A Weekend on Both Sides of China

This weekend I hosted a Ladies Wine & Cheese Tasting event at L'infusion. The idea came up a few weeks ago when one of my friends, Eva, suggested the idea of having an all girls wine tasting event. My buddy Rob had just opened a wine store and needed to promote it. At the same time, the restaurant L'infusion had just opened up in a hutong alley near the Lama Temple, and the owner Ming needed some business too. So we thought, why not combine everyone's needs and host a little wine and cheese tasting event?

The downstairs section of L'infusion, a cute little cafe/restaurant on Wudaoying Hutong, across from Yonghegong (Lama Temple)

So we did. I gathered the girls, Rob gathered the wine, and Ming offered her roof terrace for everyone. This past Sunday was the perfect afternoon! The weather was perfect, and everybody was feeling lazy and relaxed. We had a total of 13 girls show up, and we basically spent the whole afternoon chatting, eating cheese and crackers, and of course, drinking wine!

L to R: Carlie, Gill, Karen and Joyce

Rob stuck around and graciously gave a little introduction about each of the different wines he chose. We started off with a rose, then worked our way to a lovely white and then 3 fantastic reds. Everybody's favorite was the Chateau L'Escart Eden, the last wine we drank. According to Rob, this was voted one of the world's top 10 wines at one point!

These were the wines we drank:

• Gerard Bertrand 6Sens Rose - France
• Bianco Sicilia - Italy
• Lyngrove Collection Pinotage - South Africa
• Basedow Oscar's Heritage Shiraz Cabernet - Australia
• Chateau L'Escart Eden - France

Switching to another subject, I saw a rather bizarre incident on Saturday evening. While watching TV, I heard a crowd of people gather outside my apartment building. Looked out and saw a lot of people marching down the street and chanting! It looked really bizarre - the crowd held up traffic and caused a bit of a ruckus, but you could tell this was an organized event because the cops were simply standing on the side of the streets. At one point I even saw people burning stuff and cheering loudly! What's funny was when I posted the pics on FB, a number of my expat/American friends guessed that this was probably a protest of some sort. Even I thought it was a protest. Nobody thought it had anything to do with sports, especially since China isn't necessarily known for its um...athleticsm (yes, you can argue the PRC won the most number of medals during the Olympics, but that really doesn't reflect the entire country's um, passion for sports). At one point, Ashley and I were wondering if this incident had anything to do with Iran, until a local friend of mine finally broke the news to me. It was a celebration of the Beijing Guoan team beating the Tianjin Taida. What is the Beijing Guoan team and what did they play? No idea.

The crowd marching down Worker's Stadium Road

Finally, it looks like Mike is still doing well in the Gobi! Here are some pics the race organizers posted -

Wearing the Quotes T-shirt!

Deborah will appreciate this pic. Here's a pic of Jason posing with some local kids. So cute!