Last Saturday, some friends of mine and I decided to check out Mr. Pancake in the French Concession. As the name would imply, Mr. Pancake serves Western style breakfast items; no 包子 or 炒面, only a rather large menu of Western style diner foods. The actual pancakes were OK, not great, but my omelet and my potatoes were good. What was strange though is that Mr. Pancake gives you a fork and knife, the first fork and knife I used since I got to China. Most of the Western food I eat in China is stuff liker burgers or pizza that can be eaten with your hands. The Thai use forks but they do a fork and spoon combo, not a fork and knife combo. Since we went for a kind of late brunch, I also got a decent Bloody Mary and a good coffee. Overall, a good breakfast for someone who haven't eaten a Western breakfast in some time, though not as good as a proper Jersey diner.
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So my friend who's house I stayed at for Chinese New Years in Phoenix Ancient Town just sent me a box of fresh bamboo shoots that grandpa picked from the mountain. Normally I avoid cooking at ECNU because I don't have a kitchen but I dedided to make an exception. I mean, how hard can cooking using only a electric kettle, thermos, chopsticks, a pocket knife, and a glass be. As it turns out it is very possible although I did have some issues and suggestions for anyone who wants to try this dish at home. I did do some research on how to cook quail eggs and bamboo shoots but I didn't research the recipe, which might have been a mistake. The bamboo shoots themselves came out nice so that is good. Cooking the bamboo worked. I cut the bamboo in half, put in the the thermos, and pored boiling water over it. This would have been easier if I had a constant heat source however; during the one hour of cooking I had to replace the water in the thermos with freshly boiled water just to keep everything hot enough. Many of the bamboo shoot recipes online add some optional dried hot pepper to the cooking which would have significantly improved the dish, everything ended up a bit too bland. For some reason though, TESCO didn't sell any dried spices at all so I didn't end up doing that. The hot sauce I added at the end wasn't enough to correct this. I then pealed the bamboo, which was easy, and threw it back for the noodle cooking. I ended up overcooking the noodles but this is because I really messed up cooking the eggs. I was hoping to make basically quail eggs Benedict for my dinner but I ended up making quail egg soup. As it turns out, the quail eggs had a film on the inside that didn't always break open when I cracked the eggs, so I ended up squirting egg everywhere while any of the egg that actually go into the thermos ended up scrambled. I found that running the eggs under cold water prevented this but I didn't learn that until late in the process. Also, some of the eggs I bought came broken. You really have to pay attention to the eggs before buying them but, because of the basket, even the most observant egg buyer won't catch all the broken eggs. They did cause some of the eggs to stick together and to stick to the filler materiel in the basket. By the time I finished dealing with the eggs, the noodles were already over cooked. I also didn't remove the noodle water, which resulted in me making more of an egg soup than I was planning on. I would actually cut the amount of noodles I used in half and double the amounts of both egg and bamboo shoots if I was to make this again. I would also add some more spice to the dish. But still, you can make a OK and very filling dinner with only the things you would have around in a typical Chinese hotel room.
Comrades, as we all know, Karl Marx taught us it is not a matter of if the workers of the world will unite, but when and when better than International Workers Day, or May Day. In actuality, May Day celebrations were about as intense as Columbus Day celebrations, aka most people just got the day off and sat around. Still Comrades, as we also know if there was no Communist Party there would be no New China, so some friends and I decided to pay our respects to the Revolutionaries who came before us. Shortly after lunch we started off to the Memorial Hall of the First Congress of the Communist Party of China located in the French Concession neighborhood of Shanghai. As the name suggests, the French Concession was formally under French control so it was a bit easier for radicals and, in the words of Chen Kai-shek, "bandits," like Mao and the Communist Party, to have meetings there. The building still stands as a museum to the early days of the Party. While getting in was free, security was actually quite intense. I would put it at one level below Tienanmen Square level of security and around the level I saw at most of the Republican National Convention in the US. The museum itself is OK, but, unlike many other Communist sites, had signage in both English and Chinese. What is interesting is that the museum split its focus on all delegates to the First National Congress, not just Chairman Mao. I would say the building was comfortable but simple, the nicest things were the museum elements put in after the Communist takeover of the Mainland and a tea set the delegates apparently used. Now I know what you are all wondering, yes they had a gift shop, and yes I did buy a both Mao Badge and a Hammer and Sickle pin. After that, we walked passed Zhou Enlai's, the former Primer of China, old home but we couldn't go in since it was closed for renovations. We than took the subway to dinner. We went to a world famous Pyongyang Korean Restaurant to respect the founders of the Peoples Revolution there. While the Pyongyang restaurants are know for their interesting dinner shows, they are most famous for being owned by the North Korean (Democratic People's Republic of Korea/DPRK) Government. The waitresses and chefs are all imported from the DPRK; apparently the waitresses are the daughters of major Workers Party members and Government officials as waitress at a Pyongyang is a very desirable job. While the food was all authentic Korean it all has a northern flair to it. Many of the dishes were Pyongyang specific, including my Pyongyang Rice in Soup and the Pyongyang Kimchi we got for the table. Furthermore, they do the mishmash of little appetizer things at the beginning of the meal, apparently to show off the vast bounty of Socialist Korea, which I read was a common way for foreigners to eat when touring North Korea. The South Korean guy sitting next to us said that North Korean food is overall less spicy than South Korean food. The food actually wasn't bad, a bit expensive but not bad; the South Korean guy must have liked it since it was his second time there. What is funny is that the Pyongyang restaurant served Budweiser and Coke-a-Cola, in addition to a wide array of Chinese beverages, including wine and beijiu. To be honest, I was a little bummed out by their drink selection, I heard North Korean beer is actually very good and was hoping they had some. Also who ever pays 300RMB, 50USD, for a bottle of Chinese wine is just dumb. To be fair though, they did serve the good for export Tsingtao, not the domestic stuff Ellen's Bar serves/gives away on Thursdays. The meal was just preparation for the main event, a musical extravaganza put on every night at 7:30 by our many lovely Korean waitresses. The waitresses are truly multi-talented, all could play one or two instruments and sing in Korean and Chinese while servicing the customers in Chinese, Korean, and English. The South Korean guy we met could understand most of the songs, he had a few problems with the last song and told us he couldn't tell if it was in Korean or in Chinese. The restaurant was actually more subdued than you think a North Korean place would be. There were no pictures of Kim Jong-Un, Kim Jong-Il, or Kim Il-Sung anywhere and the waitresses avoided singing any political songs. From what I read, public events in the DPRK begin with a singing of the National Anthem, Aegukka, and the red anthem of the current Supreme Leader, now We Will Follow You Only but formally No Motherland Without You or the Song of Kim Il-Sung. The South Korean guy said all the songs with words were about welcome and friendship, which I guess makes sense in context. Comrades, I can report to that the East is Red, and there is Peace at the End of our Bayonets. While some of the bourgeoisie would like to tell you that respecting our Party Fathers and eating with our Korean Comrades isn't fun, they are wrong as they are with most things. So tonight, we all exist to Serve the People and to Defend the Headquarters of the Revolution! Good night and Long Live Chairman Mao!
If you remember back to the first semester, I posted a friend's ice cream that looked nothing like it did on the package. This time, while my Oreo Cookie bar thing looked like it did on the package, I got the sense that they should be a little bit bigger... Still they tasted alright so that is nice.
Usually pot noodles in China aren't spicy and all use the same Top Ramen/Manchurian style instant noodles. All except for these spicy oil noodles I bought at TESCO on a whim. They not only use a longer, thicker style of instant noodle but it was actually quite spicy. It seems like the company was trying to emulate biangbiang mian, a type of long spicy "belt like" noodles popular in Xi'an and the rest of Shaanxi Province. Overall they weren't bad, they did cost a whole 2RMB more than my usual noodles, but 2RMB is only a few cents so it is no big deal.
On our last day in Xiamen we were all woken up at the bright and early 6:00AM to visit the last three things we didn't see in the city: a Buddhist temple, a fort, and a former fishing village turned shopping center. I actually don't have much to say on anything since we spent so little time in each location. What I can say is that the Buddhist temples in other parts of China were nicer than the one in Xiamen simply because they had less people. The fort is a fort, it had big guns pointed at the Nationalist (I guess now Democratic Progressive after their last election) "Republic of China" occupying Taiwan; we only spent like 20 minutes there so I think we actually spent more time driving to and from the fort than we did in the fort. Finally we went to an old fishing village that is now a shopping center, I had coffee and tasted a Taiwanese shaved ice. Diplomatic abnormalities and political conflict are no reason why we can't enjoy a shaved ice every once in a while, right? We had lunch at a distinctively Chinese barn of a sea food restaurant that was actually pretty good. I guess I got the fish I wanted but I could have used a Sedrin (the local Xiamen beer). We were then taken to the train station for our six hour trip back to Shanghai. We made it back pretty late so my friends and I got a roast meat sandwich from less sketchy roast meat guy.
On my second day in Xiamen, my group of ECNU international students was taken three hours away form Xiamen to visit the home of the Hakka People (客家民族), one of China's 56 ethnic groups. The particular Hakka community we visited, the Fujian Tulou Earthen Buildings site, is one of China's many UNESCO World Heritage Sites. We did have some delays in getting there though; one of the roads was ripped up for construction so it took us about half an hour just to pass that small stretch of street, eventually though we did make it to the site. The Tulou buildings are Earthen buildings built to protect the Hakka people from the roving bandits and wild animals that were common in the mountains of Imperial China. Each Hakka clan would have their own Tulou building that house all the essentials for relatively comfortable living at the time, such as water wells and Buddhist temples. Since most bandits just wanted to get the booty quickly and leave, they were unwilling to besiege the fortified Tulou buildings. The site was interesting I guess, I got a lot of good photos and the Fujian Tulou buildings were defiantly neat but I don't know if it was worth the six hours on the bus there and back to see them. Walking around the site, it was clear that many other people weren't willing to make the drive. While the buildings are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a China National Tourism Authority AAAAA Tourist Site, for China there were hardly any people there. It felt like Zhangjiajie got more tourists in the off season than the Fujian Tulou did in far better weather. If you compare the Fujian Tulou to the number of tourists China's really famous world heritage sites get, like the Forbidden City of Beijing or the Terracotta Army of Xi'an, the Fujian Tulou felt down right abandon. For both lunch and dinner I had Hakka food. The Hakka were traditionally an agrarian people and their salty vegetable biased foods reflect this. I wasn't super into our lunch, I guess we went to a touristy restaurant that knew none of us would ever come back there for the food. Dinner was actually really good, the local Hakka restaurant in Xiamen proper was tasty and seemed thrilled to have such a large group of foreign customers. The food served for both lunch and dinner weren't pretty, I can't picture the Great Qing Emperor digging down on a plate of the tofu we had for lunch or the eggplant we had for dinner. It was all filling though which is what you want after a long day in the field. All in all, I guess I am glad I went if for no other reason than I can say I did.
Yesterday my group and I took a ferry to Gulang Island (鼓浪屿) to enjoy the views, musuems, buildings, fruit, and history. Gulang Island seems to have been the center of foreign activity in Xiamen so had the former British, American, German, and Japanese counculates all preserved to vairing degrees. Just walming around the streets was nice as it is a very pretty island. We got to see two museums: a small art museum which was nice I guess and a piano museum which was kind of cool. Lunch was alright. I noticed that the Chinese dont get into the water, they just sit on the beach and look at the sea. I got these cool sea shell good luck charms which was nice, no one other than the one guy I bought it from sold them. For dinner I got hotpot, the local beer, and a Hong Kong egg waffle. Overall a fun day.
From and early 6:30AM starting time, my group of about 40 ECNU International students hit the high spead rail to Xiamen, a bit south of Shanghai by Taiwan. After one sixish hour train ride and one book (The Jewz of Kaifeng by Prof. Xu Xi ) we arrived. We really hit the ground running, visiting the campus of Xiamen University with its unique architecture that blends Chinese and Western. The university (along with a near by middle and elementry school) were all founded by a Mr. Cheng Jiagang, a Xiamen local who made a fortune doing something in Singapore, and boy did we hear alot about this guy. He did seem to have a bit of an ego, the middle school only has bathrooms on the first floor because he wants people to exercise more and he named everything after himself, the area does seem quite well off thanks to his help. We then visited his grave, a large piller covered in carvingd of stuff to help teach the young, even in death. It was kind of cool and gave us some great vieas of the sea (something I don't often see in Shanghai disipte the second character in Shanghai [海] meaning sea). We then returned to the hotel to drop our stuff off and find dinner. They took us to a mall type thing and told us to have fun finding food. My friends and I ended up finding a place that sold various forms of chicken, steak, and lobster. I would like to proudly announce that we found General Tsao's Chicken in China, for real. It was actually very different from the American verson, it had bones for instance. I then went back to my room and went to bed, since I was a coffee short of my usual and I was up for a while.
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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