Monday was the day I learned about Chinese utilities. Apparently I am a voracious consumer of electricity so the monthly amount the landlord had put in had run out in the middle of the night. She put additional money in but gave me many suggestions on conserving electricity. I thought about this for a while and came to the conclusion that I really did not use that much electricity. Unless I wanted to live without lights I could not see how I could save much more. Anyways it is not that much of a worry as it only cost $5 more.

Yachi and I decided to take the day off work and go see the Forbidden City. We probably should have waited for a slightly warmer day as it was freezing out and Yachi ended up catching a cold but I am getting ahead of myself. It was cool going back to the Forbidden City. It is probably one of my favorite places to visit in Beijing and I am always finding something new in it. I am going to post those pictures as a separate post so I will just skip to walking around afterwards.





It was so cold and windy in Tiananmen that no one was even trying to sell any random junk to you. We made reservations for a duck place in the Hutong area for later that night and headed to McDonald’s to eat lunch and warm up. On the way we saw a fake McDonalds.





We wandered around the Hutong area for a while and found a scroll for Jasmine as she had lost her last one. The woman I bargained with was not terribly happy about the price I ended up paying which was too bad. As I was giving her the money Yachi found something else she wanted and the woman refused to sell it to us for less than 100 quai when it was worth 5. We also saw an auction going on for this frog looking thing.

As our reservations approached we started trying to find this place for dinner, Li Qun. We had been warned that it was hard to find but I think the holy grail is more accessible than this duck place. We had to keep asking random people on the street and they kept us moving in what appeared to be the right direction. We finally found a sign at one point which was as hard to see as you would expect from this picture.

We also found a mannequin that had not done so well for herself. It was like C-3PO in Cloud City. She had a head but poachers had taken her arms and legs. We wished the best of luck to her and forged on to find this restaurant. When we finally did find it there was an old man arguing with a rickshaw driver about how much he owed. We appeared to be the only people in the restaurant when we got there and the woman seated us at a table as the old man came in from arguing. He proceeded to give the woman very specific directions and when she didn’t understand him he just raised his voice. I was praying that we did not have to sit with him and his wife.



Of course we did end up eating with him and his wife and surprisingly they turned out to be great dinner companions. The place also filled up very quickly. The duck was good and the environment was interesting. The owner had fully taken advantage of the “duck in the traditional Hutong” aspect to cater to a predominantly foreign crowd. It was Monday and the place had more people standing around than tables by 7:30. Here is a picture of the vultures eyeing our table. I said this out loud and a couple of people ended up taking offense. Apparently vulture is somewhat derogatory. Who knew? Not little old me.

The couple told us how the rickshaw guy they had been arguing with got them into the rickshaw promising a ride for 10 quai but bumping the price to 480 once they got there. They ended up paying him 20. When Yachi and I left there was another older man arguing with the rickshaw driver. All I heard was “you gave me one price than bumped it up when we got here, I can argue all night…”. We took the old couples suggestion and went to the Green T House which is a restaurant / tea house near the Worker’s Stadium.

The Green T House was a divisive place for me and Yachi, she thought it was ridiculously overpriced and overblown. I agreed that it was overblown but it was fun pretending to be a baller and have dessert that came in a bowl of dry ice. You could not take pictures in the restaurant which is too bad. Yachi’s cappuccino came in a contraption that took two people to carry and had the sugar wrapped in rose petals. They stuck flowers in everything like the drink I ordered. As I said my chocolate cake came in a bowl of dry ice. What made it bearable was the exchange rate. Had it been in the US there is no way I would have gone. Also you have to ring the doorbell to get in. The door is locked to the outside. I would say like a speakeasy but the whole place is surrounded by floor to ceiling windows so you can see everything going on inside. One last thing, the menu did not have any mention of specific foods on it. Every entry was something like “ocean blowing a cool breeze on your soul” what that translates to in food terms I doubt I will ever be smart enough to determine.