Wednesday, September 22nd: Yvonne, Emilie and I had decided earlier in the week that if we all chose to stay home for the holiday we would spend a day biking and visiting a traditional tea house. I chose a tea house out of the guidebook I had borrowed from Yvonne and we met up Wednesday morning. It was an absolutely gorgeous day outside - the sun was shining but it wasn't too hot, perfect for our adventure!
The bike ride into Beijing was fairly easy. It took us two hours, including a pit stop, to get to the tea house, which was close to Tian'amen Square (the center of Beijing). The entire city is bike-able. There are huge bike lanes on every major road, sometimes even larger than the space for the cars to drive on , and there are always people biking here and there on petal bikes or mopeds. The ride felt fantastic and it was definitely the best way to see the city. We were able to point out places that we recognized and took pictures of the places we didn't so that we could remember them later. Both the residential and non-residential areas of Beijing are equally green - there are trees lining every street and usually manmade streams or parks every couple of blocks. Absolutely stunning.
We arrived at the tea house at noon, just in time for lunch. On the outside it didn't look like anything other than an older looking Chinese building, pretty typical. This meant that as soon as we walked in the door we were blown away by the decor! It was a three-story old Chinese restaurant-style building decorated like something out of the old kung-fu movies or something you would imagine in a dream. Every floor that you sat on overlooked the main room which had a stage in the center. It was stunning. We took a seat by the window, away from the numerous groups of white people who had come off of tour buses and were sitting scarfing down the staple Chinese dishes. We were greeted by a traditionally dressed male server who spoke English and we ordered WAY too much food - chicken covered in almonds with a green tea dipping sauce, cabbage rolls stuffed with wasabi, vegetable sushi-looking rolls, moon cakes, fried rice and two types of dumplings, both made with tea in the dough part. Absolutely fantastic meal. We also ordered two types of tea: a traditional green and one we didn't recognize. The waiter served them to us with all pomp and style; the tea was put into two different types of glasses with hot water, and we were to continually fill them up with more water after we served ourselves every time. One of the teas began as a little ball but eventually opened up into a beautiful pink flower in the glass! Both were delicious. In the middle of our meal the staff put on a shadow puppet show on stage, with a fox and birds and words I didn't understand but was still delighted to hear. Amazing.
The best part of the tea house was actually at the end. After all of the other tour bus Westerners left, the place quickly filled up with old, hunched over, wrinkly grandpas and grandmas and they were all served tea in these traditional pots. A band with VERY traditional Chinese instruments came out, and people began to take turns singing Chinese opera on stage. You could tell that the first show was defintely for the Westerners; I felt absolutely priveledged to be sharing something that was the real China: a Wednesday afternoon tea break with friends over some good music. The people were smiling at us and laughing with us and saying hello, clearly happy that we were so appreciative of their culture and what they enjoyed. I felt connected to the people in the room without ever having to say a word. Needless to say, we left the tea house absolutely giddy at our experiences; it is definitely in my top ten list of the best things I have ever done.
We decided to run some errands before heading home. I went to the train station to try and get train tickets to and from Shanghai for when a friend of mine, Michael, visits from England next week. There is supposed to be a window for foreigners, which of course wasn't open, so I waited in line only to be rudely refused by the woman because I couldn't speak Chinese. It was the first time I have ever felt helpless in China. I went outside, genuinely upset, and told Emilie and Yvonne, who then proceeded to ask a group of four young Chinese girls if they spoke English. They did and when we asked them if they would write down what I needed in Chinese for me, they offered to come and wait in line with me to buy my tickets! We waited in line together for an HOUR only to find out that I can't buy the tickets more than 10 days ahead of time, and they weren't upset at all by it. The only words I received from them were "don't worry", "good luck", "my pleasure to help you", and, of course, "you have beautiful eyes"(That is now the staple thing that I hear from Chinese people if they can speak any English at all). It was so kind!
Next we headed to a bookstore where we bought some Chinese phrasebooks, and tried to get Emilie's camera fixed. The guy was a total ripoff, and we ended up waiting around for an hour and a half just to receive the camera back still broken and to not pay anything. By then it was dark: our worst fear. How were we to ride our bikes back for two hours in the dark? Badly, as after an hour and a half of petaling we were so lost that we were on our way to Shanghai. Living in the suburbs, NONE of our maps show the location of anything that we recognize, so we popped out our new phrasebooks and stopped a woman and her teenage son in the street. The young boy spoke a little bit of English, and we were able to communicate that we are very lost and need to find the nearest subway station to find our bearings. It turned out that we had petalled over an hour in the wrong direction! By this time it was 8 o'clock, meaning we would have had to petal for another three hours to make it home. Things were not looking good but we were told to wait here by the young boy. We sat down and tried to think of what to do. We couldn't figure out what the boy was doing, running up and down the street and stopping at certain places. He arrived back to his mother and began to "talk" to her (sounded like bickering to me) for awhile and then running again. After maybe fifteen minutes he came back and told us no buses would take us to the subway; he had been stopping all the buses to ask where they go! His mother and him got at it again, and then the mother got on the cell phone and started calling a number of people. By this point we had a crowd of about 5 people around us wondering what was going on with these three white women and their bicycles out in the middle of the street. We were obviously somewhere where white people are very scarce by the looks we were receiving. Suprisingly, we weren't weirded out by it and it was actually incredibly funny: they all were trying to communicate to us in Chinese Charades, taking pictures with us, giggling with us at our lack of communication with each other, asking for kisses. Eventually we realized what had happened after another thirty minutes of waiting and another 7 people joining our group: the mother had called a distant relative to come in a van, pick us and our bikes up, and drive us home! We couldn't beleve it! They stayed with us for an hour and made sure we returned home safely. I don't think I have ever experienced kindless like that anywhere else in the world. We took pictures with them, exchanged emails, and promised to email them the pictures with us. You could tell that for everyone there, it was an enjoyable suprise to find us in their part of town and would defnitely be a funny conversation over the dinner table. We arrived back home after half an hour of gigglng in a van, Yvonne on Emilie's lap in the front and me basically lying down on the bikes in the back, completely safe and in great spirits! What an adventure!
I don't even want to write about Thursday and Friday, because compared to Wednesday nothing remotely that fantastic has happened. I've napped a lot, cleaned my apartment, had some great street food, went out for a drunk night with friends, ordered take-out food at 2am to be delivered to ANOTHER restaurant while we at dine-in food there, hit the gym, and done a LOT of marking for school. It's been a delightful three days but I am dreading working the next six. They are going to be long as I am going to have my mind on Shanghai all week. SIX DAYS UNTIL I'M THERE!
The pink flower tea is rose tea.
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