China - Tuesday Adventures

First I want to apologize for my last post. I believe the formatting might be a little, well a lot off. In all that's going on here I thought that China had blocked Gmail since in the middle of my blogging last night everything went down. Turns out that Google was moving Gmail and all that goes with it out of "beta" so things went down for a purpose. For once it wasn't due to the great firewall. :) Glad to have Gmail back and hopefully from this point on things will be more legible. Still flying blind when it comes to posting, but at least I don't feel as cut off from the world anymore.

Anyways, without further ado...Tuesday...

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Tuesday started off just like the past few days we've already spent here. A quick Skype session with home followed by a breakfast of tea and noodles and a walk to campus with the students. This time our guide Ming took a different route, through Nankai's campus, but since he had walked Terri and I around a little bit the day before (after lunch) I had a good sense of right where we were. After stopping to take some more photos of the lotus flowers that were blooming with some of the other students I was even able to tell one of them, I believe his name is Jeff, where we were. I was quite proud of myself.

This time class was in a different classroom, one with much better air conditioning. I have to say for being as hot as it is here (it's been in the 90s plus humidity) AC is not a very common thing. Ming was telling us that it's too expensive so most people and buildings do not have it, including the student rec center which even with a pool, weight room, etc. still does not have central air. That's just amazing to me. I have a hard time imagining myself going to class for 3 hours, or working out in the gym and not having AC. Kind of makes you realize that we really are spoiled in the States. My little window AC unit for my apartment doesn't seem so bad anymore.

After returning to our room for a quick clean up, Terri and I decided to head out and find the gobuli baozi place we've wanted to eat at all week. Goubuli baozi, for those of you who don't know, are little steamed pork and gravy filled buns and apparently are a speciality of this area. The one place we were told to try them, and where our guide book had suggested, has a century long history of making them. Not quite being able to read our map yet, or communicate with the taxi drivers, we asked the lady at the front desk to write down the name of the place and the address in Chinese so that we could give it to the taxi driver since it seemed too far away to walk. We showed her the English name on the paper but later found out, as the cab driver took us way out of our way, that she mistakenly wrote down the name of a hotel which had a similar name to Goubuli. So here we are, some where in Tianjin, with only a partial map to lead us back. Sure we could have gone back to what we think was a hotel and catch another cab, but we decided to put faith in the fact that we knew how to read our little map and go.

As we were walking we first came upon a park which seemed to be dedicated to music composers. There were roses, music notes and statues of men all around the park although we could only guess who each one was since the signs were in all in Chinese. We took a few photos and then headed down another road which brought us to the weirdest looking house. Covered from ground to roof top in what appeared to be chinese porcelain pots complete with a China sign on top. The house was obviously some sort of tourist attraction because the street in front of the place was full of people taking pictures. We still don't officially know what the house was or is, but Terri did spot a sign hanging out front of one of the sets of windows at the end of the gate that read pawn shop. Whatever it was, truly unique.

Continuing to walk down the street on our way to what we hoped was the right area for the goubuli restaurant we seemed to stumble upon a HUGE shopping district. The streets suddenly became pedestrian walkways only (although that didn't stop some of the bikes/scooters) and stores, real stores, lined the street. It was like a giant outdoor shopping mall, only with several of what we in the States call malls within it. Multi-floor malls, which women's departments, men's departments, teens, shoes, cosmetics, jewelry, the whole nine yards. We finally located what we thought should have been the area for the goubuli restaurant only there were no signs in English like we had hoped and unfortunately there was not much our iPhones could do at this point since we were unable to identify any of the Chinese characters marking the different little cafes (all to which seemed a little too empty for our liking). Finally, after take a quick pass through one of the malls, Terri was able to ask one of the young women working in the jewelry department which place was the goubuli restaurant. I'm not sure she totally understood us, but enough to point us to this very traditional looking store front which we then saw had a set of letters on the front that read GBU. Go figure.

From the looks of it Terri and I expected this place to be a very fancy sit down restaurant, but the nice girls who welcomed us as we entered took us down the hall and down some stairs to what looked to be a fast food type joint. We're talking benches and tables with chairs like you would see in a McDonalds or a Burger King with cash registers up front, lit picture menus hanging above them, and plastic trays to carry your food on. Since neither of us was too hungry but both really wanted to try goubuli baozi we decided to split one of the little "combos" they offered that included 8 baozi (the buns), what appeared to be 2 or 3 chicken wings, noodles, some sort of very bland soup and a funky green thing that we could not identify but was crunchy like a vegetable. Oh were the baozi yummy! I could eat those things everyday. 

After our snack we wondered further out into this outdoor shopping mecca to do some more exploring. Turns out this area must be really touristy full of clothing and accessory stores, fast food joints (like DQ, McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Hut, and local ones), a Nike Store, an Adidas store, several wedding boutiques and even a Disney Sport store that sold all sorts of Disney/Mickey themed sports clothes, tennis shoes, socks and accessories. Terri and I actually went into Disney Sport and I found a really cute pair of black and neon green Mickey tennis shoes for my collection. I was so excited too because after Terri and I did the math, they would have only been like $25 USD. I picked it up and attempted to show the girl working that section the US size inside and asked her for an 8.5. She nodded, walked away and came back with a 6.5. I nicely tried to tell her no 8.5 and she shook her head, said "No no" and then pointed me to the men's shoes. Terri and I were confused. I asked her again for 8.5 in another shoe and again was told "no no" with pointing to the men's shoes and a smile. Looking around there weren't any other pairs that really caught my attention so we thanked her and exited the store. Thinking about it some more I finally figured out why she kept saying no. Since that obviously wasn't an USA based store (since Terri lives near WDW and has _never_ seen a store like that before, ever) they probably don't carry shoes that big for women. Upon later consultation with our Tianjin guide Ming that is the case. Most women here have small feet so I was out of luck. Oh well. Probably better that I didn't come home with yet another pair of shoes for my collection, although there always is Beijing...

Terri and I kept walking watching the stores become more higher end type boutiques, complete with a Rolex store. Then between the buildings, directly in front of us on the other side of the street we saw a giant church with crosses on the top. Our guidebook had mentioned that there is only 1 catholic church in Tianjin and that it happens to be the largest in the city, and boy were they not kidding. It's a full sized cathedral that has several masses everyday, including 1 in English on Sundays. After grabbing some quick Haagen Dazs prepackaged ice cream bars (mmm, were they good and refreshing on such a hot day) we crossed the street and went in. The church was beautiful and I believe it was dedicated to St. Joseph. We took a few photos, said a quick prayer and then headed back out to the courtyard. At that point we knew we needed to head back to our hotel in order to have time to clean up before dinner with the Dean of the Law School at Nankai University in which we had to meet Ming for at 515. We were so proud of ourselves though because at this point we knew exactly where we were and were able to navigate our way all the way back to our hotel on foot. It was a great adventure and one that we probably would not have had if the hotel front desk didn't start us off in the wrong direction.

We ended the evening with a dinner at another restaurant on Nankai's campus with the Dean of the Law School, a professor, our guide Ming and then Ms Chen who I believe the Dean said at one point was his secretary. All spoke English with the exception of Ms Chen who understood but only if we spoke clearly and slowly. She was very sweet though and constantly filling up our tea, making sure we had enough to eat and even praising me for my chopstick skillz (or lack there of, lol). Dinner was excellent though and there was so much to try. Everything from fried fish bites, some sort of sweetened pork (my favorite), a whole chinese bass, mushrooms, veggies, tomato and egg noodle soup, egg plant with seafood, and fried tofu with ginger (another of my favorites for the evening). I tried everything except the egg plant (since the seafood was a shell fish of some sort) and the sea bass just to be careful. It was all good. After dinner we said our goodbyes and headed back to the hotel for the evening.

Full and worn out from our full day of adventure Terri and I decided to turn in for the night. It was a good day.