China trip 4 - Tuesday

Today was not a banner day for food or activity. I was attending a panel discussion for lunch today, and box lunches were provided. The lunch itself was rather dull – a Western-style roast beef sandwich and a chicken sandwich, some yogurt, a bottle of water, a bit of slightly sweet bread, and a banana. The sandwiches had no condiments, so the main thing of interest was that they both had cucumber on them, and the chicken was weakly seasoned with curry. Those who know me know that the banana held no interest for me. The one thing that struck me as odd is that the yogurt said “aloe” amid the Chinese characters. I turned it over, and sure enough, in the English ingredients list was “aloe vera gel.” I never really thought of aloe vera as edible, but I was curious, so I tried it. It was plain yogurt, but it had a slight hint of a floral taste. I’m not sure of the health benefits of ingesting aloe, but I assume that they’re similar to applying it topically. The lunch box itself was a plastic box similar to a Japanese Bento box, but without any dividers inside.

Dinner was at a Teppenyaki restaurant. Pretty much, if you’ve been to one of these, you’ve been to all of them. The menu is the same, the food is the same, the “grill it in front of you” schtick is the same. The main thing that made dinner enjoyable was the company – I was with friends, and we had a private room to be loud, laugh, and carry on as we saw fit. The restaurant was trendy, almost to a fault. It was in a basement, and if you didn’t know where it was, you would never have found it, but the main entry area was designed almost to look like an outdoor zen garden – it had a water feature, stepping stones, and a sand patch with zen patterns traced in it, with dark river rock filling in the spaces. Pretty cool. It was obviously a bit of a tourist destination, because the menu was carefully translated into English, the waitress spoke at least passable English (vs the broken English that is available if we’re lucky, or no English at all), and the prices were high. Fortunately, we had a benefactor, so I didn’t need to stress too much about the prices.

On the way home, I was impressed yet again by how horrible the drivers are here. I can honestly say that the worst driver in the US would be among the best here. Every time we’re out, I see people backing up to reach off-ramps that they’ve missed, playing chicken with each other while changing lanes, ignoring traffic signals, nearly mowing down pedestrians and bikes in crosswalks, dramatic speed differentials because there are an equal number of people flying along at double the speed limit or puttering at half of it.

The horn and high beams are used constantly, but flashing your high beams seems to be more about conveying your frustration with something that a driver is doing than to signal them to go ahead, even if they are in the process of cutting you off. The one difference is that the Taxi drivers here don’t yell at the other drivers like they would in NYC, and there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent to the middle finger that is so common when a driver does something stupid or inconsiderate in the US. Either way though, it really is lunacy!