Our final full day on holiday was spent relaxing - you can do too much on holiday, and end up needing a holiday to recover from your holiday. After a late start (before which I had spent a good while shaving off two weeks growth of beard), we strolled around in the alleys near the hostel. This was magical - a glimpse of the hidden real life of Beijing. Kids were making their way to school in droves. Initially we thought they were Scouts, until we realised that their red neckerchiefs were merely part of their school uniform.
After some local souvenir shopping, we went to the Silk Street Market, which is a modern market on four or five floors, rather like the similar markets in Hong Kong and Singapore. Bargaining is essential here; every manner of goods is on sale. Each vendor will tug your arm as you go past, entreating you to deal with them, all sweetness and light until you start bargaining. Then their eyes turn hard and it's no more Mr Nice Guy. "You hard man" they say, with no obvious irony. "I make no profit." Yeah right. You need a while to get used to it - when they tried to sell me a "Rosetta Stone" CD for Russian language, for US$5, only then did I get a grasp of how inflated their marked prices were. Alas, bargaining is not in my nature.
That evening, we went out for snacks with Emma's host family. This was a great family occasion. The area to which we went must have been something like the equivalent of Brick Lane - alleyways and streets of restaurants, big and small. Some of the food we liked...some, less so. The hardest thing we did was pressing money on mine host: all the food we ate must have cost Y200 (about £20), and we know that their wages are lower than ours. Only after some persuasion and charm were we able to get him to accept some money towards the evening.
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