The Berenstain Bears Move to China

Perhaps the most exciting thing as of late is that last night, we went to a very large (4-5 storey) bookstore in Xidan (near Tiananmen Sq.). Derek was looking for Tin Tin comics in Chinese, so we browsed through the children's section. To our surprise, we stumbled about nothing other than a bunch of those childhood morality tales, The Berenstain Bears!

So, this means we've been learning new Chinese vocabulary through The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room and The Berenstain Bears and the Gimmes. Take a look below to see a very poorly-lit, very touched-up photograph of my newest book.



While downtown, we sneaked a peak at the newly-built concert hall near The Great Hall of the People at Tiananmen. It looks like a large egg or a steel watermelon. In any case, it fits in with the rest of the ugly, Soviet-inspired buildings precisely because it's equally out of place in the East.

In other news, we all went out to dinner with a Calvin (and CVCA - my high school) grad named Aaron and his Chinese girlfriend. We went out for jiaozi, and, as soon as we walked out of their apartment it began to rain. So we rushed to a cab to save ourselves from the onslaught, drove for a very short amount of time and jumped out at what we thought was the right place. However, this turned out not to be the restaurant, and we dashed through the downpour, all wet anyway.

We're going to try to start seeing more sights around town, but no promises. The camera is tempermental, and it's up to it whether you get any pictures.