Local time
(Jane in a local restaurant: Beijing, China)
You may be feeling that there are an inordinate amount of photographs taken during the two weeks whilst my mum was visiting – after all, she was only in China for a fortnight. I suppose that being a proper tourist in Beijing made the difference. In the beginning, when I first went to China, I would take pictures all the time, but as I have grown used to my immediate surroundings, I feel that I have documented more than is strictly interesting.
Anyway, here is Jane tucking into our first meal in Beijing (which we found by sheer good fortune, if you may recall – http://china.analoguegirl.co.uk/forbidding-night/) as a passing local assisted us to order. I’d say this place is pretty authentically local – no heating, hence every customer is sitting with their coat on, simple furnishings with very little embellishment, a photocopied, laminated Chinese menu and a kitchen with a glass partition, burning tea in plastic cups and chips in every bowl. But also true to local spots, the steaming hot dumplings we had were pretty delicious and the salad just topped it off. I was really happy with the salad as all I would have managed to order would have been dumplings, noodles, meat or rice, but I have no idea how to ask for much else! I don’t think we looked too out of place, save of curse our physical attributes, but our chopstick handling was really first rate for ‘wei guo ren’; foreigners.
– Today Rosie is in the UK, admiring the torrential downpour outside –
