Trips

 

Wed., 10/1/14 – Beijing to Xi’an – The Chinese National Holiday begins           This morning we had time to repack for our train ride overnight to Xi’an (she-an).  As we met to get on our bus for the afternoon, it started to rain and continued to rain all day.  It is the first rain we have had since our first morning in Shanghai.             Joan took us to one of the Hutong communities in the center of Beijing.  These neighborhoods originated 800 years ago when the Mongols (Kublai) set up single family homes in quadrangles around a small and a larger courtyard.  Narrow alleys connected and fronted the structures.  These original areas became several family homes in the 1900’s as more rooms were added taking up the courtyard space.  We walked in the rain down several narrow alleys, passing a corner liquor store that had old fire water urns cemented into the exterior walls.  These living quarters are all in a dilapidated condition, have running water and electricity, cook with propane, and no “house” has a bathroom.  The residents use a common toilet in another building.  (I used one.  It had four Asian squat toilets with four-foot divider walls and no doors.) They shower somewhere else.  In 2008 these homes got electric heat to replace charcoal stoves.  We went into one of these houses and ate lunch.  The food was okay but I am still amazed that OAT approved of us eating in a place that could not sterilize dishes or use purified water to cook the food.
Firewater Urns	Model of the Hutong
Hutong street	Common bathroom
Entrance to our hostess's house	Interior
Lunch	After lunch the owner’s niece showed us the snuff bottles the women have painted for four generations.  They use a fine paintbrush bent at a 90° angle and paint the bottles from the inside.  This family’s craft was featured at the Beijing Olympics.
Painted snuff bottle	Painted snuff bottles
The uncle of this Hutong family showed us how to make dim sums and then two of us got to roll the dough, fill them, and pinch them closed.  The dough is then boiled, steamed, or fried.	Making dim sum dough
Making dim sum dough	The kitchen
It was pouring rain as we left the house and walked more of the neighborhood.  We stepped at a local market to get out of the rain and looked at some strange vegetables, many packages of noodles and spices, booths of clothes, meat, souvenirs, etc.  Several in our group bought $3 umbrellas or $1 plastic ponchos because they had not come prepared.	Covers are to keep dogs from peeing on the tires
Market	Sleepy meat market attendant
Market - white radishes in the foreground	Market - the large vegetable above the beans is a winter squash
Shrimp	Cute kid
Next stop was a fancy pedestrian mall.  The street was originally lined with the mansions of princes.  They were torn down and replaced with fancy stores and malls.    We entered the first department store to find a bathroom and found that the store sold all kinds of Chinese arts and crafts.  We looked at Cloisonné, silk embroidery, jade carvings, etc.         On the way back to the bus we strolled down the street of night food vendors.  They were cooking and selling all kinds of things especially skewers with shrimp, silkworms, squid, snake, crickets, grasshoppers, fish, frogs, turtles, etc.  There were also starfish, sea urchins, tripe, kidneys, livers, etc.  They also had noodles, fruit, and fried dim sum.  It was a great photo op, but we did not chance to eat anything.
Fruit on a stick	Octopus, fried silkworms, and shrimp
Zongzi (sticky rice dumplings)	Looks like pineapple
Octopus, duck, kidneys, etc.	Dark things are mushrooms
Desserts	Fried eggs on a stick
Fish on a stick	More goodies - silkworms, spiders, and who knows what else
Variety	Starfish
We went to dinner at another restaurant on our way to the train station.  It was a good meal and the last decent bathroom we will see for awhile.              We got into our compartment on the train to Xian.  We were each given two tickets so we did not have to share our compartment with two other people.  We each had a lower and an upper bunk.  It was not luxury and the linens were suspect.  There was a Western toilet for common use at one end of the car and an Asian toilet at the other.  It was not too bad all night but the train car rattled and vibrated and the doors rattled.  This was not an especially enjoyable train trip - a little like the proverbial "slow boat to China".
	Our compartment
Arrival in Xian

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