Misty Beijing gives me this chill from behind. Looking outside from the 14th floor into the CBD, lights from offices and lamps on the street shimmering in the mist, a bit blurry, a bit mystery, a bit scary. Misty Beijing is a little colder today, I couldn't resist asking my colleagues whether this weather indicates rain, or even snow? They laughed and said usually Beijing snows in January, this year snowfall was early but the weather now is not cold enough. I look forward to a white Christmas, a cold Christmas, and a white Beijing.
Today I went to check on the train prices to Shanghai for this Friday. The Beijing train station is actually right behind the COFCO Plaza that I'm working in. Jordan came over during my lunch break so we can go get the train tickets. But, OMG! It's SOOOOO expensive!! Return train tickets from Beijing to Shanghai then back from Shanghai to Beijing on soft sleep beds is 1320RMB!!! Can you believe this??? I really need to source other transport options, this is just way too expensive.
After checking train prices, Jordan and I went to have lunch around the train station. This is the worst experience I had so far related to food and restaurants in Beijing. We went to this nearby restaurant that serves dumplings and other normal family food. As soon as we went in we were directed to be seated, and the waitress gave us a menu. We ordered a bowel of noodles, a plate of dumplings, and some buns. The waitress asked for 40RMB (which is quite ok) to be paid at the time of making an order. After we paid the waitress we asked if she can bring us some water or tea, she replied that will be another bill. We looked at her and asked if she can just bring some normal tea and she replied she will. After we started drinking the tea she brought us and also the dishes that arrived, she suddenly came up again and said 'you gave me 40RMB before but the bill is now 67RMB, I need 27RMB'. Jordan paid the extra without really asking for the reason, however I became a little concerned. I asked the waitress what is the extra 27RMB for and she said '1RMB per person for the utensils you're using, and also 25RMB for the tea'. WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!! 25RMB for a pot of tea?! WHAT!!!!!! I asked her what kind of tea is it that needs to be sold at 25RMB and she said I told you it will be another bill. I asked her why did she not tell us the price before giving us the tea, just like what she did when we ordered the food? Why did she not ask us for the money for the tea (then we would have known the price and refused to order tea) just like how she asked for the 40RMB for dishes? She refused to answer but said that in Beijing we'll never find any restuarants that offer free tea. This is BULLSH*T! Every restaurant I went to I was offered tea! A manager of the restaurant came up after hearing the dispute we have at the table and the waitress ran away. This manager is even worse: no eye contacts, didn't want to talk to me, kept on saying that the waitress told us the price (lies!!!). At the same time, I saw the same waitress that served us starting offering tea to the table next to us, and without saying the price too!!! Some of the customers from that table overheard our dispute and started looking at the waitress too. Another manager looking person came over and said to me 'I'll come over soon and sort this out for you' and indicated for the first manager to leave. I was so angry!!! This is the worst customer service ever, giving out false information to customers and not telling the prices; and customers will have no way of arguing out of it after consuming the tea! The second manager NEVER came back to us and we decided to leave. They've collected our money already so there is really nothing we can do apart from getting really angry (which they don't give a sh*t).
I got really angry today. Not only because of their service, but their attitude and the ways they used to 'cheat' money out of the customers. I haven't been angry for a long long time, I was even shocked myself at how angry I was. I didn't speak a word after got out of the restaurant, (felt sorry for Jordan, having to see an angry Nancy for the first time). But what more can I say? When these people don't care about it, I just have to get over it and not let myself get too angry or upset. A lesson learned.
Highlight of the day
Cold weather + hungry Nancy = reminds me of the best meal option = hot pot!!! Haha, yeah, mmmmm winter and hot pot are just a perfect match! This is the plan for after work. Meeting up with Jordan and Jian, wait for Gerard and Josi to finish work, and go for a nice hot pot.Jian is studying Mandarin/Chinese in a language school neary Wudaokou 五道口, the North West of Beijing. Wudaokou is a very populated are with students and I heard that it's a place for cheap food, cheap shopping, and be part of the younger generation of Beijing city. From my workplace to Wudaokou I must walk from work to Dondan subway station (about 10 minutes walk), then take subway line 1 to Xidan subway station, then transfer to line 4 and get off at Xizhimen, then transit again to line 13 and get off at Wudaokou. This whole transit/journey took me around 90 minutes (Beijing is so HUGE!!!).
I eventually got out from the Wudaokou subway station. What I see right now is exactly how I imagined Beijing (China) to be like. Lights from buildings/street lamps all around, endless roads of shops; pedestrians coming from all directions and going to other directions, if you look at the crowd from a bird's eye view, it's more like a spiderweb type of crowd. As soon as I got out from the station I'm already swamped by street food stall operators yelling and selling their products. Right outside the station there's a smelly-tofu stall, then there's a stall selling all sorts of Beijing traditional food (like pancakes and candied fruits- I even saw the process of making the candied shaws!!), there's the newspaper stand etc. Jordan and 
Jian are waiting for me opposite the road, but looking at the amount of traffic and pedestrians, I really worried about how would I be able to cross this street? I stood underneath the lights for few minutes, seeing people around me just crossed the street regardless, pushing through the crowds, walking right in front of moving cars and just squeezed their way to the other side of the street. I stood there, completely lost, I have no idea how to cross the road. Few minutes later, the pedestrian light turned green, so I can go right? But NO! Cars are still moving, pedestrians are moving too (from all directors regardless of the traffic lights). I started to follow some pedestrians next to me, but very quickly I was stuck between honking cars and people squeezing around me. I am literally stuck. I have no idea how am I supposed to cross this road. Jordan suddenly came over, he started crossing the street and came to the middle to get me. He guided me through the traffic to the where Jian is standing. They told me that they saw me standing on the street for a very long time and looked confused. Well, I was very confused, I admit that, I was very lost and scared of the busy traffic. 
Jian introduced me to two of his friends who came along too. They're all Jian's school mates, both studying mandarin at the language school. One of them is called Gabrielle, a Canadian guy with French mother tounge, a professional translator and now wishes to add Chinese into his career. The other guy is called Xiaoping, a dutch man from Holland, and he is Xiaofang (Jian's friend I met last week)'s brother.
The restaurant we went to is on the 5th floor of a shopping mall in Wudaokou, the restaurant is called Donglaishun 东来顺. There's a restaurant with this name in Auckland as well, I think it's quite a well known name serving northern China styled food. We ordered a 鸳鸯锅 (Yuanyang pot), which is the pot is split in two flavours, usually one spicy and one normal soup based (check photo above). Then we just look through the menu and order the dishes that we want to eat. We ordered few plate of meat (fish balls, beef, lamb) and few plates of vegies (lettuce, chinese cabbage, mushrooms, turnips etc); Gabrielle also ordered some noodles and some desserts for us to share at the end. We each ordered a fresh-squeezed 
watermelon juice (12RMB each) as well, and mmmmm nothing is better than watermelon juice with spicy hot pot, hoho. The boys really went hard out with the meat, within a few minutes the plate was empty!
We had so much fun during the dinner! Although Josi couldn't make it because she have OT (again) and Gerard joined us after dinner, we had some really funny moments at the table. Jian (being a non-chinese speaker before coming to China) was popping out Chinese words that he learned from school. Gab was also really good! He's only been in Beijing for 2 months but he has been studying Chinese for a bit back in Canada, he even ordered his own watermelon juice and noodles from the waitress!!! How cool is that?! He told us that since he got here he have always been approached by local university students who wants to become a 'language partner' with him, haha, that sounds really weird, 'language partner'. LOL. 
I also took photos of the boys 'going Asian', haha, refer to photo. The 'victory' pose, the smiling Asian eyes, and haha, it's just so funny to see boys making cute poses.
Our dinner finished with some lovely desserts: fried rolls with taro, and fried sticky rice ball with sesame. They're Gab's favourite. Jian started telling me about this chocolate fish thing that a little stall sells outside their campus. He said that every night there'll be heaps of people waiting at the stall to buy this chocolate fish, mmmmm it sounds so good and I really want to try, hoho. 
Gerard called us not too long after dinner and said he's on his way to meet us. After Gerard got here we went to this very interesting cafe called, 'Bridge cafe'. This is a cafe inside a little building and occupies the second and the third floor of the building. The cafe is actually quite big and VERY crowded! The cutsomers inside the cafe are mostly unversitiy students and language school students from around the ara. There are quite a lot of students who ordered some coffee and snakcs and studying Chinese at the same time. We saw quite a few tables of westerners as well. This is exactly how I wanted my cafe experience to be like. Warm and cosy inside; small tables with some customers readinga book, some talking to friends, some laughing, some dating. 
Hot coffees make the windows steamy and misty, the street lamps outside the window blends in with the darkness and blurred by the steams on the window glass, it's so romantic. Gab ordered a cup of lavender tea (25RMB) and Gerard ordered ice cream with brownie (they asked me for pronounciation and made the order themselves, perfect pronounciation too!!) for 27RMB. At this table there are many nationalities, we're like having a 'world conference' or some sort, haha. Together we have 6 nationalities (Chinese, Canadian, Dutch, Samoan, New Zealand, Malaysian) and 6 languages (Mandarin, Cantonese, English, Dutch, French, Malaysian).
After the cafe we started walking towards the chocolate fish stall, Jian said it's located outside their campus grounds. But to our greatest dissappointment, he's not there today. Jian, Gab and Xiaoping all said that the man is there everyday, but not today. It's just so weird. But oh well, I was equally happy when Jordan, Gerard and I went to buy some chestnuts, hoho, my favourite.
I definitely want to come back to Wudaokou. It's listed as the place for young people to go to and the place for cheap shopping. Apparently there's a mall here that operates like Dressmart in Onehunga, for example, an authentic (yes it's authentic, haha) Adida's sneaker for around 70NZD.
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