"Fried chicken kidney and ox's sex organ in bamboo barrel"

That and Depressing Blood Pressure Peanut were some things on the meny from a restaurant the other day. But no, I did not eat that. Instead, I ate dog. Yes, my stomach quivers when I say that but at the time it seemed like a good idea. We met a fellow American that was like "hey, lets do it!" and we were all like "Yea! Why not?! Lets do it!" and the next thing you know I'm eating Sparky.

It was actually kinda savory but I REALLY REALLY had to NOT think about what I was really eating ("it tastes like chicken.... ummm..... its just a cutlut... ummm"). If that wasn't bad enough, that next morning we went to downtown Datong, which, to backtrack a little, we decided to take a 2 day, 1 night trip out there to see the famous Hanging Temple, also known as "Temple Suspended in the Void" because it is anchored on cliff walls with wooden beams to prevent flooding that occured to previous temples that were built on the ground. Its cool because shrines exist to all of China's main religions, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. We also saw the Yungong Caves, caves made during the Tang dynasty in the 5th century that were hollowed out from top to bottom to make buddhas (to maximize sunlight and the stone. One giant buddha that measures 17m was made out of 1 stone! crazy!). Each giant buddha represents an emperor and when I say giant, I really mean giant. They were super cool! I think it was something like it took 40,000 people to work on it, and people from all over the world, Persia, Greece, India so there are a lot of their influences. One cave in particular is cool because it tells a story of the buddha as you walk clockwise around it. Here is Buddha "talking to the hand" (I thought it was pretty funny how the little buddha is holding up the giant hand):

Anyhoo, back to eating. So we somehow ended up in the 'meat market' area where cows are just hanging from the street, some chopped off heads of donkey (??), and the smell of who even knows what animals was atrocious. I have a pict I will post. Ewww! This if anything was a real taste of China. Initially we went to Datong, besides the sites, of course, because we thought it would be cool to see a 'small town.' Small town by China standards is 3 million! Dang! Beijing has 15 million, FYI. But this town definitely doesn't see as many tourists as Beijing because people were just staring at us and NOT chasing after us haggling to buy something. Anyway, we made our way back to Beijing via a sleeper train (which by the way, are pretty nice!) and went to the famous Night Market, known for its exotic foods. And yes, they were exotic/gross. Snakes on a stick, cockroaches, scropions, some animal's kidneys, you name it. At first I was thinking I would be adventerous, you know, 'when it china, do as the Chinese do." But Nyet! No thanks! I think between the dog and then the animals we saw that morning, I honestly was almost feeling sick to my stomach to try anything. So Char and I were boring and started with dumplings (seriously, how boring could we get?) and then ventured out to get some kind of unnamed meat wrapped in some kind of dough. So it was like most things here, dripping with oil, and .... somewhat tasty, but alas, I got to thinking about Sparky and if the un-named meat was dog and next thing you know, the rest of it was in the garbage. Eating dog once was good enough for me. Needless to say I left the Night Market without an appetite.

I think I'm going to be a vegetarian.