All the Tea in China

We're really beginning to settle into our time here in China and have begun to enjoy many of the customs of ordinary people here immensely:

Tea drinking.
Coming from Ireland, where we drink a lot of tea anyway, the adaption to Chinese style tea drinking wasn't a problem for me. Also the fact that at home I prefer my tea black as opposed to the standard "tea in your milk" preference of most of my compatriots further made the adaption to Chinese tea drinking a little easier for me. The ritual behind having a pot of tea in a Chinese tea shop is really beautiful and relaxing. The varieties of tea available is incredible and so far I haven't tried one that I haven't liked, whether that be green, jasmine or oolong. It's all so very good. We've also tried Mongolian and Tibetan yak butter tea on our travels. The Mongolian option was palatable enough it's green tea made with milk and flavoured with salt, I liked it. Yak butter tea is also made with milk and is much more pungent and not as palatable in my opinion, but then I was pretty ill at the time I tried it, so I wouldn't take my word for it!

Duck eating:
I cannot praise the Peking Duck eating experience enough. They really know how to cook the skin of animals in this country. That includes pigs as well as ducks by the way. When you have a Peking Duck dinner there isn't a scrap of the bird that isn't used. From the head to the bones all are included in the meal at some stage, and are served in different and interesting ways.

Interneting:
As travellers we constantly have our eyes peeled for the one chinese character that we can definately recognise - wang ba! The Internet cafe's here are generally massive, futuristic, smoky and dark. They also don't provide USB connections as a rule so unfortunately we've had big problems uploading photos which is disappointing for us. Maybe Hong Kong will be better!

Sleeping:
Ok so maybe we're not indulging in this national past time as enthuasically as the Chinese do but we do get some sleep from time to time. The Chinese however are allowed in their constitution to sleep at work providing that the sleeping doesn't interfere with the work of others. The places where you find people asleep can be very strange. So far in the middle of a busy road is the top of my list of weird and wacky.

Avoiding death:
That sounds dramatic doesn't it? But every time you try to cross the road here and do so successfully is a major victory. The green man may mean pedestrians can walk safely in most of the world (except in Greece and Italy maybe) but here it means that the oncoming traffic should speed up, swerve to make contact, or swing into the right turn lane which for some reason never stops for the lights. They're the ones that'll get you if you're not watching out for it. Riding in a taxi is a lot of fun too if you don't mind lots of lane jumping and horn blowing as opposed to brake using. I will never complain about Irish drivers again.

That's the round up for the mo. Sorry again for the lack of colour. I can't view the pages myself at the moment so I'm just guessing about the blandness! It's only slightly frustrating at least I can post and retrieve mails, so forgive me if I don't reply to comments.