Snackin' in Beijing (Wangfujing Snack Street)

Yeah, so the real semester and classes began on Monday.


Snooze


Look!:

A visitor during speaking-class the other day
- I wanted to put it on a skewer, fry it and eat it

Hanging out with my BFF

Today I brought Isak, a fellow Norwegian classmate and the most like-minded guy I know when it comes to try eating weird stuff, to the famous snack street in Wangfujing, together with Lotte (not that like-minded, but great moral support)

Today autumn decided to arrive
And suddenly it went from skimpy-shorts-and-tank-top weather
to rainy and cold
scarf-and-jacket-I-wish-I'd-brought-wool-socks-from-Norway weather

They were still squirming

Lotte getting everything
on tape

Here's a video, made by Lotte, of Isak and I snackin'.

(In Norwegian/Chinese with English subtitles)

My skewer of.. ehr, yeah, I'm not sure
It was small and birdy-like and I ate it all;
heads, bones and everything

Those bugs to the left were actually pretty tasty,
didn't get around to buy a skewer with centipede, though
Pity.

Stinky tofu

Stinky tofu (chòu dòufu) was what I'd been most curious about trying. I'd heard about it before I came to China and seen some videos on youtube of people eating it.

Stinky tofu is fermented tofu, and its smell is, oh SO vile. It smells like.. it smells like.. oh, I can't even put it in print. It's the utmost disgusting smell I've ever experienced. I can hardly imagine that a rotting corps would smell any worse.

Here's our own little youtube video (in Norwegian) of our stinky tofu virginities being taken, shot by Lotte:



Isak didn't like it at all. But I actually thought it was alright. I don't even like tofu that much and think that for the most part it tastes like what I imagine paper mache would taste like. But as long as you didn't inhale as you ate it, it just tasted like fried tofu served with a salty sauce. If I actually liked tofu in general, I'd probably find it pretty delicious.

But I don't, so now I've had it, and I do not feel the need to eat it again.

These babies were not particulary appetising. They were hard to chew and the body was filled with some nasty, mildly bile-flavoured goo.

Isak

More from Qingdao

Before I forget, here's a few photos not from the beach in Qingdao:

 At the train station in Beijing,

which felt like a fancy, new airport

More than five hours

to get to Qingdao

Snooze!

 

 

  

 

Who they were? God, I don't know

 Want a piece of this giant bar of nuts and fruits?

It's really good!

 Our hostel 

Located inside what used to be an old catholic church

Oh, the irony

 

 Lotte

 Old people in China are really good at

staying in chape

 Go, grandpa!

 

 I saw my food

 I picked it out

I ate it

(It tasted good, but way too much hassle eating it)

At the Beach in Qingdao

Edit: I was contacted by www.qingdaonese.com who requested to feature some of my photos from my trip to Qingdao on their website. Take a look! http://www.qingdaonese.com/qingdao-photos-kine-at-the-beach

So, the past few days Lotte and I have spent at the beach in Qingdao.

Qingdao is a city in eastern China, and it took us little over five hours by bullet train to get there from Beijing. I would say Qingdao is mostly famous for its beer


We went there, had beer, lay on the beach and both of us got a sunburn. It's a hard life

Do not ask how I did this

All I can say is that
it did not come naturally
and it still hurts today

We kept ourselves intertained, observing Chinese people at the beach

For the most part they sit fully dressed under an umbrella. Or swim in the ocean with their clothes on. Or hide away inside a small tent that they've either brought or rented (what's the point in going to the beach if you're just going to sit inside a small tent?)

Lotte with her ideal white skin
is a popular model
- even at the beach she won't be left alone
I'm considering starting to claim
10 kuai per photo
as her 'manager'

You can imagined how I blended right in.

.. lying on the world's smallest towel
wearing the world's skimpiest bikini

Obviously, I didn't get the memo on the dress code

Doing a little cheer

I don't know what I'm doing here exactly
but it looks very athletic

Sometimes I almost wonder if I've got ADD
I think the other people at the beach were too

I now have a very interesting-looking piece of sunburn-art work on my back, as a result of me insisting on slapping the sun screen (very sporadically) onto myself. Let's just say, I've learned that there's a good reason why you get someone to help you schmear sun screen on those hard-to-reach places. Ouch! Not very attractive