Dumplings is good food

I slept pretty well but woke up at 6:30, for some reason. I wasn’t tired so I got breakfast with someone I bumped into on my way out the door. I was surprised how much effort it took me to get out of the building to buy something; I guess I don’t have as much confidence in my Chinese yet. Anyway, we happened on a bakery that didn’t look like much from the outside, but on the inside they had beautiful cakes (a couple cream layer cakes with dragonfruit on the top…will have to try those) and pastries. I picked out what turned out to be a sweet bun with red bean paste filling and a bottle of juice for 7 yuan. I got sort of mad at myself for spending seven monetary units on my first meal until I realized that it was seven yuan, not seven dollars, and I’d just gotten myself a perfectly nice breakfast for about $1.15. China is neat. I feel bad for any chumps studying in the euro zone now, though.

After my early pick-me-up I went back to the center for a neighborhood tour. Most people hadn’t eaten yet and were hungry, so our RA went to a mom-and-pop dumpling stand and bought giant bags of fresh dumplings, some steamed (baozi) and some boiled (jiaozi, after which my little slice of the internet is named). God, they were delicious. I have never eaten such good little dumplings – they were maybe the size of golf balls, but cooked perfectly – not soggy, not stale – and tender and juicy on the inside, steaming hot when you bit into them. I asked how much they were, and apparently they’re four yuan for a bag of twelve. This equates to about FIVE CENTS PER DUMPLING. Good heavens, what a neat place.

The neighborhood around the school is quite nice, mostly retail space. By this point it’s a cop-out to say that “China is a land of contrasts”, but it really is interesting to see the way Beijing has adjusted itself to the modern world. Example: while we were ordering our dumplings, which were located on a decent-sized street with grocery stores and restaurants on it, we saw an old man out walking his chickens. How’s about that.

Also, I found out that the reason my dorm room looks like a hotel is because it is a hotel. The university keeps hotel-ish rooms that it rents out to people who are staying there for the short term. That explains a lot.

Dumpling tally: 4