Dim sum and a New Acquaintance

I woke up confronted with a problem: how to fit two whole activities into one little day? I rarely have this problem, I'll have you know, being the boring stay-at-home that I am. But there was a dim-sum party in Chaoyang, organized by one of my fellow FB fellows; and then in mid-afternoon I was to meet a friend of my classmate ZY's, who had promised to look over the history department classes and tell me what he thought. The second activity was, of course, infinitely more important than the first. But who can pass up dim-sum?

Initially, I thought the dim-sum would be at 10, and so I would be able to do both easily. I don't know why I thought it would be at 10, except for that it took place on Sept. 10 (so maybe I got that confused with the time), or possibly because when we had our wonderful grand dim-sum parties at China Pearl in Boston--which I remember with terrific nostalgia--we would always get there at 10 to beat the crowds. But no, this dim-sum party was at 11:30. I wrote to CMc in a panic about transportation. I had never been to Chaoyang, but according to my map it was on the direct opposite side of the city. I put it to her: could I make it? She has already been in China for a year, and as I perhaps may have mentioned has a bit of a mother-hen manner. She wrote back quickly (oh how I love that in a friend) and said that yes of course I could make it. Take the subway. So I decided to try.

It was another transportation adventure trying to get to the subway. I thought I would try Wudaokou this time, instead of Zhichunlu, because the place where the Zhichunlu buses stop was so far from my house. (I am not in walking distance to either subway stop, and am equally far from both.) But I couldn't find any Wudaokou buses at all. Later, I found that they all stop at the East Gate, even farther from my house, so I'm going to have to think of something else. Anyway, I ended up just hopping a bus to Xizhimen, where I would have had to change subway lines (and pay again) anyway. This time, I was determined to prevent any mishap whatsoever. I spent the entire time carefully following our route in my map book (which marks the stops) and managed to get off at just the right one. Subway to Chaoyang, listening to Through the Looking Glass. And a taxi to the restaurant. I had written out very carefully what I considered to be the proper sequence of directions--the ring road, the bridge, the plaza--and I told these to the driver in careful sequence, at intervals. When I finally got to the restaurant name (because we were just passing it) he burst out laughing. "Everyone knows that restaurant. Why didn't you just say you were going there?" I guess the restaurant was the appropriate best-known landmark for the area. But better err on the side of caution, huh? At least I got there, and with 15 minutes to spare.

May I say that the restaurant was very disturbing? It was in a hotel, and was enormous. But it was like a hotel itself, with room after room. I think the whole restaurant may have consisted of private rooms. None of the hustle and bustle, I associated with China Pearl, servers barreling by with overloaded and steaming carts, so you practically had to risk being run down to get some of the best stuff, but oh how worth it it was. This was quite sanitized. We had our own private wait-staff, who never let the tea-cups get below half (tea was paid for by the person!). There was also a bathroom right in our private room and, I kid you not, there were bright red rose-petals floating in the toilet for you to pee on. I will add (sorry to be gross) that the rose-petals were too light to flush down. I think this means that at the end of the day someone must have to fish them out, and after everyone has peed on them. A fish-net? Chopsticks?

The food was good but a kind of pale reflection. Too classy to be really good, if you know what I mean. The ordering may have been a bit off too, but I certainly couldn't have done any better--a Chinese menu leaves me floundering unless it has pictures. The place was too classy for food-carts, too. All the ordering was done from a check-box paper. The upside was that I didn't feel disgustingly overfull as I used to in Boston (where after dim-sum we'd generally just spend the rest of the day rolling around in satiated lethargy). And the egg-custards were splendid, I admit.

I had to leave before the bill came, but it can't have been cheap. I left a 100 RMB as a guesstimate, but I suspect it may have been more.

Managed to get a bus back to the subway, where I saw this wild mural (I would have loved to have taken more pictures of it--it seemed to depict a series of wild kungfu battles--but my train came. Then from Xizhimen I took a taxi again, as I was running short on time. The driver seemed perfectly clear about Beida East Gate as a destination, but when I had sat at an east-facing gate for some time, I got a call from the person I was meeting, LY, saying, "Where are you?" (He calls me by my surname, which is funny. I'm not sure if this is a confusion about which name is which, or if it is some odd attempt at formality. But I decided not to correct him.) There followed the usual comedy of errors that seems to occur whenever I try to meet anyone anywhere. Why is it so hard to find things in Beijing? Why does Beida have to have not one but three east gates? I shouldn't actually blame China for this, should I. As Colin and anyone else who knows me can attest, I'm awful at directions in any country. Well, LY and I finally got coordinated enough to meet at the library main entrance.

There we sat in comfortable shade, and he pointed out which classes seemed most relevant to my work, and which teachers he thought were good, famous, respected, worth hearing. This is such important information, I can't even tell you.

LY is a 2nd year PhD student at my alma mater, but he graduated from Beida and did an MA at Qinghua. So he was spending what I think must be a nostalgic summer back home in Beijing. I almost didn't get to meet him--he's leaving Friday--but I'm glad I got a chance to, however brief.

We walked out the real East Gate, and LY graciously showed me a great bookstore called All Sages, about a quarter mile down the street. He even pointed out to me some of their best bargains, before taking his leave to go to another appointment he had. I poked around All Sages for quite some time. It really was the best bookstore I had been to hitherto. I picked up a handful of books on Shiji for less than the price of my dim-sum, and then, bravely, picked up one of the heavy two-volume sets LY had pointed out as an especially good bargain (it was 60% off) and relevant to one of his highly recommended classes.

Mind you it was quite a long walk home, especially hot and tired and with those heavy books. But I managed it. I also managed to cook rice in my terrible thin pot, though the fried eggs I also tried to make came out less well. Possibly my lack of a spatula had something to do with that. But I had hot rice and kimchee and semi-cooked eggs for dinner, and it was quite a feast.

Below is the sunset that I saw.