2009-05-10 Welcome to Beijing

Which airline would you prefer? I would still prefer SQ for long distance flight as it provides personal entertainment screen at each individual seat. This time I was on MAS from Penang to Beijing. Well, it just has a centralize TV screen but I am very satisfied with the food provided. Their Lacto ovo meal and sandwiches taste good at my opinion :)

Finally, we'd reach Capital Beijing International Airport. Due to the H1n1, we are required to fill up health declaration form, and going through body temperature screening station. I am pretty surprised of this promptly checking setup. Besides that, there were officer to really check the health form we filled up, to verify all contact information including phone number are provided correctly.

On our way to rented apartment, I can see the environment is more green, compared to my last trip to Beijing in 2007. I am happy to see Beijing city flower, which is called 月季. It looks like a mixture of rose and 牡丹 in my eye, with different color of red, pink, mixture of champaign and yellow, and a lot more :) It made me the 花痴 tempted to go visit botanical garden or nearby park on coming weekend, as May is still blooming season. It will be getting hot in Jun/Jul and thus less flower. Don't quote me as vase-flower lover, I am not :) I appreciate flower still alive in soil better :)

As according to IV's friend, local government put in huge effort to make the city green. After checked-in to apartment, we took at least an hour to go through the apartment inventory item with the officer there, this was really tiring, as it is very tedious to count every single plate provided, and there are few-tenth of utensils provided. Since Oakwood is US-based company, the service is good with nice friendly staff :)

Walking in Beijing is very common, we walked for around 10min to 九龙源豆花庄. Here are what we ate:




From left-to-right, top-to-down.
1) The shop. 2) Salted egg-york fried pumpkin. 3) Stewed chicken. 4) Stone soy beancurd, more details will follow. 5) Fried vege. 6) Soy bean juice. 7) Sichuan sticky rice dumpling.

Look at the beancurd, it was made in front of us before served. The waitress brought the empty bowl and a jug of soy green color juice (until now we can't figure out why it is green in color, it doesn't has additional taste/smell). Then she put a small amount of clear liquid into the bowl, put a stone inside a perforated spoon, slowly pour the soy bean juice into the bowl through the spoon with stone. After that, close the bowl lid, stay for around 30min, and the beancurd is ready :) They (whenever I said 'they', it simply means the local resident) like to eat beancurd with different kind of sauce, which are served in surrouding small plate, e.g. sesame sauce, honey, 南乳, chilli sauce and green color leek sauce. I tried and the taste is... eei no comment haha.

I've to mentioned the Sichuan sticky rice dumpling, it is exactly what we called 炸煎堆 in Malaysia cantonese. But the skin is much thinner, crunchy and easy to bite.

Pay attention to the soy bean juice in jar, it's only 0.4l and it cost RMB 18/jar. It's not special but it is so costly! We found out almost all soy bean juice here has a ‘over-burnt' taste (焦味), weird.

After dinner, with IV's friend help, we got one mobile sim pack for each of us, cost RMB 65 each. RMB 15 for the number and RMB 50 talk time, which is valid for 3 months. Calling/receiving local china call is RMB 20 cents per minute, while sending a sms cost RMB 10 cent.

Of course, we walked back to apartment. After shower and unpacked luggage, it was 11.30pm. It was a tiring trip, as I woke up on 4am to catch the flight and only got the chance to sleep on 11.30pm.

Welcome to Beijing.