Entries: Lifestyle

A good meal...an unfair price?

On this last day of our trip, we’re regretting that we didn’t learn about this restaurant much earlier. 

Michael Koliska discovered this place a couple of days ago, and I ate there for the first time last night.  It was so good—and much of our contingent agrees—that a group of us ate there again tonight.  It sits smack in the middle of the Beijing Institute of Technology campus, amid a group of similar small eateries and stores.  You could call it a Chinese Campustown.

Here is a bit of what we ordered:

Four entrees (a fifth arrived soon after) plus two Cokes, a bottle of water and a 600ml bottle of beer.  Tea was complimentary, and Chinese custom discourages tipping.  The tab: 43 yuan.  At today’s exchange rate: $5.62.  That’s $1.41 per person.  It’s the most egregious example of a pattern: food prices in China are nowhere near US prices, except for the bars and restaurants in tourist areas.  This is a story we did not cover.  It’d be an interesting one to pursue.

The food was excellent, even though the menu is written only in Chinese and we limited our choices to the items that have pictures on the menu.  We’d have never gone there without Michael’s snap decision because it’s a real hole in the wall.  So real that the wall has a hole.

The name of our favorite greasy chopstick?  Well, we don’t really know.  Below is the name as written by the waitstaff.  If you know Chinese, get us a Pinyin name and a translation! 

Dengfeng

I’m back in Beijing after spending a day and change in Dengfeng, in central China’s Henan province.  As I mentioned in my first post, Dengfeng is the epicenter of Shaolin martial arts, and I visited Urbana martial arts instructor Demitri Daniels as he went to China for more training.  Nearby is Shaolin Temple, which has its own school.  This one and several back in the city of Dengfeng are like giant military academies—while Daniels’ school has only about a half-dozen foreigners and a couple hundred Chinese students, the many of the largest schools number well past a thousand.  It was a fascinating trip to see the schools and get a taste of China outside the most-heavily visited tourist sites—even though Shaolin Temple has been developed by the government into a tourist attraction (some purists would call it a full-blown tourist trap), we never saw a Westerner there, and many Dengfeng residents seemed tickled to see non-Asian faces in their town.

Today it’s the Great Wall, and then I sit down to write my story.  You should hear it on Morning Edition in the next few days. 

Kung fu students! Thousands of 'em!:
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Taiji in the Park

I woke up particularly early this morning to check out what others have said—that Shanghai’s parks are filled with taiji (or tai chi) practitioners.  It’s confirmed!  Jing’an Park lies caddycorner to our hotel, and this morning it’s packed.  Every few feet there’s a group of 5-15 people, mostly elderly, slowly working on their forms.  Some are doing the same with red-tasseled swords, but as one woman demonstrates, a rolled-up magazine does the trick too.  Others choose a bit quicker pace, jumping and kicking to music playing from a nearby cassette player—though I have a suspicion that they’re working on aerobics rather than any ancient martial art.

Two subway stops down in the less parklike Renmin (People’s) Square, a few other aerobics groups are at it, along with a lone, traditionally-garbed man practicing besides one of the park’s landmark statues.  I felt more at peace just watching him.

Speaking of martial arts, I’m trying to make final plans to head west to the city of Zhengzhou, then south to the smaller town of Dengfeng, where Demitri Daniels has arrived for training.  You saw his picture in an earlier post.  It may mean traveling from here, or I may travel with the group tomorrow night to Beijing and make my western trip after that. 

Woman doing taiji in the Park:
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People's Park.

Wedding Day Clash

UI journalism students witnessed a wedding day clash in Shanghai Sunday.  While visiting the Xintandi area of Shanghai, the student journalists noticed a bride and her wedding party in a heated dispute with a Shanghai police officer.  The officer had given parking tickets to several members of the wedding party for leaving their cars in a no parking zone while wedding pictures were taken.  The bride, groom and several groomsmen argued vehemently with the officer that he should not hand out a ticket to the soon-to-be wedded couple, but the officer refused to budge.  It’s not a huge story, but an unforgettable slice of life in Shanghai.

Negotiating for Shanghai Bargains

Shoppers looking for real bargains in Shanghai often end up in the Fenshine Fashion and Accessories Plaza in the central part of the city.  The four story shopping zone features hundreds of small booths where vendors offer inexpensive items with brand name labels, such as Chanel, Prada, Boss, Rolex, Converse, Oakley, Coach, jewelry, luggage, etc.  Most shoppers know the items are poor imitations of the real thing.  The quest for shoppers is bargaining with the shopkeepers for the absolute lowest price.  It is this art of negotiation that makes the shopping experience unique.  For example, a shopper looking for a Chanel bag, might hear an initial sale price of 1,200 yuan, but negotiate with the clerk or shopkeeper to lower the price to 150 yuan ($91 US to $11).  Listen to some of the negotiating below.

Audio of negotiation with shopkeeper:
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