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Day Trip to Qinzhou

We were invited to visit Qinzhou and so we rode the bus there this week from Beihai. The bus leaves pretty much every hour for Qinzhou for most of the day. While at the bus station I just had to take a picture of this warning sign. I thought it was interesting because it is a sign describing the items that are disallowed on the bus. In the upper right, it warns that flammable liquids are disallowed. In the middle right, it describes that weapons such as guns and knives are not allowed either. I...

The Beihai Diet

What's a trip to China without good food? Here in Beihai there's some great seafood cuisine. Almost every meal includes some sort of seafood. In Michael Pollan's book, the "Omnivore's Dilemma", he explains how a culture's cuisine is developed over generations and generations of experimentation and adaptation with the local environment. The available forms of food here are mainly rice, vegetables, fruits, seafood, poultry, and fish. Most of our meals are home cooked by relatives here in Beihai. H...

Getting Around Beihai

This posting is dedicated to the modes of transportation used in Beihai. Here's the rundown of ways to get around: Walk/Bicycle/Bus. These are common and used throughout China. I don't see as many bicycles here as other cities. Maybe due to the heat or scooters being readily accessible. There is bus service here in Beihai but we have not needed to use it. We have been able to walk or cab cheaply to places. There are, however, places in the outskirts of town that we may need to take the bus to. S...

Beihai’s Breakdancing “Shock Crew”

The highlight of our evening walk through Bei Bu Wan park was when we came upon Beihai's breakdancing kids, aka the "Shock Crew." We sat around watching as they practiced their tricks. I had set out to put some of their stuff into a short video but after noticing that they were just practicing and not bringing their best stuff I decided to do some directing. I therefore employed H's local dialect abilities to approach the crew and get them organized. She told them that we are bloggers and want t...

Beihai Street Life Part 2

Whereas the old city of Beihai is european colonial architecture, traditional red lanterns, mom and pop stores, dimly lit streets, the newer part of Beihai is tall glass buildings, neon lights, fast food, shopping malls, and busy streets. We had a chance to walk around the Bei Bu Wan park which is the center of it all after watching a movie at a brand new movie theater inside a shopping mall. Bei Bu Wan park is a large park area where people walk, sit and lounge on the grass, watch street perfor...

Chinese Acupressure Master

One of H's cousins has a friend who is a master of acupressure and massage therapy. His method of diagnosing illnesses and ailments is very interesting. He examines your hand and applies pressure in various places. He uses either his fingers or a small piece of wood. If it hurts or is uncomfortable you let him know. For female patients he examines the right hand. For male patients he examines his left hand. After a minute or two, he gives his diagnosis. My diagnosis is as follows. First, he iden...

Beihai Sport Life

Its important for us to get some exercise while here in Beihai. We've spent the majority of our time reading books, surfing the web, exploring the town, and eating. This gave me the idea to seek out some physical exercise and also look into what the locals participate in. First off, its easy to get exercise into your daily routine as a local because most people walk to do their shopping, visit friends, or to work. Some locals ride bicycles but most people ride motorized scooters for moderate dis...

Old Town Coffee

One block away from us in old city Beihai is a row of coffee shops and stores. They are nestled between some decrepit looking row houses. But the one coffee shop that we tried, Old Town Coffee (老道咖啡馆), was fully renovated and well decorated. Although it's renovated, it maintains many of the structure's original features. The building is three levels high and very large inside with many passage ways and small rooms. Many of the rooms are now seating areas. The building has two small courtyard ope...

Happy Birthday Dragon Mother Goddess

The sounds of Beihai: mahjong tiles slapping the table, the ring of a bell of some vendor selling bags of rice from his cart, children laughing on the way to school, honking horns of scooters weaving around pedestrians. These are all sounds I'm getting accustomed to during my stay here in Beihai. Today, however, I was awakened from my afternoon nap by the rhythmic percussion of drums and cymbals. One look out of the window and it was obvious that there was some celebration going on as a parade p...

Beihai Street Life

One of the great things about living in a foreign city is experiencing the every day happenings just by walking the streets. Of course, visiting a city's tourist sites are a quick way to get acquainted with a city's history but if you have time it is always more interesting to walk through the streets and see what unexpected sites you can see. Most of time you can see people just living their lives, shopping in open air markets, playing mahjong on the sidewalks, or you might run into something m...