Jetlag flight 1 AM now arriving in Beijing, temperature 101 degrees fahrenheit

Third Day in China

Despite being a half hour late to our appointment (a cabbie exploited our ignorance of Haidian's geography), we succeeded in renting the apartment mentioned below. We feel extremely lucky in that we found such a fantastic place and such a fantastic pair of landlords. Our landlords Nancy and Mark are professors at one of the local universities, the Chinese University of Petroleum, and Nancy's English is fantastic. To answer your unspoken question, there is a second bedroom for our visitors. But don't plan on visiting after August 8th, because we hope to rent the extra bedroom for an inflated rate during the Olympics to some unsuspecting weiguoren, as we're only a five-minute cab ride from all of the Olympic events.

Yesterday we also learned that bills are paid much differently in China. Take our apartment, for instance: we have about nine different utility bills to deal with, including hot water, plain water, cold water, recycled sewer water for the toilet, gas, electric, cable, telephone, and Internet. Four of the bills must be paid at the Post Office. Another four need to be paid at the management office of the apartment complex. And one we have to pay to our landlord.

We also need to pay for bottled water delivery, which we'll have to get from the local Korean market. And we have to pay the rent quarterly, in advance, by walking to the bank and having the bank transfer the money from our account to Nancy's. (We could do it in cash, but that's a lot of renminbi to carry around) To make matters more interesting, we speak only about ten words of Chinese thus far, so we need Nancy to come help us to pay any of the utility bills. But we have our language classes starting on the 9th, and we're walking around with a English-Chinese dictionary, so we're not entirely helpless.

After we finished renting the apartment, we found the Carrefour. Carrefour is a monstrous French-owned department store near our hotel that specializes in selling goods for the cheapest amount possible to the Chinese middle class. We bought a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, and a block of cheese. (That may seem like an odd combination, but you should have seen some of the other options.) And there was a DQ right outside staffed with a bunch of giggly teenagers, so we managed to beat the heat with "cookie blizzard." I think we'll be losing some weight while we're here.

Once we had our blizzard, the jetlag kicked in with a vengeance. We fell asleep at 4 p.m. and awoke at 4 a.m. The only thing on TV was a terrible documentary about 19th century Chinese Salt Merchants on the one CCTV channel that's in English. I'm amazed that they managed to squeeze an hour out of such a fascinating subject, but somehow they managed.

Today, however, we got an earlier start. (Waking up at 4 a.m. will do that for you) We toured the grounds of Beida, as depicted in our photos above. We had a pack of school children yell "hello!" at us in an attempt to get the silly Americans to turn around. (This is evidently a common tactic for Chinese people who see weiguoren for the first time) We went shopping, looking for cheap clothes and food, since we have neither left. We managed to open a bank account with the help of our student host, Miss Han, who thanked us for providing a justifiable excuse when she wanted to ditch studying for her exams. We saw a man with no arms doing calligraphy on the street with his feet. (No, not the left one) And we once again braved the craziness of Beijing traffic, which is an exercise in daring and skill. (A tip: ignore the traffic signals, follow the pack of people across the street, and you'll be fine)

Tomorrow we're headed down to the city center to have breakfast with some expats we met. After that, it's off to see the sights. Maybe there will be something to eat that's lacking in MSG and salt. Damn those salt merchants...