The first of October is China's national day. This means that there are shows, festivities, fireworks and so on in the city center, right?

In the city center of Jinan, almost next to the main square and Baotu Spring Park, is a large lake surrounded by a park. During the day we spend some time around the lake. Because today is a national holiday it was super busy there. That also means that many people wanted to take photos of us.

Besides people taking photos of us, I managed to shoot some photos by myself as well. I have some photos of the lake and its surroundings; they are in a new album on my blog. Take a look to see how a lake in the center of a city of some 5.6 million people looks like. It also features some of China's characteristic buildings and pavilions.

Because of the national day in China we went to the city center because we expected many activities, stages with several performances, fireworks and so on. Unfortunately this wasn't the case. Absolutely nothing was going on in the center. The only thing that actually reminded people of the national day was the round-top building enlightened with the Chinese flag. But why nothing happened over there, I have no idea. Maybe it isn't that enthusiastically celebrated as I thought.

We headed back to the campus for dinner and found a rather interesting place. It was a sort of BBQ-restaurant with a very low table (with a small BBQ on it) and small stools. Because the menu was all in Chinese we asked the waiter if he could translate some of it. He didn't really know how to so he asked what we wanted. I wanted to eat some chicken and he said that they have 'chicken hearts', 'chicken neck' and 'chicken hands'. No idea what chicken hands could be but I had my thoughts, probably the claws. Everything sounds good and worth a try.

So after a few minutes we had a small BBQ filled with chicken claws, chicken necks and some chicken hearts. I must say that the neck and heart is tasty, it doesn't taste like ordinary chicken but it is still good. The chicken claws on the other hand were very strange to eat. First of all because of how they look, but also the way to eat them and how they taste. Most of it is muscle and there's a little piece of fat/meat between the toes, that's the only part that's a bit tasty. But first you would have to break the toes and then bite it off. It is a strange piece of meat and I don't think that I would take it again. But at least I tried something new today.