Beijing Birthday Shenanigans

Living away from one’s own country is often exciting, but sometimes the absence of home comforts and family can leave you with feelings of melancholy. So in order to avoid feeling blue on my birthday, I decided to dedicate the entire month of April to celebrating the anniversary of my birth. This basically meant that any activity that I deemed fun or interesting would, by default, be in honour of my birthday (when in reality it rarely was).

Another reason for wanting to milk the attention is because my birthday this year fell on a Wednesday. Who wants to join a midweek party? Nobody! Luckily, my students also remembered my birthday (perhaps the constant hints prevented any forgetfulness) and helped me to celebrate with a tower of cupcakes, oreos and Choco Pies. The chocolatey cylinders were adorned with candles, chocolate sauce and sprinkled with M&Ms, which I am told spelled out MR. D. (They do realise my surname is Cole, however they informed me that the “D” stood for Detention…no idea why…). 

After school, I went to a café with Kate and Becky, where a young girl serenaded me with a very cute, if not a little repetitive Happy Birthday greeting. After leaving the coffee shop, I was pelted with dust and dirt. Thankfully, it wasn’t the deed of a birthday-hating member of the public. Mother nature is a cruel mistress and as such, decided to pummel me with a grainy blast to the face. I later learned that I had been caught in one of Beijing’s worst sandstorms for many years. Nothing makes you feel special like a mouthful of sand.

For my actual birthday celebration, I invited some friends to my place. We ordered Chinese takeaway, (the REAL kind of Chinese takeaway!) played card games and ended the night at KTV. It was wonderful to spend the evening with my close friends, albeit a little poignant at times, as some of my friends will be leaving Beijing soon.

I was recently invited to a Chinese barbecue. This involved driving to the outskirts of Beijing, and barbecuing a variety of meats on sticks. 烤羊串儿 (lamb kebabs) are very popular in Beijing and usually coated in cumin. Anyone who knows me well will understand that I am a terrible Welshman, due to being a reluctant lamb-eater. But because I choose to believe that everyone had gone to all this effort for my extended birthday party, I felt obliged to partake in the excessive eating that took place that afternoon.

Finally, this event may not be connected to my birthday in any way, although it’s too amazing for me not to include it in this blog entry. This evening I met a robot that served me ice cream (let's refer to it as birthday ice cream). I stumbled across the Ice Cream Robot booth and saw that for a mere 10RMB, I could be served original, blueberry or mango ice cream. I excitedly paid the robot lady and watched in awe as she filled a small cup with ice cream, added blueberry sauce and a robot-handful of nuts. My inner-geek and outer-ice-cream-addict was overjoyed with such a treat. I feel that I may have to make many return visits!

Tôi đã có một bữa tiệc sinh nhật rất tuyệt. Tôi đã có một buổi tiệc ý nghĩa, vì bạn bè của tôi sẽ chuyển đi. Chúng tôi đã đi karaoke. Gần đây tôi đã ăn thịt nướng ở ngoài trời… ngon miệng và rẻ tiền.

Tối nay, tôi đã thấy một rôbốt phục vụ kem! Rất tuyệt!

The Attack Of The Catkins In Beijing

Just when you thought it was safe to roam the streets of Beijing without a mask, members of the public in China's capital have been terrorised by an army of floating white fluff. In fairness, it makes an interesting change to complain about ingesting airborne seeds as opposed to the toxic chemicals from pollution.

Each year, as Beijing makes the rather quick transition from spring to the blistering heat of summer, the trees disperse a freakishly high quantity of poplar seeds, which bombard the air with dancing white balls of fluff. It would almost look like a beautiful snow flurry, however there is something very sinister about these cotton-like wisps.

If I could offer some advice on how to deal with these levitating beasts, it would be to cover all of your orifices. It appears that the seeds' main aim is to bury deep into the nostrils of unsuspecting people while forcing everyone to make embarrassing contortions and flap their hands about as they battle their way through the onslaught of kamikaze catkins.

Sadly, the camera on my phone was unable to capture the true extent of horror that the flying brutes create.

This short period shall now be referred to, as “Fluffageddon” and is truly a hay fever sufferer’s nightmare. The seeds are called "杨絮"(Yáng xù) in Chinese which ironically, could sound like a sneeze if pronounced by a Chinese-learner like myself. Thankfully, this challenging time does not last too long and very soon, my mask will return to its chief duty of filtering out smog fumes.

   
Tôi bị dị ứng phấn hoa, vì thế vào đầu mùa xuân, mắt của tôi hay bị đỏ và sưng lên.
Bây giờ ở Bắc Kinh có rất nhiều hoa đuôi sóc, vì thế vào những ngày có gió thì thật khó chịu.

Mike's Chomping Cheesy Chinese Chow Challenge #1 - Jian bing

After sampling many of the Chinese street food snacks that Beijing has to offer, I have acquired an understanding of what I enjoy and what I should avoid. I quite often indulge in tasty market food or get a hankering for some fried nibbles when I suffer from hunger pangs. 

On the weekend, I woke up craving a jian bing (煎饼) which is a savoury egg pancake. This crepe-like delicacy can have a variety of fillings but usually contains spicy sauces, spring onion, coriander and a crispy cracker.

I have come to realise that this pancake makes a great breakfast, lunch or dinner. However, this time I wanted something more. Something groundbreaking. I wanted to push the boundaries of everything I had come to know and understand.

What if this time, I didn’t just accept the fillings I was given inside my delicious jian bing package? What if I wanted to improve on perfection? It was then that I made a drastic decision that was to change my eating habits forever. I was going to grate cheddar cheese onto my jian bing.

I have yet to discover a jian bing stall in Beijing  that offers cheese. It dawned on me that I could be uncovering something that would rock the very core of the street food world. Experimenting with cheese should not be taken lightly. I anxiously collected my jian bing from a nearby location and hastily returned to my apartment where my block of imported Irish cheddar awaited.

Usually, I eat the jian bing straight from the bag but this time I presented it carefully on a plate while I got the cheese grater. The burden of responsibility weighed heavily on my shoulders as I sprinkled a generous amount of cheese on top of the pancake.

What happened next can only be described as a breathtaking moment of bliss. The cheese began to melt slightly and as I munched on the jian bing, I felt that the cheddar was the yang to the spicy sauce’s yin.

As a culinary pioneer, I now feel that it is my duty to continue on this experimental quest. I cannot stop now that I know the treasures that lay within a cheesy jian bing. Many questions remain unanswered. What would happen if I added a smelly cheese to a stinky tofu (臭豆腐) concoction? What if I sprinkled some brie on a Chinese meat sandwich/肉夹馍 (ròu jīa mó)? What about if I paired meat kebabs/串儿 (chuanr) with some tasty cheese pieces?

I don’t give edam about what people may think of me, I understand this journey will be a grate one. But enough of the cheesy puns, I have a gouda amount of snacks to eat and perhaps some will not taste so pleasing. I must Caerphilly select my next experiment. You can expect more updates to the ‘Chomping Cheesy Chinese Chow Challenge’ soon. 

Tôi rất thích thức ăn nhẹ ở Trung Quốc. Bây giờ tôi muốn dùng thử một số thức ăn Trung Quốc và thêm một ít pho mát. Thức ăn nhẹ và pho mát sẽ ngon không ? Tôi đã ăn bánh đa mặn và pho mát. Nó khá là ngon!

Beijing's Fragrant Hills

Yesterday (April 4^th) I went on an adventure with my Chinese teacher, Maggie. She asked me if I would like to visit the Fragrant Hills (香山). I hadn’t yet visited this part of Beijing, so I happily accepted the invitation. Some people advised me that it would be too busy to go there at this time. I did not heed their warnings.

The Qing Ming Festival (清明节) takes place this weekend. During this period, families will traditionally visit the graves of their relatives and pay their respects through prayer and tomb sweeping. This also means that there are a large number of people travelling, particularly to the Fragrant Hills area, as there is a cemetery nearby and parks where people can spend the remainder of their holiday.

Despite this knowledge, I still decided to travel to the Fragrant Hills. After all, this is China; there was always going to be a crowd of some degree. Taking the subway for an hour to the West of Beijing, I didn’t think there was anything strange about not getting a seat for the entire journey. It not until the next part of my journey, when I mounted the bus that the alarm bells started to ring.

Every bus that arrived at the station was already full to the brim. Each bus that stopped caused an ocean of people to surge forward and clamber aboard the already crammed vehicle. I casually waited and foolishly thought that perhaps after a while, the numbers would dwindle. Then impatience gripped hold of me and I stubbornly planted myself on the first step of the next passing bus.

Hanging out of the doorway, two other people joined me and I felt my internal organs getting rearranged as the door swiveled shut around us. It is no exaggeration that there was barely any room to breathe. I wanted to take a photograph and document the time I endured in this tin-of-sardines-on-wheels. Unfortunately, there was no room to manoeuvre so I couldn't reach my phone. I had to exert all my energy grabbing hold of a pole in the vain attempt to steady myself, because every time the driver slowed down, a domino effect rippled down the bus like a Newton’s cradle of doom.

Twenty minutes into the journey, the bus came to a complete standstill. I was now lodged in a stationary prison teeming with frustrated captives. It would have been a claustrophobe’s nightmare. How ironic that to reach the Fragrant Hills, I had to withstand the smell of profusely perspiring prisoners (myself included).  It may have been due to the lack of oxygen, but I started to find the situation slightly comical. Many passengers decided to get out and walk the remaining twenty minutes to the Fragrant Hills. I also decided to escape and contacted my teacher to inform her that I was going to be late. Luckily, she was also tardy due to the same hordes of people flocking to the Fragrant Hills.

I finally found my teacher and she explained that in order to avoid the throngs of people visiting the parks, we should take a lesser-known route up through the hills. It turns out, that “lesser-known” meant that she was also clueless about where the trail would end up. Nevertheless, it was a fun experience.

We began the hike through a quiet village and I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of people. There was a steady incline as we passed some small groups of chattering people. I stopped to take some photographs of Tibetan prayer flags that I often see in images of the Himalayas.

It soon became evident that we would have to continue our ascent up a steep, rocky pathway if we wanted to reach the summit. Luckily, a man just ahead of us was blasting out some Chinese power ballads, which offered a rather motivating soundtrack to the climb.

 

The man with the green backpack was treating us to the Chinese equivalent of Bon Jovi and Heart.

It was quite tiring, but overall a fun hike with just the right amount of peril. From the top, the views were rather hazy, although thankfully not due to the pollution levels being too high. After walking along a road, we took a different path down the side of the mountain and it was then that Maggie admitted she was lost. She asked some other ramblers for directions, but they told her that our preferred destination was too far away. Instead, we would have to continue along the pathway that would take us to the Botanical Gardens. I was quite happy with this impromptu detour.

The Botanical Gardens (植物园) were boasting their evidence that spring had arrived. The mountain itself looked almost autumnal, but the flowers in the park were bursting into bloom.

In addition to the plethora of plants, the park is also home to a famous sleeping Buddha and a museum dedicated to one of China’s most famed authors, Cao Xueqin. I made a mental note to read his novel, Dream Of The Red Chamber soon.

I had sleep-envy when I saw the Buddha resting peacefully.

Cao Xueqin

It was late afternoon when Maggie suggested that we visit her favourite fish hot-pot restaurant. I had certainly worked up quite an appetite. We selected the ingredients to add to the fish soup and rewarded our day of hiking with a cold beer.

Finally, it was time to go home. I was wary of the return journey, however, the transport was slightly less congested which gave me the opportunity to take some shaky photographs of the busy bus. I was also pleased to get a seat on the subway. Hurrah!

Thanks Maggie for a wonderful day!

Hôm qua, tôi và giáo viên tiếng Trung của tôi đã đi bộ đường dài. Chúng tôi đã trèo lên một ngọn núi. Nhiều ngọn đồi bị che phủ trong màn sương. Sau đó, chúng tôi đi đến vườn thực vật. Tôi đã có một ngày thật thú vị.