Clever Names

This is a sign I came across on Gouzijian jie (a street in north Beijing). While it was a busy street, it was not a particularly foreign heavy street, so this was especially surprising.
he he

Now if I can find one that says 'Waiting for Guffman' I'll really be impressed.

Schwarzenegger?

This is a sign for special olympics. Signs just like it are up in all the subway stations.
I didn't even know that Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke Chinese.
You learn something new every day.

The Great Wall

When Joy and Harvey the other week, I joined them on a trip to a nearby section of the great wall. Do you see the high bit in the center-top of the picture on the left? We had just walked from up there. The unevenness of the step spacing was surprising and made for some slow going, but now we can say, "I climbed the great wall!" Well... part of it at least.
The picture on the right is the view from the tower at the high-center of the left-hand side picture.

Beijing Colds and New Soups

One of the lovely things with having so much pollution in this city, is that it allows everyone who lives here for any length of time to develop a really impressive cough. Cara was granted hers last Saturday when the 'air' was so thick we thought the rest of the world had been teleported away. Cara's cough managed to develop into a interesting cough/hack. She is doing much better now because she was able to pass the nasty thing off to Michael.

To help recover from this fun Beijing right of passage, we made another soup tonight. This one, called Galilee Spinach Soup, is from The Foods of Israel Today and is very simple and soothing.

The good news is that while everyone seems to get a cough within their first few months of living here, it rarely lasts more than 6 months.

Guests!

Gwyneth and Craig were in Beijing this weekend. We were able to get together for dinner and introduce them to the Beijing subway system. (no problem)

Why were they in China? Because they are adopting a little girl. Today they should have met their daughter in person. Yay!

More Stuff!

Cara's stuff from the US arrived Friday!
Now we just need to figure out where to put everything.

Dinner almost looks like the picture

We made Baozi for dinner. You can use many different meats for the stuffing, we used beef with spices. These are actually pretty close to how they look in the book amazingly enough. Well, maybe not an exact match, but close enough that we could recognize it as the same food! And they tasted great! Watch out for the pressurized juice in the center though. It turns out that juice can travel upwards of 12 inches and while it didn't damage the table, it did scare Michael a little.

Bread

There are not a lot of baked good in China. 'Ovens' are a relatively new item. Traditionally all cooking was done over a flame which meant using a wok for frying or adding water to a wok and then steaming food. Now, while steaming does cook bread, it gives it a very thick, doughy, denseness. It is possible to buy baked bread, (there are even bakeries with cakes!) but there are not quite the options we are familiar with. Anything other than sliced white bread is a lost cause.

I bought this bread yesterday. A normal loaf, right? Almost - but it turns out it has a jam/raisin center. Yummy surprise.

Grocery Shopping (Rated PG)

It was surprising at first how much the stores here in Beijing are so much like the stores in the US. We often go to Century Mart, about a 20 minute walk away. Think Super Walmart. While that image in not exactly reassuring, most of the things you need can be found somewhere in the store. On the other hand, there are some things you just don't see back in the states.
In case you were wondering, this second picture is of goose parts.
And we're not even getting into the live fish corner.

Dong Yue Mio - Daoist Temple

Layout of the (still active) temple.

This is a temple devoted to the worship of Taishan, the Great Mountain, and was intended for all the people. Taishan is a deity that presides over all the other daoist gods (see below).


You see this giant abacus when you walk in. Its about 4 feet tall. It is suppose to "warn those who enter that they would be judged."


These cool beasties are water dragons and usually found on the roof of buildings. All the old buildings were made from very flammable materials (go figure, rice paper and woods burns waaay easy) and prone to fires on a pretty regular basis. In addition to lots of big water containers (we're talking 4 person hot-tub size), water dragons were put on building roofs to ward off fires.

He he
This one is for Molly and Kristi.

As much as these may look like large turtles, they are in fact very squat, round, and shelled dragons. They would have made some really cool looking turtles. Aw well.

But the real meat of this stop are all the little temples and 72(!) cubicles with plaster figurines representing the 73 Chiefs of Departments (all of which are gods) and at least 5 or more figurines of some of the folks they control, rule, watch, reward, or punish. There were also rooms for the 18 Layers of Hell. The figurines go from 2 stories high to slightly smaller than real life. I'm sorry there are no pictures of the figures themselves, but they are still being used as active religious artifacts and there are signs requesting no photographs be taken. They were pretty wild though, and the monsters were downright scary.

Here are just a few of the departments
Department of Flying Birds
Department of Opposing Obscene Acts
Department of Controlling Bullying
Department of Resurrection
Department of Accumulation of Justifiable Wealth
Department of Raising Descendants
Department of Petty-Officials
Department of Monsters, of Hell, for Implementing Fifteen Kinds of Violent Death.

Just to give you an idea, this is a picture of the plaque from the Department of Promotion of 15 Kinds of Decent Life Style.