Weekend of May 24 & 25: Sanlitun nightlife, The Summer Palace

Around 140 pics from the most recent weekend: http://picasaweb.google.com/jdorrian2334

So it's been a busy weekend with classes, socializing, and sightseeing. Friday night Jon and I went to a local watering hole to have a couple of casual drinks then call it a night early because we had class on Satuday morning at 830am. We met some students from Penn State and Wisconsin and what was intended to be a short evening, turned out to be much longer than planned.

We both rose bright and early to attend Decision Making. I had my presentation bright and early on Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Despite a splitting headache and no saliva being produced in my mouth the presentation went swimmingly. I did a very good job. After class the consensus was to delay the visit to the Summer Palace until Sunday. We grabbed lunch and then went home and napped.


Saturday night we wanted to go to what is supposed to be one of Beijing's best sushi restaurants, but when we got there they were booked solid with reservations. The contingency plan ended up being a Mexican restaurant that wasn't half bad. Then we proceeded to a section of Sanlitun referred to as "bar street". It's a strip of about 4 blocks that is nothing but bars and the managers and owners stand outside and do anything in their power to get you to go in and have a drink in their establishment. Parallel it to the restaurant owners in Little Italy that are a bit pushy when you walk by and try to convince you to come inside and have a meal there. It's sorta like that, but these guys put used car salesmen to shame. What is sort of cool is that you can play them against each other. You say, "well, that guy over at Bar 1 said beers are 20 CNY, what will you give them to us for?". Then they'll either beat the price of Bar 1 or tell you to beat it. Very different experience, but fun. We talked this one guy down to 10CNY per beer which equates to about USD $1.40. What we didn't specify was what kind of beer. They served us some pretty gross product that Tsingtao brews called Shenzhen. I think it is the equivalent of the Natural Light of China. It was cold enough that it wasn't unbearable, but it was not tasty. So we thought we had the upper hand in the beer negotations, but the silly Americans were foiled again. The old switcharoo was pulled on us. No big deal though really.

We hit up a couple of the noisier places that had live entertainment for a bit, then headed to a quieter spot. We were sitting outside relaxing and we ended up meeting a group of MBA students from the University of Tampa. Nice group of guys/gals. We got to know them a bit better over the ensuing hour and then we went our separate ways.

Next we tried a sub-neighborhood withing Sanlitun call Tong Li or Tsong Li. The streets are shut off to traffic for the most part and people just mill around hanging out. Plenty places to grab food and drink. I bumped into a Filipino guy from my Advanced Finance class and we ended up chatting for a bit. We called it a night after that.

Immediately following class we went to the Summer Palace on Sunday. This place is enormous. Amazing that the emperor(s) had this place all to themselves as their little summer escape. Most of the photos in the above link are of the Summer Palace. Hopefully my pics captured the grand scale of the place.


Random End Note: Chinese people love ice cream bars and popsicles round the clock. I see them eating ice cream bars at 6am and every other hour of the day. Maybe it is the whole food on a stick thing that they like. Culturally meats, seafood, et al food items on a stick are eaten, so why not processed cream, sugar, milk, chocolate too? I guess, why not. Just another thing that struck me as strange over here.