Falling behind!

This weekend was nice; Friday night we went downtown to a tavern called Tim's Texas Barbecue. We read that they were showing the U.S. World Cup soccer games, and Beijing barbecue sounded interesting. Unfortunately, since the game didn't start until 10 p.m., we were a little too late, and the kitchen was closing right when we got there. But there was live music during commercials and halftime, and Chinese beer is pretty tasty.

We also went to another area that night after the game called Sanlitun Street. Sanlitun is a street that must have had 20 or 30 bars in just a couple of blocks. Each bar only had about 4 tables, but that didn't matter. After visiting a couple, we found that they were pretty much all exactly the same, and we headed home.

Saturday we slept in, but we headed to the Yashow Market that afternoon. The building was 6 floors, and each floor had probably at least 50 vendors with individual stands. They had everything: glasses and sunglasses, clothes, toys, shoes, "designer" purses, jewelry, tailors, electronics, art, tea, dishes, bedding and a food court to top it off. I bought myself a pair of sunglasses, because I left mine in Chapel Hill, but I didn't really get anything else because I didn't come prepared to shop.

After Yashow, we walked a little farther down the street and we came to a more Western shopping area, equipped with a Starbucks and Adidas, Lacoste and Apple stores. I also went to a store called Uni Qlo, which I'd never heard of but it reminded me of The Gap. I bought three solid tops that were on sale for 49 Yuan, or about $7.25 each. Now, compared to some other prices I've paid in China, this is a little expensive, but these shirts were a good quality, and when I compares to U.S. prices I was satisfied with spending less than $10 on a shirt.

For dinner, we were planning to stop in one of the Western restaurants. I really wanted Italian because I miss pasta, but a glance at the menu showed that the prices were Western, too. Most dishes were about 120 Yuan, or almost $18. Not outrageous in Chapel Hill, but since we've been paying less than $5--and often more like $3--we didn't want to splurge. Instead we headed over to the all-American favorite: McDonald's. I had a yummy cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake. It wasn't exactly fantastic cuisine, but it sure did fix my craving for something other than Chinese food.

Sunday we were planning to get up and head out to Summer Palace or the Forbidden City, but it turned out that we all just felt pretty lazy. I went to the gym around 11 a.m., and came back and spent much of the rest of the day doing laundry and reading Wild Swans. If you haven't heard me rave about Wild Swans yet, here's the short version: Buy Wild Swans and read it; it's an incredible book.

I came up to the office for a while to use the Internet, but otherwise I spent the day being pretty lazy.

I expected Monday to be another lazy day. I had taken the day off to spend with Debbie, Steven's mom, and we planned to go get a massage. When I met her Monday morning, I mentioned how much I want to buy a Qipao (pronounced Chee-pow), which is a traditional Chinese dress. So we headed back to the Yashow Market, where I found tailors Saturday. The dress that I wanted to make, they said, would cost 800 Yuan, or about $118. Of course, you never pay the asking price in China, so we started designing this beautiful turquoise dress. After going through the design, they decided that it would actually cost 1,200 Yuan, or about $175, and when we bartered they wouldn't go down below 800. I wasn't expecting to spend more than 300 Yuan, since I'd seen some premade for 250 Yuan in a store last week. We walked away.

So after they gave us the run around, Debbie and I wandered through the market and bought a few gifts. I found a pair of thin baggy pants that I really liked, and I got them for 35 Yuan, which is about $5. I'll need to have Grandma fix them to be Capri pants, because even the XL pants were too short for my long legs. But for $5, I thought it was worth it. I'm wearing them right now, and they're very comfortable.

All of a sudden it was almost 6 p.m., so we headed back to Debbie's hotel. We grabbed some dinner because we'd lost track of time shopping and skipped lunch. We ate with one of her Chinese exchange students who was nearby, who was very helpful. We had nuggets of lamb that was battered and fried with curry power; sauteed green beans, peppers and onions; and some very mushy--but delicious--eggplant. Debbie also ordered some chrysanthemum tea (ju hua, as my friend Fiona called it) and it was very good. It was the first time I'd had real Chinese tea since I've been here. I'm going to try to buy some later this week.

After the dinner, we walked over to the massage parlor, finally. It was about 9 p.m. by then, but we'd been walking all day and a foot massage sounded wonderful. We got Debbie's student to translate for us, and we ordered up a foot massage, back massage and cupping (which I'll explain later on).

The foot massage was great, and very relaxing. It lasted for an hour, and they massaged every bone and muscle in our feet and lower legs. The back massage was nice, but a little painful. I'm not sure if Debbie had this problem, but when the guy massaged my thin back, he put a lot of pressure under my shoulder blades, and they have really been hurting today.

Of course, for most of the day I thought the reason I was in pain was the cupping. Cupping is a form of traditional Chinese medicine. They bring in a tray of glass globe cups, then light a match inside it and quickly place it on the skin. The idea is that the flame burns off the gas inside the globe, and it sucks your skin up into it a little. The cups (there were at least 14 of them) sat on my back for several minutes. It felt like there was something crawling on my back the whole time; it actually felt pretty nice, if a bit strange.

The result is a line of huge black circles on your back. The Chinese believe that the suction from cupping pulls the toxins out of your body. They're really just gigantic bruises, which I knew ahead of time. Still, I thought it should be part of my experience of living in China. Even my deskmate Fiona said that she has it done a few times each year.

The whole massage was 2 hours, which was great, except that I got home pretty late. Great day, though.

This is the front lobby area of the massage parlor. We were afraid as we were walking up that the place might be a brothel. The parlor is underground, and down at the end of a market street. Despite the way the building looked from the street, I thought the place was very professional.

This is what my back looked like immediately after they removed the cups from my back. Debbie took some photos of me with the cups on, but I don't have those photos yet. I'll share when I get them. My back looks much worse now than it did then, because now it's bruised, not just red.

Today I was busy at work, which was nice. This week's editor brought me a folder with several mini-stories all related to one larger topic. Apparently China.org.cn also puts together a China travel website, where guests can go to see what different cities in China have to offer tourists. The "stories" I had today were all the sub-parts for a city called Luoyang, and they included lists of restaurants with short reviews, local colleges, hotels and shopping areas. Not exactly what I would have expected coming to work at a news site, but at least I was busy today.

Oh! And the sky was bright blue this morning when I left for work. It was only the second time I've seen it really blue since I got here 17 days ago:

I'm off to bed now. Have a great day, U.S. pals!