Launch: Food and Chairman Mao

My hot pot is filled with spices!

I can tell you that Sophia, my most excellent interpreter, has taken her job to immerse me in Beijing culture very seriously. For only 48 hours in Beijing, I am the most well fed tourist around. The first night was dinner with at least 6 dishes - don't ask me what they were, but each was beautifully prepared and delicious. Then when she and Miss Ching, our hired driver, arrived to fetch me at o'dark thirty for our drive to The Great Wall, Sophia had hot steamed buns and hot bean curd milk ready for me in the car. After the wall, we returned to Beijing for traditional Mongolian Hot Pot down the street from Sophia's university. I dumped completely unrecognizable foot items into my hot pot and slurped them up with vigor. When my stomach started doing a few gentle somersaults I took a break, but so far so good with all the new flavors. I confess I called a time out on new spices at dinner time (though Sophia talked me into pumpkin rice porridge with some sort of bean thing for dessert).

The 2nd day in Beijing we went to the Forbidden City and then to the best Peking duck restaurant in the city. Wow, I am spoiled. After all that, I was so ready to get back to my hotel room for an early bedtime, but Beijing has restrictions on travel into the city center based on license plates. Turns out we couldn't get back to the hotel for some hours so we hung out at Sophia's university (Beijing Sports University). In walking the campus, I spotted a huge statue of Chairman Mao and asked Sophia what today's generation thinks of that era. She felt it had a lot to do with the experiences of your grandparents. This, of course, makes sense when you realize that it was her grandparents' generation who lived through Mao's rise to power which started with the Communist Party takeover in 1949. Sophia felt that Mao was a great man who brought about the liberation of her country. As a westerner, it's difficult for me to balance that view with the mountains of evidence to the contrary. But I'm a visitor here, and it's enough to enjoy the company of a strong, smart, 24 year old Chinese female. As Mao said after all, women hold up half the sky.