Мені важко стриматися… Food is going to be a problem. The breakfast buffet at the hotel included a salad bar, which made my day…. After that I decided I’d try things that i wouldn’t normally try. One problem is that I don’t always know what the heck I’m eating when I do this. One fried thingy was delicious; it was a long, fried, um… thingy. But it was good. And sweet. And slightly purple. Then I had a "Boiled Egg in Herb Tea" (actually the little sign said "Herd Tea", and I assume they meant "Herb Tea")
 

Lots of fresh fruit.  Dim sum bar- all kids of dumplings. I passed on the western style omelette bar, but did go for the noodle bar. Udon noodles with boiled beef and blanched greens, plu some chile pepper sauce, all in some sort of broth. For boiled beef it had such a rich flavor that I wondered how on earth they had manager to do that. I would have liked to have met the cow that produced this. Yummy! And… drat – I was going to take a photo of it before I ate it, but by the time I got back to the table with it I forgot to. Tomorrow. They also have all sorts of breads, including a really crusty one with a soft dough that I probably could have eaten a few loaves of, but I managed to control myself and limit myself to one slice since I wanted to try everything else. There’s way too much of everything to even try in one day, but fortunately we’re here for another week. Bacon fried rice? Mashed potato with pesto? Not all traditional Chinese fare, but still interesting.

Tipping is not the customary thing in China, apparently (although I have to read up on that, since I’m not sure exactly what the deal is). As a result, the waiter is not coming up to the table every 5 minutes to ask how is everything?" – which is a wonderful thing, as far as I am concerned. but instead of waiting for someone to come to you, you have to remember that you need to call a waitress over when you need something. On the other hand, yesterday at dinner the folks at the restaurant escorted us all the way out of the restaurant, through the large lobby and out onto the street to see us off. At first I wasn’t sure if they were fishing for a tip, but was told that this was just part of the hospitality culture; it was a very nice thing for them to do. Many people speak or understand just enough English to be able to communicate with us foreigners (or else we use hand signals and other gestures). Menus so far have been fantastic because there’s a photograph of every item – I’m told that this is customary everywhere where foreigners ae likely to go. So we just point to items and smile with a silly grin when ordering. Three of us ate quite a lot at a nice restaurant last night for a total of 35 US dollars.

I’m not sure if it’s ok for me to be sitting at the breakfast table with my laptop; when in doubt assume that at hotels frequented by westerners it’s ok to retain western customs. But I hate doing that; I’d rather make the effort to learn and understand the people who are hosting us, so I’ll be better from now on and try to remember everything I want to say instead of whipping out the laptop. It’ll be time to go to work soon, so I guess I’m off…

PS – we started talking about plans for the weekend. I’d like to se the Great Wall of China. And the Forbidden City. And do some shopping for gifts. We’ll see how much we have time for.