Wanfujing and the Summer Palace

So the weather has stayed just as warm and just as humid, but unfortunately this weekend has gotten kinda cloudy.

Because we all planned on waking up early on Saturday morning to visit the summer palace, we decided to plan a relaxing Friday night walking around Wanfujing. Wanfujing is a pretty popular tourist site in downtown Beijing. The highlights of course are the Wanfujing snack street and the Wanfujing night market.

We left campus hungry and made the Wanfujing Snack Street our first stop. All along the sidewalk were small stands serving up all different kinds of exotic foods. It was so overwhelming at first that we decided to walk up and down the street to check out our options and watch other people’s reactions as they ate. We saw some normal foods such as fruit, meat twar, and friend dumplings, but we also saw some strange choices such as silk worms, cricket, and starfish.

As a group, I have to say that we were pretty daring when it came to trying foods and we all shared to we all got to taste a little bit of everything. Aaron bought two huge squid twars and Nick bought a baby shark. Both were actually delicious! Jay brought a dog meat twar, which of course I love my dog too much to try!

Most importantly however, almost all of us chowed down on scorpion! When we picked out our scorpions, they were all already skewered, but still alive in moving. Once we picked out our twar, the whole skewer was dunked in the deep fryer and seasoned. I have to say, the scorpions were not bad at all. They just tasted really greasy and crunchy. The strangest thing was the shape of the scorpion in your mouth, but once you got past that, it tasted just fine!

After satisfying our cravings for the weird foods that you can only eat in China, we moved on to some of the Wanfujing shops. We found this really cool bookstore that actually had a lot of material in English. I found a really funny picture book called Chinglish, that had a bunch of pictures of poorly translated sign in China, a few of which I have actually already seen! I am so glad that my friends here are the kind of people that can spend ages in a bookstore, just like me!

After haging out on the bookstore for a bit, we moved on to the Wanfujing night market, which has more of the crazy food that we found on the snack streeet, as well as some other really cool booths and shops selling all sorts of things. It was really fun to walk around and try to haggle. A bunch of us bought panda hats, simply because you cannot leave China without one. We also found some Chinese toys to play with and had a lot of fun playing and talking with some of the shop workers.

The night market began to close around ten thirty. Believe it or not, most things in China are already closed by this time. Sometimes I find it hard to believe that everything shits down so early. Anyways, by then we were all so tired that we jumped on the subway and went back to Beida and turned in for the night.

I woke up early on Saturday morning so that Molly, Brittany, and I could run to Paradiso, the coffee shop on campus, for coffee and to pick up sandwiches and snacks for a picnic lunch at the Summer Palace. I was disappointed that the weather was overcast because I was hoping for a clear day to enjoy the beauty of the Summer Palace.

Fortunately, the Summer Palace is very close to campus. When we arrived we split up into smaller groups because there was an overwhelming amount of tourists. We got to see the longest corridor in the world, according to the Book of World Records. We also decided to climb the Buddhist Incense Temple Mountain, which granted us a beautiful view of the entire summer palace. We also got to see the residence of the Dragon Lady and the stone boat that she used military funding to build.

One of the coolest moments of the day was when Brittany and I decided to do taiqi on the top of the mountain. We must have been doing a pretty good job because all of the Chinese tourists recognized exactly what we were doing, watched us, and some of them even joined in!

Later in the day, we all bought really funny Chinese hats. Brittany, Molly, and I bought concubine crowns and Jon and Aaron bought queue hats, which I think made all of us even more of an attraction for all of the Chinese tourists. So many people wanted to take pictures of and with us!

Around lunchtime, we decided to take a dragon boat to the other side of the big lake in the Summer Palace. We were able to sit in the back of the boat and enjoy our lunches while enjoying all of the scenery around us. By this point in the day, the weather had cleared up some, which made for a really enjoyable afternoon!

Once crossing the lake, we were able to cross the seventeen hole bridge to another island in the Summer Place. We were able to climb some rocks and listen to music and hang out for a bit, which was a lot of fun. Afterwards, we got to walk around the rest of the Summer Palace. We wanted to take a boat from the Summer Palace to Beihai Park, but by then it was already almost four in the afternoon. This is definitely something we will do another day!

On Saturday night, I was able to spend the night with just a few of my closest friends in Beijing. Me, Molly, Jon, and Aaron went to Sanlitun for an evening of fun where we had a rooftop dinner, played pool, and went dancing! It was a very fun night!

I am just beginning to realize how limited my time in Beijing is. I have only about two and half weeks left in Beijing before I leave for my two-week study trip. Just five weeks from this very moment, I will be on a plane en route to the US! It really is amazing how quickly time flies when you are having fun!