Hui-Hui started his day with the stacking cups again. These are good for long periods of time. He focuses quite intensely on this work.
He had oatmeal for breakfast. Hui-Hui likes to share and wants to make sure everybody gets enough to eat.
Tina and I decided to take him for a walk and practice crossing the street. I think we’re starting to get the hang of it. The best strategy for us right now is to find a Chinese person trying to cross the same street and follow them closely. Some will cross busy streets like they’re playing “Frogger”. One lane at a time stopping on the lines as cars and bikes come at them from every direction. It’s the taxi’s you really have to watch for.
Drivers have a whole different system for communicating. Horn honking isn’t rude. In fact it can be polite. Bob showed me how to honk “thank you”, it’s a quick “beep beep”. I’ve also noticed you should always honk as you enter an intersection to let people know you are there. It would be rude not to honk in this situation. Bikers ring their bells as they approach intersections. It’s a noisy place!
Shijiazhuang doesn’t have a lot of touristy stuff to do. Which makes it kind of fun for us in a way. We are a real curiosity here. Tina had a maid in the hotel sweep a tight circle around her in the lobby with a push broom while staring at her. We are glad we brought little cards with us that explain in Chinese what it is we’re doing here, and why we have Hui-Hui.
We took all three boys to the shopping mall again today. Cam got an er-hu, a type of Chinese violin.
Hui-Hui loves hanging with his brothers...
For dinner we decided to try a rather famous restaurant called Quanjude, known for it’s Peking Duck. Our Frommer’s travel guide says this “provincial branch” provides better service, price and atmosphere than it’s main outlet in Beijing. Since this was one of the few things listed in the Frommer’s China book for Shijiazhuang, we decided to try it out. I took the book down to the concierge desk and showed the entry to the attendant. No one here in the hotel really “speaks” English. I said “restaurant” a couple times to him, and finally he lit up and said, “Yes, restaurant, umm, chicken,no… DUCK!” and smiled real big! I took this as a good sign then he said, ‘Not far, take taxi, maybe… 5 yuan.”
We decided we could do this. We wrote the name and address for the restaurant on a slip of paper, and we have cards from the hotel that have their name and address on them in Chinese. We got a cab outside the hotel and rode a little ways across the downtown area.
So we get to the place and it looks great! We’re thinking we are so cool. This will be no problem. It’s a beautiful restaurant with a big happy duck outside.
We get in and the place is gorgeous.
we see the fire where they roast the duck,
and the ducks,
and all the seafood tanks that restaurants here like to use to display their fresh, live seafood.
A hostess shows us to our table and seats us. Then they begin speaking to us in Mandarin. I thought for sure that someone here would speak a little English, so I indicated I didn’t understand, she quickly went to get someone. This person didn’t speak English either though, and before long we had a crowd of well uniformed staff around us all speaking in Mandarin. A few of them gesture that I should follow them over to another part of the restaurant. They lead me to a display of hanging ducks. I try to ask how much I should order for 4 people. They look at me like I’m speaking a foreign language.
I smile a lot and keep trying to indicate that I’m trying to feed dinner to 4 people. We gesture and make confused faces at one another for a while then they lead me to a vast displays of dishes.
None of which are anything I recognize. More staff gathers around me. Then this guy
starts indicating that I should point to what I want. I make a couple choices, he seems to want me to continue. I point some more. I try to indicate that there are 4 people I’m trying to feed.
Confused looks and encouragement to select more.
Finally one of the waitresses in our entourage seems to think I may have ordered enough and they allow me return to the table. Tina and the boys are looking at me like “Where have you been?”
I’m not sure what to say, because I’m not really sure what had just happened.
I think we are going to get some duck,
and some other things.
Then about 5 waiters and waitresses tried to take our drink order. We think this shouldn’t be too hard, and try to order a couple Cokes and a couple beers. More confusion ensues, A wine list is produced. I think it was a wine list, but it was written in Chinese. I’m not quite sure why they thought I might be able to read Mandarin if I can’t speak or understand it, but they insisted several times that I should look at this list. The printing in it was very nice.
Finally we did actually get two Cokes and two beers. We also got two very odd, cloudy fruit beverages that we had also apparently ordered in the confusion.
We also managed to convey that we wanted soup for Hui-Hui. Tina had learned that the word for soup is something like “tong”.
So we all kept saying “tong” and pantomimed eating soup from the small bowls on the table. This they understood and quickly produced what looked like the “millet gruel” Hui-Hui likes in our hotels buffet.
They really made a fuss over him. When I tried handing Tina a disposable bib, a waitress took it, put it on him and proceeded to feed him for us.
Then the dishes I ordered start to arrive.
When I say these were generous platters, it doesn’t quite convey the amount of food I had apparently ordered. We might as well have been catering a small wedding.
Tina, Cam, and Ben, all start getting alarmed. “How much food did you order?”
I really have no idea what to tell them. I don’t even know what it is that I’ve ordered, let alone how much.
“What about the duck?” they keep asking.
I think I ordered duck.
In fact I think I might have ordered a couple. But there is no way we can fit any more food on the table.
We had also indicated that Hui-Hui would need more soup, so they brought him a whole tureen.
Then someone brings me this extremely fancy envelope with raised, golden Chinese calligraphy printed on the front.
I open it and find the certificate for the duck they are about to serve us.
The bird is carved table side and they have all of us taste a bite before it is served.
The head is split and served on a separate plate.
We begin to speculate what this dinner might be about to cost us. This place is pretty fancy, and we have ordered enough food to feed The Red Army. Ben always worries about our finances, and I can see him begin to panic.
The duck is excellent though, and we decide not to worry about it. We’ll just let this be our big splurge for the trip.
Finally the bill comes…
360 Yuan
That’s a whopping $45!!
So my advice is, if you find yourself in Shijiazhuang, and have time to drop by the Quanjude restaurant, try the duck. It’s excellent!
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