Tapas in China

I went downtown with two of my Chinese friends today, named Pei Nan and Xiao Yu. Xiao Yu's real name is Wen Yu Tou, but everyone calls her Xiao Yu, which means little fish. We went to the shopping district, called Chenxilu. It was just drizzling when I got on my bike this morning to meet them at the North Gate and as I rode I got rain in my eyes and it stung. That can't be good. Also, my bicycle has this interesting quirk where if I peddle too fast the chain comes off, so I had to stop and put the chain back on twice on the way there. Oh China, never a dull moment. We walked around this big building that had about a million little storefronts in it, kind of like Pikes Place, a little. They all sold little hair things and jewelry and things that reminded me alot of Claire's. There was a photo booth there too, like the kind they have at movie theaters where you take like 8 or something but you take them in sets of 16 here and you get to pick all these different backgrounds. It was really fun. This is a picture of us that I picked the background for. The picture is actually about 1"x1.5", so that's why it looks so funny. Pei Nan is on the left and Xiao Yu is on the right. It was raining pretty hard by this point and they took me to lunch at this famous restaurant downtown. We sat down and they went to order, which I was very happy about because I never know what to order. They came back and pretty soon after that the waiter came with 8 baozi (little steamed meat dumplings) and some jioazi (potstickers) in a spicy sauce. About 5 minutes after that they stopped the waiter to ask about our "other" food. I said "we are getting more?" and they said "yes, alot more." SO I stopped eating baozi. In China you have to learn to pace yourself. Then the waiter came with a tray with about 10 little plates and bowls on it. I thought he would drop off a few and the rest were for other tables but they were all for us! So I took a little bit of all of them so I could try everything and asked alot of questions about what they all were and which ones they liked. Then the waiter came back with another 8 or 9 little bowls and plates of food. All total we ended up with 22 different things. I was amazed! We had liang mian (cold noodles), liang fen (cold rice noodles), baozi, jiaozi, other little dumpling things with various outsides and stuffings, ma po tofu, diang yu (a whole little fish), bamboo, two different kinds of beef, duck, a sweet soup, a chicken soup, a black soup, dan dan mian, and a few other things I can't remember. It was very overwhelming. And filling. They kept saying I wasn't eating very much and I was stuffed!! I guess I have to work on expanding my stomach. The dan dan mian was my favorite though. Then I rode my bike home in the rain and didn't get hit by any cars, buses, or other bikes (always an accomplishment) and did homework for the rest of the evening. I'm so busy here!