15 seconds / 365 days

1 – Bri plays Godzilla at the Beijing Urban Planning Museum (wrong country, we know)
2 – more jackhammering right outside our door
3 – imagine pooping with the urinals in plain view – South Beauty szechuan restaurant
4 – our first night in China, and Bri’s first foray into couchsurfing.com, we find ourselves on the way outskirts of Beijing with a host who didn’t quite share that we’d be sleeping in the same small room as 7 other men. we rushed to a hostel the next morning
5 – whoa!
6 – an army of snow clearers was how Beijing handled all the snow removal. we didn’t see a single plow
7 – two mysteries: one solved, one not
8 – WHAT IS PUNYUMBAI? seriously, does anyone know? we’re curious. this cabbie said it (during what he surely understood to be my feeble attempt to go around and say our names), but moments later he seems embarrassed when we say it. i’m hoping it doesn’t mean “stupid Americans” – someone shoot me straight.
9 – this adorable kid was going crazy on this snow pile with that bar of his, for like 2 minutes until i pulled out my camera. then he got too cool for school

10:15am – desperate for some hot breakfast and a place to thaw, we followed our noses out of the sub-zero cold and into a tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant on the narrow ‘hutong’ (or ancient alleyway). one of dozens of small businesses without english signage, just one fogged-up door or man-sized plastic-mudflaps entryway after another, as far as the eye can see

we shivered our “ni hao” to the owner, who handed us menus that were completely in chinese. a first for us on the trip, but on that freezing morning, we were prepared to just point and not care, so long as it was hot and not beak or eyeball.

we stumbled straight for the stairs (steep and winding enough to belong in someone’s private library), hoping whatever little heat the place might have would be upstairs. but no luck. we saw our breath as we laughingly puzzled over our menus

joining us in the low-ceilinged, more-claustrophobic-than-cozy upstairs seating area were 4 men in the corner, who we saw were already several rounds into their beer and ‘baijou’ (a 112-proof rice wine distillate, which a lot of people say tastes like the trash in your trashcan, but i loved. imagine cold sake on steroids). and remember, this was now 10:20 on a tuesday morning.

so, fast-forwarding the rest of the story, they basically (i can only guess) were just as enthralled by bri’s red hair as their thousands of fellow countrymen who stopped and stared everywhere we went… so after greeting them the most endearing way i knew how, by constructing the most bizarre combinations of horribly mispronounced phrases I could find in our Mandarin dictionary, they bounded over and poured us a massive glassful of their baijou, and insisted on a toast… which then became rounds of beer, back and forth, until the videocamera came out… introductions made (i think)… the most adorable and benevolently drunk of the four spittled on me a little as he spoke, but the mood was too joyous for me to bother to be bothered… finally it was time for photo-op’s with The Red One. and since i was already rolling video, i could only pantomime the snapping of shots… but i think i sold it.

it was the best morning of our trip.

Mon – Trip to China: Bri and I had to leave for the airport, but she couldn’t find her keys. which made her very angwy
Tues – we encounter some turbulence, and she gets a light-booger
Wed – Beijing Capital International Airport has one shiny floor
Thurs – New Years’ Eve on a friend’s rooftop with an adorable puppy
Fri, 1am – we start 2010 locked out on a roof
Sat – a “bed-room” at the Wangfujing International Youth Hostel
Sun – flagging a taxi during Beijing’s heaviest snowfall in 60 years and coldest temperatures in 40