Happy New Year!

I can hear all of y'all thinking "Where do I celebrate a momentous occasion like this?"
Well, we found The Place.

Happy New Year!

Compare & Contrast

Very sorry for lating again, but I feel we must juxtapose our culinary adventures on Christmas Day with the culinary feast at the home of Poppamomma.

This was our starter course:



Our main course:



And what is Christmas without dessert:



One could only wish it were Christmas 365 days a year!

Wednesday Duck Day

Okay, every day is actually duck day. But it is most likely our last duck of 2009:









It was good. In fact, it was great.

Also great:



salmon and tuna with wasabi mustard



mustard greens



and pears in red wine.

Also, today we gave the last lecture of our course. Hence the feast.

798

Yesterday we decided to go to Cao Chang Di, which is like 798, but supposedly less commercial. Well, it was. There were no frames, or female genitalia to indicate to us that we were looking at art. But using our Chinese dictionary, we did understand the punny title of a stone mole hill: "Mao Zhi Dong".

This was the most understandable piece:



We walk around a little more there, but everything seemed closed. So we went back to the art scene we love, 798.

First we went to Iberia, where there were many fun pieces (an invitation letter for an artist completely made from cookies; a project where 10 private detectives were hired to follow each other (detective 1 was hired to follow detective 2, detective 2 to follow detective 3, et cetera --- hilarity ensued; and many more). I especially enjoyed A Work by Jiang Zhi ("Print of a fictional text recording process of developing 'Four Seasons'"), of which here a detail:



It turned out that we could actually buy this art work for only 10 RMB in the shop!

After lunch, we went to our other favorite museum in 798: Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, or UCCA. We were fascinated by this art work:







So much so that we even shot video:





And actually took pictures from multiple angles --- here are two more more good measure:





Then some more artz, with more easily understood messages:





And finally, an installation in a dark room:



Because we had to know what this actually was, I also took a picture with flash:

Merry Christmas!

Love and Marriage

We came across a big matchmaking event in a park in Dalian.









While F was busy taking pictures, A was dismayed to find she was being the object of study by several older bachelor men. Fortunately, F rejected their bids for A's hand.

To celebrate the fact that our marriage withstood the attack by Dalian's most eligible men, we went on to a park near the sea that is popular for wedding photo shoots. Beautiful scenery was complemented by atrocious sculptures - what more could one want on that one special day.









Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - at least we hope Wolfert will think so.

Dalian Seafoodz

After indulging in German foodz on Saturday evening, we seriously returned to the goal of our little trip: eating seafoodz. We went to Red Lotus Restaurant, which turned out to be quite a good choice.













Yes, we ordered too much. What else is new and exciting?

Dalian

We fled the Beijing to enjoy the comparatively country-esque life in Dalian. Dalian has less than 3 million inhabitants!



Dalian is famous for its seafood, so one of the goals of this weekend get-away was to eat as much seafood as we could. We had lunch at Tian Tian Yu Gang, one of the most famous chain restaurants serving seafood in Dalian, recommended everywhere. We were quite disappointed, especially with the barbecued shrimp pictured above. It was most certainly picturesque, but it also was really dry.

After lunch we explored the city a bit.



Here's another quiz for you: what the hell are these things?

Preparations are underway

Just to prove that we belong in the land of Cafe Konstanz (mebbe), we made Flammkuchen and cheese fondue today.





It was good.

A is an excellent woman

No, let me correct that. A is THE excellent woman. And if she accepts this honor, she will be allowed to excel at being a woman* for two years.

She is completely blown away.



* not just any woman in fact, but a woman in computer science. She did not even know she was one...

Najiaxiaoguan