Branching Out

My radio silence is inexcusable, but here are my excuses for not blogging lately: a work trip to India and my newfound love, binge watching The Americans. Yes, feel free to judge. But I've also been on some new excursions.

Found at a pop-up food fair in Beijing. An old-school boom box. 

Scott and I recently realized we've already been here for about a year and a half. How did time go by so quickly? Once that realization swept over us, we started to panic a bit. There's still so much of Beijing, so much of China, so much of Asia that we want to explore and we're afraid we'll run out of time before seeing it all. Sure, that's inevitable, but the fact gave us a kick in the butt to try and avoid going to the same restaurants, hanging out with the same people and visiting the same stores. We're comfortable in Beijing now, which took so long to achieve, and yet we don't want that comfort to turn into a complacency where we don't try new things. I think about how long we lived in Manhattan and never really branched out to other boroughs for even simple outings as much as we should have. We want to try and avoid repeating that mistake here.

Our giant group at the Sichuan restaurant in the private banquet room. 

So here's a rundown of some of the "new" stuff we've been up to in the past month.

This past weekend, we had dinner at a restaurant in the Sichuan regional government office compound, which is near the outskirts of Beijing in the southeastern part of the city. Each province has a regional office here in Beijing, a compound of sorts that has office buildings, hotels and restaurants. What makes these restaurants special, and sought after, are the cooks, whom are authentic Sichuan folks, meaning this is the most authentic Sichuan food you can get in Beijing.

Automatic Lazy Susan and random Panda bear centerpiece. Yes please! 

Our friend Mengfei organized the dinner and with about 20 others, we sat around a giant table with an automatic Lazy Susan and chowed down on dan dan mian (a spicy noodle dish that's one of my favorites), tripe (stomachs of various animals; I wasn't a fan, but I tried it), mapo dofu and a fish and cabbage soup. Some of the flavors were so different, an explosion of sour and spicy and savory all at once. We drank yogurt to quell the spice and finished the evening with an obligatory group picture (above).

The ever-spicy, ever-delicious dan dan mian. 

Another night, we ventured out to watch Joe Wong, a Chinese comedian who's performed at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and made appearances on David Letterman. You can see one of his appearances here. He was absolutely hilarious, telling great jokes about confusing American terms and practices (he had a great zinger about how police wouldn't let him shoot off fireworks in his backyard for Chinese New Year in Texas, but he could easily grab a gun and fire off a few rounds).

We also went to a pop-up food festival with our Mandarin teacher, watched To Live, an epic Chinese movie by renowed director Zhang Yimou that follows one family through from the heyday of the 1940s in China through the Great Famine and Cultural Revolution, and got to eat at Black Sesame Kitchen, a small restaurant in a charming hutong that serves private, reservation-only dinners twice a week.

Hou Jinxia, our adorable Mandarin teacher, about to try some grub from Andy's sausages at the food fair.

I'm a bit tired from it all -- I need to be a homebody some of the week, for sure -- but I'm also rejuventated by our new outings. It's a great reminder to never become too used to a place -- even if you've lived there for decades -- and to seek out new restaurants, new activities and new friends.