Things keep getting more and more interesting every day we are here. Today we visited the Beijing Zoo and one of the markets near the zoo.
The zoo was awesome because first of all we got to see a ton of giant pandas! It was kind of cool to see how obsessed Chinese people are towards the country’s unofficial mascot. Most of the focus of the zoo was on the pandas. The architecture of the zoo was something I didn’t expect. The entrance to the zoo itself is extremely beautiful and a lot of the buildings towards the front of the zoo were Chinese in style, which was a pleasant surprise.
After going to the zoo, we ate lunch. What we had today was (I believe) pretty typical for a lunch in China. Something Claudia said yesterday stuck out for me: how Chinese people tend to eat out rather than cook for themselves because food is so inexpensive. This seemed to be the case because the restaurant was extremely crowded with all types of people: families, workers, and teenagers. Lunch was also awesome because of the Dairy Queen! It was nice to have a little taste of home.
The market we went to was pretty insane. Everything was so inexpensive and the place was huge! I had an awesome time shopping and got a lot of great bargains. One thing I noticed was how aggressive the merchants were.
After a long day of shopping we went on a walk and then to dinner. We went to a place called ‘Grandma’s Kitchen’ that served American food. It was funny to see the Chinese impression of what American food is like. All of the portions were gigantic, and a few of the menu items were absurd, like the cheeseburger with hot dogs on it. After dinner, Dr. Gao took us out to experience the night life of Beijing. We had a ton of people come up to us to try to get us to come to their bar. I had so much fun even though I thought I was going to die in the taxi a few times!