Is This Thing On?: November 2008

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Autumn

Somehow the trees here are still in mid-autumn colors.

Hangzhou is a very scenic place. There are many tourists here but almost no westerners. The train from Shanghai is only about an hour and twenty minutes if you get an express, so I imagine that many people from shanghai come here to get away for a day or a weekend. There is a very beautiful lake in the west part of the town called West Lake that is transversed by a pedestrian causeway that offers spectacular views. We walked it before and during sunset.

picturesque

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Hangzhou

We just arrived in Hangzhou.

Mobile Blogging from here.

I will post pics later

dinner!

went out with simon and Joyce again for dinner last night. Maybe the best meal yet! It was a Sichuan restaurant so some of the dishes were quite spicy. They ordered so many different things that I cannot remember them all, but there was a frog stew with something like okra, a fish stew, wonton in broth, several vegetable dishes, a fried pork-belly dish, a noodle dish, rice, crispy scallion pancakes, and several others as well as two delicious desserts. One was made from lotus root stuffed with rice and cooked in a sugar syrup and the other was a rice-wine soup with rice and rice balls in it. It turns out that Simon & Joyce are true foodies as well as being great hosts. They can remember and describe dishes they ate long ago at various restaurants. They've already created a 'must try' menu for us for our trip to Hangzhou today... We are very lucky!

far out

this the psycedelic pedestrian tunnel from the bund in shanghai to pudong. Its a little like a disney ride and also a good way to cross the river. However as pure entertainment it falls a bit short. Don't take this unless you need to do a river crossing at the bund or from pudong to the bund.

French Concession

we walked around the French concession a little bit today. Very strange to see old french maisons in shanghai. I honestly don't know much of the history so I'm going to do some research about it.

Pudong

This a picture of the pudong side of the river where we are staying.

The Bund

heres' a picture of the bund at sunset.

Friday, November 28, 2008

what were we thinking?

decided to go to a nearby "steakhouse" for dinner.... big mistake; It was the worst meal so far in China. I guess we should stick to the Chinese food.

ferry 'cross the huangpu

Took the ferry from pudong (where we are staying) into shanghai today. Walked around some very cool old neighborhoods and got some grilled octopus and a soft round flat-bread stuffed with something unidentifiable but good. Next we had dim-sum for lunch and ate crab and pork soup-dumplings, stir fried pea-shoots, shrimp and egg fried rice and red-bean paste dumplings for dessert. Next we went to a tailor recommended by our hosts here and ordered custom-made cashmere coats for an unbelieveably low price. They have books filled with the ads for all of the top label designers, you pick out the one you like, then pick a fabric and they make a perfect knock-off for you in a few days for a small fraction of what you would pay in a store. I really like shanghai a lot!

Thursday, November 27, 2008

is it hot in here?

ok, this fish soup was so spicy that I was sweating more than I did when I ran the marathon; by far the spiciest thing I've eaten so far (but really good). Nam took this pic because I was bright red and dripping with sweat and all of the waitresses were walking by our table to see the red faced white guy. Pretty funny......

Shanghaied on Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone and no, this is not the world's smallest turkey, it's a pidgeon and we ate it, the whole tiny thing head and all, well just the back of the skull and the brain. I know that I've only been here one day, but I already love Shanghai! It's the only city other than New York where I know I could be happy living. The food is incredible, the people are friendly, and the city is vibrant, modern and majestic. My chinese is getting better every day; I can get around in a cab or a restsurant with confidence. The next two weeks are really going to be great!!!!

a bit of chinglish for you.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

On the train

wow, that was a long train ride! It turned out that one of the guys sitting across from us lives in the building right next to the one were staying in so he gave us a ride (or rather his driver gave us a ride). Anyway we are in Shanghai now and so far it looks amazing.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Update

I've been having some trouble with the blog client app I've been using which is why I have not posted more over the last day or so. It seems to be working now though. Yesterday we went to dongyue temple which was really interesting. It's a functioning daoist temple in the middle of Beijing. It's been there for hundreds of years and has a lot of interesting stone tablets and carvings as well as some very cool statues. I'll try to send up some pics in a minute. We also had a great spicy/sour fish hotpot lunch at san ge guizhouren restaurant. Right now we are on a train bound for Shanghai, we just pulled out of the station and should arrive in about ten hours; very excited to see the scenerey along the way.

They Don't Have This Department at Macy's

oops... I was looking for housewares.

Monday, November 24, 2008

qianmen

This is the "front gate" to the city of beijing.

tiananmen square

walked through tiananmen square on the way home. Saw the flag lowering ceremony at 5, but didn't want to push through the crowds to get a picture.

tomorrow, the world.

張林海

Went to an art museum today after lunch called, "today art museum".... LOL. There were three exhibits but the main one was the one we both liked the most. The artist's name is zhang linhai, and his work is very dark and disturbing. I've posted a few examples of what we saw.

back at the noodle loft

after taking care of the train tickets we went to the noodle loft for lunch. We had a bowl of shaved noodles and a bowl of cat's ear noodles.

Sunday, November 23, 2008

粥

Last night we picked up Simon and Joyce from their place and we all went out to eat at a place called chansi xianshige. The specialty is a congee hotpot, basically a rice soup in a big pot over a burner in the middle of the table. Various raw ingredients are ordered and brought to the table and cooked in the congee. We got mostly seafood and vegetables and it was absolutely delicious. It was great to talk with our beijing friends about our trip and about china in general. They advised us to change our Shanghai train tickets from the "T" train to the "D" train as it is much newer, faster and more comfortable. So we are going to stay in Beijing an extra night and leave on the Wednesday morning train instead of the Tuesday overnight train. There's so much to see and do here that an extra day is going to be welcome. It's also another day to practice standard mandarin Chinese as the Shanghai dialect is quite different, and even when they speak mandarin, the accent is and pronounciation can be hard to understand. So we are off to the station to take care of the tickets, then somewhere for lunch....,

noodles for lunch

we had noodle soup for lunch at a semi-outdoor table in the snack street area.

Lazy morning

It's Sunday afternoon here and we've had a really lazy day. We got up and lounged around before eating breakfast at the buffet downstairs. Afterwards I went to the store down the street to buy a few bottles of water for our room and nam used the computers in the business center to check her email. Then we went to the gym, worked out and came back up to shower before going out for lunch. Speaking of lunch, yesterday our friend ping who drove us to the wall dropped us off at a local restaurant that he recommended. We ate a spicy stir-fried chicken in hot pepper oil, jie lan in soy sauce, and the best pork ribs I've ever eaten. I was too busy eating to take a picture. Tonight we are going to eat with Simon and Joyce who both live in Beijing. Simon is the elder brother of a close friend of ours and we are very excited to see them. So we're off to lunch now and then possibly tiananmen square or the drum tower; I'll let you know about it later!

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Great Wall

We went to the Great Wall today. If you ever have the opportunity, you MUST do this. Absolutely incredible; no picture you've ever seen can come close. There are four places to see the wall near Beijing, our driver whom we met and befriended serendipitously yesterday strongly recommended that we go to mu tian yu, so we did. The weather was perfect, there were few other people there and there was a cable car that got us up the mountain, saving at least an hour's hike up very steep terrain. Once on top, the wall stretches as far as you can see in two directions, making impossibly steep climbs and descents over mountain upon mountain. We treked out to the left (west) for an hour or so, neither of us quite believing that we were really there.

Me on the wall

Nam on the wall

Breathtaking

Clinton Was Here

You might need to zoom in on this to read the text. We took this cable car down from the Great Wall.

Jing Ju

Went to see traditional Beijing opera tonight. Very unique music and highly stylized costumes and makeup. I really enjoyed doing this.

Friday, November 21, 2008

silk market

sorry this picture is not so great; the camera in this phone is not very good.
Yesterday (Friday) we took a cab to another kaoya dian (duck restaurant) in the far NE part of town that has the reputation for being the best in Beijing. Along the way, the driver and I started talking a bit and we negotiated a ride to the great wall for today. The restaurant itself was a crazy experience, nobody spoke a word of English and my mandarin proved inadaquite for the first time. I managed to order the food, but the waitress kept asking me questions that I couldn't understand and would then turn to nam expecting her to translate. The food itself was really good, but we both got the feeling that the staff thought we were a bit stupid. After the meal we walked a bit; if you ever have to cross the street in Beijing, be really careful. Drivers here are not required to stop or even slow down when turning right at a red light, it's more like a merge.... We got in another cab and went to the silk market which is a four or five story indoor clothing market filled with vendors selling clothing of different varieties. Nam bought a nice coat that I bargained down from 1500rmb to 260rmb (about $38), so I felt like I redeemed myself a bit here after my linguistic disaster at the restaurant. It was dark out when we left the market, we jumped in another cab (cabs are very cheap here) and headed back to the hotel.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Another Beautiful Day

We've been really lucky with the weather here (knocking on wood as we speak). It's been cool and sunny every day and not too cold at night. Of course it was a little hard adjusting from the sub-tropical climate in Hong Kong, but this feels more like November back home. We just got back from breakfast and are going to the gym/pool before heading out for another adventure. Sorry if I tend to write about food a lot, I think it's because it's the easiest part of this whole experience to describe. I'll try to expand my breadth of topics in future posts. Doing a lot of text entry is also very time consuming on the iPhone, which can sometimes lead to consternation in one's travel-partner, so I apologize if there are photos posted without descriptions. I promise that we will relate all of our experiences in more detail when we return.

Mobile Blogging from here.

Wangfujing Night Market

This is the night market on wangfujing street, just a few blocks from our hotel. There is an area off of the main street that is filled with food vendors. We ate a lot!

lamb on a stick

I also tried fried chou dofu or 'stinky tofu'. I had it once before in a restaurant in queens and hated it. All of my Chinese friends told me I had to try it from a street vendor and they were right! It's really good.

why don't they do this back home?

The street food here is so incredible. This guy cooks up all kinds of stuff on bamboo skewers:beef, chicken, lamb, chicken hearts, scorpions, seahorses, stinky tofu, crickets, and lots of other good stuff. It's all cooked to order right in front of you so you know it's good and he is only one of dozens in the "snack street" area.