ADDED: This happened on Thursday. went out to dinner yesterday with Michael. We went to a hot pot place pretty close to my apartment. It is starting fare away aka the fare drop in the cab which gets you about a mile or two. This was a Mongolian hot pot place which is different from more traditional places because they add spices to the soup. Normally it is pretty clear with some vegetables and you add the spice by dipping the freshly cooked item in a separate spice bowl you have. This Mongolian place must be doing something right as they have expanded from two or three restaurants to the sixth largest chain in china in three years with ten Beijing locations.

we passed a neon three dimensional palm tree to get there. That is pretty cool. i am thinking of getting one for my lawn when i buy a house. i will have to move somewhere without a homeowner's association though.

we ordered, in scientific terms, a shit ton of food. Four plates of lamb, a mushroom plate, a vegetable plate and some extra diakon radish. There is a spicy side and a regular side as hopefully you can see in my blurry picture. vegetables only go in the regular side (according to Michael but even he admits most people put them in the spicy side, he just doesn't like spicy).

we had a nice long dinner. It was interesting talking to Michael. We discussed the various regions of china, how he liked it here as opposed to Redmond, the current cultural movements and politics in general. i liked listening to him describe being here as opposed to Redmond. He used the word free quite a bit which at first took me off guard as i tend to view china as slightly more restrictive than the us. It makes sense though for him. He is much freer to do what he wants here and comfortable enough to do it here.

talking about the regions was fun. i learned what differentiates the north and south and the east and west from the eyes of a southerner. It seems to be opposite of the us. The northerners here are more open and loud whereas the southerners are more restrained and say less. For perspective he compared both groups to Americans who are louder than both by a large amount. i always enjoy hearing about people's opinions on their fellow countrypeople. He compared the southerners frequently to Japanese as a positive term which was different from how i have heard a lot of people here refer to Japanese. There still seems to be a fair amount of animosity between the countries.

his opinions on the direction the culture is moving were enlightening as well. It seems the almighty dollar or quai seems to be replacing most of the more traditional value systems in the youth. i asked him what impact he felt the cultural revolution had on the more traditional value systems and he agreed that it probably had the most significant impact. Especially because some of the market reforms started while the memory of that was still fresh.

while discussing all these things we managed to put a serious dent in the food. The only thing that remained was the vegetable plate at the end of the meal. We got through everything else.

Michael lives a couple buildings down from me so he taught me how to say a place close to the apartment building that cab drivers across the city would know. After dinner i got in the cab and was able to get him to understand where i wanted to go on the second try. Baby steps. Now i can get home if i get stranded.

because of the setup of the city there are many places that are not on a named street so you cannot really use an American style address like 94 Stewart. People end up using a lot of landmark style directions like near the large department store down the street from the Mongolian hot pot place. The apartment complex i live in is not big enough to warrant landmark status but luckily i live next to the old athletes village and people know where that is so i can say that and get within a two minute walk of the building. i just have to be careful because if i get the first word wrong i could end up in the new athletes village or the Olympic athlete village both of which are about 40 minutes away.

here is the door to my building. If you notice they also use the careful not to get your finger caught in the door sign. Apparently razors shoot out of the door once it shuts and cut off your finger. Glad they put up a sign.

music recommendation, lupe fiasco - revenge of the nerds - mixtape. This is the first more mainstream rap i have listened to in a while and really liked. He is from Chicago and rhymes about things beyond money, clothes and hoes. The song that caught me was a song about conflict diamonds and how the rap industry (and desperate boyfriends) is supporting wars in Africa
and pretty horrible practices by companies like deboer's. This is a slippery slope though. i watched a t.i. video today and caught myself thinking it was pretty good. Pretty soon i am going to have platinum teeth.