First Night in Beijing

Written by Christie Rosenzweig (First Year Nursing Major)

May 3, 2012: First Night in Beijing

After we got off the plane and retrieved our luggage, our tour guide, Angela, greeted us. She was super excited to see us! She brought us to a nice bus, which I slept on, for the entire 50-minute ride to the hotel. Our hotel, Nanjing Great Hotel, is very nice.  After settling in (and figuring out how to turn the lights on!) we met up with the group down in the lobby. It was time to explore! First things first, we had to find an ATM to get some Yuan. Once everyone was set we headed over to a line of food carts that we had seen on the bus ride over. Unfortunately, they had all closed at 9 o’clock (it was probably close to 9:30 at this time. It is hard to keep track of the time with no cell phone.).

The street we were on was for pedestrians only and it resembled Time Square. We stuck out like sore thumbs! Especially because we had our cameras out trying to capture everything! There were a lot of people there who were walking, shopping, and eating. It felt like a summer night out and it was fun just taking it all in. Dr. Huang came with us and thank goodness he did because I don’t think we encountered any other English speakers. After walking around for a little while, we found a little restaurant to eat at. It was called something that translates to “Dogs don’t care for it” referring to the steamed buns that are the restaurants specialty. The name implies that the buns are so good that dogs don’t recognize it as food. Our professor ordered for us. For an appetizer we had two kinds of duck and some chicken. They were served family style where the food came out on a tray and each person got their own individual little plate. We had to use chopsticks, which was the biggest challenge. The duck was actually pretty good and was served cold which I found interesting. We also tried some rice soup which tasted like warm water with rice the consistency of cous cous and the kind of sand on imperial pizza mixed in. For our entree, we had the famous steamed buns. The buns came out in shallow tin trays and were very hot. Inside the buns were pork and a gravy-like sauce. The actual bun was a little bit chewy. It was really delicious, and also difficult to eat with chopsticks. Some of my friends experimented with the hot and soy sauces but I enjoyed my buns just the way they came out.

After our meal (getting close to 11) we stopped to purchase some water bottles because it is unsafe to drink the tap water in China. This was harder than it seemed considering that most vendors were closed or closing. The street was beginning to empty out already! Thank goodness we had professor there with us because it was difficult to communicate with the vendors. He helped us order and make sure that we got the correct amount of change.

When we finally retired back to our room, Nina and I decided to watch some TV, which was of course, all in Chinese! We put on a game show but it was impossible to understand what was going on. Surprisingly, the music in the background of the game show, and on some commercials, was American! I picked out some Maroon 5 and Avrile Lavigne, which I thought was kind of funny and unusual.

It was a great day and I’m so glad I was able to travel with my classmates. I am very much looking forward to the early morning tomorrow to go to the Great Wall.

Thanks everyone for the e-mails!!