liulichang market

(March 29)

Today, we went to an area of Beijing called Liulichang, which is basically a bunch of streets with a bunch of tiny little shops selling everything. There were tiny stalls selling paintings, Chinese musical instruments, calligraphy sets, "antiques" (they would try to convince you just about anything was an antique), and just about anything you wanted. Of course, they were always good for a little bargaining, so it was definitely a good time.

We walked around for a while before finally finding this cute little tea shop owned by a former professor of tea (that's right, they have schools that teach everything you could ever need to know about tea, including how it's picked, how it's supposed to be poured, everything). She made us countless batches of tea, letting us taste just about anything we wanted to sample. Apparently, as women, we should drink fermented tea and not green tea. According to this woman, this is because women are the "yin" part of the yin/yang, which means we are more like cold temperatures. (Men are fire, the "yang", so they have more hot temperature things). Apparently, fermented teas are warmer, so they can counterbalance the coolness of womanhood? These teas also tend to be better for the skin. She also convinced us of the necessity of putting tiny rosebuds in our tea. Apparently, adding rosebuds to your tea increases your luck substantially. Plain rosebud tea is delicious, but added to the Lychee Red Tea I bought, it's even better! When I tasted the plain rose tea, the best way I could describe it was to say it tasted pretty. If pretty had a taste, it seriously would be rosebud tea. After spending over an hour talking to her about everything from brewing tea to potentially teaching her child English, we left and moved on.

The next big place we went was a small shop selling just about every kind of traditional Chinese musical instrument imaginable. Being the band nerd I am, I couldn't help but go in, and after sampling several of the woodwinds I ended up bargaining my way into getting a mystery instrument that consists of a large gourd with small bamboo pipes coming out of it. It definitely has a unique sound...I have some practicing to do. My roommate is currently studying the erhu (a two-stringed Chinese instrument), so I'm thinking by the end of the semester we should be able to make some very...interesting music.

After that we walked around for a bit, and after a while I found a piece of art that I loved. It is pretty big so I figured it was going to be super expensive, but out of curiousity I asked anyway. I would have been willing to pay the price she started with (it was about 1/4th of what I was expecting), but I talked her down an additional 25%. It really is a beautiful painting--I don't know where I'll put it, but I'll definitely make space! So those were my purchases for the day. The shopowners just loved the fact that we spoke Chinese. Some of them spoke a little English, so they would speak in English and we would respond in Chinese. The most exciting part though is having a complete conversation with someone in Chinese, and then while you're having that conversation, realize that they're speaking Chinese...and you're understanding. I've been in Chinese-speaking countries for a while, and I still get excited when that happens :-)