Oh Ikea, how do I love thee...let me count the ways

In every young persons life comes a point where one must make a choice between quality and price when furnishing the home. Luckily, the folks at Ikea don't think this is any way to live and have forced fed their version of simplistic chic to the masses. Ironically enough, Chinese are notoriously frugal (take my landlord, for example, who, instead of buying two new bed frames, instead, came over with a 18 inch wood saw and cut the guest room bunk beds apart...sorry for all of you staying in our guest room in the future....but I digress) and so Scandinavian design meets Chinese economics and wallllah!! You get the second biggest Ikea in the world. Seriously, you can see it from space.


Cliff and I headed over to Ikea to pick up some storage units and some mirrors and other assorted knickknacks that would bore you to death. However, the first, most important thing we wanted to do is eat. The Ikea cafeteria is a site to behold. First, it's ginormous. Second, the food is cheap and kinda western. Their menu is pretty large...you can get the standard meatballs, mashers and lingonberry sauce (which is crap, compared to what is available in US Ikeas), spaghetti (weird sweet taste and they use some sort of fake margarine on it, which I know is a misnomer, since margarine is fake butter, so maybe its fake-fake-butter flavor...whatever), some assorted Chinese dishes, smoked salmon platters, salads, etc. I don't know if you got this from my opening dialogue, but unsuprisingly, Ikea offers these items all at a reasonable price. The great thing is that the menu is also printed in color photos, so you can order via the pointy-talky method, which Cliff is fluent in by now.

Cliff decided on the baked salmon with a veggie medley called "vegetable max". It was not bad at all and it only cost 25 RMB (3.75 USD).


I opted for the Chinese option for several reasons...the food didn't look too oily (been a problem here for us), the meat looked reasonably lean (also a problem) and they gave you alot of rice (which cliff wanted). It was reasonably good and at 19 RMB (2.5 USD), it fit the bill.

After gouging our wallet of 2900ish RMB, we decided that we needed to have some of our items home delivered. Also, if any of you have ever put together wooden storage shelves, you know what a pain in the @ss it can be and you can actually pay Ikea to do it here. So we brought our stuff to the delivery section and the first think they said is that they couldn't deliver the 4 foot plant we just bought. As they were telling us this, an older man came up and asked us where we were going and what floor we lived on. He then quoted us 80 RMB to take our stuff home. Ikea quoted us 80, plus would charge us 4% of the price of whatever we wanted them to assemble and we'd have to wait for delivery. Given the fact that we didn't know how we were going to get the plant home, we caved in to the freelance-ikea-business-stealin-delivery man. He led Cliff and me out of Ikea and down the front walk where he had his van parked.


Here is a close up of the man loading our stuff.


Cliff is happy he finally has someone that can help him take the heavy stuff...


And...all of our stuff crammed in the back of his van.


After putting some stuff together, we headed out for a meal of Beijing duck at a place that we've never tried before. The duck was marginal (lots of fat, but the meat was tasty), but the price was right...38 RMB (5.5 USD) for half a duck and 58 RMB (8.5 USD) for a whole duck and they give you the options to take home the bones (which alot of Chinese do...mainly to make soup). This compares to the 198 RMB plus extra for the fixins at the nicest Duck places in Beijing. Cliff put it to me this way, I could could eat more than three ducks at the place we went last night for the price of the best place in Beijing. Obviously, there are some culinary nuances that make the expensive duck deservingly expensive (roasted over fruit tree wood, served on gold plate by waiters in period costume), but maybe that is lost on me...and I love duck, so price and quantity also weigh heavily on my decision making process. After dinner we stopped back at 7-11, because Cliff wanted ice cream and I wanted beer. Any one who knows us, won't be surprised by the previous statement. We walked out of 7-11 with 63 RMB (9 USD) of goodness...four King cans of Yanjing beer, cheese cake, a chocolate almond coated ice cream bar, a small container of vanilla ice cream and a dozen small ice cream drumsticks....all of which were pretty d@mn good.



As you can see, Cliff was exceptionally pleased with the ice cream bar...

So, I went to a market today, called SanYuanLi. Its located near North Sanlitun Street and is about a mile from our house. I had heard that they had a good selection on fruits, meats and cheeses as well at alot of imported goods.


Wow...what an experience. The market is set in one long warehouse with shops on both sides of a long aisle. In the front of the market is all the fruit stands, maybe 20 in all. They all seem to serve the same things, cherries, pineapples, dragonfruit, cherries, peaches, lychee, grapes, mangoes, strawberries, etc. After the fruit comes the sauce and spice stands. These have a mix of dry spices in plastic bags and sauces in jars. Strangely enough, these chinese spice shops slowly morph into a imported food emporium.


They have about a dozen shops that sell all of the same stuff, hershey's syrup, cake mix, olive oil, sardines in oil, all sorts of cereal (most likely selling at 10$ a box), hard liquor and wine. Its pretty impressive the range of goods they carry, but I don't think the purveyors of these fine mini-establishments can guarantee the freshness of these goods. Near the end of the rows of imported good, the air started to smell alittle stale, to the point of becoming putrid...I was thinking that it was the cheese in one of these places, but no, alas, it was the open air butchers that were next in the market.


They started with beef and mutton stands, then pork, followed by chicken and finally, thankfully, seafood. Most of the butchers had their wares displayed on a wooden chopping blocks or on hooks in front of their stands. Today I saw mutton spines, pigs feet, a skinned animal with frozen water bottles stuffed in it to keep it cool and a huge beef heart on a hook. As I mentioned before, the sight of all of this was incredibly fascinating, but the smell was absolutely stunning. Thankfully, the seafood counters were next (which smelled less foul), followed by some beautiful produce stands. I was very impressed with the veggies, they was a large variety and all of it looked delicious. I don't like to think about what most Asian nations use as fertilizer, but as soon as I get my stuff here, I'm going to give these a try.


All in all, I brought home 60 RMB worth of fruit (about 9 USD). The most expensive thing I bought was the grapes. Cliff requested sweet grapes in chinese (pretty good after three lessons, huh?), so I had to acquiesce. The sweetest grapes at the stand were imported (or course) from Italy. I told Cliff that he better start eating up. We also got some bananas, a mango and donut peaches and cherries from the Beijing area...I'll make sure to wash those well. I bargained with the lady and she really didn't give me too much of an discount, but she did throw in a free lime. I don't know what the heck I'll do with that.


Close-up of the fruit that will most probably help build up my immune system.


We also bought a bing (cake). This is more like an indian naan or roti with some egg and green onion. Its pretty tasty, but it wasn't fresh made, so it could have been better.


I'll try to take some better pics next time. Well, everyday is a new adventure...we'll keep you updated!

Yesterday was a big day for us...we decided to go checkout the Beijing Volleyball Club. Cliff and I have been looking forward to playing VB ever since we left VA, so this was almost the highlight of our week. The club meets in a sports school near Houhai. Houhai is one in a series of lakes just NW of the Forbidden City...a couple years back it was gentrified. Some very smart person proposed a complex--lakeside--that would have restaurants, bars, rent-able boats, all in a historic-looking hutong compound. Needless to say, this area has become one of the premier tourist sites/traps in Beijing.



It really is beautiful and is a quaint place to waste away a tispy afternoon or a colorful place to have the evening meal. When dusk hits, many older folks come out to the entrance of the park area and ballroom dance. Someone brings a huge speaker, and a microphone and a large, age-diverse group of Beijingers spend the evening hours singing and dancing. It sounds bizarre, and in some ways it is, but seeing this nightly ritual is a great reminder of what an incredible time it is to be here. Back in the day, when Mao was alive, the communist workers didn't have any creature comforts and there were no bars or clubs and very few restaurants...mostly those were for high ranking party members or diplomats. When the average worker would get home from their work unit, they would take to the parks. There they could have a leisurely walk, exercise and visit with their fellow comrades. The oldest generation of Chinese have never strayed far away from this regiment and nowadays the parks are always filled with pensioners wiling away their days.

The young people take to the streets for different reasons, mostly because the vast majority of families live in flats and the public parks are some of the only places to hang out with friends and meet up with their significant other. The malls are quickly replacing the parks as the place to see and be seen, but even to hang out at the mall food court costs money, and that is still a precious commodity for most of the regular folks here. But, I digress.

Anyways, Cliff and I searched out the small gym where this volleyball club regularly meets. The first thing I noticed about this group is that 'club' is a loose word for what they are...right after we started stretching, we noticed two guys, both about 6'5" and in their early 40s, start stretching near the court. I started to hope, in vain, that they were warming up for a spirited game of badminton in the courts next door. Then I noticed two Chinese women, who were both a shade under six foot, start peppering on the court. One wore a "Louisville Volleyball" jersey...I hoped that she was just a big ole' Louisville fan and not an actual player. Boy, was I wrong. After alittle warm of time, we started a hitting line, and I stood around to dig some hits. The girl from Louisville was next in line, wound up and swung away....and...I actually dug the ball. That's not to say that my forearms didn't sting afterwards and I'll have to confess, it was aimed right at me, but I was proud, none the less. Later that night, I found out from one of the regulars that the twin giants had played on the Chinese national team, back in the day. One of the girls played D-I ball at Louisville, one was on the National Team and two other women were players on the Team Beijing in the run up nat'll championships. It was clear that all of these players were past their prime, but we played (and by we, I mean they, 'cause I played horribly) some good, technical ball.

Afterwards, 14 of us went out for dinner across the street. The group was about 60-40 Chinese and foreigners. The Chinese players ordered the food and brought Baijiu (more on that later) and we all split the tab. It was great food and a great time overall. As I mentioned before, we did partake in the Baijiu...this is the Chinese answer to Soju or Tequila. It is about 105 proof and is drunk straight. It smells like rubbing alcohol and it tastes much like I would imagine sulfuric acid to taste. Regardless of these aesthetics, we all drank a couple shots (even Cliff!) and all made the obligatory pucker-face afterwards. Similar to tequila, the first breath afterwards is like breathing fire, and if I had a lighter last night, I could have become a human flame thrower. In total, our group of 14 had two big bottles of beer, three big bottles of coke, one bottle of baijiu, two huge gourds of soup, ten different main dishes, two clay pots full of meat baked rice, and our bill came out to 40 RMB a person, which is about $6.50. Nice.

On a food note, I came home from errands this morning and was starving, so while Cliff was at the gym, I went out to purchase lunch. I bought two turkey sandwiches on whole wheat, a baozi (steamed meat filled bun) from 7-11, a diet coke and two bags of chips.

The sandwiches were only 20 RMB a piece ($3)...we were not a big fan. Its like ordering a pizza here--it is called a pizza and looks alright, but it just tastes alittle off. I don't know what it is, but it was not something we'd go back for.


As a back up, I picked up a baozi from 7-11. I could sing you an ode to 7-11 here...its everything a convenience store should be. There are no scruples about what you can and can't buy here...it has cigs, hard liquor, beer, wine (called great wall...its not good), snacks, magazines, but where it really excels is in its food offerings. There is a steam case filled with half a dozen buns...you can get pork and cabbage filled, hot dog filled, fried sauce filled...anything you want. Next to that, they have the Chinese equivalent of the NYC dirty-water hot dog...its a tank full of broth, with about 30 sections, filled with all sorts of crap on a stick. You can order fish balls, tofu, mushrooms, fish cake--everything--and the best thing about it, is that it all tastes the same! If I were starving on a desert island and my only other option was to harvest my own leg to survive, then this dirty water food would would totally be a viable option. At lunch, they open a hit-dish station and they serve six different dishes, all with varying amounts of meat. A to-go order from this line seems to cost about 2 USD or less. Lastly, I visited the chip aisle again. I chose "rock taco flavor" and "italian meat flavor"..."red wine roasted chicken" came in a distant third. The taco flavored doritos were much like a salsa flavor, with less kick and the meat flavored chips had a sour BBQ tang to them. I have yet to find my heart's desire, as far as chip flavors go, but the search goes on.


Cliff has demanded get a pedi and mani tonight, so I've got to sign off...but it will make for an interesting blog tomorrow.

Cliff and I decided to go to "the store" to make a couple of purchases...and by store I mean to a basement market and a small grocery market. These are a couple of the things we brought home:


We bought some snacks--chips, snickers, oreos, pockys--but the most interesting ones to pick out were the savory snacks. I bought some kimchee flavored potato chips and Cliff picked out some American BBQ Bugles. It was a fairly difficult choice for me, because I also had Italian Meat, Cherry Tomato, Grilled Meat, Sweet Chicken Meat Tomato and Cucumber potato chips to choose from. Cliff didn't have as many Bugle choices, but he did have BBQ, American Cheese and regular flavors of Bugles. I'll have to try them all.


We also got some sweets....Pockys of course!!! I got vanilla ones and Cliff wanted to try the Pizza ones. Vanilla wasn't so good.


We then headed down to this underground market to order some sheets for our king size bed. We kinda goofed up when we moved here, as we packed up all of our queen size sheets and we have a king, standard and single bed. So, there is a small shop with alot of fabric and they have bedsheets and curtains on display. We picked out some fabric, which I think is of decent quality--maybe about 300 thread count--and are giving it a go. We picked a basic beige sheet that had a sateen stripe pattern. They charged me 200 RMB (about $28.50) for a king size fitted sheet, flat sheet and four pillowcases. I suspect that I paid a substantial foreigner tax on this price, even after some bargaining. We figure that this is part of the "China Experience".

Another of the observations that I made here is the prevalence of "Mei Bai" or beautiful white. I look a country bumpkin here--I'm all dark and dressed weird, by Chinese standards. Even by US standards, I'm pretty dark...I wasn't the best at putting on sunscreen on the last couple weeks in the states. Due to the amount of time we spent rock climbing and in the M3, I've become a shade of tan that definately sticks out here. So today, Cliff and I went to go buy a set of Chinese visors that we can use on our bikes. These things are completely ridiculous. It is the size of a welders mask and comes in every color of the rainbow. We got a couple of black ones that have a pattern on the visor. We paid 35 RMB for both, which is about 5 USD. The visors claim to keep out 99% of UV rays and while we look like goombas wearing them, we look like Chinese Goombas, and blending in and becoming one with the culture is part of the program, so we've obliged.

Looks pretty good huh? Below is a front and profile view...


Its pretty hard to top all of the great treasures we brought home, but we did accomplish one other thing of note...we got a massage at a blind-man massage place. It truly was a place to get the "Peoples Massage". Basically, you go in, they lay a sheet on a massage table and then they lay a sheet on top of you. No taking off clothes, fancy smelling candles, soft music or tranquil decor. My massage lady had to take appointments at the front door, so I had a couple breaks in service. Cliff's lady was texting someone while giving his massage. There were a couple tables in the same room, so I also got to hear all sorts of chinese conversations. The environment was pretty crude, but the massage was not bad and the price was pretty d@#m impressive (50 RMB for an hour, which equals about $7.50). We have another place, Bodhi, that we like going to, it had a happy hour massage special on mon-thurs--one hour of massage for 98 RMB (14 USD) and it includes snacks and fresh juice. Its a hard call for us...get one or two massages for the same price? So, when you all come visit China, you can have your choice of what side of China you want to see.

Overcast with 50% chance of acid rain

As many of you have heard, Beijing is disgustingly polluted. There are many ways that the government has been trying to fix this: They've closed most polluting factories within Xthousand miles from the capital. They have banned certain numbered cars from the streets on certain days (for instance, cars having license plates ending in even numbers can't drive on the roads on X days and cars with odd numbers can't on Y days). Regardless of this, the city skies still seem pretty bad. Below is a picture from our back window...


Now look on the right of the tall building...yep, those are buildings back there and they are probably only 8 blocks away.



And this is what it looks like on a clear day. Puts things into perspective, huh?


Here is picture from our front window...look between the high rises and you can see another set of buildings about 6-8 blocks from where we are.




And here is the clear day perspective....


Needless to say, this is pretty f-ing disgusting. The pollution isn't brown, and it doesn't smell too bad and to the uneducated, it just looks like a foggy morning. Although cars are a big contributer to pollution (they say that Beijingers adds another 1000 new cars to the roads a month), its mostly coal pollution. Many families living in hutongs still use coal to light their woks and heat their homes. Additionally, the Chinese economy is very dependent on coal power. It is much cheaper to build coal burning power plants, much cheaper/easier to fuel them too. And when the gov't must provide fuel/energy to the 16 million residents of Beijing alone, cheap and easy is important.

The interesting dichotomy is that Beijing has banned most forms of disposable plastic bag, due to environmental concerns. Grocery stores and other businesses must carry thicker plastic or paper bags and must charge customers for them, in order to encourage customers to buy reusable bags (think the kind you can now buy at whole foods or giant). If you must buy a plastic bag, it costs 2mao, which is only a couple cents, and a reusable cloth bag is 3 RMB, or about 40 cents. In retrospect, can you imagine the enviromental footprint of 16 million people going to the grocery store? And...culturally, the chinese don't take one big trip per week, they buy fresh food for dinner everyday, or at least every other day. Its pretty staggering when you think about it and more amazing that the Beijing gov't had the grapes to implement something like this.

On a related note, if there is a silver lining to the pollution cloud (pun intented), its that when you do outdoor activities , you don't have the sun beating down on your brow. Cliff and I went to Ritan park today and bought a pass for the Ritan Park climbing wall. It was a pretty neat experience and we will definately return.


The wall was pretty tall and it seemed like Cliff enjoyed himself. I didn't hop on because I don't have my harness and shoes here right now, but maybe next time.


There are some pretty nice climbing places in China, and eventually Cliff and I would like to climb the Karst mountains in Guilin. For those who are not familiar, those are the famous peaks down south in the river valleys that often photographed--for now, we'll have to be happy with the man-made stuff.

Our First Post

Well, as some of you have perhaps noticed, we haven't posted anything on our phoenixandcliff.com website. We are resigned to the fact that we have fallen victim to the Great Fire Wall. We are working on this problem and hopefully we will get things up and running, since Cliff put so much time and energy into building that webpage (thanks be to Mr Dreamweaver too). As some of of you know, I flew the coop first...I had some in-processing in Tokyo and I touched down in Beijing over a week ago. Cliff took a direct flight from DC and due to all of his business travel, was upgraded to B-class. Needless to say, he flew in style.
Cliff giving the thumbs up to the Red Carpet Club

Look at the spread...

Make sure no ones looking....

Have way with spread...

Hide morsels in backpack...and....repeat.

If some of you haven't seen Cliff in awhile, he has transitioned into his new spouse status in style. He has not cut his hair or shaved since leaving his old job. He has the facial hair growing capacity of the average asian, but God love him, he is trying. Since Cliff was tying up loose ends in DC, I tried my best to get things in our new place taken care of. This experience has been exhilirating and frustrating at the same time. I'm proud to say that I've arranged to get water delivery, satellite TV turned on, registered at the Public Security Bureau and pick out new furniture. These were all small victories and really made be feel as if my last year of language training had served me well.
I've also had some ego-adjusting moments that have been embarrassingly funny. For instance, in the bank here, the service windows are at the front of a 30 seat waiting room. At each window, bulletproof glass divides customer and teller and the teller communicates thru a microphone that can be heard throughout the entire waiting room. No problem. I can read enough Chinese to fill out an account application form...I fill in my name, passport number, address, phone number--I even write it in chinese. When my number is called, I stride up to the appropriate window and push all my paperwork through the little slot. In my mind, this transaction was to go smoothly...the teller would compliment my written chinese, give me an account and and my atm card and I'm in and out in 10 minutes--tops. However, I must have been smoking crack to think it would turn out so well. Granted, the teller didn't seem confused by anything that I wrote or said, but it became clear that I haven't refined my bank vocabulary...words like checking account, dual savings account, cash or wire deposits, international money transfer, SWIFT code and intermediary bank didn't exactly role off my lips. Actually the awesome thing was that I could speak softly into the window microphone, but the teller had a speaker and the speaker was loud and the whole bank was privied to our conversation (and by conversation, I mean my chinese baffoonery). And so it goes.

As I said earlier, Cliff arrived a couple days ago and I let him choose his first meal in China. Ummm, yeah, I can say I'm that proud of this moment, but here we are:

No kidding, the food was not bad. They have this spicy chicken sandwich here that has a crust like you would find on Popeyes spicy chicken. It was good. They also have coconut pies (vice the apple pie you find in the US), which looked good. Conversely, the red bean pie did not look so good. I don't know what it is, but I just can't get used to all the sweet red beans here. They have red bean yogurt, red bean ice cream, red bean filled crossiants--I could go on and on forest-gump-style about all the the different variants of sweets that I don't have the stomach for. I suppose that asian must look at the western way of using red beans (chili for example) and be equaly horrified. Speaking of great foods, the Chinglish here is legendary, and we ran across this next picture. No comment.

Given the title of our blog, we actually lived up to that billing today. We needed to buy bicycles...we were sick of walking everywhere. So, the big question is whether to buy a new or used bike or buy a electric bike? We need to have bikes for our apartment and another set for school to get from the metro to uni. I had heard that Wudaokou, the uni area on the north west side of town had a couple of cheap, used bike shops, as well as a bike street. Cliff and I metroed up to the "Wu" to check things out. Eventually we were directed to Qinghua University, which has quite a few bike shops on campus. Because we were alittle lost on where to go, we asked a nice student for some quick directions and she ended up walking us around the campus to three different bike shops and helped us look for used bikes. We found out that used bikes run about 90 RMB (roughly $12.50) and new ones start at 180 RMB ($26) and up. The trick is how to get the nicest bike you possibly can, that won't get stolen. Her advice was not to get something too new or too shiney. I've heard that you can't live in the 'Jing without getting your bike stolen at least once, but that is an indoctrination we don't have the patience for right now. The girl that helped us (who was studying in QingHua's PoliSci Masters program--majoring in Marxism) was very helpful and typical of what we have encountered so far in China. Most people are very friendly and willing to help, and willing to chat, given the time to do so. Most importantly, she told us that if we went out of the West Gate of Qing Hua, we could find a place that sold electric bikes. Cliff and I definately wanted to get electric bikes...they are sooooo very helpful in getting around in the city. I also feel like we are doing our job not to add to the pollution, which was very bad today. We settled on two pretty boss-looking diandongche, or electric bikes...we paid 2000RMB for each, which comes down to about $290 a piece. Typically they last for about 50 charges and you can go about 30 KM on a single charge...that equals out to about 2 years, so we might have to buy a new battery, but it was well worth the cost. The bike goes 35 km/h, has an alarm, wheel lock, horn and LED lights. Its like the BMW of the bike world, or so I pretentiously like the think.

There were two major problems with our electric bike aspirations...first, I was incredibly intimidated by the notion of driving one of these things in Beijing traffic. There are no rules of the road, or so it seems. Also, the last time I drove a motorcycle, I dumped it...and...the last time I rode a scooter, I also dumped it. If you are wondering how this is possible, then you don't know me well enough. The second problem, is that we wanted to buy the bikes in Wudaokou, but had to get them back to Dongzhimen. Cliff and I decided that we would have to drive the 10-15 odd miles between the two. Given the fact that the very first time we would ride motor bikes in traffic would also probably be the longest and most dangerous trip we would take on the bikes (given that it was rush hour and the best way to get back was via the fourth, third and second ring roads), we proceeded with caution. By the grace of God, and other more experienced road warriors, we made it. There is something very sobering about weaving in and out of buses, taxis and crossing ten lane roads in a small bike. It makes the fact that there is no behind-the-wheel-portion of the chinese drivers license test, way, way more important than when I was just a run-of-the-mill pedestrian.
But, when it was all said in done, we came home with some new, shiney, blinged out bikes.