I helped Mike move into his new apartment on Sunday afternoon, which was an interesting adventure. It took him almost an hour and a half to exchange his travelers checks into RMB at the bank, and then the lease signing took another hour and a half. Finally he was done and I offered to go to Carrefour (家乐福 in Chinese) with him to find stuff like sheets, a pillow, soap, etc. The Carrefour is located near the hotel (and his apartment) in the big underground mall by the Sinosteel building in Zhangguancun. I had read a case in Competing Through Strategy about how Carrefour has been a huge success in China because they really cater to the Chinese market, so I was excited to see it in person. It turns out by catering to the Chinese market they have made it a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad place that is miserable.
First of all, the place is packed with so many people. Everywhere. They are pushy, shoving and in the way. Secondly, nothing is arranged in a logical manner. We found sponges, dishwashing gloves and trash bags together, but no dishwashing soap or laundry detergent. There are no staff anywhere to ask for help. The store is crowded with narrow aisles. It's also kept at a much higher ambient temperature than the rest of the mall and the outside temps. It was so miserable that Mike wanted to just leave without buying anything, but then I pointed out he'd have no toilet paper or sheets, so we waited in the line. The checkouts have 3 cashiers next to each other in a row, and each cashier has her own separate line, so it is a complete madhouse, of course, with everyone milling around confusingly. We had such an awful time in Carrefour that we stopped at Bellagio (this cute, modern Taiwanese style place nearby) to have a pick-me-up snack of passion fruit tea and mango rice balls. We found shampoo and detergent at the fake 7-11 next to Mike's apartment building, so I think I will just stick to Watson's and 7-11 from now own for toiletries and the like. Neat trivia, the detergent works for both hand wash and machine wash, I guess because not everyone has a clothes washer in their apartment. Dryers are non-existent here.
Also funny, we went out that night in Wudaokou and came back around 12:30am. I got a phone call from Mike telling me that his apartment complex locks the entrance gate with a PADLOCK at night! He had to jump the fence to get in. Talk about a fire hazard!
Showing posts with label CHIRISH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CHIRISH. Show all posts
Monday, March 23, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Where Few White People Tread
On Friday night Mike Logan and I decided to get the heck out of dodge and avoid the T-bird crew, who were planning a Karaoke night. Before anyone starts busting out the kindergarten rhymes (i.e., Mike and Ginger sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G), let me just point out that he is married and we joke that we are "older brother, younger sister" since he is half Asian as well (Taiwanese to be exact). We are both here trying to practice our Chinese so we can pass Thunderbird's language requirement, so we figured that a night out with the locals would help with that.
Mike has this great guide book to Beijing, called the Beijing Insider's Guide. It listed a couple of cool clothing stores that we decided to check out. The first one was called simply The Thing, or Dongxi in Chinese. It was in the Xidong district, which is south of where we are living in Haidian. It is located in a brand spanking new mall, called Joy City. Since it is full of every kind of shop you could ever imagine, Joy City is an appropriate name! Each floor has a funny name, like Youth, Anarchy, etc. The Thing was interesting, but had US style prices so we did not buy anything--they carry unique t-shirts, hats and sweatshirts all with urban modern graphic design styles on them. Very similar to www.threadless.com type stuff. We wandered around Joy City just taking fun pictures of the stores, all of which were shiny, new and brightly colored/lit.
Afterwards we decided to check out the Huayuandonglu area, which Mike had been to already with a local friend. He promised me that there would be delicious food, and no white people, which was music to my ears. We had a fun adventure asking where the subway is, but we didn't know how to say subway. First we asked where the "huoche" was, as that means train, but the man we asked didn't know. Then we showed him the subway map that Mike had and he said "Oohhhh, ditie", which means subway. Great, now I'll never forget it. The subway ride took about an hour, because we had to go around a slightly long way and change trains twice. We exited the subway and then had to walk a ways down a dark side street to get to this little area where there definitely were no white people--heaven! Even though it was about 10:30 at night many restaurants were open and had a few tables of patrons. We bought a stick of "beef" from a guy grilling it on the street (he added this local chili spice and it was yummy) for 1 Yuan. It turned out to be mostly fat, but it was still yummy since we were very hungry. We picked a restaurant that was pretty crowded and were amazed to find they had an English menu, with decent translations and nice pictures. We ordered a bunch of vegetarian food plus some pork congee and two bottles of beer. The total came to only US$10. The standout dish was fried string beans with Sichuan peppercorns, which make your mouth go numb in a lemon spicy kind of way--really unique!
After the eating adventure we went to a cafe for some green tea, which was served in a nifty little glass teapot with as many refills as desired. We caught a cab back ($15 spent on cabs--the whole night, what a bargain!) and went to bed around 1:45am. It was later than I wanted, but I was excited to try new foods in new areas of Beijing. While we were walking around the place we saw a lot of barbershops, but I suspect they were brothels, because there were only chairs and no hairstyling equipment, and just a few bored looking girls in heavy makeup looking outside at passers by. Interestingly there were also real barbershops next to the fake ones, which was funny (you could tell the real ones because there were people in there actually getting haircuts). We also saw some tents on the street with people inside eating what appeared to be dumplings, so they must have been some kind of illicit restaurant. We definitely want to come back to try those places, which we have termed "Expert Level Chinese Dining Only". That will likely be in a few weeks!
Mike has this great guide book to Beijing, called the Beijing Insider's Guide. It listed a couple of cool clothing stores that we decided to check out. The first one was called simply The Thing, or Dongxi in Chinese. It was in the Xidong district, which is south of where we are living in Haidian. It is located in a brand spanking new mall, called Joy City. Since it is full of every kind of shop you could ever imagine, Joy City is an appropriate name! Each floor has a funny name, like Youth, Anarchy, etc. The Thing was interesting, but had US style prices so we did not buy anything--they carry unique t-shirts, hats and sweatshirts all with urban modern graphic design styles on them. Very similar to www.threadless.com type stuff. We wandered around Joy City just taking fun pictures of the stores, all of which were shiny, new and brightly colored/lit.
Afterwards we decided to check out the Huayuandonglu area, which Mike had been to already with a local friend. He promised me that there would be delicious food, and no white people, which was music to my ears. We had a fun adventure asking where the subway is, but we didn't know how to say subway. First we asked where the "huoche" was, as that means train, but the man we asked didn't know. Then we showed him the subway map that Mike had and he said "Oohhhh, ditie", which means subway. Great, now I'll never forget it. The subway ride took about an hour, because we had to go around a slightly long way and change trains twice. We exited the subway and then had to walk a ways down a dark side street to get to this little area where there definitely were no white people--heaven! Even though it was about 10:30 at night many restaurants were open and had a few tables of patrons. We bought a stick of "beef" from a guy grilling it on the street (he added this local chili spice and it was yummy) for 1 Yuan. It turned out to be mostly fat, but it was still yummy since we were very hungry. We picked a restaurant that was pretty crowded and were amazed to find they had an English menu, with decent translations and nice pictures. We ordered a bunch of vegetarian food plus some pork congee and two bottles of beer. The total came to only US$10. The standout dish was fried string beans with Sichuan peppercorns, which make your mouth go numb in a lemon spicy kind of way--really unique!
After the eating adventure we went to a cafe for some green tea, which was served in a nifty little glass teapot with as many refills as desired. We caught a cab back ($15 spent on cabs--the whole night, what a bargain!) and went to bed around 1:45am. It was later than I wanted, but I was excited to try new foods in new areas of Beijing. While we were walking around the place we saw a lot of barbershops, but I suspect they were brothels, because there were only chairs and no hairstyling equipment, and just a few bored looking girls in heavy makeup looking outside at passers by. Interestingly there were also real barbershops next to the fake ones, which was funny (you could tell the real ones because there were people in there actually getting haircuts). We also saw some tents on the street with people inside eating what appeared to be dumplings, so they must have been some kind of illicit restaurant. We definitely want to come back to try those places, which we have termed "Expert Level Chinese Dining Only". That will likely be in a few weeks!
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