恭王府 Mansion of Prince Gong

After Forbidden City 紫禁城, Great Wall 长城, Summer Palace 颐和园, Temple of Heaven 天坛, the priority list will go to Lama Temple雍和宫, Mansion of Prince Gong 恭王府, Hu Tong 胡同, Qian Men前门，后海 and etc.

Entrance fee to this mansion cost RMB 40, which is the same with MuTianYu Great Wall. If you are interested to read some historical story, here is the best place http://www.pgm.org.cn/ :D

This mansion can be divided into two parts in general. Buildings and room in front, garden and some bedroom at the back.



Of course it is not as large as Forbidden City, but I do agree that this is a well preserved mansion. Similar to Forbidden City, most of the building are locked. Some of the building is used for exhibition, and no photo allowed. So I am not able to share them, most probably I myself will forgot about those after a certain number of years too :p but I think the exhibition hall is more exciting than that in Forbidden City, like below. More decoration and well preserve ceiling and furniture inside the hall.




This seems to be a very popular spot for local tour. 10 minutes after I enter the mansion, I seldom had chance to enjoy the calm and quiet environment. I have pictures as proof, before and after:




After this tour group left, another will come within few minutes :)

Another uniqueness is on the building window. Like picture below, there are around 44 windows like that on top left of the building, and only few of them are duplicated designs/shapes. If you ever have chance to come here, remember to look up at the window of the long building in front of the garden entrance :) I took all of the window picture, only half way through my neck started to get tired :p





The garden is green and nicely design, with pond, small pavilion, stone and even a mini Great Wall :D





Overhearing some local tour agent explanation, in feng shui, rock and water represent power and wealth. In ancient rich man or royal residence, these can be seen everywhere. The mansion owner tend to believe bat bring good luck to him, as a lot of the things are named with bat, and even some design are origin from bat. Another is the corridor and door. All doors/corridors are narrow and long, to bring good meaning in chinese 长寿. Well, I looks thin but not too' long' is 长瘦, could I be long life also? :p　此长瘦非彼长寿，哈哈

As for food, there are stalls selling snack, water and instant noodle only. Luckily there is still a SiChuan restaurant which is accessible from inside/outside of the mansion for my lunch.



I finish all foods above by myself, I need energy to continue walking :D A waitress asked if I dine there very frequently. I told her this is my first time and asked why she has that query. She explained there was a time a female undergraduate always dine there alone, and she thought I am the one. Well probably there are some stories about that lady so she is curious to know. Anyway, I can still 'tipu makan' by telling people I am still in university :p *chuckle*

One improvement of culture I see from this trip is, they are more polite in taking picture, give way and block people view less. Fast learner eh.

Turkish food

In a raining like cats and dogs evening, we went to Turkish Mum for dinner. This is the only Turkey restaurant in Beijing, as advertised. We met the chef, she probably is a Turkish. After we finished our dinner, a lady looks like restaurant or owner came to our table with the chef, asked if we like the food. They talked to us in English as the waitress know we are from Malaysia. We all gave the same reply that we loved the food, it was really great.

After long talking, here is the food. All description from top left corner, clockwise:


1. Turkey bread with lentil soup. The lentil soup taste is similar to dalcha we used to eat with roti canai except additional fragrant taste, not really sure what taste it that though.
2. Lemon lime mint juice, kind of nice, surprisingly taste similar to Penang 'ketla sumboi' :p
3. Sultan Delights - Very tender mutton with mashed potato. I wish I can find similar mutton in Malaysia :D The best dish of the day.
4. Some appetizer: Minced parsley + onion + don't-know-what-rice, mashed chickpea (if not mistaken), cucumber + cauliflower pickle, salsa-like tomato + onion.



1. Turkish dumpling with yogurt. The dumpling is very small, there are 2 in the spoon, with 1 opened.
2. Beef curry + fragrant rice. The taste it is good. SH said similar dish can be found at Penang padang famous kambing soup.


1. Rice puree with milk. Smooth and nice.
2. Puff, we think this is normal, maybe puff is not so common in Beijing.
3. Turkey red tea, normal red tea.
4. Turkish coffee. Wow, the taste is special, a little bit sour and a little bit of herb taste, best fit for black coffee lover like me. When drink it, have to drink slowly and carefully, to avoid the coffee powder which usually sink at the bottom, more story about this later.
5. Pumpkin pie, can taste it has less flour/cream and more pumpkin natural taste :)



There is some believe about Turkish coffee fortune teller. After finish the coffee, capsize the coffee cup, after a while, your fortune can be read from the coffee powder stick on the coffee cup. Well, we just do it according to the menu instruction. The chef was surprised when she saw this and she thought we know how to tell the fortune. We told her we just follow the instruction and the chef said we were doing it wrongly :p Anyway, just for fun :)

By the way, our stomach is full so we did not order kebab. By the way, the waiter still think we did not order enough and keep asking if we need more. This situation happened at almost all other restaurant where the waiter will said the food we order is very less. Haha, now you can imagine a Beijinger's appetite :)

McDull 麦兜

McDull new movie is on show in Beijing cinema, but I won't watch because it is in mandarin. If it is in cantonese I probably will :D

Jul 22 Solar eclipse

Before we start, let's take a look a real sunny day view from my office :D




Nice sky eh :D
Well, this is how it looks like on Jul 22 ;)



So this is the only eclipse I manage to see, it appears less than 1 minutes :) Other than that, greyish and hazy sky.

The olive italian food

Guess what is that? It is a bottle for olive oil and vinegar. This is my first time seeing this 2-in-1 liquid bottle :)

One thing I would missed about Beijing is the food. There are just so many restaurant around, with more variety of foods, eastern, western, european, italian, french, russian, japanese, belgian, deutch, korean, thai, singaporean, indonesian, (of course we seldom eat thai/msian/singapore/indonesean food here :D ), vietnamese, turkish and etc.

There is a restaurant called 'the olive'. It is quite nice decorated. The picture on the wall are specials made up a relaxing dining environment.



Here we go for food :D



For soup, we have the mushroom soup and pumpkin soup. The pumpkin soup taste is very good, natural pumpking sweetness, no added cream and thick. The mushroom soup is a bit localized we think.

I always like to try risotto, and the pumpkin risotto is just unique and enlighten my taste bud. Different from the normal seafood/mushroom risotto always appears on the menu. The pesto pasta taste good as well. The chicken sandwich is okay, fresh and not disappointing.

The New Orlean cheese cake at the left is the best among the three. The tiramisu cheese cake taste like normal cheese + chocolate layer cake, and it doesn't has any alcohol taste at all. The blueberry cheese cake at the bottom is not in our favor that night :)




After dinner, the rain stop, which make some trees body looks even darker and nice looking scenery.

Time flies

I read from somewhere, life is like a roll of toilet paper, the older you are, the faster it rolls.

Well, 2.5 months in Beijing will be a memorable one. Next week this time I should be resting in my room at Penang :)

See you soon friend!

From 65th floor of Beijing

If you been to Komtar Tower Palace restaurant before, this is no surprise for you, except the view are different. Here in Beijing at 65th floor altitude, more matches box can be seen compared to that in Penang :)

I learnt a trick, when going to such high class places, speaking English is probably better as I am in casual jeans wear. Unfortunately it was hazy, although from ground we saw the sky was clear, but when we are at top, it was hazy at the ground.



The bird claw building from top (in the center of the picture).





The food:



Unique bread taste with the sauce. The blue cheese crab is famous and it taste special.

The main course are BBQ beef rib and chicken breast. Both taste good and tender texture. Surprisingly the portion is huge too.



Forgot to mention, a 700ml of Voss brand still water from Norway cost RMB 90 :D