My First Blog (Kind of)

Now that it has fallen out of style I have decided to take up blogging.

I went to Sanlitun to meet Bernice at a Cha Chaan Teng-type restaurant called Herbal Cafe. Those familiar with such cheap Hong Kong-style tea restaurants must be wondering why this one would choose such a pretentious name for itself, but this is in fact, no normal Hong Kong restaurant. Actually, I can assure you that Beijing does not have any proper Cantonese restaurants serving Cantonese food in normal dishes. And any Cantonese food you find here will definitely not be at Beijing prices.

I was to go to a station called 团结湖 at which point it would be just a five-minute walk to Sanlitun Village, where the alleged cafe was. This turned out well for me because I did not know until this point that there was even a station this close to Sanlitun.

I left Exit A of the station but then had no idea which direction to turn. With my keen racial profiling instincts, I decided to follow some white girls, but after a few minutes of this, I figured I should rather ask for directions.

How does one say "Sanlitun Village" in Chinese, however? 三里屯村？ Sanlitun Cun? That sounded ridiculous. Since I was not one to be ridiculous, I just stood there and kept trying Bernice's line until she picked up. During those 10 minutes, it dawned on me that Sanlitun Village wasn't actually a village at all, but was a mere mall. Sanlitun itself was called the Village, which in itself is rather silly, since it's a bar district full of embassies, not to mention that the 屯 （tun） in Sanlitun also meant village. So the mall's name translated completely into English would have meant "Three-0.5-Kilometre-Village Village" or "1.5-kilometre Village Village."

And the restaurant ended up serving me yang chow fried rice in a bowl.