This morning, Erjiujiu took us to the train terminal to pick up all of our train tickets for this trip. They can only be ordered online, and they can only be picked up in person, and it’s better to do it before the day of your trip. Erjiujiu likes to walk behind us so he can order us around and tell us whether to go left or right. Julia discovered a new strategy and she tells him “gen ni zou”, which means “following you”. We got our tickets pretty smoothly and headed back home.
If you’re pushing a stroller, the best way to get out of the subway station is by getting as close as possible to the gate, shove your ticket into the slot, and as soon as the gates open move forward quickly so both you and your stroller make it out on time. This time, however, I didn’t push the ticket all the way through, so the gate didn’t open. Before I got a chance to understand what was going on, Erjiujiu started yelling at me to do things – I don’t know what they were, because Erjiujiu yells in Chinese. A lady that works at the train statin heard him yell and came to my help. Thank god, I thought to myself – she’s actually going to help me! She pushed the ticket all the way through, the gate opened, and the lady gestured me to walk safely through. Of course, the gate closed right when I was passing through and hit my pelvis. “And this,” I yelled “is why I wanted to do this myself!”. Walking from the subway station Julia tried to explain to Erjiujiu why I was so annoyed, but he just didn’t get it. I can’t wait to get out of here.
We decided to take a break from all the madness and have lunch on our own. We wanted to try to find a dumpling place that we found in our last visit, and we were pretty sure we found it while walking from the subway station to Yeye and Laolao’s home.
- “Yeye, what is the closest subway station called?” Julia asked.
- “Don’t worry about it. Erjiujiu rented a car...”
- “I know how we’re travelling from here to Xian! I’m asking about the subway station that is closest to here!”
- “Let me finish! Erjiujiu rented a car and he’ll take you straight to the bullet train terminal that will take you to Xian, so it doesn’t matter what subway station is closest to here.”
- “O.K. Got it. Now can you tell me what is the subway station that is closest to here? I’m trying to find a dumpling place.”
- “So what do you need the subway station for? There are plenty of good dumpling places on the main road.”
- “I’m looking for a specific one that we ate at. It was on the way to the subway station.”
- “Oh, then go and have Chuan dumplings!” Laolao interjected.
- “How do you know that what we had?” Julia asked.
- “It doesn’t matter. Those are really good.”
It was pointless. We just left the house. We really didn’t remember where that dumpling place was, but then we got close to a huge construction site, and around it were a couple of dozens of small workers’ restaurants, with small tables on the road, and they were packed with construction workers wearing hard hats having lunch. That’s exactly what I wanted to eat. You pay 10 Yuan – about a $1.5, and get a plate, and you can scoop to your plate as much food as you want. Then you fill a bowl with as much rice as you like, and you sit at the small tables. We got two plates with a soybean stew, tofu in sauce, potatoes, eggs and tomatoes, and cooked yam. We got some attention, being the only baby and white guy among all those construction workers, but it really wasn’t that bad. However, when we were done and I got up to take pictures everybody seemed more engaged. They laughed and cheered. From what I gather, for them this is the simplest food that exists, and it’s funny to them that someone thinks it’s something special that worth documenting.
Then we wanted to find an indoor playground for Ada. Most malls have them, so we took a bus towards the main shopping area. At this point, Julia started to not feel well. This led to her first getting us on a bus at the wrong direction. We got off and switched buses, but when we got off at the shopping area, Julia was out of her element and could not navigate us around. We stumbled upon a huge indoor playground, but the toddler area was opening at 3PM, and it was only 1PM. I decided that this is not working, and that we should head back closer to home, where there was one self-contained mall that I can navigate myself and it was a walking distance from Yeye and Laolao’s home, so we could easily retreat if Julia felt worse.
We took a taxi to that mall, which turned out to be a good decision: they had a couple of indoor playgrounds, and Ada had a blast.
We went home. Ada was exhausted and fell asleep on the way. We had dinner, packed, and went to bed - tomorrow we’re finally leaving for Xian.
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