While "random photos from around Asia" might not be the greatest blog title this is in essence what these are. I quite like the photo of the Beijing Bird's Nest Stadium and the tourist with the drone from Laos. Overall I think I am most happy with this set of photos. I guess with travel I saw new places so consequently the photos of those places are new. In Shanghai I often did just my daily life or saw the same things several times.
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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.
Two days ago by the time of posting I arrived in the city of Guangzhou, formally know as Canton, for a short visit before meeting my mom is Hong Kong. Guangzhou was a major treaty port and was one of the first Chinese SEZ. Now it is a major trade hub for mainland China in part because of its physical closeness to Hong Kong. The first night in Guangzhou I didn't do much besides get my train ticket, which I later learned was wrong, at around 8:00pm and ate some local specialties, a peanut rice crispy type thing and some candied ginger, of Fenghuang my friend gave me. The next day I decided to see all the kind of odd sites. I got a 24 hour "go anywhere on the metro for one price" cards and I was off First was the Martyrs Memorial Park where there were monuments to Communist revolutionary hero's, Sino-Soviet Friendship, and Sino-North Korean Friendship. I then visited the Peasant's Movement Institute, now a small museum, where many early communists, like Mao Zedong, taught. Interestingly it was a KMT institution that was formed before the KMT and the Chinese Communists split after the death of Sun Yat-sen. Dr. Sun apparently spoke at the Institute a few times. The museum was ok, it was free and has Mao's old office hidden away in a corner so I guess it was worth it. Continuing on, I then went to Xiaobai (小白), home of Guangzhou's African and Middle Eastern migrant communities. To be honest, while I did see more black people (about 10 in total) and sober Arabs (about 30) then I normally do the communities seem small. This may be because they are all off for Chinese New Year (a holiday they don't celebrate, but would get off regardless), the weather left much to be desired so many stayed home, or the size of the communities have been overblown by the foreign media. You can be the judge of that. I moved on to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, an impressive building with a ok exhibit on Dr. Sun but not much else. Finally I got dinner on Beijing Pedestrian Street. I got some seafood noodles that were kind of overpriced and didn't provide me with enough food, I ended up getting some squid sticks form a roast meat guy just to satisfy my hunger/seafood cravings. I then returned back to my room to snack on more Fenghuang specialties.
My posts have slowed down a bit because of Chinese New Year aka the Spring Festival which, rereading this post, I didn't actually write much about. Even though I was actually quite busy most of the day eating, drinking, visiting relatives of my friend, and lighting fireworks Chinese New Year in China is a hard experance to describe. While I can tell you that I ate four large meals, started drinking at noon, tried not to blow my hand off with cheap Chinese fireworks, and watched the CCTV New Year's Gala, it loses something in translation. What I can say is it is a rather crazy holiday, if you wanted to you could do Spring Festival from dawn till dusk. During Spring Festival it seems like every old Chinese lady in the country is in a constant state of cooking and every old Chinese man is giving the foreigner some of his special medicinal corn whiskey out of a terribly large plastic bottle. I can confirm, the food is on point. Interestingly enough, I think many of the dishes are made to be recycled into new dishes. Pig's foot noodles breakfast becomes a protein at the major lunch meal which becomes a soup base for late night dumplings. My friend's father-in-law was especially proud of the wild mountain bees served fried with chillies, apparently they are both expressly expensive and rare. They tasted pretty good actually. One of the major activities is visiting other people's, mainly relatives, houses, all of which serve more food and alcohol. While the food can be refused, your new host will fight you to stay and eat. I ended up eating a second lunch because my friend's brother-in-law put the food out on the table before we could say no. The most iconic image of Chinese New Year is the fireworks, legal without a permit only on the New Year's holiday. They are fun but it is important to note that the fuses are so short they might as well not exist and not all fireworks actually work well. We got a few duds in our batch, this is something you just have to live with. The fireworks are also constant, it is as close as I ever want to come to becoming a resident of Aleppo. Overall I enjoyed my first real Chinese New Year, even with the craziness.
Ok, I know this is late but it is good. These stories are from yesterday but I had some Internet and app issues.
\nThanks to Chinese New Year driving an otherwise very had working people to a degree of laziness I had to set off at 8:30 to get to my 12:30 bus in Zhangjaijie City. While the bus station in Zhangjaijie was less nice than Changsha's, it is light-years ahead of Chiang Rai's. I ate some xiaolongbao (小笼包) and waited for my bus. The bus itself was actually really nice, the passengers sat in the second floor so I got a great front row seat to the madness that the Chinese describe as a road network. After a occasionally peaceful and often nerve-wracking bus ride I made it to Fenghuang County (凤凰县) and met my friend for first dinner. \nFirst dinner was soup, rice, duck with duck's blood rice, egg with some type of wild vegetable, and a fried fresh mini-shrimp pancake (to serve as a balance to the giant shrimp of Thailand). We then walked around Phoenix Ancient Town, where we ran into three dudes who really like me for some reason. I took some pictures with my fan club and continued on. \nAfter quickly dropping my bags off in my room, my friend and I hurried to the nightly Miao cultural show. The Miao are one of China's minority peoples, like the Hui, and I believe are actually in the majority in this small part of China. They have their own cultural traditions, art, style, and language from the majority Han (the group most people think when you say "Chinese people") people. After a torch lit precession and running into my fan club again to the stage the show got underway. There is a very particular style of Chinese tourist show that I have seen on TV but never experance firsthand. While there was the standard dancing and explaining cultural traditions, there were several elements that felt more Chinese. First, there were two different art auctions during the show. While the art was nice my friend told me the prices were greatly inflated. Next, there was a large amount of audience participation. After being somewhat conscripted by my friend, I ended up dressed in traditional Miao women's clothing and entered into a drum contest. I think I totally bombed, apparently no one else thought so since I won. My prize was an ox necklace (apparently the Miao like oxen), some black good luck face paint, and quite a bit of rice wine. I thought they were only going to give me a shot, but when I downed the shot they handed me a flower pot and told me to "干杯" (ganbei: literally "drain the cup" is used as the toast in China and implies you kill the drink in question) that too (which I did) I was aloud to sit down as the One Night King of Miao Drums. Don't worry about the alcohol, Chinese rice wine actually has very little. \nMy friend and I then got second dinner at a late nighy grill (which is apparently another Miao thing) which was good but it apparently wasn't the best. |
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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