Breakfast in Yinchuan

Forget about cereal. Like most meals in China, breakfast comes best cooked fresh from the street. If we notice here, the man rolls out the dough and places it in the hot oil while the woman twists it with her chopsticks. The girl (their daughter?) is the whole power behind the operation, hand-cranking the wheel that keeps the fire burning hot hot hot.

No matter what the weather, you can count on the breakfast vendors to be out. They're like the postal carriers of the street food industry. What I don't understand is why, with little competition and great demand, these vendors never charge more than a kuai or two for their delicious wares?

Wild Wild West Day ONE: Tombs, Movies Sets, and Helan Mountain

Right so I've been home about a week now. Time is really flying by, somehow I've managed to fall behind yet again.

Our first day in Yinchuan was freezing. The day started off on a great note when our driver, not even two minutes out on the road, accidentally rolled backwards into another car. There was a great deal of arguing between the two drivers over fault, and I got out of the van even to take pictures of the bystanders.

Our first stop was the Xi Xia Mausoleum, which were tombs from the Xi (Western) Xia Dynasty. Honestly, they just looked like giant anthills. The gloomy weather didn't help our lack of excitement either. But because there were four of us camera-happy girls, we took loads of funny pictures.

  Our next stop was a giant movie set where numerous films have been shot. Danny, our director, told us a whole generation of filmmakers who grew up during the Cultural Revolution used this set, because they would make films about the Sent Down Youth or the Re-education movement of the 60s and 70s. One of my favorite movies I recognized as having taken place there! To Live, which is from 1994 and stars Gong Li. Highly recommended. Anyway, we ended up exploring and taking more funny photos. There were also two tied up monkeys in the complex, they looked like they were going to bite my nose when I got close to them. The set is obviously just a tourist attraction now, but we could have spent half the day there if Danny let us, just taking pictures. My favorite part of the whole trip there might've been when a group of tourists kept trying to take photos of Brittney and Leanna just because they were white, and I started making funny faces whilst standing in between them. Imagine looking at a picture of two white girls with me in the middle scrunching my nose and sticking out my tongue...brilliant.

Our last stop of the day was Helan Mountain, which looked to be just giant rock formations but they actually had ancient carvings and drawings. I couldn't see a single one without having to stare at the same boulder for ages, but some of the others could really pick them out. It started to drizzle while we were there, and by the end of our walk through it, we were all just wet and cold. I ended up holding everyone up though because I was bargaining for some souveniers to bring home. I think the matter of contention was five kuai? So less than a dollar...but really, it was a matter of pride.  I ended up winning. Dinner that night was on Danny's contact in Yinchuan, who is the sister of a coworker in Dalian and whom Danny had never actually met. She's a professional singer, or was, and now gives voice lessons while her daughter is a news anchor on the local television station. Her husband turned out to be Shanghai born and raised, so we had a conversation in Shanghai dialect, which made me very happy, as it always does. The dishes at dinner were all fantastic, and kept coming even when we were stuffed. Because we were in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, where a good majority of the people (the Hui minority) are Muslims, lamb is a staple meat. One dish was lamb raised so as not to taste gamey, and it was so tasty, the meat seemed to melt off the bone. Even the tea we had -ba bao, or Eight Treasure tea- was delicious. The dinner was definitely a good experience not just for the culinary satisfaction, but also because through Danny's polite conversation and the way he acted towards these three, it was a perfect demonstration of how Chinese people form and maintain guanxi as well.

Friday in Beijing and arriving in Yinchuan

Yesterday was a full day! Our train arrived at the station at 6 in the morning, and we high tailed it straight to McDonald's for coffee. From the moment we arrived though you could tell the sky was beautiful- I got lovely pictures of the sunrise. After breakfast we decided to check out the Olympic venues, so we hopped on the subway and when we arrived it turned out you needed special passes to get in! We got on these buses instead with Beijing 2008 on the side, and it basically went in a loop around the venues, stopped at like the Village and outside the Stadium, etc. We didn't get terribly close to the Water Cube or the Bird's Nest, but close enough to take pictures- the pictures just have lots of gates and buses in them!

Then we finished off the loop (the buses were really comfortable and the weather was gorgeous-Beijing really did a fantastic job with the air pollution) then went to Yonghe Lama Temple. According to Hack it's one of the rare temples that a. wasn't destroyed in the Cultural Revolution and b. is from a particular sect of Buddhism that's seldom practiced. The biggest sight was this giant Buddha carved from a single sandalwood tree- it actually had a Guinness World Record plaque outside the temple (for what record, I'm not sure, I'm assuming it's to do with height or building material. Or both).

We took the subway back, and after three trips to Beijing I finally made it to the Silk Market. I spent a good almost hour probably at this one shop debating over jackets- one I didn't buy, it was a nice dark green Inspector Gadget-type trenchcoat that was 200 rmb, but the one I did buy was a 240 rmb Columbia knock-off, that I'm incredibly pleased with. It's got two layers, and the inner sweater layer even zips out and can be worn alone, among other awesome features...best 35 dollars I've spent in a while. I also bought a 'silk' skirt for 35 rmb (the lady was so upset though, she wanted 38 and I just wouldn't give in for pride's sake and she said, Where are you from? Are all females from where you live like you? I've never met anyone so stubborn/cheap from America.) then Hack and I were nearly threatened by a lady selling jerseys. We went to look at them and when we wouldn't agree to her prices (90 a pair) we tried to walk away and she got extremely red and wouldn't let us...I've never felt scared of vendors before.

After that we went back to Wang Fu Jing, where we had breakfast, and checked out a tiny little food street that had, among other things, seahorse on a stick. We ate dinner in the giant mall there, where we all made the comment that Beijing was way too Western for us, and how glad we were to be there only a day. Though, it was such a full day we felt ready to head back to Dalian, we had to be reminded there were still five more days to the trip!

We took a 9:20 pm flight to Yinchuan, where we arrived last night about 11:30. When we disembarked, I was realized buying the jacket was the smartest decision I've made in a while, it is Freezing here (46 F this morning)! We were picked up by contacts of Danny's and taken to this hostel where it seems to have been transfomed from an old factory building or something, and there's No Heat. No hot water for showers either; we asked this morning when hot water would turn on and the owner said probably not today...because their water is heated by the sun! I guess we're lucky they even have this old laptop for public use. There is this really cute collie here though in the lobby.

We're spending four full days here, and we're still not quite sure what we have planned. We could go to Inner Mongolia, or the desert and ride camels and go sand sliding, or raft on the Yellow River...today's extremely cold and it's raining outside though, and the girls got about six hours of sleep (I got four because they moved back our pick-up time and I just decided to read books in the lobby instead of going back to sleep), so though it's not starting off on the right foot, as Hillary said...at least we had a beautiful day in Beijing to remember if nothing else!