Hot Pot Master

烹大师餐饮连锁集团是香港资深艺人曾志伟先生投资创立的，2007年5月进军上海餐饮第一站，现分别在北京 、上海、常州、无锡、扬州开设16家分店，2009年8月进驻北京。

Maybe we should have a Central Park-based FT-do at the Hot Pot Master place moondog is hankering to try!

I'm down. I suggest we shoot for some time in Jan before CNY.

I'm only in Beijing for 1 week in January - 7th evening to 13th night. I'm in if the dates work! I love hot pot... :P

Let's try for the 12th.

Off the top of my head the 12th works for us too, we expect to be back here around the 5th or so. Happy to work on the 12th, we should keep in contact to arrange ^

For the sake of others not necessarily following this thread, I suggest posting in the main Beijing meet up thread.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china...up-thread.html

So, we've been here a little under a month & thought I'd update on our move & how we're settling in.

We had a great time in the UK but it was disappointing to find that until we get our permanent residents visa, we can't do the big-ish shipment we were hoping for, so it was a case of cram as much into our suitcases as we could (luckily 3 pieces each up to 32kg apiece) and bring what we could with us.

That done, we began settling into daily life here. Hubby at work, me doing housework and finding out where I can make friends. Hence, one day about 2 weeks after we arrived back, I braved the subway for the first time alone, to go to a coffee morning organised by INN Beijing. For any other newbies, this is International Newcomers Network, Beijing. I found out about them from the internet and it's an organisation that's open to foreign nationals only. I'm not normally a coffee morning person, but have realised this is such a good way to meet people. So I went and I met some very nice ladies, some also new to Beijing, some 'old hands', which is a nice mixture. From that coffee morning, I got an invite to a 'card afternoon' at someone's apartment about a 10 minute walk from ours. Again, I'm not a card player, but I took the opportunity to meet some more people, a very pleasant hour or so was had. I've since been to INN's monthly meeting and met some more very nice people who I will hang out with.

We also met up with a few FT'ers at Hot Pot Master and had a very pleasant evening of food, beer & good company - when's the next one guys???

We've also been shopping to make our apartment more like a home for us rather than the somewhat plain apartment it was when we moved in. Slowly, we're getting there and having to get our guest room ready for no.3 daughter, who is arriving on a hastily arranged visit to us, arriving next week, has helped speed up this process!!

We were astounded by the noise of CNY and the fact the it seems anyone (& indeed everyone!) can set off firecrackers & what seem like rocket launchers, anywhere and at any time they please!! The noise has been indescribable at times, but nice to watch for a short time, but not the hours/days it's gone on for!!

We are still habituating Sanlitun Bar Street, I guess we like the atmosphere! We need to get out more :-) We go out walking every weekend to find new places but as yet, we haven't done anything really touristy, saving that for when visitors come and for when it gets warmer.

We still have to sort our language lessons, although we're very surprised by how well we've managed with very little Mandarin, we probably have a dozen words between us! We cope with food shopping - we go to Carrefour and top up with basics locally and Ikea, although probably many peoples' worst nightmare, has been brilliant for homeware - not so brilliant on the wallet though!

In conclusion, we're really enoying life here so far, it's very different to our lives in the UK although we are missing our families dreadfully.

Thanks for reading and hope there is some info there which may help people like me - a Newbie in Beijing

Thanks for the update and glad life in China is going well so far. ^