Xin Qi Er, Ba Yue 5

Tuesday, August 5

Three days until Opening Ceremonies!!!! So exciting! Here, everywhere you look and everywhere you go, there is some reminisce of the Olympics coming to town.

Today, I went out in the city with the Guest Services team. Our job was to visit a variety of places to get a feeling for how they are and where they are located within the city. These places are the ones that they will suggest to the guest on where to go for their nightly excursions in the city. We set off at 9 o’clock in the morning to concur the city. We went from silk factories to markets to restaurants to clubs and all over again.

In this city of literally thousands of places to go, we narrowed it down about 20 vital places to visit, most of them being market places or restaurants. Each time we pulled up at a new site, all nine of us would hop out of the van, walk up to the place, check out the seating, environment, food, drinks, shops, availability… and the list went on. But after about the fifth site, we got the routine down and it was almost second nature.

We saw a variety to things, especially with the restaurants. With guests coming from cities all over the world, it had to be that way. Just one that really sticks out from the others was this place called Club Lan. It was something that you would never expect to see in the midst of China… even from the first time you stepped off the streets. In order to get up there, you went through an up-scale, fancy mall. This was such a shocker to begin with, since the Silk Market was right across the street… where everyone is yelling at you to buy their product and practically grabbing you into their stall. But once you got into the club, it was like crazy, but well-done decorations. There were tented private rooms and unique seating in each of the 7 rooms. French paintings lined all the walls and the celling. Despite these and all the other hectic decorations, the place seemed really well put together, yet, in each corner, you could discover something new and interesting. This club represented more of the ‘new’ Beijing that is arising throughout the city. All of the younger generation is now becoming more European and and more or less ‘forgetting’ about their traditional culture.

However, in the city, many traditional places still exist. We visited one called Din Tai Fung, which was a simple, non-decorated cafeteria-looking place. Yet, it served some of the best known steamed dumplings… and in the traditional way, just like they did years ago.

Going from Club Lan to Din Tai Fung was a real shocker. It represented the change between the young Chinese who are growing up in a pop-culture who are now replacing the traditional, older Chinese which its culture is know for. In ways, I find it sad to see their culture get covered up to be like all other American cities, but then again, its just like all the other cities rising up and changing to the modern world.

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