Hangzhou Sights

Hangzhou is known for being one of the most popular tourist cities in China, and it's not hard to see why particularly in spring. I haven't quite sorted out the food pictures, so here's some photos from Hangzhou's best tourist spots for now.

West Lake - Photo taken from the Su Causeway

West Lake - White cherry blossoms around the eastern part of the lake

West Lake by night, with the famous willow trees in the foreground

Bamboo grove at the Hangzhou Botanic Gardens

Random cherry blossom tree at Hangzhou Botanic Gardens

Random cherry blossom tree at Xi Xi Wetlands

油菜花 at Xi Xi Wetlands

Scenery at Xi Xi Wetlands

Japanese knick-knacks

I recently received 2 different types of Japanese snacks. First, the mother came back from Nagano with a few boxes of these apple-crate lookalikes from the ski resort (of all places).

They looked just like real apples.

They felt like real apples.

Apple cake!

A few weeks later, I was playing host to some Japanese government officials who had just flown in from Tokyo. They gave me a small box of snacks with an egg motif after the meeting. Opened it up in front of my curious colleagues.

From what I could tell with my limited Japanese, this egg-shaped snack had sesame and originated from a shop in Ginza.

The *egg white* was made out of white chocolate, and the *egg yolk* bit was black sesame. Pretty groovy.

Kempinski Hotel, Suzhou

The Kempinski Hotel in Suzhou Industrial Park has a lovely setting on the edge of Dushu Lake.

Their food is pretty good too. For example, we all found this shrimp dish to be excellent.

Until we looked at the menu.

Air China from Shanghai to Tianjin

Finally something worse than Singapore Airline's SIN-PKG fare...this seafood noodles on Air China domestic was basically gooey artificial crab meat on pasta. Very nasty.

(Didn't help that my in-flight reading material was the chapter from Julie and Julia revolving around boeuf bourguignon)

Steamboat in China - Version 2

A few days after the roundtable steamboat, we were also taken out to dinner in Tianjin by our Chinese partners for the longest steamboat session (in terms of the length of the table, not the duration of the meal) ever.

My little corner, where a colleague and I shared a portion.

Garnishing, dips, and the ever-amazing chilli oil.

Veggies - not quite so pretty as the previous session's, but still good. I love the dehydrated tofu - it's really good when it soaks up the hot stock.

Mixture of beef and lamb. The beef was no less worthy.

Garlic to put into the soup.

The looooong table. Being seated at the edge means that I was one of the least important people at the dinner.

My fave sesame sauce, chilli oil and coriander dip.

Midway through, the waitresses came to dish out weird looking sliced bits that looked like they had originated from the deep insides of various animals and had never seen the light of day until their host organism had been electrocuted to death. Subsequently, I was told that it was slices of some large shellfish and that I was missing out big time if I didn't try it. So I did.

And it was so wonderful, I asked for a second serve. Till this day, I have no idea whether it really was shellfish, and frankly I'd rather not know.

The main dish, or 主食. I finally realised why the Chinese serve the carbs at the end...so that in case you're not full on the good stuff (ie. meats and seafood), the cheaper and more inferior stuff will fill you up at the end. In Tianjin, they prefer noodles and dumplings to rice.

Then a steaming hot pot of braised pork in soya sauce came along as well. Excellent in the freezing cold weather.

Steamboat in China - Version 1

I went to Tianjin from Shanghai, and it was around minus 5 deg C in early Feb. I am of the opinion that there's nothing better to eat in extreme cold weather than steamboat!

What one serving looked like:

Garnishes

Close up: We had many people in our team who were cheering to see the coagulated pig's blood. Apparently AVA doesn't permit it to be sold in Singapore anymore since it's apparently unsafe.

We also had prawns....

Veggies - made the soup stock even sweeter.

The dumplings were GOOD.

Sesame sauce with spring onions and coriander...divine.

Even better - chilli oil.

I like steamboat in China because they always give you your own pot, which means you don't need to reach halfway across a table to search for your missing food item. And you can drink the soup straight out of it.

My pot.

The entire spread. It was a lovely night.

Shanghai Nights - Fu Mao Mini Lobster 复茂小龙虾

I was passing through Shanghai last month, and at every stage of my journey, was extremely full because of the 12-course meals that we had to sit through (there was also massive drinking but that's a story for another day). However, I managed to sneak away from the group late one night to meet up with an old classmate.

When I last visited Shanghai in 2005, I remembered the most exciting place that she brought me to back then was a shop that sold spicy boiled mini lobsters, or 小龙虾. These are more like yabbies or crayfish though - with a huge head, and very little meat. So after a night coffee, I suggested going there for a late night snack - apparently they're open till 4am.

The shop is called Fu Mao （复茂), and they have branches all over Shanghai, and some in Hangzhou. I went to the Fuxing Road outlet.

Outside looking in - and getting very excited

What a menu! Trays and trays of mini lobster and crabs! Since my friend had I had both had dinner, and even dessert, we felt rather limited in our options.

So we decided to go with a half tray of mildly spicy 小龙虾, which cost us RMB28 (approx S$5.60). This was finished in a flash.

And we ordered 2 hairy crabs. Each cost RMB 25 (or S$5!!). I was so excited at seeing this. It didn't matter whether this crab was from the famous lake or not...for 5 bucks a crab!

Turning it upside down to tear the crab apart

Taking off the shell

All ready to dip into vinegar

And....shamefully, we were so greedy (ok I was so greedy) that we ordered another tray of hairy crabs to share, cooked in mildly spicy stock as well. At RMB 68 (S$13.60), this was a steal! These were smaller than the earlier ones, but again, no complaints.

Address: 595 Fuxing Road 复兴路 (near South MaoMing Road 茂名南路口)

Tel: 86-(0)21-64370370
Website: http://www.xiaxie.com/benyue.asp

or if you're linguistically challenged, you can also view http://www.gudumami.cn/en/shop/cs06527/menu1.htm （which features another branch)