ikea beijing, the family restaurant

One bored and lonely Sunday afternoon shortly after moving to China, I hopped on my (not so) sweet bike and rode the seven miles from my place to check out Ikea. My map was dated and I ended up getting very lost. Once you leave the city center of Beijing, you quickly enter rural factory areas where construction workers live and work. I was totally lost on a dirt road when I stopped to ask a man using a hammer to break ice on the ground where I could find Ikea. I hadn't bothered to learn the Chinese name for Ikea knowing that I would never get lost so I had to play charades. "You know, the big building that sells furniture? Household stuff?" No, he said, but as I turned away, he called after me, "Are you talking about the foreign place that sells food and coffee?" Yes! 

(the Ikea restaurant) 

Ikea Beijing was nothing like the ones I've been to in the States. The actual products and design were the same, but there had to have been thousands of people in there. Second of all, it seemed a lot more like a hangout place than an actual store. The restaurant was also a main event. It was massive and absolutely packed. I drank Glögg, a Swedish mulled wine, and ordered what I always order, Swedish meatballs. I definitely think a lot of people go there just to eat and then make there way over to the couches and beds to relax. 

Friends and family sat around and talked, played games, and took naps.

I didn't buy anything. Partly because I rode my bike and couldn't but also because the line was insane. I recommend going on a weekday. That's when I went back to buy a couch and a soup strainer and a bunch of other things that I don't need. Ikea gets me every time on that last lower level as I'm leaving and shoving everything I see in my yellow bag and telling myself this is such a good deal.

-mk

horse carts in beijing and a new fruit called xiao feng, 特小凤西瓜

Well, it's not a new fruit, just a fruit new to me. Nate and I took the subway two short stops from the Beijing city center and wandered around the streets aimlessly looking for a place for me to buy new glasses. Turns out we were in an area of the city where a lot of Uighur minority people live-- the Muslim minority group from Xinjiang, the Northwest part of China. You may have heard about Xinjiang recently in the news. We saw quite a few horse drawn carts in this area and this one was selling a fruit called te xiao feng xi gua (特小凤西瓜).

We bought one for 10 RMB (about $1.50) and ate the whole thing. I've never seen it sold anywhere else but maybe I haven't looked hard enough. It tastes like a cross between a watermelon and a honeydew melon. Has anyone seen this for sale in the States?

-mk

trials for the cctv building fire have begun

My first thought when I saw this building sticking out in Beijing's downtown skyline was what a cool building. I rode my bike over to get a closer look and realized that this was the infamous CCTV headquarters building-- the one that caught fire during the 2009 Chinese New Year firework celebration. Its local nickname in Chinese is "the underwear" because it kind of looks like a pair of briefs. People also have a lot of bad feeling towards it as well and not least of which because it is a 5 billion yuan construction site funded with government money. CCTV is the government-owned Chinese television network that consistently churns out bad TV and propaganda. Some overzealous CCTV executives decided last year that they would set off an unauthorized fireworks show directly next to the building. This caught the nearby newly-finished Mandarin Oriental hotel ablaze. A year later and the hotel is still standing (see below). It's an eye sore for sure. I've heard all kinds of rumors as to why they don't just tear it down and the one that makes the most sense to me is that it is structurally connected to the nearby CCTV tower and that they're just planning on restoring the outside of the hotel for aesthetic reasons. I live just down the street and have noticed that the CCTV tower is still not in use and that construction has begun on adding a glass shell over the outside of the blackened hotel. 

 A Chinese friend of mine who works at a Beijing law firm told me that she and the lawyers there tried to get in contact with the CCTV executives as soon as the fire started to help them make their case, but even before the fire had been put out that night, all the CCTV officials involved had been rounded up and thrown in jail. Soon after, CCTV and the Chinese propaganda ministry banned reporters from reporting on the fire unless they used the official line from the China News Agency. A year later, trials have just begun for the 23 accused (read more here on China Daily).

For more on how crazy Chinese New Year fireworks can get, watch our 2010 Chinese New Year fireworks video. 

another new year’s, another chance to make and keep resolutions

I had high hopes for 2010, but those days are over. I didn’t keep my January 1st New Year’s Resolutions. Not even for a day. When February 14th, Chinese New Year, came around I took the opportunity to edit and reinstate my resolutions. Here was New Year’s again! Another chance at success! Wake up at 6, run at least 3 miles everyday, and get out of debt entirely in 2010 turned into wake up no later than 9, don’t expand my debt any more than I have to, and if you’re not going to exercise, at least feel bad about it and take a multivitamin.

 

None of my Chinese friends make New Year’s Resolutions. In fact, they thought I was hilarious for making them and were shocked when I told them that January in the U.S. was the biggest time for new gym memberships because of people deciding to get in shape or lose weight. While I think this very Western mentality of constantly wanting to improve ourselves and our personal lot in life is admirable, I don’t think I have any chance of keeping a resolution I make simply because it’s a new year unless it’s something like eat a piece of chocolate everyday. That I can do.

A huge Chinese New Year tradition however is that of making jiaozi (饺子，traditional Chinese dumplings) at midnight on Chinese New Year (February 14th). One dumpling in the bunch is made with a gold coin inside. Bite into that one and you’re going to have luck for the entire year. Nate and I were fortunate enough to have dinner with my friend Yuki and her family. Her father was an excellent cook and made way too much food for us to ever finish. Later we all folded jiaozi together in the kitchen and I learned a new very simple cool way of folding them from Yuki’s mom. I’m still practicing, but I’ll try to make a video of that.

The only dish I didn't like was the boiled pig's feet (pictured below, top and center). That's just not my scene. Interestingly enough, my Chinese friend Susan who was also a guest at the Huang family house, told Yuki's dad that every dish he made was too salty and that her grandmother was a better cook than him. It was an uncomfortable moment but Chinese people (especially Susan) are blunt like that and sometimes downright rude. He nodded and accepted it as if fact. If you're a guest in America and you think the meal is atrocious even to the point that you'd rather eat your napkin than smell the food, you still keep it to yourself. I learned this lesson at my friend's 14th Birthday party when her mom brought out a huge, colorful cake to the table and I asked, kindly I thought, if it was homemade or store bought. She said to me in front of all my friends, "You are a very immature, rude girl and your mother didn't teach you any manners." Her face had turned the color of the crimson icing on the stale cake she'd made (or possibly bought) and she stomped out of the room and left her daughter to blow out the candles without her. Now there's a beacon of light in the dark world of bad manners...

 

-mk

fireworks and housefires, 2010 chinese new year

Last week was the 2010 Chinese New Year or Spring Festival. The whole country basically shuts down for the celebration. Shops and restaurants were closed and most people travel to their hometowns to be with their relatives for the week so Beijing was near empty. Mary Kate and I spent the festival week in Beijing and her co-worker invited both of us over to her apartment for New Year's Eve night. Her parents made a huge meal for us and we when the clock ticked close to midnight everybody made jiaozi dumplings with pork and chives filling. Then we went outside to set off fireworks...

I have heard that fireworks are a big deal here but nothing prepared me for the war zone that Beijing turned into. People set off fireworks in the courtyards of their apartment complexes and the first night they are allowed to set them off all night which basically means you can't get any sleep. Mercifully, the rest of the week people are only allowed to set off fireworks during the day and up until midnight... but then they start again at 7 am. Above is a video of of some of the fireworks during the first night of the festival. In the video we are in the courtyard of an average apartment building complex, called 小区, (xiao qu), which is the type of place most Beijingers live. The fireworks celebrations were the same all over the city and I expect someone flying over Beijing in an airplane would have thought we were in the middle of World War III. The fireworks you can buy here are industrial strength (the kind they set off at Disney World or over the Brooklyn Bridge in New York) so these were not wimpy sparklers. People set them off so close to buildings that sometimes the buildings catch fire which actually happened to one of the buildings next to us. An outdoor air conditioner on the 10th floor of the building caught fire and it managed to burn a pretty big hole in the building before the police came and put it out.
It was an unforgettable night and a lot of dangerous fun.

-Nate