I hope heaven doesn't have so many tourists

One sight of China's history that just slipped from our first three days in Beijing was the Temple of Heaven (Tian Tan). Accordingly, it was first on the list upon our return from the northeast.

It was a place for ritual sacrifice by the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, to spur a good harvest. In fact, the word for "temple" also translates as "altar" - in this sense it is very different from a Buddhist temple. It is a large park complex with a handful of significant and interesting buildings. It is also on most tourists' lists of "must do" Beijing, so it was crowded.

The most impressive sight was the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. This three-roofed structure was an architectural marvel. It is made with no nails whatsoever, just well-fitting wooden pieces. Alas, because of its shape, location, and topping golden ball, it is also a magnet for lightning and has had to be rebuilt several times.

The other highly impressive spot was the Circular Mound Altar, where the actual sacrifices took place. This raised platform had some hidden mathematics, with each ring on the altar containing a multiple of nine stones (9, 18, 27, and so on). This connected the altar to the solar system. There were so many people here, the top of the altar was akin to a cattle call.

Seeking some relief from the crowds, we headed towards the emperor's Hall of Abstinence. This residence was built as a small miniature of the Forbidden City. It was a neat complex, surrounded by a dry moat, and containing a number of nice courtyards, passageways, and small buildings. It also had one very large bell.

The final place we found in this complex brought the most depth in terms of cultural history. It was the Administration of Divine Music. Contained within were a number of outdated instruments that formed the imperial orchestra. Lots of oddly shaped wind and string pieces here to catch my fancy. None playable by us, however.

Hot pot from a Mongolian perspective

Having successfully negotiated a taxi ride back to town, we found ourselves in Haila'er with a couple of hours to spare before our flight to Beijing. Time for some of that vaunted Mongolian Hot Pot!

The internet proved useful, though in a roundabout way. Venturing to our free WiFi corner once more, we located a couple of hot pot restaurants on Google Maps, not two blocks away from us. We walked towards them...but the first was not to be found. We did locate the second, but its emptiness, scattering of used refrigerators open to the air, and general grunginess did not entice us to go inside.

However! We did pass a nice looking, apparent hot pot place that Google Maps had neglected. We went inside. Thanks, Google Maps!

Ordering was straightforward, as the menu had pictures and we knew the concept. Soon, plates of food, with side dishes, appeared.

The five small side dishes included peanuts, green chillies, chilli paste, blanched garlic, and pickled onion. The peanuts and the chilli paste saw the most use, with the peanuts serving as palate cleansers and the chilli paste taking the broth up a couple of notches.

On the non-veg side of the meal, we got two cuts of lamb. One was sliced thinly and a bit like lamb prosciutto. The other was a rough chop and left thick little strips of lamb. Alas, and why oh why, but the meat was not good. Gamey, gamey, gamey, with the thick strips being, to me at least, inedible.

But they were more than saved by the delicious vegetables and fungus. The mixed mushroom plate contained enoki, shiitake, king trumpets, and several unidentifiable but delicious varieties. They were joined on a separate sampler plate by spinach, more enokis, and lettuce. All of it was scrumptious, and so different from each other. The enokis were lovely because of the snap to their bite. The long and shaggy mushrooms second from the back were richly flavored and very earthy. The spinach and lettuce soaked up delectable flavors from the broth and parlayed them into my mouth. Yum, yum, yum.

After an hour of sitting next to our individual hot pots and eating many things from them soaked in chillies, I was sweating profusely, one of those great sweats that cools you down and makes you healthy. Viva Hot Pot!

Starch and dairy, dairy and starch

The second day in the grasslands we found ourselves ravished around lunchtime. The only place close was the canteen at our tourist trap, so we ventured in. Max placed our order.

First out of the kitchen was sliced carrot sautéed with lamb. The carrots were nice, not overcooked and sliced wonderfully. The thin oil and vinegar sauce was a nice accompaniment. The lamb, however, was not a treat. Continuing the theme, it was overcooked, gamey, and hard to eat.

Next was sautéed eggplant, green peppers, and potatoes - a dish I would learn later is called "three treasures." This was wonderful. Each vegetable had been cooked well, the dish was piping hot, and the sauce was slightly sweet and full of flavor. The potato slices, in particular, were thinly sliced, crisp on the outside with enough soft mash inside to remain delicious. This did not last long on the plate.

Finally, and again, there were milky noodles with lamb. All I can say is, ugh. I was in no mood for a bad tasting dairy-filled bowl of noodles. I tried to pick out some of the noodles but to no avail. I was forced to push this dish away.

A bit unrelated, but...on the way out of lunch, we saw this very large two-humped camel. Not sure if it was a good sign or a bad omen, but there it was.

Hospitality in a yurt

We reached the collection of yurts and a man came toward us. First he began to speak in Mandarin (I think) but quickly realized it was no use given our blank stares. So he switched over to hand signals, and welcomed us in. We were led into his kitchen / dining room.

He offered us some water, which we gratefully accepted and began to drink. After a handful of minutes, out came a couple of nibbles.

There were seasoned tofu disks, julienned potatoes with bean sprouts, and diced spicy green chillies. The chillies were tremendously hot, so much so that a small chopstick amount required an infusion of potatoes afterward to bring down the heat. All were tasty.

Next, a bottle of somewhat official moonshine appeared. With a wolf on the label, we knew this was serious stuff. Simon, the name of our host, shared that it was 38% alcohol. He had some 62% alcohol in a jug, should we want to graduate to that. We quickly said no, the 38% was great, thanks. He poured a small shot for all four of us (we were joined by the cook at this point), and with a quick "ganbei" it was down.

Then, we began to converse. Well, communicate as best we could. We shared our ages, 30 and 31 on our side and 46 and 54 on theirs. We told him about our walk and the perilous barbed wire fences we encountered. He told us they were a bunch of contruction workers building a small complex for the summer sports festival, when typical Mongolian sports would be played. wish we could have been there for that!

After a lull in the conversation, Max suggested we break out our playing cards. We did and it was a hit. We started with Blind Man's Bluff. Simple to learn and fun to play, we each placed a card on our heads. We looked at each others' cards but not our own. Then, we put them down and the low card lost. We graduated from that to Blackjack, a surprisingly simple game to communicate with your hands. Then, perhaps overestimating our ability to share new games, we switched to Russian Poker (where you have 13 cards in your hand and make one 3-card and two 5-card poker hands). That only sort of worked. But we had a great time, lots of laughing and traveler friendships.

Then it was time for dinner. The cook took me down to the meat cellar, and I saw various parts of lamb on hooks, curing for later use.

He hacked off a piece of lamb from the left leg and brought it upstairs. He began to cook it in a large wok.

I am sad to say that it did not taste very good. The method of cooking for this easy-to-be-gamey meat was boiling in plain hot water. It quickly got overcooked and dry, with little good flavor left to its name. However, there were a couple of interesting condiments to try topping it with. One was awful, little white cubes in a red sauce. I could speculate as to what they were but would rather not. The other, though, added a nice pesto-chilli flavor to the meat. We hung out with them for another handful of hours. It was a great and unexpected night!

Thanks to Simon and his friends for taking two weary travelers in and showing them some great Mongolian hospitality!

The grasslands are greener

We reached Jinzhanghan quickly and were delighted - mostly. It turned out that the main place to stay was a kitschy, overdone tourist trap that had dressed up their Han Chinese staff in Mongolian outfits and put on all manner of ridiculous shows. We tried to come up with a plan B for somewhere to stay, but drew a blank. So we dumped our bags and quickly made for the grasslands.

And it was heavenly. Within 15 minutes, we were over a hill from the schlocky camp and amidst the lovely grasslands.

This was big sky country, halfway around the world from Montana. The sky was clear with a couple of clouds (incidentally, one of the very few days in which we've seen the sun in China). The grasslands just went on and on. We were in a small valley with a winding river running through it. On either side there were gently rolling hills. We began to walk in one direction. We came across horses.

We came across sheep.

We came across dead sheep.

And, every once in a while, there would be some kind of livestock fence. Sometimes we could walk for a bit and get around it, other times the only way through was over or under.

It was a great walk, in the broad sunlight and with a slight breeze in the air. The hills in the distance appeared to shimmer with happiness.

We saw a small group of yurts off in the distance and made our way towards them...

Navigating blind, with our intuition and taste buds

From the frontier with Russia we headed north west, to the frontier with Mongolia. The Chinese province we were aiming for was so similar to China's northern landlocked neighbor that it goes by the name Inner Mongolia. Our destination: the grasslands.

To get there, we took our third overnight train from Ha'erbin to Haila'er. This one was the cheapest, only Y275 (~$40USD) for a 10 hour train ride with a soft bed. Not a bad deal. We knew we were getting close when we woke up the next morning and the view was full of grass and livestock.

The train pulled into the Haila'er train station at about 7am. Our plan to secure a bit of breakfast and a ride out the grasslands, about one hour away. Simple, right? Or so we thought.

We scoured the Lonely Planet China. Whoops, no map of Haila'er, not even a basic quarter page affair. Hmmm. No worry, we would head to one of the hotels, in the center of town, and begin asking around. We caught a taxi relatively easily and arrived at the hotel. No luck, though, because they spoke not a modicum of English. We ventured out into the streets of Haila'er, with our bags in tow. We didn't know if we were walking north or south, the right way or wrong. We went down into a pedestrian tunnel to get across a particularly nasty roundabout.

We emerged, look around, and were lost as ever. We found another, larger hotel, and went inside. No luck at the front desk, but at least it was a chance to use the free and nice restrooms. On our way out, a staff member saw me looking confused and asked what we were trying to do. "Hire a car to Jinzhanghan" I said. One moment...she looked and came back with a sheet of paper full of Chinese characters that quoted a price of Y150 for the ride. Not bad, but higher than we had expected. We headed back out.

There was one place in the Lonely Planet that sounded particularly promising, a hotel near the Mongolian part of town. But, for the life of us, we could not find it. We kept walking around in circles. Finally, as Max was venturing down another side alley trying to get a clue, I brought out my iPhone. Somehow (divine intervention?) there was a free wireless signal there. I called up Google Maps and we were able to get a bit of orientation and locate the hotel.

At this point, however, we were starving. So we headed to a cafe near the hotel, where we were quickly hidden upstairs in a room away from the other customers. I tried to order, but the waitress said one moment and left. She returned with a telephone, with a live call on it. She handed it to me. I said "Hello" and a torrent of Russian poured out of the phone towards me. Russian! Nice to know that my beard works, but it is not a language I speak. So I said thanks and hung up, then placed a very random order with the waitress, literally just pointing at two random items on the menu.

First, though, she brought us a large thermos of milk. I don't know what kind of milk it was, but it was very grey in color. Yak? Horse? Other? It wasn't bad, and the warming sensation it provided was delightful.

Next came the julienned potatoes in oil and vinegar. These were great, light and refreshing. I don't know if they were even cooked all that much, as they retained a fair amount of crunch.

Finally, the noodles in milk broth with lamb arrived. These were, to put it charitably, not good. The noodles were ok, if a bit overcooked and too thick. But the broth was fairly heinous - warm savory milk that tasted a little funky. And the lamb - so gamey and so so overdone they must have boiled it for hours. I could eat only a little, and I was hungry.

Coming out of the meal that provided enough sustenance for us to continue, we were determined to get out of town. It was nearing 11am, and we wanted to spend this day on the grasslands. We went to the hopefully helpful hotel and began to talk to them. Their English was limited and our Chinese was worse. Using every bit of our two skimpy guides' language sections, plenty of hand gestures, and some dumb luck, we managed to communicate what we were trying to do. But then nothing happened. And then it appeared we needed to negotiate. So we turned to our secret weapon, my friend V. We called him up on our (well, his actually) mobile and asked him to play go between. He talked with them. He talked with us. They talked with us, sort of. He talked to them again. He talked to us again. Finally, we had determined that they wanted Y600 for a two day trip to Jinzhanghan and required the inclusion of a guide. Too much!

On Max's good suggestion, I ran back to the other hotel and confirmed that we could get a one way ride for Y150, and that it would be easy to get a return trip for the same price. I got Max away from the overcharging hotel. Once booked, our bilingual hotel helper walked outside, talked to the first taxi she saw, and agreed the price. We piled in, and were off!

Beard on the Bosphorus

Posts are catching up from the big China blackout. In the meantime, here's a beard shot from a fun trip on a ferry across the Bosphorus.

Seems like Russia but it's actually still China

Ha'erbin has a fascinating Russian streak that I was dying to explore. I mean, it's further north than Vladivostok, for crying out loud! And, explorations had to include those of the culinary kind.

The first stop was a Russian tea house called Cafe Russia 1914.

It was decorated aptly in an old-fashioned, tablecloth bedecked way. Max and I ordered some tea and some tea snacks to while away some afternoon hours.

Both pots of "Russian tea" we received were far too weak. Where was the strong tea that China was famous for? Where was the robust flavor that Russians do not shy away from? Not in this tea.

Better were the light snacks. A plateful of roughly chopped pickles brought a distinctly non-Asian taste to my palate. The mashed potatoes were regular, but they were topped in a delicious black pepper sauce. The sauce was quite spicy, bringing a snappiness to each bite and creating a mini-addiction for me. It oddly reminded me of eating pepper crab in Singapore.

After dipping our toes in the Russian waters, however, we wanted to go whole hog. Max had secured the name of a true Russian establishment at the beginning of our previous evening at the Russian disco. Called Around The World, it was a taxi ride away in an indistinguishable part of town. Upon entering, however, we saw that this place was the real deal.

The dining room was elaborate and the bar had been made out of the hull of a ship.

They even had a full selection of Russian beers. We went with the Baltica 9. It was good if too light for the meal we were about to enjoy.

Appetizer one was salted pork with whole grain mustard. What a change of pace from the Chinese food I had been eating. And so good. The paper thin slices of pork were a cross between bacon and prosciutto. And, moreover, the mustard awakened taste buds that haven't seen a mustard seed in months. I even ate some of the mustard plain.

The second appetizer was pancakes with salmon roe. These were the standout of a very good meal. The pancakes, more like crepes, were expertly cooked and had not a raw or overcooked spot anywhere. They were slickened by a creamy butter that made everything delicious. And the salmon roe was the proverbial cherry on top. The way these roe popped, they had to be so fresh. They brought a saltiness that balanced the sweetness of the butter and the breadiness of the pancake perfectly.

Max and I had to split the third pancake precisely evenly, there was no other option.

As a soup course, I had the okroshka (or cold meat soup). It was a bowl of joy. The creamy base wasn't too thick nor too thin, imparting its own flavor while making room for others. It also (according to Wikipedia) contained krass, a fermented beverage made from rye bread, with a very low alcohol content. Huh. Mixed into the soup was a bunch of green onion and a bushel of parsley. Finally, the cold meat was there, small diced chunks of smoked pork. The entire thing was a refreshing mix.

Max went for the borscht. Longtime readers will know I have a strong (and unfortunately unavoidable) aversion to beets. Something about them always tastes too pickled and just off. But! Miracle of miracles! Somehow, the beets in this borscht were manageable. And, there were delicious tomatoes and awesome spicing to drown them out. I could make my way through stealing a couple of bites of his soup.

Moving on to main dishes, one was chicken stuffed with pistachios and then deep-fried. This was pretty good. It suffered a bit from a too thick batter and too long frying process. The creamy sauce on top was nice.

The other main was broiled carp with cream sauce of onions and mushrooms. The sauce here was delicious, as the cream had invaded the mushrooms and made them quite tasty. The fish was nicely cooked, though needed the sauce.

One dessert was this chocolate tiramisu cake, nice and light and providing a burst of chocolate. The other, no picture alas, was edem, or broiled apples in caramel sauce stuffed with dates and nuts. Um, good. So warm and satisfying.

The meal then took an unanticipated turn when the evening entertainment came on. Two sets of artists alternated. The first was a couple that looked like Russian ice dancing rejects and danced a mix of burlesque and ballroom dancing. The second was a solo woman who belted out (or was it lip synced?) tunes both sad and sultry. Odd. Oh, and there was disco lighting throughout, and many curious Chinese patrons who repeatedly blocked our view with their attempts to take photos.

In balance, though, this was a highly memorable meal. The salmon crepes and the two soups will stand the test of time and of judgment - they were darn good.