The Great Wall of China (万里长城) @ Badaling (八达岭)

不到长城非好汉
He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man.
Mao Zedong

So recently we went to the Great Wall of China (万里长城) at Badaling (八达岭), about 50 miles away from Beijing. It’s the most visited chunk of the wall due to its proximity to China’s capital, and it’s really well suited to visitors and tourists like us! Woo hoo!

Check out the massive sign on the hill, advertising the Olympics. There’s going to be a lot of recycling done in China in November…

It was about 40rmb (£3) to get ‘in’ to the wall, and then you could choose to go left or right. How exciting! As we knew nothing about anything, we went left! I was pretty happy with our decision as it seemed like our direction was the ULTRA HARDCORE one…

…as this steep picture suggests! It was quite worrying seeing some of the people (60+ yrs old) really trying to hold on to the guardrails as their lives flashed before their eyes. I was also crapping myself at various points, especially when J revealed his ‘tactic’ of running down the wall (“it’s the safest way to do it”)…

We saw this mad set of stairs on the side of the wall…but J assured me that he’d seen a documentary about the GWOC a few weeks ago and this was NOT a battering ram. I was sad.

Walll walll walll!

All along the wall there are small rooms where you can sit and emo-photo (or hide from the rain). I preferred the former.

It’s a really long wall.

This picture was meant to show off how steep this section of the wall was, but it ended up with J doing the robot / Ric Flair strut.

Seriously I have no idea…

Well we made it to the top, so why not reward ourselves with some ice-cold beer or four! Interestingly, the price of beer decreased the higher you got – the shop at the gate charged 30rmb per can (£2.20ish), but at the highest point that we could reach the lovely ‘travelling salesman’ woman charged….5rmb! China: Where supply and demand make no sense.

Cow internal organs lunch @ Zhu ji (朱记)

I’m not a big breakfast person. Waking up early for work for nearly 5 years (and going to bed late) really messed up my eating patterns, and I’ve found that my lack of hunger in the AM has followed me to China.

The other day a friend called and asked if I wanted to have a late lunch/early dinner (it was about 3pm, I’d just woken up). I thought it would be ok to go with her and have a quick breakfast snack, and off we went onto Nanjing road to what she called a ‘soup place’.

Now, I grew up eating soup. Heinz tomato soup was a cornerstone of lunchtime whenever my Dad and I were spending ‘quality time’ together (watching Home and Away and Neighbous). This, however, had done next to nothing to prepare me for the PWOPER CHINESE VERSION. (Edit: Did I say China?! I meant TAIRANESE!)

So in we went to Zhu ji – an ‘authentic Chinese restaurant’ (finally!) (Edit: See bold above)…this translates to small, cheap and with a terrifyingly unique menu.

Ok, first dish…no suprises…it’s like beansprouty thing with peppers and an interesting (and rather tasteless) ‘meat’. After we’d finished I asked what it was, and found out it was tofu. I’m all for vegetarians getting their protein fix somewhere, but c’mon…not in my plate. Check out the brown ‘rind’ on it…I don’t know why the manufacturer even bother with trying to make it look like meat. /rant

Now THIS is what I’m talking about! Roast beef, thin strips, in my face. Thanks. I wish I’d had some Warburton’s thick crusty white bread, some mustard and a little butter to hand…Oh gawd….I’m a horrible expat scummy English…

Although I totally forgot pancake day this year (the best of all religious ‘holidays’), I felt a littler cLose Weight Exercise/”>Lose Weight Exerciser to God after eating this. Pancakes and chicken and beansprouts and peppers and hmmmm lovely. It was a bit like the calm before the storm because next up…

Soup time! Now, I like to try different things…and this looked pretty innocuous. Hot water, check. Green stuff, check. Meat? Well…if you can call it that…

Out of the soup popped a whole load of stuff which I sure as hell hadn’t seen in any butcher’s shop before (and I used to practically camp out in the butcher’s in Sturton le Steeple to buy drumsticks (the sweet kind not the chicken kind)). I made the terrible mistake of asking if these were mushrooms in the bowl…and my friend replied:

No, they’re all different parts of a cow’s internal organs.

Damn…but I’d come too far to back out, so I slurped down a bowl or two, trying desperately not to chew too long on the bobbly matter that was slipping down my throat. I needed something bland and safe to take away the fear…

…and here it is. A big block of tasteless tofu! With some onions on the top (I think they put them on everything to add the X-Factor).

Next time I go for soup, I’m asking for a full ingredients list and a quality assurance that the meat is organic and farmed away from nuclear plants (and I’ll certainly have a couple more beers before sitting down to eat).

Oh beer

So the Tesco’s under our house really is special. Not only do they sell delicious, nutritious food and drink, but they also have a wide variety of special offers that keep the punters coming back for more.

My particular favourite is Reeb – a crisp, light beer (4% alchohol) with a distinct taste of Budweiser about it. It comes in bottles of 630ml (a lot of beers here come in these big bottles – very good for sharing (or drinking alone)) and doesn’t have any of the bloating or agro side-effects that Stella, for example, has.

Now…after this mini review…click on the photo to see how much one of these babies will set you back! You’ll choke on your finger.

(And before I forget, the most amazing thing about it is that REEB is BEER backwards! It only took 3 days to work that one out…)