After walking for a short distance enjoying views of the Beijing Bird Nest (National Stadium for Olympics 2008), we arrived at the Entrance to the underground Restaurant where we would be having Xinjiang Dinner - Dear & Sifu (our Chinese driver) standing infront of Sifu’s car below!

The entrance to the underground Restaurant :

Before we had our dinner, we first went to the below underground Gem Boutique which was just opposite the Restaurant.

At the Boutique’s entrance was a huge beautiful grand Carved Jade Ship!

We were led to be seated in a private room where this very smiley guy started introducing gem stones to us - how a raw gem stone was carved & made into a precious stone etc etc. However, cos our 2 tour mates, Dear & I were all so hungry we told him that we would like to cut his introduction short if he was alright about it!! And he was really kind to let us off heehee!!

Guess he had to do his job a little cos he brought us to the Gem Showroom for a look - & funny thing was once I stepped into the Showroom, his lady colleagues all turned their heads towards me & started smiling & giggling to me excitedly & one of them even spoke to me in Mandarin ”Wow your hairstyle is so Modern, it’s so Beautiful!!”!! Heehee so cute & funny cos I never expected such response & compliments from strangers of Beijing!

In fact I was really surprised that the Chinese people in Beijing really liked my red hairstyle, finding it so modern & so beautiful on me & that I looked real good with it etc as I’ve heard from our tour guide Wang Jing about their compliments plus I’ve myself seen their excited smiley expressions & heard their nice remarks towards me since my first day of touring in Beijing……unlike back home in Singapore when I’ve had STARES from the locals as though telling me “Am I some kind of alien from somewhere?!!” And I’ve had a few teenager girls who saw me & got startled shouting ”Aiyo!!” with that really scared expressions on their faces as though they’d just seen a RED GHOST!! Hahah it was all hilarious!! And never on earth would I expect that dying my hair so red will actually scare people off!!! Haha those were the first couple of days that I felt really odd & dared not go out too often!!

But of course I’ve had many really nice compliments from Singaporean people unkown to me who upon seeing me outside, would tell me ”Wow such beautiful bright red color”, “It really suits u so well cos u’re so fair & it’s so modern & beautiful”, “Wow you really look so gorgeous like a Japanese etc etc”!! Anyway, dying my hair red has been a real beautiful experience for me cos Red is one of my favourite colors & I’d do it again next time, dying it other daring colors like may be Hot PINK, or Purple heheh - I once asked my Salon guy if I could have rainbow colors too cos so far I’ve never seem anybody with that colored hairstyle haha!!

Anyway, we walked around the Gem Showroom for a while, just to entertain that so smiley friendly guy a bit, then walked to the next-door really pretty Xinjiang Restaurant where we would be dining.

And guess what I first saw upon entering the Restaurant?! A Souvenirs Store!! Hahahaha I just love buying souvenirs especially when I’m travelling!! And I was more interested in looking at each & every items on sales at the store than any other thing then - & I was so so happy cos I found so many pretty stuffs (which I’ll show you at the end of this post)!

Below photo shows the Souvenir Store at the entrance of the Restaurant.

The 2nd best thing about the Restaurant was that there was stage live performances just right infront of our dining table (below right) - where Dear was seated with our tourmates & tour guide Wang Jing.

The other part of the Restuarant with private rooms.

The 1st dish of our dinner - Fried Eggs, which was very delicious - sometimes the plainest thing on earth could be the nicest!!

Waitress from Xinjiang serving me fridge cold Coke - she was really sweet cos she was the only among a few other Waitresses (from whom I requested for fridge COLD Coke since China restaurants seldom serve ice-cubes) who really helped me look for a bottle of cold coke - the others just simply said “No more Cold Coke!!”.

Some kind of milky colored soup - oops I actually forgot how it tasted but think it was real plain!

And the next best thing besides the Eggs was the below Stewed 3-layer Pork (pork belly) with Dried Bean Curds in black soy sauce! It was very well-done & very yummy!

See it was so good it was almost gone now!!

Stir-fry Vegetables (”You Cai” in Chinese) & Roast Chicken that came with its head too!! That’s Xinjiang style of cuisines from what I knew when travelling in the Silk Road (to xinjiang too!) 2 years back - their Chicken (& sometimes Lamb too) would be served the whole with heads & backside too - in this case the backside of our Chicken was missing! To Dear & our 2 other tourmates - this was really something new & a little yucky hahah!! 

The Roast Chicken was delicious & being attacked by our 2 tourmates haha!!

Now, this following dish was the BEST of the Night - Fried Crispy Prawns!! We were really happy to see this dish cos it was the first time we had prawns in Beijing! And I just love Prawns so much!

The Prawns were very tasty & the skins very crispy & nice we wished we had more!

Nice chili in some kind of dark sauce - we kinda miss chili cos the Chinese seldom eat chilies & the restaurants normally don serve chilies too!

Water-melons for our after-meal - see the way it was stacked up on top of the bottom plate? Well, Xinjiang people have the habbit of doing so - stacking up plates of food on top (& in between) other plates of food when they served the dishes!

The Xinjiang Dance & Flute (by boy) stage performances were on while we were having dinner! It was really nice entertainment & reminded me very much of my travelling days in Xinjiang on the Silk Road, China!

Below is a Video of the Xinjiang Dance performance which I recorded with my camera in between dining :

After the Dance performance, this below tall & gorgeous Xinjiang dancer stepped down from the stage & came to our table to have our hands tied with red strings - guess it was for good luck & well-wishes!!

After dinner, we came up outside from the underground Restaurant & taking a last glimpse & photo of the Beijing Bird Nest which was just across the road from where Sifu parked his car! We then left in Sifu’s car to go back to our hotel, Ai Hua Hotel, for the night.

We arrived at Ai Hua Hotel below.

And me back in our hotel room looking at our 2 babies Smartie & Sparkie seated on the bed (towards my left infront of me)!

Mmmm, my red hairstyle looked pretty gorgeous from the back views right?!! No wonder I’ve head so many good compliments even from strangers! Heeheee, did you notice my “SWEETS” hairclip?!?! They’re REAL SWEETS okie made into hairclip - so cool, unique & pretty right? I love it so do many people - family, friends & even strangers who would stop to touch them, & asked me if they were real, some even wanted to buy from me, & some even were discussing which flavour they wana eat hahah!!

Close-up view of my REAL SWEETS hairclip (with Coconut, Orange, Strawberry, Durian & Pineapple flavours - heehee which flavour do you like?!!) :

Ok, enough of my hairclip, let me now show you all the souvenirs which I bought from the Souvenirs Store inside the Xinjiang Restaurant where we just dined - Enjoy :