望德楼清真餐厅 - Wangdelou Halal Restaurant

This is the first of several posts in which I will translate receipts or other things from my recent trip to China. This translation comes from Wangdelou Halal Restaurant, near the Hutong district in Beijing.

I couldn't remember what restaurant this was, even after looking at the food and the date. After searching for the address it was a little clearer. The food was just OK, which explains my fuzzy memory of the place.



宫保鸡丁 - gongbao jiding - Kung pao chicken.
荷兰豆 － hé lán dòu － Beans (from Holland?). I don't recall this dish.
米饭 - mǐ fàn - Cooked rice.
番茄虾仁 - fānqié xiārén - Shelled shrimp balls in Tomato sauce.
可口可乐 - kě kǒu kě lè - Coca-cola (I think it was Sprite, but who's counting).

Total: 103 Yuan.

Future posts will include more detail.

Taiwan photos (台北照片)

Tomorrow we leave Taiwan and head back to Vancouver. Here are a few brief photos from our stay.

1. Taipei 101 at night. This is the second tallest building in the world. We visited the observatory Thursday morning.

2. Fresh mango ice cream with brown sugar. Delicious - and great on a hot day or night.

3. The night market our hostel is located inside. We spent many evenings shopping here.

4. Teppanyaki dinner in the night market.

5. A view of the North from Taipei 101.

Fixed posts from the past month

I had some time today and I fixed all of the broken posts from the last month of travel. Everything that was missing was in the bottom area, and I've marked it all in italics so that it's easy to see what's changed. Here are links to the posts that I've updated for your reading pleasure:

1. Fireworks in Chengdu
2. Hangzhou and Beyond
3. Goodbye Suzhou (再见苏州)
4. 熊猫 Research Base
5. Missing photos
6. Sichaun Hot Pot (四川火锅)
7. On to Xi'an
8. Shanghai Expo (上海世博会)

These changes should answer some of the questions I saw in the comments (that made no sense to me at the time).

I will try and post about Taipei before we leave on Saturday morning.

Arrived in Taipei

We have arrived in Taipei and are already enjoying it a lot. Amy's family has been amazing!

From Taipei we can access all sites so I took a look at my blog and realized that most of my posts have been cut off. Everything after the first picture is lost so the last month of travel has been lacking in descriptions. I'll try and repost a few.

Off to Taipei

Our time in China flew by really quickly. We are on our way to the airport heading to Taipei for 5 days before coming back to Vancouver.

More pictures to come when we get to Taipei.

Shanghai Expo (上海世博会)

We have arrived in Taipei and are already enjoying it a lot. Amy's family has been amazing!

From Taipei we can access all sites so I took a look at my blog and realized that most of my posts have been cut off. Everything after the first picture is lost so the last month of travel has been lacking in descriptions. I'll try and repost a few.

Here's the Shanghai one in full:

I knew Shanghai was a big city, but had no idea how massive it really was. The China book I have reports 18 million residents and 5 million migrant workers. You can see a glimpse of one area of the city here:

This is a view across the Huangpu river in Shanghai - we are on the west side of the river just a block from this walkway. We hope to go to a restaurant in the large Pearl Tower for lunch tomorrow as it has great views of Shanghai.

We've spent most of our time visiting the Expo grounds here. Our bodies ache from the last two days of walking. I think there are between 300,000 and 600,000 visitors per day! There are pavilions to see from nearly every country, and some have 3-4 hour lines. The good ones have restaurants with local food and drinks, and all of them show you unique things from each country.

On day one we had lunch at the German pavilion. They had pretty good food and great beer.

We noticed many people collecting stamps from each pavilion in an expo passport and decided to get on board. I went from not knowing something existed to obsession really quick. In two days we filled up most of our passports with 40-50 stamps. It's fun to collect and a unique souvenir but some people take it too seriously. In a few cases I saw people with up to 100 things getting stamped in a row at each pavilion. They resell pre stamped passports for a markup. I can't imagine that would be fun. What's worse is the poor guys who get stuck on stamp duty. We don't think many people are saying thank you to them because when we do they always look surprised.

It's not all bad though. We did find the Canada pavilion. The line was pretty big but our Canadian passports let us jump the queue and get right in. It felt just like home inside. In the evening they invited us back for a show where Dashan was performing (a very famous Canadian in China who speaks better Mandarin than many Mandarin speakers). We had plans already so couldn't make it.

Argentina had a cool pavilion and on the second floor there was a wine bar. We relaxed for a couple glasses of wine and a nice break from the crowds.

Here is the Spain pavilion at night. We didn't find time to go inside.

At night we met up with a coworker of mine and his brother in law for dinner at a nice Shanghai restaurant. They treated us to some amazing food - I tried some Octopus and Shanghai style Xiaolongbao (pork dumplings with crab). After dinner they took us around town and pointed out many of the local sites including a really popular bar street where we stopped for a drink. We wouldn't have been able to see that much of the city without their help so it was great.

Today was day two at the expo. We had a later start and got there after lunch. A lot of time was spent in the massive China pavilion which usually has long lines but today had no line. We had dinner at a Belgian restaurant and some Belgian waffles for desert.

The expo is massive and lots of fun but I think we are too tired to try it for a third day. Tomorrow we will try and see some local Shanghai sites.

Chinese Beer (中国的啤酒)

在中国很多人和啤酒，但是中国的啤酒太淡。我觉得他们不可能和很多，不然的话很最了。我们需要和中国的白酒。

The beer in China is very plentiful and very cheap. I've mentioned before that we could get 600ml bottles for 3 yuan (about 50 cents). The problem is that this beer is too weak, most of it around 3-4%, some even in the 1-2% range. We originally thought we were drinking 8-10% beer but found out quickly how mistaken we were.

Last night at dinner we ordered a bottle that was 1.5%. This is essentially non-alcoholic beer. Amy yelled at the guy (you have to do this in China - it's still friendly), basically saying you are joking me. He brought us something that was 3.5% and we settled on that.

Meanwhile we watched a group of Chinese guys with tattoos sitting around a table challenging each other to chug small glasses of the non alcoholic beer. After a while one guy knocked over a few full bottles smashing glass everywhere. It was surprising how drunk they seemed to get off of what is not much more than water.

That being said, 白酒 (white liquor) is popular here and is much stronger - 30-40%. It looks a lot like vodka and we are planning to try some in Shanghai before we leave China.

Goodbye Suzhou (再见苏州)

Our two nights in the city of Suzhou flew by too quickly, once again reminding us that 2 nights in one place is hardly enough time to see everything. That being said we really enjoyed ourselves.

On the first day we took a taxi into the center of town to find a place for lunch. We tried a couple different dishes here including 臭豆腐 - stinky tofu - a dish that smells terrible but tastes great. The smelly tofu slices are dipped in a spicy sauce. Amy says there is better stink tofu in Taiwan.

After lunch we trekked over to a 500+ year old garden called "The Humble Administrators Garden", or tongue in cheek "Incompetent officials garden". Like most sights in China this place was massive. As usual we wandered around without a map or guide and took photos of things we liked. The gardens were full of plants, rocks and water features. It was a lot like the Sun yat sen garden in Vancouver only much much bigger and nicer scenery.

In the evening we treated ourselves to a western buffet. We mostly ate the meat and fish but I also had some comfort food in olives and cheese. The smoked salmon was good too. In China everyone drinks dry wine, mostly red. The restaurant had a large selection of Chardonnay (I know some people would REALLY enjoy the variety). We ordered a bottle of the one white wine that wasn't Chardonnay.

Our hotel had a large indoor and outdoor pool so we went for a swim after dinner both nights.

On the second day we set out to find the canals that we came to Suzhou for. Surprisingly there was nothing in the city like we originally thought, so we had to take a one hour cab ride to a village. It was worth it!

We had a private boat tour of the canals for only 100 yuan (about $15). It lasted 30 minutes and was really cool. It's something I'd like to do in Venice if I ever make it.

Here's me on the boat. The only disappointing thing was our paddler guy was continually pestering us to pay him to sing some songs, and continued even after we said we didn't want it. He then begged for tips at the end but we just ignored him.

More canals.

Here is a view of our hotel - Pan Pacific Suzhou. We were both really amazed by everything. The service was phenomenal and even included a delicious breakfast buffet. The total cost for 2 nights was about $160 quite a steal compared to what we paid at some hostels.

We could see this Pagoda from our window and on our last morning today discovered that we could enter another massive garden from our hotel for free! We only had 20 minutes so we rushed around taking some pictures. We both wished we had more time in Suzhou and at the Pan Pacific.

I'm writing this from a fast train taking us from Suzhou to Shanghai. We are in Shanghai for 4 nights where we plan to checkout the 2010 expo sites and do some shopping. This is our last 4 nights in China before we move on to Taipei on Monday.

Hangzhou and beyond

It's been a few days between posts and we've changed cities twice, and are moving on again tomorrow.

On our last night in Chengdu we went to a restaurant in the ancient street. Many of the restaurants here also include shows - so we were able to see some live music, dancing and more traditional face changing. I have a video of the face changing to post later.

The next day we flew from Chengdu to Hangzhou (a city a couple of hours south west of Shanghai). We also made a transition from nice hotel to terrifying hostel. We spent a lot of time executing bugs. Needless to say we didn't spend too much time in the room.

Hangzhou is another big city, but what it is really famous for is the massive "west lake" right next to the city. There is tons to do both on the lake, and around it - many restaurants and bars. In particular there is a famous chain of restaurants called 外婆家 (The Grandmas). I'd heard about it through work before leaving and figured it was something we had to try. The first night there we got out front and found hundreds of people waiting. We got a number for a table for 2 and the ticket said over 87 people waiting for 2 person tables ahead of you. After an hour there were still over 50 ahead of us. We gave up and went for Thai food which was mediocre.

We hadn't been totally defeated, and tried again for lunch. We figured we would go early and get in no problem. Well at 11:20 there were already 30 groups ahead of us. We wandered around for a while and came back and a few numbers had passed. We repeated this a few times until somehow it had moved 30 past our number and we lost our table. Amy yelled at them and we were seated right away.

The place didn't disappoint. It was good food at very low prices. We had a mapo dofu (tofu in spicy sauce with pork) for 3 yuan (less than 50 cents). We also ordered a spicy green pepper dish which ended up being a plate full of fried peppers similar to jalapeños. This was very spicy. Overall good food for good value.

After lunch we took a boat to the center of the lake. There is an island there with 4 mini lakes inside it. It was quite amazing and I'll have pictures later that can do it justice. We spent the rest of the day exploring here and walking down a several kilometer long causeway through the lake.

At one point a group of younger people were staring at me and then tried to take a picture of the crazy foreigner. I wasn't too impressed and yelled back at them. Amy kicked the girl in the back of the leg and we both felt better. I guess I do standout a bit but I didn't think it was photo worthy.

At night we saw "Impression West Lake" which is a big performance on one section of the lake. It was compared to cirque de soleil but I think it was more artsy and the not a lot in terms of acrobatics. There was a very large number of performers on the lake, sometimes hundreds coordinated very well. As you can see in the photo parts of the water stage rise up for effect. The show was great but it was a little short - only one hour.

Now we've moved on to Suzhou - a city sometimes called the Venice of Asia, famous for the canals and magnificent gardens. We are staying at the Pan Pacific here and it's a very nice place to relax for a couple of days. We even had a nice western dinner here last night which was a nice temporary change of pace.

I'll update more on Suzhou later - for now we are off to see the canals before moving on to Shanghai tomorrow.

Fireworks in Chengdu

As I mentioned before, tonight we were going to see the national day fireworks from the 34th floor patio of our hotel. Before we could do that we had to check with the front desk to get our key card activated for that floor. This is the exchange that happened:

Girl at desk: Good morning sir, how can I help you? (I was going to try mandarin but figured this would be easier to explain in English)

Me: Hi. We'd like to check out the fireworks tonight from the top floor balcony.

Girl: Ok. What's your room #?

Me: 1805

Girl: and your name?

Me: Jordan

Girl: Ok. (she then picks up the phone and makes a call. I'm curious as to what's going on now)

Sorry, there's no answer.

Me: Yes - we are here. (I looked at Amy and we were totally confused with what had just happened - I switched to Mandarin)

She understood right away and activated our card. I'm still not sure why she called our room, but we had a good laugh before heading out for the day. I've found Mandarin immensely valuable here even if my level is fairly low. It's quite encouraging!

Anyway, after we had dinner we headed up to the 34th floor with a bottle of great wall red wine. Here is the view, red wine et all:

We got there at 7:45 and the fireworks were supposed to start at 8:00 at the end of the main road in the picture (there is a large public square with a giant statue of Mao). At 8:15 we saw small fireworks way off in the distance. Around 8:30 someone from the hotel stopped by and said they had wrong information and there would be no fireworks. As consolation they gave everyone free beer and snacks to take back. We were a little disappointed but it was still nice up there.

Instead of fireworks we have been watching Disneys "Up" in Mandarin. This is one of the movies I bought in Beijing. I've seen it in English before and have been looking for the Mandarin one for ages. As with the other Disney movies it is really well dubbed. I'll probably write about it more when we get back.