Discovering a new neighborhood in the niu year

Shunyi is a large district of Beijing, offering impressive villas for foreigners with handsome incomes and wealthy Chinese from Hong Kong and Taiwan. This is not where I live. In my middle-class community, I am the only non-Chinese. Though I have been living in Beijing for almost 18 years and have traveled the whole country more than once, I found I still have something to discover.

The day before Chinese New Year's Eve, I went to the market to buy 200 jiaozi pi (wrappings for dumplings). I can make very nice jiaozi but I'm not good at making the little dough circles.

At 3 pm on Saturday, they were sold out but the vendor promised he would have some the next day, at 8 am. The next morning, when I arrived at the market, 15 people were already lining up but the vendor had not arrived.