Photo Series Taiwanese street fair

It turns out I LOVE Taiwanese food, so good thing this fair was randomly going on in a sidestreet of East Nanjing Road. I had sticky rice topped with Chinese mushrooms and covered in pickled cucumbers, fresh cilantro and delicious sauce; fried softshell crab (to be fair, they weren't that soft-shelled, but they fried them so deeply it didn't matter anyway); red bean and peanut butter fish-shaped cake (I thought that was Korean, but apparently its "regional"); mai fun (I thought that was Singaporean, but again, "regional"); stinky tofu (first bite: tasty, second bite: suspicious, third bite: revolting); and jackfruit (not how I remember it from Jamaica) among other things.

The Chinese also apparently love Taiwanese food, so the street was a mess of thrown elbows and line-cutting. If there are words for "line" or "get behind" or "order" in Chinese, they certainly are not paid any regard.

Photo Series Shanghai eating tour

That's basically what we were on yesterday, our first day in Shanghai - an eating tour. We walked from Chris's apartment near People's Park to the Bund and back (proper sightseeing pictures to follow), eating most of the way - it took us over 6 hours (the walk is actually about 1 hour).

The day started with soupy bao (dumplings) on Chris's corner - fried is definitely better, I've never had them fried before - and veg noodle soup with fried gluten, "old ear" mushrooms
and tofu. Halfway down our first block after breakfast we stumbled upon the first of many scallion pancake stands (in a wet market) and bought a bag for the road. We also bought these round, flat breads with hard sugar in the middle there - delicious.

Along the Bund I bought corn on the cob - awful, they let it boil for hours - when I should have bought the squid on a stick. Live and learn.

On our way back along East Nanjing Road we stopped for Chinese sausage-filled puffed pastry, passed a mochi store (!!), ate some bizarre thing I couldn't identify, then stopped for Taiwanese street fair dinner (to many pics, that's in the next post). After salty peanuts with a side of wine and mango mojitos at Barbarrossa (my new favorite place in Shanghai for drinks, the cutest little floating house in People's Park) we finished off the day with late-night pretty crab dumplings at this fancy mall a few blocks away.

Even the Wrigley's gum is more interesting here - it's packaged in pill bottles! I bet it tastes better too, but I had to leave something to try tomorrow.

Kentucky Fried China

I finally caved and ate at KFC, my favorite American fast food chain. Gloria and I left class Monday evening with our suitcases, took the KCR East Rail Line to Shenzen, walked across the border (at this point we are recognizing the customs agents!), and took bus K568 to the Shenzen airport, where we were departing for Shanghai. Apparently Shenzen is the source of all reasonably-priced tickets to mainland China for penny-pinching HK residents - just budget at least 2 hours for the complete trip to the airport.

At the airport our options were Chinese fast food or KFC and having extreme-biked and overnight-trained with Gloria last week I finally felt comfortable enough in our friendship to admit that I desperately wanted fat-injected fried "c."

I ordered a Zinger, which was delicious, just as expected. What was not expected were the sides: there is no mac & cheese (many Asians are lactose intolerant), there are no potato wedges and the mashed potatos come in a container the size of a baby food jar. Instead they offer a corn nibblet/carrot mix and egg drop soup. They also sell egg custard, but I passed on that in order to stock up on individually-packaged sesame-covered mochi at the candy stand downstairs.

The madness of HKUST

After 4 weeks the insanely involved school group campaigning has ended and the booths have been dismantled. This doesn't mean the madness is over, though. Monday I come to school to see a full-on fashion show underway. That model is in a WEDDING GOWN. Lucky for you I didn't take a video - Celine Dion was blasting over the terrible sound system.

Shenzen addendum

I don't know if I successfully explained what Shenzen (China) is like, but on the KCR (metro) back to Hong Kong from the Shenzen overnight train station after leaving Guilin I took this photo that pretty much sums it up.

People go with SUITCASES or these woven plastic bags and just stock up in Shenzen. This woman even has weightlifting gloves to protect her from her shopping. I have a feeling some people use Shenzen as a wholesaling source; there is just no other way to explain the sheer volume of purchasing represented by the size of these bag.

Photo Series EXTREME Yangshuo biking adventure

The last day of our trip we woke up in Yangshuo to freezing drizzle. Not to be discouraged from our initial plan (wrong reaction - maybe) we borrowed ankle-length ponchos from Wei at Yangshuo Culture House, rented pink bikes (the only option, I swear we didn't ask for them specifically - but we did love them), and set out in search of a Qing dynasty village 10k away.

FOUR freezing hours later of serious mud/mountain biking on ill-equipped cruisers, wet from head to toe despite the ponchos, we arrived at the tiny huddle of houses and 30-foot wall that we were searching for. We forgot that the Qing dynasty lasted as late as 1911, so this place really wasn't all that old/amazing.

At the time we were not enjoying ourselves, and the village was not really worth braving the elements, but if it had been sunny this would have been an incredible use of a morning. Biking along the rice paddies/between the mountains and passing through tiny villages (our prof tells us those are 4th-tier - I cannot imagine the life in a lower-tier town) of people that curiously look twice at the foreigners was a view of China that we definitely would not have had otherwise. I don't think a bus or private car would have given us the same perspective.

Being afraid of the dark I do think biking through the countryside was more fun than visiting the mudbath caves, but maybe the rain was enough reason to switch plans. The only thing I'm disappointed we missed because of limited time was the full-day trips to surrounding ethnic minority villages. Definitely spend more than 2 half-days in Yangshuo!

Photo Series Yangshuo Food

The food in Guilin/Yangshuo is pretty well known - Li River carp, beer-battered everything (including the carp), stewed duck, oil tea (you cha, I believe), mei fen (rice noodles), and pickled vegetables and tofu (which I mentioned earlier), among others. We didn't get to try everything (3 days, even with biking, is only so much time), but what we had was incredible.

The mei fen was our first fave - we ate it for breakfast and lunch day 1 in Guilin. The serve you the noodles in a bowl and anything else you might want on top - tofu skin, Chinese sausage, soy sauce egg (that's my personal combo) - then have buckets of chili peppers and pickled peppers (and sometimes pickled turnip) that you can spoon from to make it spicy/tasty. Then you pour on broth either from a hot water cooler or a steaming vat of soup - watch out, this makes the peppers come alive. This was so delicious that even after finding 2 hairs from the server guy in my bowl I kept eating.

The Li river carp was rather disappointing. Apparently one of the more authentic places to eat it is in the Yangshuo food market (don't know if that's the official name), which is in this huge building open to the town's main street (the one Yangshuo Park is on). You walk past the tables of fruit, vegetables, chickens, plucked chickens, split-open chickens, slabs of cow/pig, rabbits and skinned rabbits to get to the row of tiny restaurants along the back wall of the eastern building (this enormous market spans 2 buildings), all of which cater to Chinese tourists. They cook all the food on these little tables with burners right outside the restau, it's crazy that they can make so much food off there. So anyway, at least at the place we went to, the carp was deliciously cooked in thick brown sauce and fresh chilis, but the skin was tough like armor. That river must be a hard place to live in. What was delicious was the stuffed eggplant (stuffed with pork!) and the marinated potato shreds (if you're a veg, this is one of the few items offered in Yangshuo that does not involve at least ground bits of meat).

Yangshuo is also known for their differently-shaped grapefruit - it has a hump on top. Not sure if we got ripped off, but we paid 5 RMB for ours, and not sure if it wasn't the season, but they were... not what we expected. They were dry on the inside, so the fruit was slightly-sweet and crunchy instead of dripping and sweet/sour. Also, ask for them to cut it open for you, because that skin in THICK. It's like food in Yangshuo needs extra armor to ward off the greedy tourists.

During our night stroll of Yangshuo's Western Street (the main tourist drag, that's where the bars and shops are) Gloria found this man in a booth making these delicious sugar thread candies. He was pulling the sugar into incredibly thin strands which are then wrapped around a nutty center and shaped into what look like mini-wheats. Delicious. We should have bought additional boxes to go.