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| Eats, shoots and leaves |
SPECIAL THANKS 1: Due to the oppressive, authoritarian nature of the People’s Republic of China we are currently unable to update our blog. Fortunately, using hollowed-out statues of Chairman Mao we have been able to smuggle updates out of the country and our fearless executive tea boy Raj Malalgoda has posted them online from his London base. Many thanks to Raj, (c/o Reebok Sports Club, London, in case the Chinese Ministry of Interior is monitoring this blog - sorry mate but I can’t do solitary confinement) for sacrificing his personal safety in the interests of mild amusement.
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| Bloody Commies |
SPECIAL THANKS 2: To Rhaani’s brother Nickos whose birthday gift to Rhaani was a night’s accommodation at the awesome Buddha Zen hotel. As Rhaani said “This is amazing, it’s just how I imagined China to be”.
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| Best hotel ever |
WHERE: CHENGDU
WHERE (less detailed): the People’s Republic of China
WEATHER: uurgh, rain, and cloudy, and kinda cold. Unfortunately it feels just like London. Dammit, this is supposed to be the smug part of the blog where we get to make everyone back home feel envious!
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| this is not fair, it’s supposed to be warm on holiday |
TEMPERATURE: in Chengdu a measly 12degrees (compared to London’s 13, yes I checked) on top of Mt Emi -5.
LOCALS: really friendly – I think. They can’t speak a word of English so I’m only guessing. But they don’t leap out of moving vehicles to try and sell us something or chase us down the street asking would like to buy something/ go somewhere/do something.
FOOD: touch and go, too often go. Strange as it sounds you want to say to some of the restaurants “You should really visit The Golden Dragon on Kensal Rise High Road, their Szechuan Chicken is a perfect example of how the dish should be”. When you find a dish with some meat in it tastes amazing. Unfortunately on our Chinese All-Star tour there was more tofu than at a Hippy convention...at Stonehenge... on Summer Solstice. Rhaani contends that there were plenty of meat dishes on the tour but a) lung doesn’t count as meat and b) I’m still not sure that was lung, it was too disgusting to be animal... The random street foods were sometimes pretty tasty, sometimes edible, and sometimes regrettable. Perhaps not knowing what the hell was inside the dim sum contributed to this. To be fair the biggest problem was finding somewhere where you could see what the hell you were ordering. We visited a rare place that had English translations and got three awesome main dishes, some top quality fried rice as well as drinks and it came to less than £10. So when they get it right, they get it right.
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| Bag of Duck Anyone? |
PRICE OF A BEER: 60p for a 500ml of SNOW BEER the sweetest, least alcoholic tasting beer you’ll ever drink, even more girly than a stein of German strawberry beer.
OF RANDOM INTEREST: all the soft drink cans in Chengdu tend to be old-school pull-off ring pulls. Even the newer brands like Pepsi Max.
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS: never before have I been so utterly and completely lost. Not just physically but socially, culturally and, were I a 19-year-old sociology student, I dare say spiritually. From the second we stepped off the plane it became clear that no-one spoke English. Our taxi driver looked blankly at us as we repeated our hotel to him: BUDDHA, ZEN, BuDDHa zEN. His controller was equally as confused by this strange and foreign word. Luckily our hotel was in the shadow of the city’s famous Wen Shu temple
so at least the taxi driver will have heard of that... the driver’s blank stare continued... even while we pointed to the temple on a map... of his city...with roads on it... and local landmarks.
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| Wen Shu temple, apparently not a big deal in Chengdu |
In the end an English speaking person in the taxi office managed to help us out...arriving at our excellent hotel (home to Rhaani’s dream bathroom) we found ourselves in the middle of what looked like Chengdu’s Chinatown, which technically must just be town?? ...dumping our bags we headed out for food, and walked passed some of the foulest, most disgusting market stalls known to man, all of which had massive queues of eager customers by the way... realising that no matter how far we walked or how many restaurants we passed the fact remained that that none of them had any English wording on their menu’s or pictures of dishes or any waiting staff that spoke English...
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| Wen Shu temple, apparently not a big deal in Chengdu |
fortunately a client had given me a book with pictures of various foods in it and we ended up eating chicken, of some sort...in a big pot...with bok choi...and mushrooms... China is definitely the place to go if you’re an underperforming child. Whether they’re thanking you for saving their life or lambasting you for running over their newborn baby their vocal tone and volume doesn’t seem to change, it’s all one long loud shout....Panda tour... Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin could learn a thing or two from these guys. We were snapping away for ages and somehow all we got were useless arse shots...Did you know? Pandas eat for 16hrs a day...
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| A rare face shot |
... but the baby panda’s were “the cutest things [Rhaani]’s ever seen” -....Chinese fish market, never mind Saw 3, if you have to baby sit your blood-thirsty teenage nephew take him here and let him watch frogs being skinned alive and fish being gutted while still breathing. Much like fresh lobster in fancy restaurants the fish are kept in small tanks. Customers tell the fishmonger how much fish they want and the fishmonger selects prospective candidates. He plops the fish on the scale to see if it’s the size you want. If it is, he bashes it on the head with a lump of wood. If it isn’t he throws it back into the tank. I swear you can see the fishes craning their necks to hear how much the customer has asked for, then puffing out their chests or sucking in their guts accordingly. “2kg? Nah that’s not me, I’ve been hitting the gym hard this week. Been doing my lengths, I’m a solid 4kg now, 4kg easily. Pick larry, he’s dead on 2kg”...Best of all, after the fish has been twatted with the lump of wood it’s then gut it while it’s still flapping around on the counter. You can see it breathing and sometimes it jumps on the floor only to be whacked another couple of times. Meanwhile the customer just stands around having a cigarette, chatting and waiting for the finished product. Next time your fishmonger swears to you that your fish is the freshest in town ask him to prove it....
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| Goddamit, I’m 2.4kg, ask anyone. I’ve been using creatine |
...our 2-day all-Chinese tour of the Leshan Giant Buddha, funnily enough a huge Buddha carved into the side of a mountain, and the sacred Buddhist mountain Emi Shan...a truly surreal experience. Everyone else on the tour was Chinese and only two of them spoke broken English (unlike the tour guides who didn’t speak a word of English). Best of all was the fact that Rhaani didn’t want to appear rude and so sat and listened attentively to the tour guide whenever he explained something to the group...
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| dear god I thought he was only going to talk for 2minues, it’s been half an hour and he’s yet to take a breathe |
...the Chinese people have absolutely no problem with pushing passed you. Even when there is space to you either side. Perhaps this has to do something to do with the fact there are so many people in the country....no-one was more guilty of this than the Chinese version of Little Britain’s Marjorie Dawes who banged into us countless times during our mountain trip.
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| Hello Fat Fighters... |
The absolutely stunning Ebony Museum, a complete surprise but the 20ft long sculptures of Chinese history was breathe-taking. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take any photo’s and they didn’t have any souvenir books...Paul’s almighty cock-up - leaving our gloves in the bus while we ascended Mt Emi Shan, it might be one of the four holy Buddhist mountains but with a temperature of -5 and a chilling wind as Rhaani pointed out “This is, like, the worst place ever” as her non-existent at the best of times circulation took an almighty battering....
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| I don’t care how my hair looks just take the f$%king photo.... |
...tour food, after spending a night in an ashtray of a hotel room we turned up for our 5:30am breakfast to be met with what looked like gruel and catfood...
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| Breakfast of Champions |
...Chengdu has the strangest traffic situation. Stand with your back to the road and you’d swear the streets were empty. Turn around and there are four lanes of bumper to bumper traffic as well as hundreds of motorbikes and motorised bikes flying along. But none of them make any sound at all. It’s bizarre....in addition the city has this confusing Highway Code whereby there are traffic lights and marked pedestrian walkways on every corner but none of the cars take any notice and none of the pedestrians seem that upset about it. You’ll wait for the green man and when you go to cross there’s more traffic than when you were waiting. In addition motorbikes and push-bikes also use the crossways when they’re turn green...
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| Everyone you are green for go |
Also all school children 7-18 years now wear baggy shell suit tracksuits. At first we thought Chengdu must be hosting the biggest School Sports Event on the planet but it turns out tracksuits are now school uniforms. Pretty sure this has put a severe dent in Anne Summers China’s profits.
****NEW FEATURE****
TRAVELLERS TIT-BIT: Did you know that Mother Pandas only look after 1 of their offspring. So when a Panda has twins it just abandons the one to die, nice.
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| Eenee... meanee...minee... moe |
****NEW FEATURE****
THE CHINESE EAT WHAT?: Pea flavoured Ice lollies. Sounds like something my mother would buy me in the interests of nutrition. “Great news Paul, they didn’t have any Fabs or Feasts... but I did manage to find a Pea-licious!”
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| This better count as one of my 5-a-day |
UP NEXT: the Yangtze River and the Three Gorges.
**********************ADDENDUM********************************************
A "THE CHINESE EAT WHAT?" SPECIAL
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| Culinary Delight |
I probably should have mentioned this earlier but we're currently in Sichuan province, home to Szechuan cuisine. Turns out the province's signature dish is "hot" pot, and it's spiritual home is Chongqing which is where we are currently spending a few of days before setting off on our Yangtze River Cruise.
So armed with the name - in Mandarin swiggles - of top hot-pot restaurant Fatty Zhou's we head out for a taste sensation. Having now tasted hot-pot I can categorically state that hot-pot is a total misnomer. It should really be called "oh my god, oh my god, my mouth is actually on fire, i'm not kiddin, oh jesus, oh crap, it's like i just licked the sun" pot. The cooking process is different. They put this big pot of boiling oil filled with chillis and millions of Szechuan peppers in front of you then you select numerous little uncooked dishes to drop into the boiling oil. The hidden kicker is that the longer you take to eat the food the longer it stays marinating in the chilli oil and the hotter it gets. The more cleverly hidden kicker is that things like lettuce and bok choi which you think will be nice and mild instead soak up vast lakes of lava jettisoning them into your mouth on the first chew.
Returning to the meal the entire menu is in Mandarin but as luck would have it a waitress managed to find an English translation and the real fun started. Turns out dishes available for our dining pleasure include pork aorta, fresh duck intestine, deboned chicken feet, fatty intestines or brains. In the spirit of Indiana Jones I decided to go with brains. I'm not actually sure which animal they belonged to but they were brains nonetheless.
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| Mind over (grey) matter |
Admittedly the brain only made up a small selection of what we ordered - pork dumplings, meatballs, pork sausage, potato, bok choi, beef strips, Indian bread and egg fried rice - but we had (Rhaani by accident) our fair share of brains. The weirdest thing though is the absolute revulsion at the sight and thought of eating it. Like there is some sort of your hardwiring that says: "dude this is the most vital part of the body, I am not going to let you get in the habit of eating this" - anyway it turns out brain is quite slushy.
But the slushiness was an afterthought, completely overshadowed by the absolute fiery heat of the hot-pot. Each diner is given a small serving of sesame seed oil, soya sauce, garlic salt and plain salt to flavour their own serving, but this was pretty pointless as nothing - not even the 1litre of full fat pepsi I inhaled - takes the slightest edge off the Tongue numbing, mouth scalding experience. Forget a beef vindaloo as the epitome of spicy this thing was obscene. my eyes, nose and ears didn't stop running throughout the meal and my tongue only started to consider forgiving me after we found a dairy maid stand on the way home and I treated it to a double whippy ice-cream.
