We spent the entire day Saturday wandering about town. We made our way through a number of hutongs, which gave us a glimpse of how some of the city’s inhabitants live. Seems like the poorer half, by far. I took a ton of pictures, but it’s hard to get an accurate sense of what they’re like without actually being there. On a wall of someone’s home along one of them, there was a hand drawn sign (in chalk?). I’d really love to know what it means, because my imagination is all over the place with it…
Update: it was explained to us that the sign says something like "For the safety of your family, be careful with cooking gas, so you don’t burn yourself down". Hmm. I prefer the versions my imagination came up with…
Later we happened upon a tea shop. There’s someone back home for whom I wanted to bring back some good tea, so we spent a considerable amount of time talking to the ladies who sold the tea (and when I say talking, I mostly mean gesturing and hoping for the best). This lady demonstrated the proper method for brewing tea:
It involved a bazillion steps, warming each of the two pots, then the cups in sequence, rinsing off the leaves, then brewing and pouring. Well, I make it sound pretty simple, but I’d have to see it a few times to remember the steps int he right order. It was neat. I purchased a rather large cake of pu-er tea to bring home as a gift. No idea how I’ll fit this and the bottle of Great Wall wine in my luggage next week. Repeat after me: must remember to bring larger suitcase last time…
A group of men were quite enthusiastically and loudly engaged in conversation over a game of….. something. It involved stones and lines drawn on a square board. It made me think that I’m missing so many of the nuances of life here, because I don’t know the language and can’t ask questions. Not being able to read signs doesn’t help much either.
We dined at an eating establishment that was surely not designed for tourists. Of the hole-in-the-wall variety, it produced food that was rich with a hundred new tastes and flavors that I’ve never tasted before. I found myself not being able to catalog them all in my mind fast enough to remember them. On the other hand, I’ve identified a spice that doesn’t agree with me, and I’m going to need to stay away from it, because it stays with me for a long time after I eat it – star anise.