For food (like Hong Kong’s OpenRice):
www.dianping.com
It also includes other categories like entertainment, shopping and… even weddings!
Nice search functions
For directions (like Google Maps, but localized):
www.sogou.com
You can save your home and work address as defaults, quite convenient.
Today I rode on a motorbike for the first time. It’s one of those small ‘motos’ that drive slow and close to the ground. I was finishing up my morning badminton session when a fellow player offered me a ride. It felt a bit like a Taiwanese movie moment as I put my hands on his shoulders and we drove past Ditan Park (地坛公园).
To help visualize the scene:
(This is actually a pretty accurate representation except we were both, obviously, in sportswear)
(Picture from Google)
The cool bike breeze made the 40 degree (celsius) heat disappear for a sweet 5 minutes, during which I exclaimed: “超爽哦!” (chao1 shuang3 o1; “this is so cool!”).
酸奶 (suan4 nai2), literally ‘Sour Milk’ in Chinese is wildly popular here. The term practically translates into yogurt, but in Beijing, it is both eaten and drank. On the streets, you can see shops selling the drinkable form of 酸奶 – typically for 2-3 RMB in little ceramic jars, which you have to return after you finish your drink.
But what I’m introducing to you is a fantastic discovery that I found after a conversation with a colleague… remember the milkman? Well, here, there is a 酸奶man (yogurt-man)! All you have to do, is dial in to the company’s hotline, register your address, let them know what type of yogurt (or milk) you want; and you can have a fresh bottle of yogurt delivered to your doorstep every day, rain or shine (even on Sundays!).
The procedure
I started my order on July 1st, 2010. The first day, my yogurt came quite late. This was because the yogurt-man needed to install a yogurt box outside my door. Finally, sometime in late late afternoon, my yogurt arrived. I got the low-fat kind for 2.2RMB a bottle. The taste reminds me somewhat of a lite Greet yogurt. It’s quite nice. Some of my colleagues have it for breakfast in the morning. Unfortunately, my yogurt-man continues to deliver my bottles in the afternoon. On the up side, the bottles can be kept (unopened and in refridgerated) for at least 3 days. So I guess if I wanted it in the morning, I could too.
