CHINESE TEA AND IMPERIAL DESSERT EVENT

My super awesome friend Samily works for a newspaper here in Beijing and is always planning fun events!  She invited me and some other friends from church to attend a tea and dessert tasting at a hotel called JE Mansion.  There were several wives of ambassadors there and I got to meet a few of them - Georgia, Cape Verde Islands, India.  There were also a few others in attendance from other embassies as well but I mostly talked to my friends from church that were there.  The hotel was very, very nice.  It costs about $500 - $600 a night to stay there.  We got to tour some of the rooms and dinning areas and they were very beautiful - mostly decorated in purples and yellows.  The owner apparantly bought many of the doors and cabinets as well as many other pieces in the rooms, from antique markets all over China.  A lot of the woodwork was very beautiful.  The weather was great so we all sat outside and enjoyed our traditional chinese desserts made mostly from rice and beans.  My favorite was the rose cake and you could definitely taste the roses.  The Chinese version of dessert is very different than the American or European version of dessert.  Chinese desserts are not sweet. We were treated to some music played by a young man fromCanada who composes and produces music here in Beijing.  We also got to see a dessert demonstration from one of the chefs.  It was a very nice event!  I better be nice to my friend so she will invite me to more fun things!
http://www.china-je.com/en/index.asp