Suzhou: delicious West China food!

Mike and I went to Suzhou last week. It is a smaller city (than
Shanghai, still larger then Seattle) famous for its gardens. I was
excited the night that we arrive to find a Uyghur restaurant because
they have great food. Especially delicious kebabs. Since that is my
current China favorite, Mike was immediately dragged in for dinner.

Okay, so that menu might look a bit less appealing, but it was
actually quite delicious. I was thrilled when I accidentally ordered
my favorite bread and lamb dish. It is strongly seasoned and served
with fresh cilantro on top. One of my personal favorites. Besides,
what is not to like about a place that actually serves a darker beer
with (slightly) more favor?

The other two pictures are ones that I took from the window of the
restaurant. Suzhou has lots of Van-trucks. They are everywhere and
despite being labeled "van" decidedly a truck. The third picture is
the view across the street from the restaurant. I think this is
another place to eat, but a bit confused by the title.

Anyway, more Suzhou posts to follow! This time with actual gardens.

Ann

The Search for Hai Bao

Mike and I spent many of our early Shanghai days trying to hide from
Hai Bao. However, he really is everywhere and after awhile we gave in
to the power of the Hai Bao. We too were seduced by his charms. We
learned his simple ways and language. Our relationship with Hai Bao
was short lived. We left his city with mixed emotions forced to
wonder what will happen to the million Hai Baos after Expo is over?
Will they form their own blue city? Will they mingle among us as
bright beacons of hope? We can only imagine...

Expo (The Final Installment)

After tromping past Scandinavia, Mike and I wound our way to the China
Pavilion. The China Pavilion is enormous, but we were still amazed
when we got to the entrance and there wasn't a line. Incredible. We
ran in quickly, feeling like we were getting away with something.
Inside were smaller pavilions for each of China's provinces (including
the province of Tibet). Sichuan, our favorite of course, had
everything: pandas, strange dog/dragon things. MIke and I were both
fascinated with the panda. Okay, I was fascinated with the panda, and
I have extensive panda-sanctuary plans for when we get to Sichuan. At
any rate, we both made imitation panda-gesture poses. And the wild
dragon dog things - I began to pose next to one when he blinked,
starling me! Ahh!

China Pavilion was pretty great, but we were both exhausted and soon
after decided to head home. There was a brief panic when we couldn't
find the exit. We tried asking some of the staff who seemed to speak
good English, but couldn't understand what we wanted (exit? way out?
I want to leave?). After making no progress we desperately hurried
through the pavilion. Luckily we found some exit arrows on the floor,
but we still reached several dead ends before finding the real exit
(inexplicably, all the other exits were shut and locked). Once we
were outside we started to worry that we had somehow missed the
up-in-the-air part of the China pavilion, but were too tired to
contemplate going back. Ever.

Probably.

Ann and Mike

Expo (Part 2)

Or What Happens When You are Waylaid in Scandinavia Before You Make it to the China Pavilion.

After the food debacle, we found ourselves in the Expo gift store looking for postcards.  Or, Ann found herself in the Expo gift store looking for postcards.  Mike found himself sitting on a bench outside, drinking the remainder of the water rations, wondering which pavilion to visit next, before following Ann into the Hai Bao purchasing fray.  The gift store (Shanghai is filled with Expo-licensed gift shops selling authentic Expo souvenirs, and the Expo itself is no exception to this rule) had some pretty interesting things.  For one, we discovered that Hai Bao is not just limited to posters and plush toys.  You can also find him on useful, everyday items.  I must say that I (Ann!) was sorely tempted, but Mike managed to pull me away before I gave in and purchased some great nail clippers.  So many choices! 

Thinking more clearly, we headed towards the China Pavilion.  We took the elevated walkway (So much dedicated Expo construction: it's a mile of cement walkway, thirty feet wide and forty feet off the ground!) and managed to simultaneously avoid a lot of other foot traffic, and see the view from above.  It was great!  The walk was long, with plenty of distraction along the way.  Predictably, we were completely waylaid by the Scandinavian Pavilions.  Sweden had some great horses that became the inspiration for Ann's Swedish Pose.  Denmark had a series of ramps that we saw people riding bicycles down.  Norway (or Finland, there is some debate) was large, white and egg shaped, surrounded by a broad, shallow moat.  It was also strangely mesmerizing and we took lots of pictures in front of it (few of which turned out).

After Scandinavia, we continued our journey towards the China Pavilion hoping to at least catch a glimpse and maybe get inside.  The crowd strangely sparse - we'd heard stories comparing the expo with that traffic jam outside of Beijing that took 9 days to clear - so we had hopes that we could accomplish the impossible.

Expo, Expo, Expo! (Part 1)

Mike and Ann (We're both contributing to this blog entry) made the pilgrimage to Shanghai Expo 2010 last Friday.  For those of you blissfully unaware (what is Expo?), Expo is a modern World's Fair hosted by Shanghai in China.  As far as purpose...well...in Seattle we have the Space Needle to thank the World's Fair for.  China will have the red inverted pyramid of their China Pavilion and a graveyard full of Hai Baos.  Hai Bao is everywhere in Shanghai.  Everywhere.  Every single park, mall and most hotel lobbies.  Posters, billboards, television ads.  Plush dolls carried along subway rides.  It is pretty remarkable.  Ubiquitous smiling blue Gumby.

And it's not just outlandish Hai Bao purchases - Shanghai has gone all-out for the Expo!  We rode a subway to get to the Expo, of course - everyone in Shanghai rides the subway everywhere - and we had picked this Expo entrance (I think there are 15 entrances in total, not all on-site, in what must be an effort to distribute the pretty serious pedestrian all-hours Expo traffic) because we had heard that the wait was short (so short! mercifully short!).  We wended through the interminable metal railings (fairly empty of people!), slalomed our way from the ticket selling booths to Airport-level security at the entrance (they wanded me down, made me take the pen out of my pocket), and then once through descended to another subway stop.  The Expo has its own subway line, three stops just like any stops throughout the rest of the city: two in the Expo grounds and one a ways off at the Expo entrance we had chosen.  The Expo, in a similar vein, has commandeered the ferry system:  there are four "Expo Water Gates".

Thus we arrived at the expo.  Awed, of course, but equally dazed.  Evidence of this is supported by our quick entrance into the Ireland Pavilion.  We walked up a quiet walkway and into some strange Dublin meets Shanghai art exhibit.  It was very odd.  From there we quickly backtracked to the main Pavilion only to find ourselves walking uphill and against the flow of traffic.  We quickly figured out that we had stumbled in the exit.  Undeterred, we continued through the pavilion to the entrance and then headed for the exit again.  Unknowingly we had begun by bypassing one of the expo's many lines.

From here we wandered.   The line to Canada was moving quickly (some people were running, actually, hurrying to get into an easy Pavilion) so we gave it a shot.  It was a fun, red (as you can see from the pictures), very Canadian experience.  We were greeted by a white guy on a television screen (the Expo has so many screens!) speaking Chinese.  Inside was at first sort of like a dance hall, but with more picture taking - then a room of images of Canada - then a fairly quiet room with slow wide-angle photographs fading one to the next, of a truck driver and a Quebecois vegetable warehouse (we didn't linger long enough to see whatever larger arc the room's exhibit may have had in store) - before finally leaving through a space in the wildly shaped thin-slatted exterior.

Russia and USA were nearby, so we moseyed over for a look.  The lines to both were long, the USA in particular, so we were forced to extrapolate from the buildings' exteriors what might be contained inside.  Russia was magnificent.  The USA, well, less so.  It was a terrible, car-dealership-like building.  It left both of us depressed and disoriented.

And hungry, it turned out.  From there we floundered into a food area fully living up to every Westerner's secret China eating nightmare.  Large signs, ambiguous prices, no sign of eating utensils, plates of food sitting out waiting to be grabbed by a member of the dense, pushing crowd.  The wooden chopsticks we finally found kept in a warm, moist drawer.  We opted for a quick rinse of Purell and eating with our hands fried baozi that we typically bought on the street for half what we thought we were paying, which turned out to be half again what we were actually charged when we got to the front.  After barely escaping alive with the questionable soup filled baozi safely in our stomachs we made a quick exit from the region.  We used our new found strength to strike out towards the China pavilion.

(Mike and Ann)

The Durian Incident / Mochi, how could you?

I had to wait an hour for dinner tonight, hungry, desperate, faint, while Mike led me from restaurant to expensive restaurant looking for somewhere able to satisfy his exacting standards at wholesale price.  The Princess and the Pea Vine.  We had taken the subway from Pete's place in Pudong, where we're now staying, over to ritzy Lujiazui - the financial center of the universe, and home to massively tall buildings and some dubious architectural decisions - and ended up prowling around The Super Brand Name Mall (that's its name!) for dinner.  Pete and Elyn had taken us there for dinner the other day, but Mike balked at the (admittedly rather expensive) Xiao Long Bao at the restaurant that had been our first choice plan.  We ended up at a Taiwanese place for dinner, not too expensive, not too bad.  Nothing special.  But somewhere during that long hour prior to dinner we had passed a dessert restaurant with pictures of mochi in the window.  I never leave a restaurant and immediately want dessert, but here I was pulling mike over to the mochi place.  Little did we know it wasn't a mochi place so much as a durian dessert place, but they did orders to-go, which was what we wanted.  I settled on the 5-mochi sampler and Mike got something strange that could have been custard, or could have been milk (it was milk) with two scoops in it:  one of thai black rice and one of durian.  The first bite of the mochi sampler was foreboding.  Or downright bad, really.  Kind of rotten, even.  Durian.

Anything that requires both pickles and a cup of Earl Grey Tea to wash the taste away is no good.

Mike and Ann

Ann and I started our day with extensive plans: fabric market, tea and grabbing food along the way.  Unfortunately, we didn't made it out of the house until 7 at night, after Ann got in a 3 hour nap (so tired!).  Thus our search for a good dinner place was under strain before it ever even began.  We arrived in Lujiazui and went to the only place that looked remotely promising, the Super Brand Name Mall (it doesn't sound remotely promising, does it).  There I searched and searched for a place to eat, becoming more worried as stipulations were passed on by Ann.  "No noodles.  No soup.  No Korean.  No sea food."...I took up the challenge.  We walked around the mall for almost an hour and after only 45 minutes I could tell that I was losing Ann.  It started with lagging as we were getting off the escalator.  She wasn't dodging other couples the way she normally can.  A glazed look had come into her eyes.  I made an almost fatal error by settling too soon, steering us towards a place that looked good and then aborting after we were seated.  Ann's eyes flashed with anger.  I fended her off with sweet words and managed to find a good Taiwanese place in the end.  Unfortunately, the Mochi place had already been spotted.  Our fate was sealed.

Durian burps for the rest of the night.  Worst fate in the world.

Ann and Mike

Dispensary

We were able to tour a Chinese herbal dispensary at the end of our last day.  It was amazing and I think that we could use some of the ideas to improve our own Bastyr Chinese Herbal Dispensary (attention Allen). 

Hopefully this numbering system that I'm using will show up on the blog.  If not...I'm sorry.  I can only hope that each picture and it's explanation will be decipherable.  

(Picture 22)  Note the nice wooden table and chairs.  I think it's time we got rid of that plastic table and moved in one of those!  Also, the boring white lab coats could be replaced with those snazzy blue uniforms.  Hmm?

(Picture 25)  Clearly our jar system is not challenging enough.  The drawers could effectively remove most visual cues.

(Pictures 26 and 27)  This formula is monumental.  Suddenly I am ashamed.

(Pictures 30 and 31)  Okay, so I think this may give us some clues on how to fold up the formulas using the non-paper bag method.  But I still have no real idea of how they are able to do this.  It is pretty amazing.

The dispensary was really incredible thing to get to see.  It was beautiful on the inside and amazing to watch how they measured and built all of the formulas.  Often they used no scales at all, but would just eyeball how much to put in each formula.  Sometimes they would pull out the tiny gold scale and measure the herbs that way.  We even got to see some rare herbs like cinnabar.  It was great.

Ann