Rat in Chinese restaurant

I thought this chicken head in the hot pot would be the most exciting thing I'd see tonight but oh how wrong I was. I'm down in Lijiang, Yunnan Province, again but this time on our annual firm outing. Tonight we went to a hot pot restaurant in the Old Town, the same place we went to last night because the food was so good. Yvette, one of my colleagues, saw a rat running across the floor - we were a bit disturbed by this but kept on with the meal. What drew the line was a rat running across my lap. I am not kidding. We were sitting on these benches and I don't know how it got up there but I felt something on my lap as I was eating and I looked down and there was a rat there!!!! It was awful. Sorry I was not quick enough to get a photo.... I screamed and pushed it off and we left fairly quickly after that. The other patrons didn't seem too perturbed, they just kept on with the excellent hot pot. Perhaps we should have not been so sensitive but just thrown it in and ate it too!!!

Just some fun

Mum took this one while she was visiting.

New Years - Alice in Wonderland

The big day arrived for our performances as Alice and the Queen of Hearts. Unfortunately I had to work on New Years' Eve (yes a Saturday, they had this weird Chinese arrangement for the holiday where we worked on Saturday and we get Tuesday off instead) but we were given an early mark at 4 since we all had a big night ahead of us. We took a taxi to the venue at about 6.30 as we had to get our hair and make up done. The taxi started taking us to a completely different part of town since we had agreed to whatever his response was to our initial instruction (since we didn't understand him). We turned around the other way and then all yelled at each other in our native tongues (always best in an argument, the other side gets the general drift). We eventually arrived.

The function we were characters at was for a Chinese property company. There ended up being people from lots of different place there so I guess it was a bit of a networking event. It was held at Bund 18, right on the river and with a great view of Pudong and all it's space age /Jetsons lights. On level 4 there they have a Creative Centre, and they had put up a whole set in there with different rooms and activities, all in Wonderland style. Besides Jane and I they also had a guy dressed up as the White Rabbit, and some soldiers with big cardboard cards for costumes. They had done an awesome job with the set, they had an area for croquet, which was where I was stationed, and a mad hatters tea party room (which was marked 'reserved' all night and which for some reason no one went into, a pity). The party itself was OK but they were being a bit tight with the alcohol so people weren't really all that drunk. It was quite cool counting down to midnight in Chinese, never done that before. I was thinking we might have to be in character, which is a bit out there with the Queen of Hearts who is fairly crazy, but we didn't really play our characters too much, I think it would have freaked everyone out a bit. At about 1 we left and when we were going down in the lift a lady in the lift gave us her card and said they were going to a party at her place. We jumped in a car with them and it turned out she was the curator of the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, so that was random, but cool. Jane was stoked since that's right up her alley, and it turned out this lady is also really into animation, which Jane absolutely loves. The party was at the Museum, I hadn't been there yet and have to go back to get a better look because it looked fantastic, the archietcture was great and they had some interesting animations playing on the walls. So we stayed there for a while and then left to move onto the next place, which for me turned out to be home, since we went outside and couldn't get a taxi to save ourselves. So we walked home. Then Jane went out again, and I went to sleep.

Streaking on the Great Wall

If you've ever thought about streaking on the Great Wall, you can see here how its done. In the middle of winter too, and believe me its damn cold in Beijing in winter.
Actually, just as an aside my stepsister just told me to put an apostrophe into previous sentence, and I've already uploaded some of these photos, she is really not distracted. Mind you they're her photos and she's already had a chance to laugh.
So last week Lisa arrived and the first couple of nights she and Jane went out on the town (Monday and Tuesday nights are happening here apparently). They met two guys, Greg and Jason, who just got off the set of Mission Impossible 3 - they had just finished 6 months filming and were having a week off to look around. So on Wednesday night they all got on the train for Beijing (soft sleeper, nice). They had a wild time, as you can see. The nude boy in the photo is Greg. The naked streaker took my sister Lisa to a massage parlour in Beijing, swearing it would be legit. It was all looking a bit dodgy when they turned up at an apartment with no signs, and double beds instead of massage tables. The mini towels (ie facewashers) didn't help the situation. Lisa was feeling dodgy and so searched through all the drawers while the massage lady was away. She found her evidence....condoms!! and so left immediately as it all got to be a bit too much.

There is a stack of shopping at the Great Wall, they all line up alone the entrances and you can buy all sorts of stuff. Actually its hard to get away from them. Jane was writing an article on earmuffs for one of her jobs and she went around Bejing and Shanghai for a few days taking pictures of people with earmuffs on. In Shanghai she had to bribe people to wear them because everyone's too cool for school here. The rabbit earmuffs you see her wearing she got in Alaska, but unfortunately she left them in a cab. Anyway Beijing all ended up in debauchery with hookahs and pashes.

On the way out to the train station they caught a cab without a meter, when they got there the driver upped the price they had agreed on to rip them off. They argued and finally agreed on 80RMB. They gave the driver a 100 to get 20 RMB change, but he wouldn't give them the change. he stood next to the car, lit up a cigarette and laughed at them, especially Jane who was trying to communicate her frustration in Chinese. So Jane took a different tack - she took the keys from the cab and waved them around in front of the driver. He knew he was trumped, so he laughed and gave them the 20RMB. I reckon Jane should have asked for 50.