#zhajiangmian

[calpicowater]

Week 28.6/52: July 8th - July 14th 2024 | Back in Beijing!

Back in my first home <3 good to be back

black bean noodle for first meal OFC.. so delish

also tried cola chicken wings

[vegan-nom-noms]

Zha Jiang Mian

[ann-atar]

Oh yes I will reblog any reference to Zhajiangmian-Sauron!

(And yes I bet he was having flashbacks. Am positive he hates any situation if it reminds him that at the end of the day he'll always be a monster portion of overcooked, over-mixed noodles.)

(And I'm not quite willing to die on a hill with this stupid metaphor but ... *cough* Sauron is not seasoned well enough for any discerning palate and Melkor threw out his leftovers after the War of Wrath.)

© [insp.]

[metamorphiacreations]

i want to talk about Jjajang Cookie and cultural disconnection

bc its not the focus of the story but its important for her as a character

hi welcome back to Meta rambling at 3am again akandn

The dish of jjajangmyeon or black bean sauce noodles (which sounds so fucking good, i really wanna try some) was brought to Korea in the late 19th century by way of Chinese migrant workers and stems from the Chinese dish, zhajiangmian or fried bean sauce noodles

i saw a post from @/walnutcookie where he mentioned that unlike most other cookies, Agent Jjajang doesnt know how to make her own dish, Cream Puff Cookie knows how to make cream puffs, Latte Cookie knows how to make lattes, even Tanghulu Cookie's whole thing is going back and forth between hot and cold baths because thats what you do to the fruit to make tanghulu, but Jjajang has never made jjajangmyeon until she starts running the noodle shop and even then she doesnt get the hang of it until Olive (who ill call Oli for this post) shows her how to make noodles.

this could be interpreted as Jjajang representing children or descendants of immigrants that have one way or another, lost touch with their culture. the chances of it meaning to be that deep are honestly 50/50 because on one hand the story is a hardass of a government agent does average life work to track down aliens but at the same time the story so far has constantly brought up going back to your roots and homestyle nostalgia. in fact the reason the restaurant blows up in the first place is because Jjajang learned how to play to the aliens' favor by making the noodles taste like home to them.

the franchise doesnt need to say it out loud because its so obvious but a cookie's main ingredient is integral to their living and for a lot of cookies, that ingredient is like 98% of their diet. so the fact that Jjajang up until this point had been eating instant noodles rather than proper jjajangmyeon probably wasnt good for her.

we can see that slowly but surely she starts becoming more happy and comfortable making noodles and even catches herself taking pride in her work, although she tries to bring herself back to reality afterwards. she is a secret agent, not a noodle chef! but i wonder if she realizes that she's finally able to find some connection to her ancestors. given the dishes history, it would make Jjajang canonically Chinese Korean but she talks like she never had the chance to partake in her Chinese heritage.

i myself am afro-dominican. 2nd gen american born or however you say it. my great-grandmother, grandmother and great aunts moved from DR to New York and without getting too personal, i dont feel confident in my knowledge about Dominican culture. i dont know about the history of my country, i dont know about our clothing styles or anything specific but i do know about our food! we eat it all the time! i love sancocho, i love mangú, i love platanos in general. food just makes me feel connected to DR even though ive never been (yet!)

call it projecting or whatever but i feel like Jjajang is the same way, shes happy making noodles because it brought her closer to her family roots and even if that wasnt the intention with her character, i still think its a great aspect and wonderful, quiet plotline.

[outofconcheol]

Between The Mountains And The Sea (XMH x GN!Reader)

pairing: detective!Minghao x gn!reader genres/au/rating: angst, some fluff, sort-of mystery au, 15+ summary: In the seaside city, the ebb and flow of the tides is as constant as the presence of tragedy in Minghao's life. Until one day, the tides bring him you.

word count: 2.3k

warnings: Minghao is a detective investigating an un-aliving (referenced, no graphic depictions), unconventional detective-suspect-witness relationship, mutual pining and melancholy, OC is a different kind of femme fatale, alcohol use, (1) kiss

a/n: I watched Decision To Leave and it had me so effed up (seriously, it's amazing). I loved the dynamics between the two main leads, and for some reason, the visuals brought the Hai Cheng mv to mind. This is purely experimental, and it kinda reminds me of my rough early fanfic writing, but hopefully it's still an enjoyable read!

Minghao was nine years old when his parents had taken him up the mountain for the very first time. He cherishes the memory as though it were yesterday, still remembering the crackling in his lungs from the exertion, and their feet dangling over the edge while he happily munched on his mother’s cooking. 

“Remember Minghao,” his father had said to him, quoting an old verse from one of the many books that sat collecting dust on the shelves of his office. “The wise love the sea, the benevolent the mountains.”

He’d been so wary back then, an irrational fear seizing him - what if his shoe suddenly slipped off and was to fly through the air, only to hit some poor unsuspecting soul below? It was then that he decided the mountains weren’t benevolent after all, their harsh, jagged faces looming above the landscape, striking fear into people's hearts. 

And so, Minghao stayed away for many years. Until he met you.

He remembers the way you’d shuffled into the empty boardroom, so different from every other person he’d ever questioned. While normally their eyes were trained on the floor and their shoulders hunched, an indirect admission of some sort of guilt, you walked in, eyes level with his own. A challenge in them. 

While it wasn’t unreasonable for Minghao to question the widow of a deceased victim, you made him feel like it was. 

“You’re a hard person to track down, ___,” he mutters when you take the seat across from him. “You think you’d be more eager to come in and answer some questions given he was your spouse.”

“He was my husband,” you counter back, voice far too calm and steady for someone who was supposed to be in the harrowing stages of grief. “Not my life. I have a job, I have people I take care of.”

I am not benevolent. I like the sea.

Minghao’s father’s words come back to him when he looks at you, tempting and unknowable, your demeanor like the ebb and flow of the ocean tides that ravaged the coast a couple of miles away.

You lean over the table, inching closer and closer, and Minghao is transfixed, unable to draw back when he smells the warm hint of your perfume. You’re impossibly close, and he has to turn his head to remind himself that his colleague, Mingyu, had gone home for the night. 

“So Detective Xu,” you whisper in his ear. “Ask away.”

Minghao stands up abruptly, your curious eyes following the line of his body. Your eyes follow the line of his body, and he has to force his racing heart to calm down, reminding himself that there was a job to be done.

“Let me buy you dinner first.”

After that night, Minghao stops eating dinner at his apartment, the tiny box with the garish wallpaper making way for the sleek wood of the boardroom. His packs of ramen are exchanged for more extravagant meals - sometimes bibimbap, other times sushi, or on the rare occasion, zhajiangmian, his favorite. 

The two of you start off eating quietly, savoring the meals and tranquility amongst the hectic backdrop of your busy lives. It’s only when you’re both working to wipe down the table and put away the utensils and your hands brush against his – rough and callused against soft palms, that a chill runs down his spine – one he pushes to the back of his mind.

I’m working on the case, he’d lie to Mingyu when his partner questioned why he couldn’t join them for drinks, watching them clamber down the street. And then he waited. Waited until night had fallen and he could hear the drumming of your boots in the hallway, spotting the light blue wool of your favourite coat first, clutched in your arms while you wandered in, a coy smile on your face.

Instead, he learns that you’ve been unable to sleep in your bed since everything had happened, falling asleep to the sound of a different drama every night, a half-eaten pint of ice cream not far from your side. 

That’s why he buys you dinner, he convinces himself. You’re clearly in shock and unable to cope with your husband’s tragic passing. It’s not because you take his breath away, a formidable tempest in your blue coat, standing out against the foggy backdrop of the seaside city. 

It’s not because he also finds himself unable to sleep along with you, spending nights bundled up in his down jacket, staring at the twinkling lights of the houses across the bay, wondering which one is yours. 

He forgets to go home, falling asleep in his car, roaming and wandering the streets in the hopes of running into you outside the shackles of his job, so he can finally get to know you in the way he yearns to – not as a suspect or an informant, but as a human being.

. . .

Minghao heaves for breath, his legs buckling underneath him as he climbs the stairs one by one, chasing after a new suspect. He’d been disappointed when the captain, Seungcheol, called him into the office that morning, informing him that the case on your husband was closed due to lack of evidence. 

Minghao wanted to protest, to tell Seungcheol that you were worth it, but he realized how strange that would have sounded. And so he kept his mouth shut, being handed the next file for investigation, reading over the thief’s name – Soonyoung. The hours passed by, with him slumped over at his desk, until Mingyu is shaking him awake, telling him that Soonyoung’s been spotted and that they needed to split up and run after him — now.

The wind howls at the top of the winding road, Soonyoung cowering in the corner, and Minghao approaches the man, fingers lingering in case he makes a sudden move. His hair is matted with sweat, hands shaking as the handcuffs lock around the other man’s wrists easily, and he’s calling Mingyu for backup, ready to take the suspect back to the station for questioning. 

All of a sudden, bright lights appear from around the corner, the roar of an engine and then sputtering, the car coming to a halt. The door swings open, and Minghao isn’t prepared for what happens next.

“Hao? Is that you?” your voice calls out to him. Hao. You’d never called him that before. It was always Detective Xu, a respectful distance in your voice, reminding him of the gap between you two.

“Is everything alright?” you look from Minghao’s exhausted figure to the handcuffed man.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Minghao manages to hiss out, wondering how the universe could have given him his greatest wish, the chance to see you again, in the most inopportune of moments, where his duty outweighed his heart.

You nod, eyes shining with concern, but back away anyway, stumbling over a few rocks on the road before the car revs up again, driving away.

Mingyu arrives not five minutes later, the two of them leading Soonyoung into the car, and that’s when Minghao spots it – the tiny piece of paper. Glancing around to make sure no one’s looking, he picks it up. There, scrawled in hurried and messy ink – is an address.

He knows it’s yours, and that it can’t have been there by accident. Tucking it into his back pocket, he lets out a heavy sigh, preparing for a grueling few hours of questioning ahead of him. And then, the real investigation could begin.

“You came,” the door swings open before Minghao can knock, his fist suspended in the air while he stares at you in shock, unable to say anything. He doesn’t know if he’s more shocked or you’re more shocked that he actually showed up. 

“I made food,” you usher him in, and immediately, the smell of your cooking hits him, reminding him so much of his mother’s. He’s slipping his shoes off before he can think, and downing three shots of soju not even five minutes later.

It’s different from when you met before, because Minghao is in your home, your space. It’s different because he’s five shots of soju deep, and spilling information he shouldn’t be sharing with anyone about cases that should never see the light of day. Anything from petty thievery to crimes of passion.

You follow along with interest, pausing to nod at his declarations and add in your own theories.

“I don’t know about you Hao.” There it is again. You reach over with your spoon, pausing to take a bite from his bowl, and Minghao feels his throat go dry. “But it’s not a crime to like someone just because they’re married. If it was, the whole world would have been in flames by now.”

Minghao sputters, choking on the steaming rice that clogs the back of his throat, and your eyes are staring at him once again, deep and solemn. How would you know, unless…

“You’re tired,” you take his hand, pulling him up with you. “Please sleep.”

Minghao focuses on nothing but the warmth of your hand as you lead him down the hallway until he’s enveloped by darkness, falling backward onto the sheets of your bed. 

“Close your eyes,” you whisper to him, and he feels his gaze become heavy, the ceiling of the room that’s not his blurring into soft focus. “Pretend you’re in the ocean, floating along the waves…”

Your voice is hypnotic, drawing him to a lull, and Minghao thinks it’s so easy to love you. He wonders why your husband couldn’t have stuck around long enough to do so. 

He remains awake long enough to hear your voice go impossibly soft, asking a question to the darkness.

“I want your heart, Minghao. Will you give it to me?”

Soon enough, time ceases to exist in the quiet seaside city. The days at work begin to blur even further for Minghao, desolation creeping up his spine when he realizes that in his line of work, there’ll always be a tragedy with no happy ending.

He scribbles notes furiously in his journal, watching the passerby from the bus, when all of a sudden, there’s a shadow who takes the seat in front of him. It’s you, in your blue coat. The two of you hadn’t spoken since Minghao fell asleep in your bed. He’d spent many sleepless nights afterwards wrestling with your whispered words.

He’d never given his heart freely to anyone before, but something about you made him want to try, just this once. Even if you had nothing to give back.

“Your hands,” you finally break the silence. “They have blisters.”

Reaching over, you grab his hands in yours once again, and Minghao marvels at how gentle you are, reaching into your pocket for your hand cream. The smell of flowers and almonds permeates the air, the cold cream making him jolt, but soon enough, it’s soothed by your touch, thumb rubbing circles against his palms. 

It’s far too intimate a gesture for Minghao to wrap his head around, and all he can offer in return is chasing down a man selling balloons when the two of you exit together. He offers a red one to you, and you accept.

“Why me?” Minghao asks, watching you twirl the balloon around in your palms, eyes lighting up in glee. 

“Because you listened.”

He should have known it was all too good to be true, watching the grey clouds roll in on the coast. Mingyu had been on his case for months, asking him where he disappeared off to, why his focus wasn’t there. 

How could Minghao focus, when he remembers the way you’d giggled at the aviators hanging off his shirt, putting them on his face with a smile? 

You’d left without a trace, taking all your memories with you, from the lip balm you’d stolen from his coat pocket, to the files that had been swiped from his work satchel, containing precious evidence from your husband’s case.

How could he focus when he’d felt a taste of happiness, only for what felt like mere moments to pass, leaving him collapsed and broken. 

He knows the storm is on the way, rain pelting him, the waves crashing against the shore, their whispers becoming screams, but he drives, drives, drives, chasing the memory of you, until it leads him to the mountain. 

Tall and deadly, a solitary figure against the thunderous sky. Minghao fights the downpour, abandoning everything behind him, and he begins to climb.

He doesn’t know if it’s minutes, or hours later, when he stumbles to the top, collapsing from exertion. You’re alone, perched against a rock, looking off into the distance. He remains there still, unable to move, though he longs to know what secrets you hide.

“I’m afraid of heights,” your voice echoes out. “That’s why I like the sea - it’s chaotic, unpredictable. It can wash away everything, even all the bad memories. That’s why I married him.”

“Because someone like you would never want me, Minghao. Someone who doesn’t hesitate to scale a mountain in search of the truth. Someone kind, and dependable. A force to be reckoned with.”

“You don’t get to make those decisions,” he seethes, turning you around to face him. His hands run up your sides, and you shiver at his touch. “To decide who’s worthy of what.”

“What if I told you that my happiness is the tube of lip balm you stole from me, or a red balloon floating in the wind? That yes, maybe I’m the mountain, but only because I want to be, so the waves don’t take you away from me? That maybe we’re just two lonely souls, who’ve never had anyone really know us the way we know each other.”

“You don’t know me,” you tell him, clutching onto his coat.

“Then let me,” he takes your hands in his, pulling you closer to him. Around you, the mist thickens, but you pay it no mind, fisting the damp hair at the back of Minghao’s neck, your lips seeking his. 

When dawn rises, you remain in the comfort of his embrace, your broken souls finding peace in each other, somewhere between the mountains and the sea.

a/n pt. 2:  As always, any comments or feedback are much appreciated, but I appreciate you all anyway. Lots of love, Isi &lt;3

[wisteriagoesvroom]

🎀 list 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the ask box for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! get to know your moots or followers <3

THANKS BUD uhh

1. noodles. all types. the other day i had an objectively excellent zhajiangmian for lunch and was like. damn noodles slap every time. i’m overdue for some pho soon.

2. f1 rpf. severely brainrotted. pour one out for me, a fallen compatriot. lately i’ve been leaning towards writing some yuki, let’s see.

3. lying in bed on a sunday while on my phone which is a very underrated but critical activity

4. my friend’s cat who has decided i’m ok and lets me forehead boop him. an honour

5. being somewhere in the southeast asia tropical seaside and smelling salt and coconut and barbecue. and the birds are chirping and you’re standing by the shoreline with the sun turning the sky so blue, and putting your feet in the sea water that is ancient and capable of terror, but in that moment it’s being exceedingly gentle with you

[crehador]

hmmm top five .... ways u like to eat noodles?

WOW OK MANY MANY WEEKS LATER I AM!! REMEMBERING THIS ASK and woag i love it very much. noodles my beloved. top five ways in no particular order

西红柿鸡蛋面 <- tomato egg noodles? what is this guy called?? you know what i mean, this guy is like my top comfort food guy. though full disclosure. i am a big fan of this tomato dish egg with rice as well, instead of noodles. very simple but very good! but caveat when i google this guy's name a lot of the images are very soupy and idk the way i learned to make it in my family, it's not really a soup, just like. the tomato egg cooked together, then put on the noodles almost like a sauce? it is almost midnight and i am craving now hahaha maybe this was not a good time to answer this ask

热干面 MY EXTREMELY BELOVED <- another guy i do not really know how to translate. i always have to have it at least once when i'm back in wuhan. it's like. i don't even think there's anything particularly special about it? it's just very Childhood to me, and i love it. especially when you get it from a slightly sketchy street food stall, in like one of those paper bowls in a plastic bag. that's the good stuff

北京炸酱面 <- once again... the name... idk... beijing zhajiangmian ANYWAY i feel like this guy is very hit or miss for me, sometimes i am just not in the mood for it. but sometimes it is so!! extremely hits the spot

this is very unspecific but i love to have a small portion of noodles at the end of hotpot! like sometimes udon sometimes 粉丝 (vermicelli? does this guy count as noodles? well he's noodles to me) sometimes i don't even know, basically just whatever noodles i have on hand. just a little bit at the end of hotpot, after all the meats and veggies have been ummmmm rinsed? (that is not the correct translation of 涮 for sure lol)

and now this is even more unspecific but it is a way to eat noodles so! it must count!! and it is basically, no matter the kind of noodle (though not soup noodles i guess) i love to slap in a spoonful or two of laoganma and just mix it right in. IS THERE ANYTHING BETTER this is reminding me that i need to buy more laoganma

[saiyukiitaliaandinternational]

Monthly Minekura Christmas edition

Day 21 “Mistletoe”

I couldn't think about anything Christmas-related to a character linked to Chinese culture, so the only thing that inspired me to use mistletoe in the composition were Arcimboldo's paintings. I always loved his imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish and books. Arcimboldo was a conventional court painter of portraits for three Holy Roman Emperors in Vienna and Prague; he also produced religious subjects and specialized in grotesque symbolical compositions of fruits, animals, landscapes, or various inanimate objects arranged into human forms. At a distance, his portraits look like normal human portraits. However, individual objects in each portrait actually overlap together to make various human anatomical shapes. They were carefully constructed by his imagination. The assembled objects in each portrait were not random: each was related by characterization

For example The Librarian is made of objects that signifies the book culture at that time, such as the curtain that created individual study rooms in a library. Keeping this in mind I wanted to paint Goku with different types of foods from Chinese cuisine more precisely mooncake for the cheek, gāo diǎn for the eye, bread for the nose, then we have zhajiangmian, Peking duck, baozi, lou mei, dāoxiāomiàn, lamian, prawn crackers and knife-sliced noodles. Only non-Chinese-related stuff is the mistletoe which fits perfectly his hair. Unlike The Librarian which is meant to criticize rich people's misbehavior specifically that behaviour to collect books only to own them, rather than to read them, here I just wanted to symbolize Goku with food and because he's rooted in Chinese culture, Chinese foods were the best to represent him. Maybe in future I might draw other Sanzo Ikkou in the style of Arcimboldo (Sanzo a mix of sutras and weapons, Gojyo made of cigarettes, alcohol and women and Hakkai might be done with a mix of books of different genres).

Credits:

Saiyuki Reload Blast © Kazuya Minekura, Platinum Vision, 2017-present

[a-christmas-carol-from-hr]

oc lore ive never posted for fun

Scrooge:

-had a truly god awful perm in the 80s

-would get very invested in city builders like City Skylines. would waste hours naming individual subway stops one by one.

-from the cotswolds. used to be a weird nature child.

-her favorite food is Zhajiangmian (noodles with fried bean sauce)

-her special interest when she was a kid was narnia (like book scrooge and ali baba)

Marley:

-daisy buchanan coded. 'i am a beautiful fool' + 'his voice was like money'

-really likes golf but is very bad at golf

-his favorite food is steak

-perceived by his Exchange collegues as a ladykiller, but nobody can remember anyone he seduced after about 2002 or so. hm.

-has a very posh english accent. it's fake. he's from the slums of glasgow. his natural voice is a strong scottish accent but he hides it.

[ellawrites-if]

ROs Fave food?

Oh good question!

Ciaran: loves a homemade cottage pie like their mam used to make.

Killian: used to love going to the street vendors with their older brother and a favourite dish of theirs was zhajiangmian.

Brin: has a massive sweet tooth, but black forest gateau is a favourite of theirs.

Zai: is vegetarian, so koki corn would probably be cited as xyr favourite dish now. As a child though, it was sese plantains.

Ajax: is a foodie, so they’ll eat almost anything at least once. Seafood is a particular favourite.

[obstinaterixatrix]

got confused because lex was talking about korean noodles & I was like huh?? but that’s chinese and apparently jajangmyeon was zhajiangmian introduced by chinese migrant workers and then adapted into more of its own thing in korea, learn something new every day

[eggallthethings]

Zhajiangmian

[somerakaptilo]

Well, I'll make you something else, Don't need to show me how, Since I'm the mad scientist, proclaimed by myself, Canto or Sichuan, Jiangsu or Hunan, No matter which one you pick I'll get it done, Zhajiangmian and xiaolongbao, Wonton and chashao, Delivery or takeout won't beat my retort pouch, You're loving my retort, I'm loving your retort, You're my only retort, you're my only retort

[aventurasdeunatortuga]

Beijing

The past week or so has been spent in Beijing with my best friend from college, Irene. Irene has been living in Beijing since 2019 and teaches English at a high school here. I’ve really enjoyed getting to see her neck of the woods and have been so grateful to have her as a guide because China, especially Beijing, is very overwhelming.

I’ve been to Beijing before, in 2018, but it was just for a day and a half and things have changed a lot since then. Beijing is definitely comparable at least in my experience to Mexico City. It is absolutely enormous and a beast to get around in, but there is so much to see and do and every neighborhood is so interesting and different. After being here a week I’ve barely scratched the surface, but I’ll go through by day.

Day 1, Sunday

We spent most of the day traveling from Macau to Beijing and getting ourselves situated. I was very nervous about flying into Mainland China as they are quite strict at border control and only very recently reopened the border to foreigners. Things only recently opened back up about 3 months ago. I made it through without a problem though and we made our way to the place I’m renting for the week. China does not allow foreigners to stay with residents without going through a long and arduous registration process, so I’m staying in an apartment about 25 minutes away from Irene, which is considered very close by Beijing standards.

Absolutely everything in China is done via apps and QR codes. Everything from riding the bus to ordering food in a restaurant to getting a taxi to paying your water bill; it is all done via apps that are mainly in Chinese. Thank goodness for Irene helping me get all the right apps set up showing me the ropes. After a week here I’ve finally figured out how to do most things by myself. It is certainly very convenient, you don’t need to talk to anyone or even carry around a wallet in most places.

In the evening we did a food tour with Lost Plate tours, it was really cool because they took us around to a lot of off the beaten track restaurants you’d never be able to find on your own and we tried some really amazing dishes.

All of the restaurants were in the Wudaoying Hutong, one of the historic neighborhoods in central Beijing. In total we visited 4 restaurants.

We tried 炸酱面 (zhajiangmian) hand pulled noodles with savory plum sauce and fresh vegetables (my personal favorite), 烤肉(kao rou) old school Mongolian style barbecue cooked with hot briquettes right on your table with a flat grill top. The style originated with soldiers building cook-fires literally inside their helmets, laying their shields on top, and cooking on that. We also had 门钉肉饼 (men ding rou bing) gigantic pork buns, fried on both sides and 春饼 (chun bing) spring pancakes with a variety of fillings. We rode on rickshaws around the hutong to get in between the different restaurants, it was so much fun. By the time we finished at a brewery after the fourth restaurant, we were absolutely stuffed, and made our way back for the night. Beijing is in a heat wave right now, with temperatures ranging from 95-104 degrees every day for the past 2.5 weeks, but in the evening in the hutongs it finally cooled down a bit and it was really lovely to walk around and see the neighborhood.

Day 2, Monday

Today was a lot more laid back. Irene had to work today, that meant that I stayed in my apartment in the air conditioning to rest and recover from the last crazy few days. I ventured out a bit in the afternoon to a nearby mall to find food. Malls in Asia are no joke, they are like small cities with every single kind of store you can think of. In the evening Irene and I walked back to that same mall and ate at a Mexican restaurant, then we walked a bit and explored the Chaoyang area I’m staying in. Even this one small area is enormous, we’ve been averaging about 20,000 steps a day even without doing all that much today. We saw the local river, the Liangma River, and visited another mall. It was very beautiful.

Day 3, Tuesday

Today was another rest day, I did not leave my room until 5pm today. It’s hard feeling like I’m missing out on things when I take rest days; but I’m in China for about 3 more weeks, and know that if I don’t take these rest days I will burn out from exhaustion very quickly. Especially with our trend of walking 8+ miles every day in 90+ degree weather.

In the evening we met up with a former student of Irene’s, Vicki, for Beijing style hot-pot. If you’re not familiar with hot pot it is exactly as it sounds, you’re given a hot pot of broth or hot water and tons of ingredients that you can add in as you choose to cook in the pot and take out as they become ready to eat. Beijing style is a little different because instead of being heated from underneath on a hot plate or stove; a very tall burning hot cylinder is with hot briquettes is placed directly inside the pot, with a little chimney at the top for the smoke to escape. It’s hard to describe, so see the video above to see what it’s like. We ate so much food and were absolutely stuffed.

Later we walked to the Central Business District (known as CBD in Beijing 😆). There were tons of skyscrapers and interesting buildings, its where all the major Chinese corporations have their headquarters. We took photos at a famous building known as the “Pants” building because it looks literally like a pair of pants.

Day 4, Wednesday

Today was my last partial rest day for a while. Irene got off work early today so in the afternoon I met up with her and we went to 798, which is the former industrial area turned trendy artists’ neighborhood. There were a lot of abandoned factories here that have been turned into artists’ residences, studios, and galleries and is near Beijing’s major art colleges. There was a lot of public art that was cool to see. We ate at a giant shaved ice place and ordered way too much food. Who knew ice was so filling 😂

Later I got to visit Irene’s apartment, and then she packed a bag to come stay the night at my place as we had an early start tomorrow. We ordered dim sum delivery and watched dramas which in my book is an excellent evening.

Day 5, Thursday

Today was spent visiting Irene’s school. Back when I was teaching university level English in Mexico City, Irene was able to visit me and spend the day at my school so it was really cool to do it the other way around today.

Irene’s school is absolutely enormous. It is a K-12 private boarding school on the outskirts of Beijing. It reminded me a lot of a US college campus. Most of the students except for the young students and students who come from other provinces live on campus during the week and go home on the weekends. Most of these students plan on attending college abroad at prestigious universities in places like the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia after graduating. They get English instruction from a very young age and are thus very fluent by the time they graduate.

Irene teaches grade 10-12 English, with between 8-20 students per class. I was amazed by how self-sufficient and responsible the majority of the students were (compared to my absolutely feral first graders back home). They were doing a study of the story The Most Dangerous Game and then created characters to role play in a DnD campaign based on the story; which I thought was really cool. Irene’s prep period was right before the lunch break, so we had a full 2.5 hours for lunch. We ate Xinjiang cuisine at a mall nearby the school, Xinjiang is in northwestern China bordering Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan so the cuisine was a unique mix of Middle Eastern and Chinese food; it was really really good. We didn’t realize we were eating there on the Eid holiday though and the restaurant was packed.

Later after teaching 3 classes Irene introduced me to a student of hers that wants to be an elementary school teacher after graduating. I hope I didn’t scare her off too much from the field. It was really cool but weird to talk with someone that age who is considering colleges and careers; I’m 29 and still feel like a kid most of the time, but thinking back to being 16/17 and thinking about how much I’ve learned and grown and experienced since then was very eye opening. Irene and I gave her a lot of advice about college etc. and we remembered being 21 and having all these anxieties about graduating and finding a job and all that and wow it is crazy how time flies and we are able to actually give advice about that stuff, it feels like just yesterday we were stressing about the exact same things she is stressing about.

In the evening we went to one of Irene’s favorite restaurants, The Taco Bar. Way back in 2013 Irene studied abroad in Beijing and was missing the easy access to Mexican cuisine we have in the US (specifically burritos) and went on a legendary search we now refer to as The Burrito Quest where she searched out and tried every single Mexican restaurant in Beijing, which is harder than it sounds. The Taco Bar didn’t have burritos, but it was hands down the winner of best Mexican restaurant in Beijing according to Irene. She has been coming here since 2013 even when their original location closed down, to their new location, and through the pandemic. We had an enormous amount of food and again ended the day extremely stuffed.

We had planned on this being our goodbye dinner, but we had discovered that Irene’s apartment had had a power cut. Rather than spend the night in darkness in 103 degree heat she decided to stay at my place again. But this meant embarking on an odyssey across Beijing to her apartment to get her stuff since she is traveling again this weekend; and then going back to my place for the air conditioning; this journey on Beijing public transport at rush hour during a heat wave was a major feat.

After 19,000 steps and a 2.5 hour trek we finally collapsed back at my place to sleep.

Day 6 Friday

Early in the morning I said goodbye to Irene as she headed off to work, she is traveling this weekend so she was going to the airport straight from work. I’ll really miss traveling with her, although I love solo travel, the best way to travel I think is with a close friend.

Today was my sightseeing day. I’ve been to Beijing before and have seen The Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, and the Great Wall before; and given the heat had no desire to confront the crowds there again.

So on Irene’s recommendation today I visited the Summer Palace. It is an enormous complex where the emperor would visit in the summer months in northern Beijing. It is much smaller than the main palace at the Forbidden City in central Beijing, but even so it was enormous. The emperor had it constructed when the capital of China was moved to Beijing in the 1300’s and many elements of the palace were modeled after areas in other places in China that the emperor liked.

There was a shopping street modeled after a town in southern China that I’m visiting later on in this trip. It is famous for being built on the water and it was my favorite area in the palace. There was an enormous manmade lake that was built to be Beijing’s emergency water supply and modeled after a famous lake in Kunming and was used to train naval officers. It was truly enormous. The land excavated from building the lake was used to create a 200ft tall hill upon which the palace itself was constructed. There were also literally thousands of smaller structures built throughout the massive forest grounds. I sat next to an old man on a bench for about 40 minutes while I ate a snack and did some people watching. Everyone else was moving so much and there were so many people but me and that old man were just vibing.

Most of the palace was looted by the British in the late 1800s, but the buildings themselves and natural structures were in amazing condition and it was really cool to see, albeit the heat.

Then I headed over to Nanluoguxiang hutong, another historic neighborhood in central Beijing. This is considered to be rather touristy, most of the original buildings were destroyed in renovations of the city, but were reconstructed to look like traditional neighborhoods in Imperial China, called hutongs. It is a very beautiful area, with streams and lots of people walking about. I visited here in 2018 and it was my favorite area of Beijing to just walk around in. I had some lunch and explored for a while and did some shopping.

My final stop of the day was Baiyunguan, the White Cloud Temple in southern Beijing. It is one of the oldest Taoist temples in China and is nearby a famous Taoist College. By this point in the day I was pretty exhausted from the 103 degree heat and having spent about 6 hours on public transportation and walking in crowded tourist sites. It was incredible to walk into the temple from the loud crowded street and immediately felt how calm and quiet it was. It was literally completely silent except for the wind and the birds.

I walked around the temple for a while. Taoism is one of several traditional Chinese religions, which work in synch with each other. Many Chinese people practice elements of Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and animism. Taoism is all about finding balance and peace in the natural world. The temples themselves are actually called 观 (guan) which translates to look at or observe. This comes from the Taoist belief that understanding comes from looking at or observing the natural world, so the temples are places to look and observe. There were lots of very beautiful areas, some statues of deities people offered incense to, and lots of displays of art and calligraphy. It was very peaceful and a nice way to end the day.

I made my way back and collapsed for the rest of the day.

That’s it for Beijing, I’m amazed if you made it all the way through this very long post. It was great to spend time here. I am writing this post on a plane ride to my next stop, Zhangjiajie in Hunan province in south central China. Stay tuned!

[lunaiinn]

Hello mortal how’s the ramen? Or is that spaghetti in a cup I’m not entirely sure but nonetheless how is you’re day

In case you don't know what is it:

Zhajiangmian is a Chinese dish consisting of thick wheat noodles topped with zhajiang sauce.

[glitterdustcyclops]

my mommy made zhajiangmian for lunch uwu