food and pandas, and Chengdu has delivered! Ann was infuriated by Hot
Pot chili oil splashing on her new dress ("I was! Stupid hot pot. It
wasn't even that tasty"), I was enchanted by the crispy/tender combo
of my favorite vegetable, Bitter Melon, and we both have been shocked
by the vast number of fancy pastry shops here - orders of magnitude
more than there are in Shanghai. I mean, sometimes you just want some
tasty vegetable baozi for breakfast, and those are hard to come by
now, but I can hardly walk down the street without tripping over sweet
buns (tasty), cream-topped coffee dusted custard things (delicious!)
and baguettes to rival those made daily at Safeway (a side note: no
pastry purchase is safe from the threat of odd, unanticipated savory
items lurking inside. Does this have fish in it? Why is the
character for fish in its label on the display case? I'm not buying
this fucking fish bun!).
We were dismayed yesterday when we spotted a number of Hai Bao here.
They've broken through the Shanghai quarantine. Or perhaps there has
been a Hai Bao forced migration. But the Hai Bao do seem to have
maintained their upbeat demeanor. One question answered! They put
them to work selling pastries.
Chengdu: home to Panda everything! This includes: signs, posters,
toilet seat stickers, taxi logos, taxi hood decorations, trash can
decorations, a clothing line ("Hi Panda", at http://www.hipanda.org),
and cigarettes. I didn't know pandas smoked, but their cigarettes
come in gold boxes! Pretty swank! More to come.
Ann and Mike
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