East meets west
Like all her peers, Yang has free lunch at the staff canteen and has never been to the main dining room for journalists. "It's too Western and expensive, I heard," she said.
The dining room, which opens 24 hours a day, serves buffet, including Asian and Mediterranean dishes, grills and other international flavors.
"Some people complain it's expensive, but it all depends on what you choose," said restaurant manager Shi Shengli. "A dish with two small pieces of German sausage sells for 40 yuan (US$5.7), but a quick meal with just one slice of pizza with a small coffee, for example, cost 15 yuan."
Kong Pao chicken, a popular Chinese dish with chicken and almonds, costs 20 yuan and most Chinese vegetable dishes are sold for 10 yuan, said Shi.
Fruits, including apples, peaches, oranges and bananas, all sell for 5 yuan each.
AP engineer Roy Wu said he would rather dine out most of the time. "When we're in China, we prefer some real Chinese food."
On the sidelines of his work, Wu occasionally visits the MPC's massage room, where Chinese massaging service is provided for free.
"We use the traditional Chinese therapy to ease people's pains on the neck, shoulders and back," said Tian Guihua, a volunteer and graduate student from Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
The small clinic has received more than 150 journalists since it opened on July 8. "Most of them were foreign reporters. Very few knew anything about Chinese medicine, but nearly everyone said they were interested or curious in traditional Chinese medicine," said Tian, who also briefs the foreign guests on the discipline, pointing to pictures of renowned Chinese doctors in history including Hua Tuo and Li Shizhen, and various herbal plants.
One of them is the "worm grass", known to the Chinese as "summer-grass winter-worm". The traditional Chinese cure-all forms when a parasitic fungus hijacks and devours the bodies of ghost moth larvae that have burrowed into the alpine soil for up to five years. It then steers their bodies to the surface so it can spread its spores.
