William Chow's Personal Web Page

The year is 2006.

China Round 2

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Today is go to eye doctor to get a prescription. We went to a place called, Aier Eye. It has all the high tech like we have here. They don't have many machinese, so they just increase the number of doctors and technicans. They also stream line the system so they make it more like an assembly line.

The first station you go to is the machine you put your chin on and they take a bunch of measurements and tests for dialiation and focus. It prints of a slip of paper with whole bunch of number readings.

Then also had to go to another station with a laser tool to scan off the index off my old pair of glasses.

Then to another station where they make the adjustments. They don't have enough of those dial or electronic eye lens machines. Instead, they made us wear these cool looking yet retro look 3-D glasses with the special lenses in them (see Alexanderia's pictures below).

Their eye chart is also easy to read too. It is the letter "E" flipped in the four directions to make "W" and "M" and the backward "E". So it was easy to just point which way the E faced. Now, the problem came when testing for asigmism, which one was better or was it the same. That needed Ami to help me out.

Then you get the corrective lenses put on to your 3-D specs and they keep testing. After they got it figured out, then you walk around with it to make sure they worked ok. I had to go in to have my lenses corrected for asignmism. Probably lost something in the translation. Anyway, the good news is my prescription got better. I went from a +6.25 +6.00 down to a +6.00 +5.75, however Alexanderia went down from a +4.25 +4.00 down to +6.00 +5..75, by coincidence.

At the eye doctors looking at her new prescription.
Doesn't this look like someone watching those 3-D movies?
Too it wasn't this easy to control kids. Just plug them into an Ipod and use the play and stop functions on the Ipod.
Welcome to "Dr. Tongue's 3-D House of Tourists"!!

We went to Beiling Park to take pictures this afternoon.
Bubble mixture in a Candy Candy bottle.
Lotus Lake rock.
Flowers are in full bloom just now.

With the lady of the lake statue.
My try at bubble blowing.
People can rent a boat to go on the water. You don't want to swim in this crap. Although people do die trying.
Blowing bubbles off a bridge into the water.

Us on the docks of Lotus Lake.
Statue of Emporer Taizong in the main square.
Buying a kite to fly.
After a few tries, Alexanderia got it up.

However, even with the help of an old man kite expert, we got the kite up but the string broke and it ended up here.
We managed to save the kite with the left over string. We gave the kite to the old man. Alexanderia cried a bit but we can always buy another kite to try again another day.
We continued our walk to the tomb of King Zhao.
Me at the entrance.

Just inside the gate.
The entrance to the tomb. We didn't bother to pay for the admission to go into that this time around.
Totem pole like thing.
Beef stir fry like thing with green peppers. Not bad but it is like teriyaki beef, it is a real shredded.

A north China style rib. Very nice meat, it just literally peeled off the bone. The toppings were the usual spicy.
Alexanderia still had her bottle of bubble juice, so she pulled it out on the walkway home.
We encountered some small kids in the yard. They went nuts chasing after the bubbles to pop them. She was stuck her for bit making bubbles.

The Experimental Chinese Food Of The Day is:
Beef Cake (Bing)

This is another word that has its translation lost in the muddle of English. It can be translated as a cake with beef in it, thus beef cake. I suppose it could be a pie, so thus it could be a beef pie.

It is a flour based coating or wrap. There is beef, pork or vegatable inside. So essentially it is the same definition as a "bow" or bun. Only real difference is a bow is made using rice flour, and it is steamed. This is made of wheat flour and it is deep fried or pan fried. It is the same concept as certain types of dumplings, except this is a larger version than something small like a dumpling.

This thing is quite good. The only issue I have with it, is the same issue I have with dumplings; it is fried with oil, so this thing is dripping with oil. The outside is oiling because of the frying. And the inside meat also was cooked in oil, so there is a bit of moisture from that too. When fresh, this thing is crisp. When it has sat for a bit, it becomes chewy and soggy.