beijing: day 4

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Breakfast meal size getting smaller and smaller as the stuff I want to eat diminishes
Had bun, fried noodles, sausage, bread roll and coffee
Why are the eggs so weird? How does one make weird eggs?

first order of business was to the garden with the tree where one of the emperors hung himself
(post hoc wiki: The Imperial Garden of Jingshan Park 景山公园; and it was Emperor Chongzhen who hung himself)
Our tour guide Gary told us that they have since replaced the tree - after the emperor hung himself, the tree was replaced with a sapling. but then all the tourists started questioning how an emperor could have hung himself on a sapling, so they replaced it with a huge ass tree: 



It was cold here; but we had a marvelous view of the Forbidden Palace
Then we watched old asians do old asian things - like playing with this racquet and ball that never fell off as well as good ol' fashioned line dancing
This techno music came on and the boys started dancing -.- kind of inappropriately lol






Then it was to Tong Ren Tang (同仁堂) which is the most well known producer of chinese herbal medicine and of course, originated in Beijing...
A lot of people got their pulse read and almost everyone got told they lacked sleep lol
Then of course many people got told what kind of herbal medicine would help alleviate their woes xD
People went jackpoo, buying tens of thousands of RMB in herbal medicine (I'M NOT EVEN KIDDING.)
Mum also made some purchases, she got $2 packets of herbal band aids lol

After that, it was lunch time at a miscellaneous restaurant
Same old poo.
It was the afterwards where we went off to the side street to eat chinese delicacies that was epic.
Pretty much everyone in our little australia group had a try of the scorpian. Crunchy!





Then it was off to some 6 storey shopping mall thingy where you haggle haggle haggle. We ended up getting  what seemed like a ton of stuff at the time, but was probably not that much relative to everyone else. I got:
  • knitted jumper from RMB360 to RMB80
  • Pashmina scarves RMB180 to 3 for RMB100
  • Loafers from RMB980 to RMB100
  • Fake mulberry bag RMB480 to RMB100
  • Other stuff was mum and isaacs. He got like belts and pants and wallets, etc
It was so completely ridiculous. A trap for foreigners. And by heavens, there were so many foreigners and a lot of the vendors knew ridiculous languages. I'm pretty sure one of them were conversing in Russian. like WHAT?!

Standard haggling conversion went something like this:
how much?
380
What? So high opening price I don't even know how to talk to you
I give you cheaper. Friend price 300
What? Too expensive!
Ok ok you tell me how much!
50
What? Too little! Let's compromise. 220
Pfft no. 60
180
No no. 70
Ok ok last price. I dont want to haggle with you. I can't go below 100 or I'll lose money. 150!
75!
120!
*starts walking away*
75!
Ok ok 100!
*walks more away* 75!
You're making me cry. 90.
*walks out of sight* 75!
Come back come back! 88!
*almost gone* 75!
Add 5 more dollars! 80!
Fine. Fine.
Other tactics aside from walking away included putting only 50 in your wallet and being like, this is all I have.
Another is talking down the price for one item, say 180 down to 40. And then asking for 100 for 3 of them, etc etc etc. Discount on the discount.
Another is to have one person just really not wanting you to buy the thing an pulling you away. Lol.

So tiring.

Spent like 3 hours in that mall.




Then it was off to some govt approved theatrical performance. It was pretty not good -.-
The best part was the flood and the trampoline.
Aside from the epic mechanics behind the set, the story and characterics left me completely unattached. The tricks were the classics, nothing new or particularly exciting. Big sigh. Had high hopes after a stick fell out of the sky and hit the stage like nothing i'd ever seen.
Had caramel popcorn an instant milk tea with jelly inside.
One of the aunties kept saying the water for the flood was fake. Lol forever. She argued that the people weren't getting wet and they weren't being pushed forward by the tide. Lol no.
Check out the water, bro:




It was about -5 degrees when we walked out of the stadium thingy at the beijjng theme park and the bus was parked super far away. Fail.

Dinner at some place. Ate zha jian mein (炸酱面). It was so good we paid 48RMB for another bowl. All other dishes were standard.
Also ate THE boniest fish ever.
The boys wouldn't shut up so when it was time to leave; the three of them had to choke down all the food that was left in about 2 minutes. Hilarious.

Back to hotel, me and little bro went down to lobby for wifi. Joined by the Boys and joe.
Spent 2.5 hours walking, standing, squatting around lobby trying to load Facebook via vtunnel and delete my spam emails.
Had nice chat with the boys. Once again, I've become one of them cos the things they talk about in front of me are like o_O.
Weird cos there's some girls on the tour, a little younger than me but I prefer to hang with the boys. Even though most of their convo is about body building, hot chicks and computer games.
Hmmm...Girly gossip is a bit too tiring for me. Sigh.

Went back to room. Watched a bit of 007 and then sleep time.






donna.