed up our things, and were off to church. It was so nice to be in a "regular" (-ish) ward for church. We got extra lucky because it just so happened to be primary program Sunday - that's basically the best Sunday of the year! It was so so adorable. The Spirit was so very strong throughout church, I seriously had to stop myself from crying like every 3 minutes. After sacrament service, Tom and I went our separate ways to go to Relief Society meeting and Priesthood meeting. The RS was very small; it had 4 or 5 regularly attending members, and 4 visiting sisters: myself, a businesswoman, and two professional golfers. Interesting, right? The professional golfers were Lolly Maritz from South Africa, and her trainer Reeve Nield from Zimbabwe. They were very kind.

After church, we went to Fat Burger for lunch. Oh my delicious. This place is more or less like an In-N-Out - they make burgers, fries, onion rings, shakes, and nothing else. It was so so tasty. We each got a burger and drinks, and shared an order of fries and onion rings. YUM.

There were so many foreigners in this restaurant. I don't think there was a single Chinese patron. While I was taking a potty break, Tom overheard some girls talking about Mormonism a few tables over. Well, I'll just let him write about it.

(Tom here) It was so interesting, because for the first time in a few months, I was getting a prompting to have a missionary moment that would not be against the law! (It's legal to proselyte to other foreigners here.) I hesitated for a few moments, and when I heard the word "Mormon" again, I decided I would do it. So while Alicia was still away in the restroom, I scooted in between a few tables and interrupted their conversation. It was about 5 American girls in their early 20's. I apologized for interrupting and asked if they were talking about Mormons.

Anyways, long story short, none of them were members, but a few of them had seen the broadway play, "The Book of Mormon". They were discussing the origins of the church. I wanted to hear more about what they were saying and make sure they had their facts straight, but I could tell that my presence had changed the topic enough that it would be wierd if I started preaching about church history. We talked for a few minutes about what we were doing in China and once Alicia showed up, I felt like we had made a good enough impression and that we should leave it at that. But then, I just had to throw in one last plug... "Oh, did you guys have any questions about Mormons?" ha ha They said no, and we said goodbye.

Here are a few random pictures that we took along the way.

A few people have asked what the toilet situation is like over here. Here is the simplest way to explain it. This was on the door of a public restroom.

An interesting juxtaposition.

An advertisement for a sleep-anywhere pillow. Holes in the side of the globe are available for hand cuddling.

The trip back to Cangzhou was a little stressful, but things were looking up when Tom found this Dove chocolate bar on the ground at the train station.

At the end of trip, we gathered our loot and took a picture. Like a boss.