Day 1: Rock and Roll in my HEAD!!

Watched China's first spacewalk yesterday. It was a pretty amazing experience and you could totally sense the Nationalism in the air as the astronaut hoisted the Chinese Flag.

The major plan for today was to visit my great uncle?? (brother of my grandfather). He happens to be a retired general in the Chinese PLA so we usually get some forms of preferential treatment when we visit him. As usual, he sent a military vehicle to pick us up in the morning. The good thing about a military vehicle is that they are typically above the law. If the driver wanted to, he could have driven however way he wanted! Luckily, he has never played GTA before so we generally followed traffic laws.

After some moments of conversation which involved many questions about a particular Princess, and the showing of the General's latest book (Basically poetric description of famous battles in 5000 years of Chinese history), we headed off to lunch. Typically, trips to China devolve into a series of massive feasts with people encouraging me to keep eating until I inevitably explode. This meal was no different.

We went to this really upscale restaurant that specializes in serving military personnel. Initially, they put us in this massive dining hall complete with TVs, elaborately decorated sofas, and enough space to sit about 30+ people. Unfortunately, our lunch party only consisted of 6 people. They switched us to a smaller and slightly less elaborate room shortly afterwards. The food was pretty amazing, they had some kinda strange sea cucumber appetizer dish, peking duck, various types of chicken, shrimp, fish, and even steak (was actually pretty good). To top the meal off, they ordered 2 batches of egg tarts. These egg tarts were super awesome, way better than most of the tarts offered in US. The most unique thing that I tasted though, was the drink. I had never had Apple Vinegar drink before. This thing tasted kinda sour going down, but left a really really awesome aftertaste that was amazing. My grand uncle quickly caught on to how much I liked this apple vinegar and proceeded to order 5 bottles of the stuff for me to take home!

On the way back from lunch, we stopped by Tiananmen Square to check out the floral preparations for National Day. It was pretty spectacular and the news even reported that it was a world record for most amount of fresh flowers ever in one display. One small damper on things was the traffic. It was absolutely terrible. Beijing has a series of 6 "ring" roads (basically loops) that go around the city. None of these loops have any form of traffic signals so you would think that traffic would be relatively fast moving on these roadways. However, the sheer volume of cars caused bumper to bumper traffic and it took us a good 1.5 hours to travel about 20 miles.

I am living with my grandparents who live in these housing projects off the main campus of Chinese Agricultural University. As such, we basically drive right through campus any time we leave to go somewhere. This time coming back, I noticed this awesome dude wearing a felt black jacket that was designed to look like leather with huge letters written in glitter that was designed to look like rhinestones. The letters read "Red Panda, Rock and Roll in my Head!!" Soo awesome, even better than the "Bimbo" brand ice cream I saw earlier.

Dinner was "relatively" light to compensate for El Feasto Gigante and consisted of...2 giant grabs. I love eating crabs, my particular technique involves separating all the meat from the carcass before consumption.Mmmm. My lost baggage finally arrived in the evening and everything was intact. Operation: Nanjing is still on schedule!