Jin Bai Fa

Oh Beijing.
Oh so different than Shanghai. SO different.

Shanghai, to me, is the downtown Vancouver of China. At least that's the vibe I was getting.
Beijing reminds me of Mexico on steroids. Not for its beautiful weather but for its crazy vendors and pushy salesmen!

And boy does it smell rank.

Yesterday:

"Oh, hello, you are heading to the Forbidden City?"
"yes"
"Follow me, right here. You come see some of my art."
"Is the forbidden city over there?"
"Yes yes, very close!"
"Okay"
(somewhere in here he told me he thought I was Asian from behind because I'm petite. He thinks I'm petite! I'll follow him anywhere!)
Shows us art, shows us art, shows us art...
"So, this is your art?"
"No, these four are (shows us the four seasons) I am an art student and these art pieces are being sold for scholarships."
(ya... right... he looked like he was 50)
"We aren't going to buy them"
"That's okay. Have you been to the Great Wall? We have many tours!"

Then a guy right outside says:
"Have you been to Great Wall? I'll give you my car.."

uh...

Once in the Forbidden City:
"Hello! You go to Chinese Acrobatics Show. Tonight! Go tonight! Is very amazing. One motorcycle goes in ball people cheer, two go in people cheer, three, people amazed, four, many scared and leave. And face change opera. Very big secret in China. Some leak out and now Japanese do it, but was national secret for long time."

(still have no idea what he meant by face change opera, but I'm sure it's just fan freakin tastic)

Have I told you about our hostel?
It's totally huge. And in an alley (that freaks me out after dark!) But it's pretty nice. The staff are nice.
There are turtles and fish in a big pool thing in the front entrance.
Our room is... interesting.
Our 'twin bed' is two beds pushed together (but the sheets and pillows are nice so who cares?!)

Our bathroom is also our shower. Let me say that again:
Our bathroom is also our shower.

If you don't understand what I mean (which I didn't when Stuart told me until I saw it for myself) our shower head is literally right by the toilet. Like, the water will spray all over the toilet, all over the floor and that's where you shower!!! It is bizarre (and frankly, disgusting) and the water pressure stinks (almost as bad as the air outside)

Actual blog about yesterday:

Forbidden city was boring. I dunno. Maybe I shouldn't say that. But I feel like you've seen one giant impressive Chinese building, you've seen 'em all. I mean, it's interesting that it was an imperial palace during Ming Dynasty and stuff and it is really very impressive, but you can't go in any of the freaking buildings at all, you just walk around and read how they were made (most of them the same-ish way)...
The best part about it was reading about the concubines. (Mainly because it was disturbing/hilarious and the only building you could actually go in... the most useless one!)

Tienanmen Square was huge.

So in the evening there was this restaurant that we found on a Beijing travel website that sounded awesome and we decided to venture out and find it.
... Beijing is huge.
We finally found the road we needed to be on (after many people attempting to help us)
We looked for Jin Bai Fa for a million freaking years and asked EVERYONE we saw where it was and it felt like EVERYONE was certain of where it was and was pointing us in all different directions. We wandered down the same street for HOURS, literally HOURS asking for directions. We went to a newspaper vendor and showed him the symbols for the restaurant and he pointed literally right across the street... but it wasn't there! We thought we were just missing it so we went back across and looked and looked and looked but nothing! We asked someone else and they pointed us way down the road. We asked someone else and they told us we were on the wrong street! We would not rest until we found JIN BAI FA!!!!!
... but then we did.
Man, did we ever eat at an awesome place... and we found it all by ourselves!
Best Kung Pow Chicken and Egg Fried Rice I've ever EVER had. (Maybe it's cuz we were so freaking hungry)

After dinner we realized how long of a walk we had to find our way back to the subway. We walked... and walked... and walked... and walked in the dark. and... wait. did we miss it?

We asked someone who barely spoke any english and he had no idea what the frick we were talking about.
Then
It happened.

We saw two white people! Two glorious white people! We started talking to them and... oh my gosh! Their hostel was right by ours and they were heading back there with their Chinese friend who had a car! We were saved!

After talking to them for quite a while as we completely backtracked to get to this guy's car we found out that they were from Coquitlam! And the guy went to UFV and played on the basketball team and has a bunch of friends from MEI. Small, small world.

It was fun hanging out with them and they showed us their hostel and stuff.
Stu and I needed to get to bed early (10:30) because we had a 6:30 wake up call for the Great Wall so we went home.

The End.