China/PKU: Day 3 - Foot Massage Please!
This is going to be a very quick blurb, since I am far too tired.
Basically, we started out our day with a tour of the Beijing Capital Museum. For the first two weeks of our study abroad program, we take some get-to-know-China-and-its-history courses. Yesterday we took a course on Chinese culture and art; today we took a field trip to a museum full of culture and art. Pretty fascinating! I can’t say I was all too interested in the museum, but there were some very interesting pieces. And besides, I get to take field trips again - I feel like an elementary school kid all over again!
Following the museum tour, we had lunch there - 40RMB for a buffet style restaurant in the museum. It was a bit overpriced for China, but compared to the States, not bad at all. There was fried rice, some Italian pasta, vegetables, etc. I really like broccoli, random fact. I don’t know why people hate it…but when it’s steamed the right way, oh man is it tasty!
Immediately afterward, we went to Xidan. Beijing’s two main commercial shopping areas are Wangfujing and Xidan, both are along Line 1 of the subway, and just 3 stops apart (Xidan -> Tiananmen West -> Tiananmen East -> Wangfujing). We got to visit Joy City in Xidan. It has one of Asia’s longest escalators or something, going from floor 1 to 6 continuously, with no stops along the way. Joy City is also a pretty large mall…there is one main area, and like three sub-areas. In total, it is 13 floors. B4 is a parking garage, B3-10 are full of shops and restaurants. After you hit floor 6, you have to walk further in to see the F6-10 escalators - you can’t really go from floor 1 to 10 directly, you have to stop at floor 6 and continue up.
We were at Xidan until around 4ish. Some of us were looking for cheap clothing because we’re super sweaty here and we want to avoid the impending task known as laundry. After failing to find anything, we decided to come back to our dorms, take a one hour rest and reconvene. I found the Silk Market (well, specifically directions how to get there) and at around 530 we left the Silk Market.
Silk Market - five floors of haggling. Most of us bought shirts and stuff, I got some souvenirs for some friends :) I’ll post a specific post about haggling experiences tomorrow. But basically, we wanted to buy shirts - lady said 105RMB per shirt. Hell no. After a while and calling my cousin and in-law, we got the price down to 55 per shirt. Still, it’s a bit pricey - almost 10 USD a shirt…nothing spectacularly cheap.
The white guy in our group (other than him, we’re all Chinese) had a tougher time haggling. He overpaid on everything he bought, which, thankfully, was not entirely too much. But hopefully we taught him a bit about haggling.
We made our way over to Xidanagainfor dinner at a noodle place - Ajisen Ramen place or something. Arrived at 930pm, place closed at 10pm, left at around 1015pm.
The subway…you’d think that around 1030PM it’d be empty, but nope. More about that in my future subway-specific post. But after a while, here I am at my dorm at 11:47PM.
Class tomorrow from 9AM-1130AM, then 230PM-5PM. Yay…
