China -Day 8

On Monday, we were again busy. We grabbed some street vendor food in the morning, and made our way to the Beijing Zoo.

Wow, all I have to say is, even though we were prepared, we really weren't. We went to see the Giant Pandas first, and they had a nice exhibit. It was bit and pretty clean, and about average with a large Gorilla enclosure back home, but that's where decent-sized cages ended. From then on, we saw dirty enclosures that were too small, and had no toys or entertainment for the animals.

The Lions and Tigers were all in Enclosures slightly bigger than a large jail cell, and the outside was not much bigger.

About halfway through the Zoo we took a break and went to the Aquarium. This was much better. All the fish had clean, nice tanks, and everything was really nice. There was a big Sea Turtle in an open tank and you could sit and watch it. If you felt like breaking the rules, as most of the visitors did (me too, I'll admit), you could easily put your hand down and touch the turtle without being too obvious about it.

The Aquarium ended way too soon for us, but we made our way back to the Zoo for more depressing sights. We saw the Zebras in a big pen, but with low walls so that you could easily pet them. You weren't supposed too, but people did anyway. I did, carefully, and it was pretty cool, like petting a mule actually, with a little more of a propensity for trying to bite you when you were near their mouths. One got bobbed on the rump with a toy someone had, and he wasn't too happy, but looked kind of used to it. We walked through the "deer park," which was just a huge section of pens, where you could easily pet half the animals if they were close enough, and we did. We saw a kid feeding a people snack to a big wild goat, and that was bad. We looked in the children's zoo and saw a Camel in a too-small enclosure, a small hut just filled with cats, and a bunch of pens packed with a ton of different dogs. Finally, we saw the penguins and reptile house. The Penguin's tank was too small, and in the reptile house all the snakes were either in the wrong cages, or not in their tanks.

So my opinion: The Aquarium was cool, the Zoo was not (Except the Giant Pandas, they are so cute), although it was nice to pet some animals, hehe. China is definitely not nice to their animals at the Zoo. I definitely will not visit the Zoo if I ever go back, maybe the Aquarium, but not the Zoo.

After the Zoo we made our way to Beihai Park, and the island in the middle of it so that we could have our Valentines dinner at Fangshan. Fangshan means "Imitation Imperial Cuisine." Basically, some of the cooks who last worked for the Emporer decided to open a resteraunt on the island in Beihai park so that they could still make imperial cuisine. The Emperor allowed it, but stated that it was not imperial cuisine. It could onyl be imperial if made in the imperial palace, so it was subbed imitation imperial cuisine, even though it was the same food. The last Dowager Princess, Cixi, likes to visit Beihai Park, and whenever she did, she would take her lunch at Fangshan. These days, it's a pretty expensive resteraunt (by Chinese Standards) that served set course menues ranging from 295 yuan to 1200 yuan.

We made our way to the resteraunt and were greeted by servers all dressed very traditionally, and by very gold decor. Everything was gold or yellow. We took a look at the menu and picked one of the two cheapest meals for 295, only about $50 for a 12 course meal!

Over the next two hours we got so many things; little cakes, smoked duck, ham, and chicken, Mandarin fish, Camel hump meat, pork buns, tea, fruit, scallops, more cakes/buns, and a couple more that I can't remember right now, but posted pictures of on my website.

Finally, about two hours later, we were very full and made our way out and took some pictures of Beihai Park at sunset. Although we were full, we decided we wanted something sweet, and made the 1/2 hour walk to Grandmas Kitchen. I had left Cody's gloves there, and we decided to go back for them and some delicious sundays.

On the way there, all the tea I had drank at Fangshan caught up with me, and I had to find a public bathroom. Luckily we found one about halfway to Grandma's Kitchen. Unfortunately for me, I walk in and realize all of the toilets have no doors, and there's a lady using the squatter right in front of me! There was on western toilet, right next to the door, where someone could just peek in and see me, but I sucked it up and just did it. It was insane. I never thought "public restroom" would be so public, none of the other ones were, but I guess if you gotta go, you gotta go.

We finally made it to Grandma's Kitchen, recovered the gloves and had some really delicious sundays. So yummy. We then made our way back to the hostel, found some room and strength for a beer and chat in the hotel bar, and then went to bed for our last sleep in China.