Ah, how helpful Internet research can be. I went to Beijing for the weekend to take care of some visa business and I decided to stay for two nights. I had a recommendation for a hotel but I couldn't find it, so I settled on a place called the Wanch Inn that offered single-bed rooms for fifty yuan. The facilities were shared, but I'm fine with that. Unfortunately, the hotel did not offer towels (even when I looked up that word and asked for one), and seemed to never have hot water. So I came home yesterday sort of grumpy and with nasty hair, and I looked for the hotel online. Too bad I didn't read this guy's blog post before I left for Beijing:

We booked into our hotel called the Wanch Inn, it was situated in the south of the city and it was located in one out the little Hutongs. They are small streets where the locals live and there houses surround a central courtyard (Hutong means courtyard living.) This Hutong was converted into a market street with hotels, shops, restaurants and all types of stalls.

The Wanch Inn is set up to cater for Chinese tourists and the price was only 120Yuan a night for a room with its on bathroom. A dorm bed down the street in a hostel was 140 Yuan each. And you had to share the room and the bathroom with 4 other people. We booked in for a few nights before meeting Bill and staying in the Novetel.

The Wanch Inn turned out to be a very terrible place to stay in the end, the room didn't have any towels and hot water is only available between 7-8am and between 8-12pm. The Chinese have there showers at night, this was really inconvenient for us as we were looking to sleep in... The other problem was that our room was right behind the reception and the phone started ringing at 7.00am and all the Chinese people would be waiting in the reception to go on their tours... I think we have said it before the Chinese people don't talk to each other they shout at each other, so at 7.00am the shouting begins and all the other hotel noise. The other problem was that our room had a window but instead of going outside it went into the shop next door.... I could stick my fingers through the wire and push the picture off the wall.... They would be open till 9-10 at night so they had music playing and people coming in and it was really, really noisy.. Did I mention the hard beds... They were they hard that both Adam and I would wake up with dead arms....

All so true. I also was harassed at the hotel by a guy who took me to his shop and tried to sell me paintings. I foolishly gave him my cell phone number, and I now have like eight text messages from him. So, let's hope my blog post also shows up on search engines and the Wanch Inn is further delegitimized for resourceful English-speaking tourists.

Last weekend it snowed here in Tianjin, China. I guess it betrays a sort of naïvety on my part, but I was surprised to see people writing in the snow in Chinese characters. Probably these two people were writing their names just as we do in the West.

One thing we don't do in the West is bike while it's snowing. My infinite respect goes to the Chinese who brave any weather to transport themselves on the vehicle of choice (though cars are becoming quite popular for those who can afford them).

Until June I am living in Tianjin, China. I am studying Chinese (Mandarin) at the Tianjin University of Technology. My apartment can be viewed on excellent satellite shots from Google Maps. In McLean, Virginia, I lived at 38.916535 degrees north latitude, whereas my Tianjin location is at 39.089276 latitude. So despite moving thousands of miles from home, I really just strafed across the planet, which I find quite cool. I will eventually put up a page describing my experiences in China. In June I will meet with my friend Paul Colombini and travel on the Trans-Mongolian (Trans-Siberian) railroad, going from Beijing to Moscow and making a couple stops along the way. Then I will travel around Europe for a month before returning to the United States.