Jade Factory Store

After the wall, our guide took us to a government-run jade store, where we got a discount and had a traditional Chinese meal.  The store is clearly intended more for groups of tourists--the parking lot is in a large gated area, completely paved, and marked for parking multiple buses.  The store itself is about twice as big as a typical Walgreens or CVS.  The guide in the store explained that most people think that jade is the color and the stone name, and that a lot of people don't know that jade comes in all different colors--I certainly didn't!  Jade comes in green, yellow, purple, red and black (and possibly a color or two more that I've forgotten).  We saw some amazing jade works, all carved from single pieces of jade.  The jade ship took two masters three years to carve--all from a single piece of jade.  The chain links are separated and move like a real chain.   I'm leaving this image at full resolution for your perusal.

 

 

We purchased a "Family Ball", also known as a "Happiness Ball"  made from a single piece of jade, the size that we purchased took a master either one or three months to carve it (I forget how long the guide said). 

For lunch, we were taken upstairs to a massive banquet hall where the chairs were all covered in white fabric, 8 chairs at each large round table with a large glass Lazy Susan in the middle, there had to be at least 60 tables in that room.  It looked like it was set for a wedding, and it was utterly empty.  We were led straight through that room into a side room with 6 tables for four, there were some other foreigners (like us) already seated.  Once one other Chinese family was seated in this side room while we were eating, so we stopped feeling like we'd been banished to the "kids table".

Our lunch was delicious--there were about six dishes--sweet and sour chicken (similar to what you get in the States--this was pretty much the only thing the kids wanted), white rice, some salty and spicy battered and fried shrimp, a dish with jicama (or something very much like it) and broccoli in a very light sauce, some "fried cheese" which was a batter-dipped soft, sweet cheese, some little egg-roll type things with what I think was a fig paste inside, and a beef dish with a light sauce with yellow, green and red peppers and onions.  The rice was white rice with some corn and bits of a red vegetable in it (I think this was a red pepper, but the bits were small and not very strong flavored).  Again, tea, and soda.   We all used chopsticks.

When we left, we stepped back into that banquet hall, and it was packed full of tour buses full of people of all nationalities.   There was a large section of what I think were tourists from India, all getting tons of vegetable dishes.  I saw several tables of Americans, most of whom were not using the chopsticks, and the ones who were using chopsticks were using their personal chopsticks to take food from the shared dishes.  I felt rather smug in the knowledge that even *I* knew that that's like double-dipping!  And that's about as close to Chinese etiquette as I'll ever get, I fear.