New Year's in Beijing

these are the dongba heiroglyphic sayings that i bought. I got some for bob and my parents too. This one is for bob. it means something along the lines of work hard/always do your best and then the next line is don't waste a moment. that kind of message. the general message is the same but can be interpreted a little differently as it was between the 3 people who told me what it meant throughout the day

this one is for my parents, it means something like family is happiness. the first character is a man and women in a house.
at the bottom is the year, the year of the rat.

this one is for me. i forgot what it means, i have it on a piece of paper somewhere but i thought the characters were so cool looking, these look less pictoral

this one means like all the money will go to you or soemthing like that. not really something that i care about that much but i thought how they broke it down was cool. its silver. then the guy with the silver. then the guy putting the silver into his house. kind of amusing right? this one is up for grabs for switching if my parents or bob want this instead of the other ones.

this was the braclet we got from this place when they tried to scam us into "donating" money to the "temple" after then had performed all these acts on us.

finally got this tibetan lantern.

these prayer flags were on the ground so i took some.

this one is just the same as above only with the one line that says work hard and always do your best. this one is also up for switching if parents of bob wanat this instead


this scarf was hand woven by someone in lijiang on a loom and cost 15 rmb after some hard bargaining by me ($2.20)


look at the quality of these chinese eco friendly bags. they are sheit. i brought the ikea bag along because i anticipated the other bag breaking. how bad is that? and then the ikea bag ripped too. i made sure they weren't over loaded either. another example of poor chinese quality. if you're gonna make eco bags you gotta make them better than plastic a-holes!

new years was a little weird. most of the people we know are away back to their respective countries or on vacation because chinese holidays are coming up. we ended up going to this little opening at this spa owned by this girl and her mom, they are japanese but live in france and now here and speak french, german, japanese, chinese, and english. we went to 2 different japanese establishments.


i ended up at this restaurant again because i went the owners special Japanese new years brunch thing with Ryan. I didn't know it would be the same place.

all so delicious. the tuna sashimi was awesome.
unlimited beer, sake, shochu, food. i was so full and buzzed and sleepy. so were a lot of these guys. So new years in Beijing ended up being a japanese affair, which is ok because western new years in china doesnt mean shiet anyway. next up Korea. I'm flying out in the morning. see you on the penninsula!