Hou Hai, tasting a piece of Chinese old history

Day 14 at USOC HQ, Aug. 17, 2008

Today is Sunday, I swtiched my off-day with Clair Randt to spend today not at work. getting up late (such as 8 a.m.) is a dream nowadays since everyday I reach USOC HQ at Hilton at 6:30a.m. I need to get up much early. With my parents in town, I enjoy the long sleep and chat with my parents. When Phelps swims again, I asked everyone sitting around to watch. They are still thinking that I am so funny to be crazy about his swimming but not taking the offer to be the interpreter :)

This is lunch, is that cool!



I got an call from Dan who will give me 5 tennis tickets evening time, which are Men and Women single finals, cool! My uncle will fly in this afternoon, we will be all 5 together to see the games. Then he gave me 5 afternoon basketball tickets. how generous is he!! but I still have my classmate here before heading to airport this evening. I let my aunt to give to her business friends, thanking her to have me here :) my goodness, her friends are crazy about it, not believe that she has 5 basketball tickets. nowadays, it is unreal that people have extra tickets flowing around.

I have to admit, tennis is the best game so far I enjoy the most! After game, I took my parents to Hou Hai, having traditional chinese food and wondering around "Hu Tong". When we walked quite further into Hu Tong, we found "Jiu Men Xiao Chi", wow, a big surprise. From outside, there is no difference with other resident, when you walk in, a small yard, but when you walk in the second door, there is a huge dinning area, completely in the old old Chinese eating style, bamboo decoration with ancient food setting. It is not only a food area, but walk into an old dynasty eating street.












After food, we walk around Hou Hai, a very big lake, surrounded by traditional buildings.




There is a famous bar street nearby. Only when you walk around here, you will be amazed with the setting, friendly, esp. sitting outside with a huge TV everywhere, oh, the atmosphere, I do not know how to describe it. here, drinking is not the top choice, but getting together with people you have never met and sitting outside on the sofa, watching games and chatting for the evening, wow!




At Hu Tong, how you can judge who live here in the old days are by looking at the top of door with how many standing woodsticks, the maximum is four, which sort of like the stars on solders shoulder; and by looking at the bottom stone in front of the door, this looking means that people live here are working in arts field ("wen zhi"), the lion looking is in military ("wu zhi"). is that fun? I just love to walk around here, the building you look is at least 600-800 years old, some are seriously over thousands years, are they cool??