Cooking in the Chinese Kitchen #2

I still can't get my stove to turn on (above), but since it scares me, I'm kind of ok with leaving it off. It scares me because yes, that's a gas tank, yes, it's attached to my stove, and yes, if anyone in the world would be able to blow up a kitchen thanks to their exposed gas tank, it would totally be me. So for the time being, I'll leave it off and just use the coolest electric kettle in the world!

ta da.

By day, a normal electric kettle. By night, awesomeness:

Heating Up... Ready!

And I didn't even know it did this until I got home from the store and plugged it in. Yay I love China. Since this is my only means of cooking, I'm now limited to a diet of Ramen noodles and tea, but it's not like I was very savvy with a spatula in the U.S.

Being a vegetarian, it's a bit difficult to buy pre-made food at the grocery store. Even crackers and noodles are often covered in shrimp dust or pork flavoring (ew). So, when I saw frozen black bean dumplings,

I was thrilled for 3 reasons. 1) could be made in my Super Cool Kettle 2) vegetarian and 3) clearly delicious judging by the child's smile on the package. Imagine my horror when, after boiling them as directed, I dumped them into my bowl, and they looked like this:

I tried to eat them, but the consistency caused me to lose my appetite before the dumplings even made it to my mouth. ...and then I didn't need dinner after all, so obviously win-win. The End. (ps cute chopsticks, WCBF!)

Cooking in the Chinese Kitchen

Since I can't figure out how to work my stove, I spent tonight's dinner money on wine glasses. Real classy!

because I had no other plans for 6 am

This morning my aunt and I caught the flag raising ceremony at sunrise in Tiananmen Square. I figured there wouldn't be many people there, since it's a daily event, it's off-season, and we'd probably be the only people awake in Beijing. WRONG! There were already thousands of people there, all invading each other's personal space to get a good view of the flagpole. Really, the only people who could see were those in front of the pack, and I'm pretty sure I don't have enough motivation to be one of them. Maybe if there had been more dancing. It was an excuse to see the square at dawn (largest in the world, thank you), which in itself was pretty impressive, and watching the millions of Chinese soldiers disperse in formation was cool (and their coats are adorable).

Proud Party Member

Worthy of note: we were the only non-Chinese people out of the whole crowd. Everyone else was on their pilgrimage to the Center of It All. Oh, and I had my first stint of western celebritydom when a Chinese girl asked to take a picture with my aunt and me. Because why not.

For dinner tonight, we went to a Tibetan-themed vegetarian restaurant called Pure Lotus, which was like, in a mall but had an amazing ambiance once you got inside (run by monks?). Here's how they presented the meals:

big stone bowl + fruit + dry ice = Zen

The dishes were all named things like "bitter melon soup from hell" and "I love you-- no discussion." Some were much more ridiculous but of course I've now forgotten. I'm pretty sure they were supposed to be deep, not comical, but whatever.