Finally, Some Delicious Dumplings

This morning we had our usual meeting time of 8:25am to get to class by 9am. I ate a little more for breakfast – some toast, rice, and a little croissant. The class topic was supposed to be about marketing and the Chinese consumer (something I would have found interesting) but it turned out to be pretty difficult to understand our professor and he talked a lot about theory and QA which was not very exciting. At least today was our last day of class at Peking U and we got a certificate of completion and everything, haha. We had our usual cafeteria lunch and I kept to a small bowl of rice and lo mein. Maybe this will turn out to be the best diet ever?

After lunch we went back to class with the same professor and this session was slightly more interesting than the morning. I heard that our professor talked to him and asked for less theory and more specific content to China. We looked at some popular Chinese websites and talked about a lot of different aspects of growing internet usage in China. Paid search marketing came up for a little bit, of course. We had the rest of the evening free from Peking U planned activities so after class at 4:30pm we all headed back to the hotel.

We had a little while to relax at the hotel and then we all met at 6:15pm to take the subway to our professor’s favorite dumpling restaurant. Now this was by far the best meal in China so far!! I LOVE dumplings and they are my favorite thing to get for Chinese takeout and now that I’ve had the real thing I might not be able to go back! This place is all hand-made dumplings with any kinds of meat and herbs you could mix and match. Our professor just ordered a large variety for the group and I tried a little bit of everything. I’m not sure of all the combinations (we were just guessing) but there were some like pork with cilantro and beef with fennel. You could tell everything was just so fresh like the fillings and dumpling melted in your mouth. There was a sauce on the table that was really spicy that lots of people liked but I of course didn’t try that. I was content with my dumplings and used a little bit of sauce from the appetizer we got. I didn’t even mention the appetizer! It was an eggplant dish in some sauce that was just absolutely delicious. So dinner was pretty amazing and if we could have that for dinner every night I would be one happy student in China!

Now I am back in the hotel to get some good sleep before a long day of sightseeing on our last day in Beijing.