It was the break of dawn. Sunlight slowly crept up and enlightened my room. My uncle tiptoed into my room and crouched next to my bed, “Wake up, Ray,” His voice was only a bit louder than a whisper. I rolled over and pretended not to hear him. “Come on Ray, how would you like to have American food today?”
That got me, I had been in China for over a week and was longing for some American food. I slowly sat up on my bed and began to rub my eyes. I opened my eyes which was a big mistake.
The sunshine was way brighter than I had expected. Only opening my eyes a sliver, I walked to the bathroom and washed up. My uncle was talking loudly and proudly in living room, “I know just how to get that boy up, and Mao said it was going to be hard. Ha, I know my nephew better than the back of my hands.”
“Oh boy, what a drag. They had to wake me up early while I’m on vacation.” I thought as I washed up, after that I walked to the living room where my mom, dad, and sister were all waiting. They gathered around the couch watching some sort of Chinese soap opera, my sister playing with her phone and was the first to notice me and yelled out, “finally that sleepy head woke up, I thought he was never going to get up!”
I decided to ignore that comment and started to put on my shoes. When I finally pulled on my tennis shoes, I yelled out, “I’m ready!” Everyone quickly got up and scrambled towards the door.
The weather was torpid and luminous. The bright sunlight took up the entire street, nowhere to shade or to cool down. There were already many people walking around on the street. Some of them walked in and out of small stores, others were waiting in line for street foods as breakfast. The smell hit me before my sight, a delicious aroma flew everywhere. I glazed around, there were countless amount of street vendors selling things from bags of freshly steamed pork buns to fried bread biscuits, my mouth already began to water. So I quickly walked away before my stomach lunged towards the street food.
Beijing McDonalds and Starbucks
By: Ray Zhang