Authentic Chinese Food

The families who had traveled to Beijing first to sight see joined us at 6:00pm in the lobby of the hotel. Simon met us there and explained that we would walk to an authentic Chinese restaurant. The walk was nice. We were able to talk to the other families along the way and Simon pointed out areas to shop. Along with the adults, there were three boys with us. One family brought their two teenage sons, another their five year old.

The restaurant was off the main street. If you can imagine walking down a dark ally, that's how it felt. Fortunately, there were a lot of us, so it wasn't so bad. Our group was divided up among three large round tables. We sat with two families at our table who had spent the day before touring Beijing. They were a lot of fun. They told us of their adventures at the Great Wall and how the climb seemed never ending and strait up. Apparently, us Americans are really out of shape because these families were passed by eighty year old women and people in high heels.

The food was not bad. It was served in stages. Each dish was placed on a glass lazy susan in the middle of the table. We would just rotate the lazy susan and serve ourselves. Minutes later, the servers would add another dish. Eventually the lazy susan was full of different dishes. All of the food was definitely edible, but there were some things, mostly veggies, that I couldn't identify.

There were only three drink offered to us; coke, sprite, and beer. Somehow, after all the glasses were passed out, Gabby didn't get one. John got beer, so she couldn't share with him and I had Coke, so she didn't want to share with me. We motioned to one of the servers and asked for a Sprite. She cocked her head side to side and finally said, We do not have any." At that point we pointed to a glass full of sprite and again asked for sprite. She got another server who offered beer to Gabby. We said, "No, Sprite." This server said, "No Sprite, beer?" Fortunately Simon was with us. He talked to another server. A couple of minutes later, a server appeared with a large bottle of 7-Up. It was then that we realized our communication error. They didn't have any Sprite. They had 7-Up.