One Miàn Tiáo [Noodle] at a Time

[by Rebecca]

Last night we ate supper at a real Chinese restaurant. By "real," I mean it didn't have any silverware, just chopsticks and Chinese style soup spoons. Our waitress didn't speak any English and got a different waitress to help us. The second waitress only spoke limited English, but with her English and Jay's Mandarin, we managed to successfully order hot and sour soup, pork dumplings, chicken with lemon sauce, stir fried noodles, jasmine tea, and bottled water. Everything was delicious and the portions were huge. We ate until we were stuffed, but still had at least half of the food left over. It cost about $12 USD.

Ben is a trooper. He tried everything and loved it, even the jasmine tea. He hasn't quite gotten the hang of chopsticks yet. To eat the noodles, he resorted to hooking a single noodle on the end of a chopstick and eating them one at a time. (We'll try to attach a picture below, but have been having trouble connect with blog sites on the Internet.)

Today, we are going to an acrobatic show in the evening. This morning we MIGHT try to venture out on our own to see the beautiful "Summer Palace." We have been warned to cross the streets with caution. The drivers here do not exactly follow traffic signals and definitely do not give the right of way to pedestrians. Before we left I read that 25 bicyclists and pedestrians are killed every day in auto accidents in Beijing alone. That's 175 a week, over 650 a month. I suppose in a city of 15 million+, that statistic isn't surprising to officials, but it shocked me. We will definitely watch where we're going!