Eating Out

I realized at lunch today that I haven't talked about eating in Beijing yet, which is surprising seeing as I do it two-three times a day (depending on when I wake up). Every meal for the most part, I go out to eat. This is mainly due to the fact that I'm living in a hotel with no kitchen facilities, but it's also relatively cheap to eat out if you find the right places. Generally a meal here will cost from 10-30 kuai (about $2-5). Of course most foreign food and many of the larger, flashier restaurants can cost upwards of 100-300 kuai for a meal, but I have rarely if ever gone to such places. I will now walk you through a typical dining out experience when locals aren't eating with me.
We walk into a restaurant and either sit down or tell the waiter/waitress how many people and are shown to a table. The menu consists of one or a combination of the following: a white piece of paper completely in Chinese with places to write the quantity of each dish, a completely Chinese menu that's generally two sided, or a large menu with lots of pictures. Sometimes, depending on how touristy and popular the place is, there will be English translations of some or all things or an actual separate English menu, but neither of these can be expected unless you go someplace with an English name. Obviously the best case of those listed is the large menu with pictures because we can just look through it and point at what we want.
The waiter/waitress (fuyuan) stands at your table waiting for your order as soon as you walk in. Coming from the states, this is really awkward because we're used to having time to figure out what we want. It is best if you go into the restaurant with an idea already of what it is you want to eat, as most of them serve similar dishes. Often it is easier to ask "do you have this?" about everything you want instead of actually trying to get through the menu. When the menu is completely in Chinese or you're faced with one of those white sheets, asking is a must at least for now, as I cannot understand most of any menu.
Chinese people traditionally don't drink water with meals, instead drinking either tea (cha) or beer (pijiu), and when they do drink water, it is hot (basically tea without the tea leaves). We often ask for cold bottled water and are either told they don't have it or given room-temperature bottled water. Often when having soups for meals, the liquid part serves as the drink and no further drink is ordered.
Anytime you need anything in a restaurant be it napkins, more beer, the bill, chopsticks, etc...you simply yell out "FUYUAN!" Yes...yell. It seems so rude, but you're basically yelling "WAITER!" It's the only way to get any service, so at this point, I've gotten used to it. Hopefully I won't start doing this when I return to the states.
Getting the bill is kind of like the beginning of the meal. The fuyuan brings you your bill and then stands there waiting for money. They are also relatively pushy and if someone pulls out a 100 kuai bill (which by the way is the biggest bill that exists and equals about $15) will often just take it from them to pay, and then you will all have to pay that person. In general for smaller purchases, they hate when you only have a 100 kuai bill, but it's not usually a problem for food.
When leaving the restaurant, they are usually pretty grateful and say thankyou and goodbye in the now common form of "xiexie bbye".