After laying out our spread of spicy Sichuan food, the waitress returned with four slightly stale slices of white bread, each on their own glistening plates.      

I wondered briefly if DIY chili chicken and peanut sandwiches were a new fad in Chinese restaurants, but when I asked her how I was supposed to eat mine, she looked at me as if I was mad.     

Silently she fished a sliver of our fish from its oily sauce and showed me what would perhaps have been obvious to someone not brought up on a diet of toast for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, more toast for tea and sometimes bread and soup for dinner.  

The bread was just a sponge, for draining the oil from carp cooked in a traditional and much-loved way that left it a little too greasy for some modern eaters. No one in the “Spicey Seduction” restaurant would dream of eating it.

Which is not to say that there isn’t a lot of bread consumed in China, where bakeries dot most towns and an advisor to parliament admonished athletes last year that they needed to follow Westerners in consuming more milk and beef if they wanted sporting success.      

But two weeks enjoying what I think is one of the world’s great culinary traditions may bring a few surprises for Olympic tourists who have not been to China before.      

I don’t mean the strange translations which this blog has explored before, or the more exotic animals and birds favoured by some Chinese diners, just small differences in eating and cooking habits that can be a little disconcerting for first timers.      

Soup is served at the end of the meal, as are rice, noodles and other staples (beware of filling up because you think that an order for sour and spicy soup has been forgotten).      

Then there is vegetarian meat, which looks like meat and when done well tastes pretty like meat — but is made out of tofu.      

The squeamish may prefer not to be shown the fish they are about to eat flapping around in a net as proof of its freshness,  or have chickens and ducks served with their heads and claws still attached.      

And I learnt years ago not to expect too many sandwiches outside of Western restaurants.      

In one of the first Chinese textbooks that I studied a mother warned her children not to be naughty. Otherwise, she threatened,
they would face …. sandwiches for lunch.

Picture of Chinese breads by China Daily. Beijing restaurant by David Gray  

All the tourists, athletes, journalists and other hangers-on flooding to Beijing for the Games need a place to stay, and with hotels already filling up fast, some landlords are more than just rubbing their hands at the prospect of a little extra cash.      

One friend is desperately hunting for a new apartment after her landlord said her rent would jump nine times if she wanted to renew her contract this summer.

Others are also on the market after slightly less avaricious, but still illegal and crippling increases to their monthly housing bill.      

Beijing is worried greedy businesses could ruin the image of the Games and so hotels and restaurants have mostly promised to cap rates at high but just about reasonable levels.      

But private landlords are bound by no such promises — and many are determined to get rid of the tenants currently blocking them from claiming the Olympic jackpot.      

The only possible consolation for those squeezed out by greedy landlords is that their former homes may end up like the hotel rooms in Athens which sat empty during the last Olympics
because of sky-high prices.

The increase in rents is not bad for all Beijingers though — and some of those who own their properties or have more reasonable landlords are getting in on the moneymaking themselves.      

Property pages are scattered with ads for Olympic rentals.      

And one friend has managed to hawk out his two bedroom apartment — usual rent about $1,000 a month — for $2,000 a night. More than enough to keep him and the landlord happy,
though he might not be offering to share.

Picture by Reuters/stringer

In China almost everyone wants to share Beijing’s moment of Olympic glory, and the northern city of Harbin started early with a celebration in ice.

A glistening neon re-creation of an ancient Greek temple now bursts out of the winter darkness on the banks of its frozen Songhua river like a hallucination brought on by temperatures plunging below 15 degrees Celsius.

But it’s as real as the translucent, multi-coloured Westminster abbey, electric yellow stretch of the Great Wall of China and blue-green Stonehenge standing nearby.

The kitsch but mesmerizing statues are part of an “ice-lantern” festival that has converted an old trick for luring fish to the hooks of night-fishermen into a more lucrative tool for luring tourists and their cash away from warmer parts of the country.

Each year there is a different theme to the festival, which features dozens of vast scultpures, and this year it was — of course — the Summer Games.

Beside the ice Acropolis – a tribute to original Olympics creator and 2004 host Greece – there is a strange “Olympic tower” soaring in multicoloured splendour tens of metres into the night sky and sculptures of athletes striving for success scattered between plastic trees with neon blossoms.

British monuments get a place because London will hold the next Summer Olympics.

And the sculptures, carved from ice hacked out of the frozen river, aren’t just for staring at.

For as long as you can stand the sub-zero temperatures, you can climb the near life-size Great Wall, speed down a vast ice-slide at the end, take photos with what are touted as arctic foxes, clamber up to the steps of the Parthenon, walk through the bright-pink re-creation of Beijing’s Gate of Heavenly Peace or get closer to the icy Stonehenge than you can to the original.

It’s so popular and, for locals, pricey – tickets go for 150 yuan or around $21 – that there are Russian guards from nearby Siberia at the doors.

“The managers don’t trust Chinese guards. They fear they will let all their family and friends in for free,” said a Chinese tour guide cheerfully.

Emma Graham-Harrison is an Energy Correspondent in the Beijing bureau