Food

There seems to be a strong inverse relationship in China between the price of food and how good it is. My favourite meal last time was the noodles that they served in the university canteen, and this time I've noticed again that you can pay a lot for fancy food that's not actually that nice, but you'd be much happier with a cheap meal at the local restaurent. We paid RMB 200 at a fancy restaurent (a week's wages for a labourer here, by comparison) for food that was alright; below cost 30 RMB and was fantastic.

Hanzhou, Experiment, Art

Last saturday I went to Hanzhou. As i mentioned before, Hanzhou and Suzhou are supposed to be the most beautiful places in China. Personally, I'd cut Suzhou out of the list: Hanzhou was much nicer! It's a medium sized city built around a huge and lovely lake, surrounded by hills with tea plantations and lots of temples and pagodas. The gardens of Suzhou are indeed beautiful, but all of Hanzhou is.

We arrived quite late (circa 9.30pm), but were able to relativly quickly find a restaurent that opened late (cf. McD's in Suzhou!), before retreating to a moderatly priced hotel. However, their air conditioning was broken, so they shipped us upmarket for the first night for free! What a score. Next morning we had a breakfast buffet, all you want of a wide array of eastern and western foods.

I knew that my friend and regular blog correspondant Lisa Gao had planned to come to China at some point this holiday, but I hadn't expected to find her in my fruit bowl at the hotel

Breakfast isn't big in China so its always slightly eclectic, but not here. Lots of chinese dumplings, noodles etc., but also the full array of bacon, potatoes, cereal, cold milk, fruit, fruit juice, french pastires etc - I stuffed myself full for the day.

On sunday we visited the Lingyin Temple, a big budhist temple. It's just over the hill from the lake and is in the middle of the tea growing areas. Next to it is a famous hill called "Hill flown in from afar" after a travelling Indian buddhist mistook it for a hill from home which it resembled, which we climbed. The temple itself is still home to several buddhist monks, who climb another even taller hill each day on their hands and knees to visit another temple (which you can just see at the top of the tea field photo below, with a cable car for lazy tourists), and clean, worship and practice martial arts (allegedly). They seem to have struck on a winning revenue stream though - there are thusands of tourists daily, who come to burn incense and worship their family gods (apparently buddhism adopted gods when it reached china).

buddhas carved into 'hill flown from afar'

despite numerous signs informing that for true buddhists piety is more important than incense, the vendors outside still made a healthy taking. The chinese aren't the most religious of people, but they have a very special way of sinocising foreign ones

Buddhism, much like Islam, is a religion of peace

After the temple, we went to try and find the tea museum, but it was unfortunatly out of season. Instead, we got taken to one of the tea villages to a little tea huse to have tea explained to us by a local woman. We wondered the village for a bit and bought some overpriced locally cut stuff, then returned to our original hotel (unfortunatly repaired!) for a shower.

proof I was there

A tea field. I want one of these!

In the evening we went to a nice restaurent on the lake (my first glimpse of it so far!) that was packed, apparently Zhou En Lai ate there back in the day so it's always popular with domestic tourists. We wondered a bit afterwards, along one of the long causeways that cross the lake, before returning to the hotel.

We woke early the next morning for another marginally less impressive breakfast, less bacon and more rice but still palatable. No black tea either unfortunatly. We went back to the lake and hired bicycles from one of the many hire places around the lake and cycled round it for a few hours, which was really good fun and very pretty.

part of Hanzhu's beautiful West Lake

It was almost time to go after this, we had lunch at a nice Guangdong themed restaurent (the bit of China nearest Hong Kong, known for eating anything!) and headed back to Shanghai in the glorius monday sunshine.

All was good until I got back home, and discovered to my horror (and for the second time) that I'd lost my debit card. Further, my laptop seemed well and truly broken and I was a bit gutted. Luckily, some frantic calls later revealed that it had been left in the first hotel, they were very good and sent it off almost straight away. Laptop was less positive.

On tuesday Professor Ma arrived back, and the students and I and he discussed various plans for experiments. I got the go-ahead for mine, and my and another student decided to travel over to Pudong on wednesday evening. It was Yaoyao's birthday dinner in shanghai that night in Shanghai, she took several of us to an 'italian' restaurent. It's no wonder that Chinese people think they don't like western food - the imitation is pale (much like chinese takeaway in the UK i'm sure!). The pizzas we had were greasy, covered in horrible rubbery cheese, not a tomato i sight, the tuna (I'm a big fan of napolitana in the UK...) could have come from a can, not enough vinegar, bread too thick, no chilli oil, no pepper mill, etc... The potato salad side order was very good, however!

In the day on Wednesday we had some american visitors to the lab who I chatted to for a bit, they were the investors from the company but seemed to be more on the business than the science side. When we arrived at the company that afternoon I saw them again and told them my plans! It was late so I and the student (his english name is Bob!) headed to the dormitary nearby to start the next morning.

Our village, complete with a few words from the big man himself (5 ft 0 Deng. Party man Bob is a very big fan)

The village that the dorm is in is right on the outskirts of Shanghai where it merges with the countryside (and the coast!), and I've got some good photos of it. When I left it before a few weeks back, some workers had been clearing weeds from a large area of ground, which has now just about been turned into a nice paved area with trees and benches. Development is rapid.

then

and now

Shanghai's eastern edge

By Thursday morning, I was very keen to get by experiment under way. I'd spent some time fighting through paperwork, and finally got to the factory floor by about 10am, to find that the crucial stage of the process for my experiment is no longer used! We had to adjust it somewhat, and the results were less useful that I'd hoped. However, carrying it out was good fun and the company are planning to do my original experiment themselves at some point now which is great.

We finished early on Friday afternoon, and Bob and I returned via SHanghai centre. We went to a nice little market, and did some souvenir shopping. I have purchased a Chinese chess set which I now need to learn to play, and several other amusing nicnaks. I also aquired the newest harry potter for 20 RMB (1 pound 30) and a compilation of shakespeare plays in english and chinese.

Certified 'World VIP' Ma Sun carves me a name stamp

On Friday night I went out with Valencia and Kenny and several others, first to an interesting club in south Shanghai called 'Absolute House', before moving on to Attica. As usual Valencia had obtained us free entry to both places and drinks so the night was very cheap. After we left attica we wondered shanghai and ate funny shellfish as the sun came up!

On Saturday I went with Toshiba to Century Park - a very large park in central pudong not far from the Jin Mao tower. It was very nice, with a big lake in the middle that we were able to hire a boat and sail around on for a bit! After that we went to see the latest Harry Potter in the cinema (I'm not addicted!) and had dinner at an italian place much nicer than the one I went to on tuesday! Still not enough tomato tho and very overpriced this time: someone needs to bring Pizza Express or ASK here.

captain Jack

Shiji Park

On sunday, Valencia wanted to go to the Shanghai art museum. Very tired from the busy week I skipped Dragonboating to sleep, and on a whim joined her in the afternoon to go and see the special exhibit: lots of Gaudi's work from early 20th century Spain. We explored people's square afterwards, and got the usual approaches from 'tea shop' people trying to get money out of us - she was very surprised, and said it was a totally different experience from when she was alone! She thinks they might not know how to deal with a western woman, but I put it more down to her fluent Chinese - a good few people were taken by surprise when she jabbered back at them!

Gaudi was a big fan of 'hyperbolic perabaloids'. Obviously.

upstairs they had quite an strange mix of his furniture

he had a change of heart on his death bed - form AND function

Anyway, she had had to visit a nearby restaurent at some point as part of her job, called Saigon Blue, so we decided to have dinner there (unsurprisingly Vietnamese). It was a lovely little restaurent but a little bit out of the way, a few streets south of Nanjing Road and not quite in the french concession, and also hidden by a large strange hotel-like building (but not a hotel, apparently) called the 'Overseas Chinese Development Center'. You had to actaully leave the restaurent and enter the building to go to the loo, which might have been cold in the winter and felt a little strange! They want to change the place into a bar with V's company's help, but she wasn't massivly enthused. The food was very good though: we had lots of fresh veg in salads and spring rolls, which made me realise how much I've missed them - almost all vegetables here are stir fried or cooked in sauce (side note: I also spotted a subway tucked away near people's square which I will be visiting SOON!).

We wondered a little bit afterward before heading our seperate ways - she made me laugh at one point by suggesting we go for a foot massage - before I realised she was serious! After all the dodgy 'massaji' calls that one hears outside clubs in the early morning I wouldn't even have thought about it, but she told me about the wonderful massage she'd had the week before. It's a very different experience here for men and women! She has promised to take me with her next time she goes to translate for me and guarantee no unexpected surprises!

Jin Mao

My friend Chris from the UK is in town - we took Chinese classes together last year so shared our teacher's amusing quest to grasp all things British. Also, my new debit card was here, so we decided to paint the town red (well...).

We took the tourist tunnel under the river to Pudong, which is a bizarre tram-like vechile that moves through a strange tunnel of lights that might be trying to simulate LSD. Unfortunatly I didn't disable the flash on my camera and none of the photos came out very well.

Chris had told me about this nice buffet meal served in a certain Grand Hyatt hotel, but we didn't quite know where it was, so we asked directions, and were pointed to...

Yup, that's right, I ate up there. (recycled photo I know - it didn't come out so well at night)

It was rather divine, we partook gladly and plentifully.


Clockwise from top: smoked salmon, POTATOES* with onion and bacon, prawns in garlic, pork cutlet, ROAST BEEF**, antipasto, fish, BEEF CARPACCIO (WITH SHAVED PARMESIAN*!!!), some shellfish. * - much needed

They had also committed the cardinal sin for any buffet meal, and included sorbet in the dessert. Chris displayed a typical northern lack of restraint on the dessert


While I, with my superior southern breeding, was much more civilised:

(I couldn't find the big plates)

We had a window seat and were able to enjoy the Shanghai skyline much more nicely from the 56th floor (about 2/3 of the way up). It's only when you're there that you realise how much taller than everything else Jin Mao really is. We eventually managed to disable my camera's flash and get some skyline pictures of mediocre quality

Citigroup always was a second rate excuse for a bank

Price tag for the evening: 450RMB each - less than I paid for my Lacrosse annual dinner back home.

After dinner, we wondered Pudong breifly and happened upon a breif note from our sponsors - Chris and I were both given £400 by a certain fund back in the UK, and we were sure they'd approve of our recent investment in the Shanghai property/eatery market


We like these people. The Chinese couple we ambushed to take the photo perhaps didn't quite understand...

A Busy Weekend!

I haven't posted for a few days: it's been a very busy weekend and I needed until now to catch up on the sleep!

On thursday I had dinner with a few people in Shanghai, which transformed into a rather late excursion to the before-mentioned Bonbons and a fairly late (early) return home. Friday was my last day at the company, so it was fortunatly rather light on the work front - trying to get some last bits of data and looking around the place a final time.

In the afternoon Prof. Ma returned me to Puxi via his daughters work, they invited me to dinner on Sunday chez Ma, whch is very close to the university - with the promise of Baijiu, the chinese national spirit.

Saturday was the real beginning: went into town to meet a friend for breakfast, and had my first experience of People's Square as a lone foreigner - totally different! I'd heard about this scam where a group of young female students 'befriend' you saying they want to practice their english, then take you to some teahouse where you end up getting charged a massivly inflated bill for a few cups of tea - as well as reading it on the internet, my friend Neil warned me about it: he'd been scammed for 400 RMB on the first day (they tried to take 1000!).

It hadn't happened to me yet but I wasn't surprised, I obviously don't look like the kind of guy that would fall for a scam. Or perhaps I do. Within 20 minutes of arriving (got in half an hour early due to mistiming busses!) it'd been tried on me twice. It really is very cleaver, but of course forwarned is forarmed and I got rid of them. When I came back hours later one pair were still there - apparently they'd 'got lost' and asked me for some directions!

That afternoon (to my eternal shame I forgot my camera for the whole weekend so have no photos of any of this) I met up with more friends - James and Ziyang from my course in Cambridge and a few of their friends, and went to KTV! KTV is karioke, but its massivly popular here, occupying about the same cultural space as going out for drinks. You get a room with the karioke stuff, order foor and drinks, and sing away to each other for several hour, and its as much fun as it sounds, although the only english songs they have are dodgy britney covers and the omnipresent Backstreet Boys (the supermarket near where I lived in Pudong played the BB greatest hits album on loop - but frustratingly didn't have a dance floor!).

Afterwards we went to a Guangzhou restaurent (Guangzhou (formerly Canton) is in the south of China near Hong Kong, and its people are famous for eating almot anything. There was a recent field mouse epidemic in central china where 2,000,000,000 field mice chomped through thousands of acres of cropland, but the farmers were able to make up their losses by exporting live mice to Guangzhou instead). We ate donkey and rabbit among other things and it was all rather tasty!

Afterwards I nipped briefly home to change and shower and make a rapid turnaround, before heading back into town to visit Attica, one of Shanghai's most famous scenes. It's on the roof of one of the buildings of the Bund (by this stage the loss of a camera was really getting to me!) and priced accordingly. It had two really nice rooms and a lovely outdoor bar area, and the clientelle were slightly more resectable than those in bonbons. We knew a few people there (someone in the Taiwanese mafia allegedly?!) and chatted and danced until about 4am. Clubbing here seems much less down-all-you-can-and-act-stupid oriented, although that may be because the people who I go out with don't drink that much, but it's actually much more fun and much less expensive. We also met lots more people, my Shanghai circle is growing!

Since we left at 4.30am and dragonboating starts at 8, I'd made the prior decision not to return home, and brought a bag with me to the club. The one weakness of Attica is that the cloakroom ONLY takes coats - we argued this one for a bit, and despite my bag containing nothing valuble the assisstant wouldn't give in, luckily it wasn't a bulky sports bag or anything and despite looking slightly metro, it wasn't so bad.

Crossed the city early in the morning and saw some interesting sights (camera loss now chaffing). McDonalds is open 24/7 near the bund, but the only people actually eating were a few groups of foreign lads clearly just out of a club too. However, most of the tables were occupied by sleeping locals - literally just head down on the tables like those funny mushroom people in Voyage of the Dawn Treader! Another open square was covered in homeless - so many here.

The subway is shut from 10.30pm - 6am which really makes me appreciate London's 1.00am-ish, although I wish more cities would follow NY's 24h example! Got to the DB pickup at about 6.45 and dozed by a wall for a bit until 8, then dozed a bit more on the coach. We had about 40 people this week: enough for two boats and races!

It was by far the hottest day so far and with no cloud cover. I borrowed some sun cream but it wasn't as good as my factor 40 stuff and rapidly washed off in the spashing. Despite the races being great fun, I knew it was just a matter of time until the strawberry look arrived!

I was meeting up with some more friends afterwards to explore Shanghai further and we popped down to a temple called Yu Yuan Temple, a former temple of Taoism and now a shopping mall and tourist area (the buildings are preserved and it's very pretty), with a little bit of temple left and some god statues that you can go and bow to if you're into that stuff (I and my guides of course were) and we were there for a while as the morning's sun turned into a heavy downpour outside.

We wondered the backstreets of Shanghai towards the bund and stopped for tea in a teashop (a very reasonable 2 RMB / cup, although my guides, who don't speak the loca Shanghai dialect, could only point and gesture, a great equalising experience!), and came to the far end of the bund. Got a ferry across (another 2 RMB!) and wandered Pudong breifly before I had to head back to my apartment for that night's dinner!

Evening came and I was picked up by the professor and headed to his. We had lots and lots of dishes (off the top of my head; peanut chicken, steamed fish, braised beef, a kind of local shellfish, several vegetables, fruit, left VERY full!) all of which were most tasty, and the promised maotai - the best brand of baijiu. It is about 56% alcohol, but much tastier than vodka, and between us I and the professor had the better part of a (small!) bottle. At this stage I was slightly concerned about how I would get home, but fortunatly Mrs. Ma (also a teacher at Shanghai Daxue) said she'd take me home!

Haven't been up to much besides work since, except to say that:

++=

Real* Tea! I was like a heroin addict drinking this. And yes, despite being packaged in the UK, all the ingredients are individually chinese!

Another rule

another rule to add to the clothing post from last week:

9. Unless you have at least 5 years chopstick experience, do NOT wear good clothes to restaurents focusing on noodles, hot pot, or any soup-based dishes