The Early Bird Catches the Tour

2009 09 15 – Day 81 – Chengde

Arriving in Chengde at 04:30 or thereabouts, I expected a bit of a wait before I could find out about visiting the tourist sights. I was wrong. Riding the high-tide of arriving passengers, I was teased out of the flow like a tickled trout and, before I knew it, I had negotiated a tour deal and was sat in a minivan on the way to a hotel to dump my stuff, splash some water on my face, find some food and wait for the sun to rise!
After freshening up, I had a bit of time to wander the chilly pre-dawn streets.

This square was virtually empty just 20 or 30 minutes earlier, but now was alive with people exercising, some individually, but mostly in groups. Aerobics, dancercise, tai chi and foot-badminton were the most common.

And while some exercised their limbs, others exercised their songbirds

Now most of the city was awake I could get breakfast:

On my morning stroll, I'd seen one of the reasons American fast food chains like McDonalds and KFC are making headway into the Chinese market – because, at certain times of the day, they're the only places open!
I'm glad I held out for a genuine Chinese breakfast.

Around Shanhaiguan

2009 09 14 – Day 80 – Shanhaiguan

Like Qianmen in Beijing, Shanhaiguan is part of the 'new old' China.
The new arched entrance to the old tourist attraction The First Pass Under Heaven:

The building to the left with the circular windows is part of the hotel I stayed in, which was very convenient.

New flat surfaces and sharp edges abound in the old town. Perhaps everything's new?

Except this food stall. Delicious spicy eggy pancakes – a staple breakfast item for my time in Beijing, so I don't know why I didn't have a good picture of one earlier.

The sun came out, collaborating with the smog to make my photo of The First Pass Under Heaven look like it's from the 1970s or something:

Within the tourist zone around and beyond the gate are a variety of gentle entertainments:

archery with arrows of dubious quality – they each lacked at least one fletching; drumming on massive drums of impressive sound and rebound; wide wall walking:

bashed biscuit buying

(and eating! Mostly almond and honey I think. Mmm!)
In fact there was plenty of opportunity to buy a variety of tourist tat, but I declined the enthusiastic stall holders' advances.

The rising ranks of tour groups were beginning to crowd my space. It was time to move on.

Shanhaiguan Nightlife

2009 09 13 – Day 79 – Shanhaiguan

First stop after Beijing – Shanhaiguan – a heavily 'restored' old town to the east of Beijing, occupying a strategic location between the mountains and the sea and well known for being the only place The Great Wall meets the sea.

Having arrived at the end of the afternoon, I'd barely had sufficient time to find a place to stay and settle in before darkness fell.

And so out I strode into the warm summer night in search of dinner

The spiders crafting impressive webs on their lampposts were easily large enough that a few could make substantial and possibly nutritious dinner... but no way was I tempted to try!

There were very few people out and about, but those that were still managed to obstruct my photography:

having said that, I think the silhouettes add to this photo. I believe the man is airing his crickets – which gave the street a lovely gently musical ambiance.

Eventually, having left the old town, I found a streetside barbecue.

With the help of the smiley, friendly, if a little embarrassed, teen girls waiting the tables, and a good deal of pointing and not being fussy, I managed to have a fairly tasty dinner of fish, sausage, garlic bread and pepper. I'd innocently ordered what I thought was a bell pepper to add some veg to the meal, but in fact it was a massive chili pepper! It was one of those hot peppers where you know its hot after you've had some, but the true heat doesn't come through until two or three bites later... by which point it was far too late. Trying to keep my breathing normal, stem the sweat at the hairline, soothe my mouth with beer and not cry was tough for a moment or two, but I beat it... mostly... I did have hiccups for much of the rest of the evening!
Walking off the chili-pepper before bed and exploring the town a little, I hadn't gone far before the sound of drumming danced out of the darkness and, like the flame beguiling a moth, drew me to its source.

A small troop were giving a bit of a streetside show and a rag-tag band of onlookers had gathered. It looked like some kind of amateur/hobby group thoroughly enjoying themselves. I watched from the sidelines for a good 15-20 minutes till they were done, enjoying the rhythm of the drums, the crashing of the symbols and the enthusiasm of the performers. One sprightly elderly gent with a twinkle in his eye, and doing a good job of looking like a Chinese drag-queen, spied me grinning from the sidelines on his way by and made at least a couple of attempts to rope me in! A negotiation that brought much to the amusement of the chubby teen who'd sidled to my side for a closer look at the sole foreigner present.
Soon after the last drumbeat had ebbed out into the night, I beat a hasty retreat back through the old town to my bed.

Capital Curiosities

2009 08-09 – Beijing

Just a bunch of interesting stuff sighted around the city

Iconic, cliché, but bears repeating I think.

I'd not previously thought of kite flying as a way to chill out.

There's nothing sensible anyone can say about this, it's just plain wrong!
But as strange as the dog with jeans was, I was more taken aback on a late night walk home from a club, when I passed a man walking his goose!
No that's not a metaphor!
No it wasn't the alcohol and no the goose didn't have a lead, but its owner did walk in such a way as to protect it from over-curious passers by, be they man or beast!

What better time to revise your algebra than when stuck in traffic?! Very practical.

How many young Chinese men does it take to hoover the road?... Three apparently.
Lets hope they really were measuring pollution levels or something useful like that.

I have never before walked into a shop to such a simultaneously horrific and comedic greeting!
These cheeky chops reminded me of the Ren & Stimpy episode A Yard Too Far... thankfully, in the real world of that particular Chinese shop, there was no sign of an over-amorous guard baboon!

Cooking at the Hutong

2009 08-09 – Beijing

Keen to engage in Chinese culture in as many ways as possible, I was happy to find some cooking classes at The Hutong. Sadly I was never involved in a tea party in their cute little tea room:

To prevent us novices from slowing down the show, plenty of preparation had been done for us,

but we still got make our own special blend:

Our finished dumplings and salad:

My not-too-bad (but far from pro) attempt at hand-pulled noodles:

Mmmm!

Three Cups Chicken!  Don't ask me why it's called that, but it's Taiwanese and really tastey!

One of the friendly chefs teaching, Tina, has culinary expertise running in her family. Her father is a chef improving international relations with his diplomatic dishes at the American Embassy.

A couple of Sichuan dishes.

Eating Beijing

2009 08-09 – Beijing

Finding a place to eat in Beijing is never a problem, though choosing might be!  To a European's eyes,  an incredibly high percentage of small businesses are eateries and, given the number of people many of them employ and how cheap the food is, you have to wonder how they make a living.
Happily, thanks to my parents no doubt, I have a flexible palate and almost everything I ate was at least agreeable, but more often than not very tasty.

My favourite alley stall near Beijing Station served up a good Beijing breakfast pick-n-mix of boiled egg, dough sticks, fried bread, noodles and xifan (sheefan) – a rice porridge that can be incredibly bland (perhaps the most bland dish in Chinese cuisine), but this stall did a reasonable job of giving it a tiny bit of taste.

Mr. Lee – Chinese fast food! Simple dishes that seemed so much better than the food in Western fast food chains. Unlike most Western travellers, I have built up an immunity to the siren song of the 'Golden Arches' and would prefer Mr. Lee any day of the week.

Generally speaking, eating in China is a social event and a group of people will share a collection of dishes. This results in individual dishes that are quite focused in their flavour, texture and colour and yet the quantity of food per dish is more than enough for one. Eating alone in restaurants is therefore less than ideal as you either have to order way too much food or be restricted in the variety of contents of your meal.

Though very oily, this was possibly the best aubergine dish I've ever eaten! It was certainly one of the most garlicky! I think this was also the first dish where I was introduced to the Chinese cuisine concept of meat as a garnish, with slivers of fried pork sprinkled across the top. The noodles were a separate dish I ordered so I wasn't just eating aubergine... I wasn't expecting quite so much food but, in a stomach busting burst of Britishness, I cleared the plate.

Hotpot! With a large gas cylinder under your table, you cook your meat and veg yourself at the table in either of the two tasty boiling liquids – one extremely spicy and the other not.

A happy aspect of travelling alone that I didn't anticipate is that local people are not so shy about approaching you and helping you out if they can.... which is exactly what happened here! Jing-Hua, a medical school fresher, and her mum generously invited me to join them and share their dinner as they had too much anyway – brilliant!

Urumqi Food

2009 08 10-11 – Days 45-46 – Urumqi

One of the ubiquitous hole-in-the-wall cheap eateries:

If a place is full of locals then you know it must have something good going on and so we joined the queue in the doorway for four of the 24 or so tightly packed stools.

Uncertain with our combined Chinese skills and the speed of the place we fell back on the old trick of pointing at our neighbours tastey looking food and indicating that we'd have what he's having.  This is what we got:

Pretty spicey, but survivable and tastey.

Stopping at a street seller's stall, Akanuma persuaded us to buy this, touting it as the 'King of Fruit':

For those who don't know, this is a Durian fruit.  It's opening is held tightly closed by the wire to protect the fruit I'm sure, but perhaps more importantly to protect the noses of those who walk past te seller's stall!  Yes, the Durian fruit stinks to high heaven!  The smell is such that any sane person might question why would anyone want to eat such a thing!?  Durian fans, of which there are many in Asia, claim it is delicious, but the aroma is so off-putting it puts the most pungent French cheese to shame.  It's so bad that many hostels and hotels in Asia ban it from their premises!  We hadn't seen such a sign in our place and no one smelled us coming, so we were able to return to our room with our royal prize.  Curious about the unusual combination of apparent deliciousness and obvious stinkiness, I was persuaded to try some, scooping out a small mouthful of the soft inner flesh... in the flavour there was echoes of the smell that didn't endear it to me, but there was something intriguing about other subtle flavours that floated elusively around the central flavour. Although I thought I would not go back for more, following my initial unfavourable encounter, after a little while I found myself reaching in for more!  I couldn't help myself!  My second mouthfull was, however, enough to satisfy my curiosity and I didn't have the desire or compulsion to return for more.

Urumqi has a thriving daily night market, the best part of which is given over to feeding locals and tourists.

Despite our Durian adventures earlier, I wouldn't set out to eat some of the more exotic offerings, but Rob had different ideas, challening us as soon as he saw these:

On the left are silk worm grubs and on the right some unknown but substantial beetle/bug/insect thingy.  At first I thought the silk worms looked more palatable than the bugs, but that was before one of the silk worms moved!  They were still alive!  At this point I felt properly repulsed and a little bit queasy, but we'd made our choices, and the chef was busy preparing our dishes.

The silk worms, rather surprisingly, required more work to eat than the bugs, as we were advised to rip the grub in two and remove the small and thin black central part before popping the two parts in your mouth.  Though fairly repulsive to look at, both grubs and bugs turned out to be not too bad... can't say I'd be rushing back for seconds (ever again), but they were definitely edible.

A Uighur muslim promotes his fishy carousel.

Only after we'd ordered these seafood barbeque sticks and begun to eat them did we remember our trivia: Urumqi has a place in the Guiness Book of Records for the most remote city from any sea in the world (2,500 km).  Despite such geographical opposition, the barbequed seafood was tastey and we saw no reason to not finish what we'd ordered.
 


Anyone brave enough to devour this satanic offering would no doubt curry favour with the Lord of Darkness.... I didn't see any takers and I wasn't going to hang around to find out!