Tuesday, August 16, 2005
The Village - Hometown Restaurant
We went to what is known as "the village" last night. At the entrance of CEIBS, if you make a right, you go to Carrefour, the Ramada Pudong, and various other modern developments. Basically, modern life. However, if you make a left out of the school, you walk 20 years back in China's history and into a cramped, old village that is probably far older than anything surrounding it. It's dirty and the people in general are quite poor. This isn't to be confused with what we'd call the "ghetto" in the US since it isn't crime ridden or a drug den or anything like that, "just" poor. They don't get many waiguoren (foreinger) here at all, if any. We had heard that they have some small food stands, where food was cheap and good.
So I gathered up a two international students and a Chinese student (since, you know, he speaks Mandarin and all that) and off we went. There are bicycles everywhere here and after a couple wrong turns we found the food street and although it didn't exactly LOOK that great, it smelled great. But really, it was mostly pretty basic food. Roasted chicken, dumplings, noodles, and vegetables. In a way, I was expecting live chickens in cages and thinks of that sort, but as far as I could see, none of that. Not sure if I can say I was disappointed or not.
Regardless, we didn't eat there (I can hear my mother's sigh of relief from here). Our Chinese friend was a little sketched out and after talking to a local, there was a apparently a famous place on the east edge (famous in the village, at least). Meanwhile, I'm really getting stared at, despite my attempt to conceal my blond hair with a hat. Foreigners aren't THAT big a deal, but being seen in that village must have been a rare occurence.
We find the "Hometown Restaurant" and soon, we have beers and dishes are on the way. First up, roasted duck tongue. It was wonderful. Really! It wasn't just the tongue either, more like the whole lower jaw. But China is no place to be squeamish. In this case, I was rewarded for my adventurousness. I'd heard of this before because its apparently the equivalent of popcorn and nuts at US bars. But I was envisioning just the actual tongue, not the entire lower *beak*.
The rest of our order consisted of a cold spicy tofu dish, stir fried beef with hot green peppers, sliced potatoes, green peppers, and red chili dish, ox intestine soup, salted & steamed chicken, a duck, garlic, and potato dish, a whole steamed trout, and one or two more that I can't remember now. Except for the intestine, which didn't taste bad but the texture just got to me, everything was good. All that, plus eight liters of Tsingtao, cost us 40 kuai (the slang term for renminbi) or about US$5 each.
The xiaojies (waitress) came over near the end of the meal and started to talking to us while our Chinese friend translated. We were told that we were the first foreigners ever to eat in that restaurant, so of course, photos were in order. And I'm not quite sure how this last part happened, but we suddenly also had 4 mobile phone numbers. Yeah, so China isn't too bad.
So I gathered up a two international students and a Chinese student (since, you know, he speaks Mandarin and all that) and off we went. There are bicycles everywhere here and after a couple wrong turns we found the food street and although it didn't exactly LOOK that great, it smelled great. But really, it was mostly pretty basic food. Roasted chicken, dumplings, noodles, and vegetables. In a way, I was expecting live chickens in cages and thinks of that sort, but as far as I could see, none of that. Not sure if I can say I was disappointed or not.
Regardless, we didn't eat there (I can hear my mother's sigh of relief from here). Our Chinese friend was a little sketched out and after talking to a local, there was a apparently a famous place on the east edge (famous in the village, at least). Meanwhile, I'm really getting stared at, despite my attempt to conceal my blond hair with a hat. Foreigners aren't THAT big a deal, but being seen in that village must have been a rare occurence.
We find the "Hometown Restaurant" and soon, we have beers and dishes are on the way. First up, roasted duck tongue. It was wonderful. Really! It wasn't just the tongue either, more like the whole lower jaw. But China is no place to be squeamish. In this case, I was rewarded for my adventurousness. I'd heard of this before because its apparently the equivalent of popcorn and nuts at US bars. But I was envisioning just the actual tongue, not the entire lower *beak*.
The rest of our order consisted of a cold spicy tofu dish, stir fried beef with hot green peppers, sliced potatoes, green peppers, and red chili dish, ox intestine soup, salted & steamed chicken, a duck, garlic, and potato dish, a whole steamed trout, and one or two more that I can't remember now. Except for the intestine, which didn't taste bad but the texture just got to me, everything was good. All that, plus eight liters of Tsingtao, cost us 40 kuai (the slang term for renminbi) or about US$5 each.
The xiaojies (waitress) came over near the end of the meal and started to talking to us while our Chinese friend translated. We were told that we were the first foreigners ever to eat in that restaurant, so of course, photos were in order. And I'm not quite sure how this last part happened, but we suddenly also had 4 mobile phone numbers. Yeah, so China isn't too bad.
