houhai

We decided to try to catch a cab to our next destination, Houhai. We managed to find a “rickshaw” (I can’t stop calling them tuktuks, which is what they are.) This wound up costing twice as much as the 10 kuai a taxi would have, but he got to us first, and he entertained Yili on the way. Yili tells me later that he looked at me, and asked her “is he paying or are you paying? Cause if he’s paying, I’m going to charge a lot more.” Assuming I didn’t know about how far it was, or that taxi rides that short are the minimum ten kuai. Anyway, on the way, he was a chatterbox, and kept asking Yili about the number of Americans, and asking if she knew any American girls, since he thought marrying his son off to an American was a pretty good idea. She said she’d pass that along.

“Hai” is Mandarin for lake, and essentially, this is the lakes district that is to the west and north of the Forbidden City (no idea what “hou” means – I don’t know even know the tone, let alone the character, so my dictionary says anything from ‘monkey’ to ‘sorrow’. We could call it “sorrowful monkey lake”, but that’s just wishful thinking on my part. I will look it up.) So, what it is, is a road that’s mostly devoted to pedestrian (no guarantees on that in China), all the way around several different lakes, with shops/restaurants/bars around that. Alleyways lead off this road, leading to more of the same (these alleys are called “hutong”.) It’s not too awful for tourists, just a few touts trying to get you into their shops, until you hit the thick bar district. At which point, one bottle of Tsingtao is much like the other, so you’re just negotiating the price then. And seeing if the live music looks ignorable.

The incredible thing to me, is that since the lake is frozen, people stake off an area and rent skates out. I wound up not going, and it might be my biggest regret about Beijing (it has now warmed enough that the ice isn’t thick enough anymore.) Skating on the ice at Houhai is now on my life list of things to do. In addition to traditional ice skates, the vendors have gotten creative, and strapped blades onto all kinds of things, including what look like old school desks (you have ski poles to push yourself) and tricycles (you pedal a front wheel for locomotion, and skid where the back wheels should be.) I even saw something that looked a lot like bumper cars. The place was mobbed with people on a Sunday afternoon. At least several thousand people were on a lake much smaller than Greenlake in Seattle. We saw an old guy hack out a clear area from the ice and, after a crowd pleasing warm up ceremony of some sort, jump in. It wasn’t clear to me what the point of this was – was he passing the hat for change, or just nuts?

At one point, we found chou doufu, or stinky tofu. With some kind of spicy sauce on it. Awfully good on a very cold day. 5 kuai.

Our other coworker, Chris, got into town that night, so we met up with him and went out to eat. Where we learned that the vegetarian menu just means that it has vegetables in it. The lotus root stuffed with pork didn't taste like much.