Real Chinese Food

English menus in Chinese restaurants were very nice including the name and a picture of the food.  I took pictures of the ones that were most different from what we get at home.  One huge difference between Chinese food and American food is that generally Americans don't want to know what animal they are eating while the Chinese don't see any reason to hide it and often consider the parts we wouldn't eat as delicacies.

The Fungus sounded a little weird, but it was by far my favorite food.

I'm wondering if the vegetarian part  of this 'vegetarian duck' meant that it didn't look like the animal of origin.

This one was just an interesting typo.  I wonder if God Fish has more sole.

Goose Webfoot with mushroom

Only the turtle and sea cucumber are different.

Green Vegetarian Food aka broccoli

Shark's fin is becoming a controversial food because of the toll it takes on the shark population according to one article I read in a Chinese newspaper.

Fish lips was an amusing idea.

He looks sad...

I was too chicken to try this one.

Chicken Tendons with vegetables.

Can't escape goats even in China.  This is goat tripe.

More fish lips this time in soup

chicken.

and more chicken.

Our hotel generally included a Chinese/ American breakfast:
*Always congee but  the toppings for it varied.  Congee is a rice porridge served with various toppings.  None of the toppings were sweet; most of them seemed to be some kind of pickle.   One of them looked like brown sugar  but didn’t taste like it at all.    I tried it a couple of times, but my brain seems to expect sweet in my
porridge rather than pickled.  It  probably tasted as good to us as sugar on porridge would taste to a person used to eating congee with pickle.
*Fried rice—daily although the vegetables varied somewhat.
*Fried noodle—again daily but with different vegetable.
*A variety of cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, and lettuce
*Sausage: generally weisswurst which tasted very German.  It seems to have been steamed rather than roasted.
*Eggs:  each day one or two varieties:  fried, hard boiled, or preserved
*Vegetable:  baby bok choy,napa cabbage or steamed cucumber. The baby bok choy with soy sauce was especially good.
*2 kinds of cereal—chocolate flakes and plain flakes.  The chocolate ones were sweet.  They were next to the hot milk; cold milk was on the other side of the coffee.
*toast—I observed the proper way to eat toast using chopsticks but didn't take a picture.  It’s roughly the same as eating the sausage:  pick up the whole thing in the middle and nibble away around the edges.  Bottom line is that Chinese people don't seem to eat anything with their fingers--it's much more sanitary.

Chinese Transportation

This very blurry picture of banana boxes was taken for Wendy

September 30, 2011: The Last Day

In the morning we took a bus back to Tianan'men Square.

This is on the main road just south of Tian'anmen Square.

This and the next several pictures were taken from the bus

This is the view from Tian-anmen Square of the National Museum of China.  A lot of people were waiting for it to open, but it didn't seem super crowded once we got inside.   

Wine Vessel with 4 Rams

People weren't allowed to bring in any bags or electronics, so we took turns going through Mao's Mausoleum.   White flowers were for sale outside the mausoleum.  Once inside those who bought flowers placed them in a special area and then bowed down to the floor.  After that we marched along single file, not being allowed to stop even for a second.   The room was huge with the body in the middle, and we all walked around it and then out the back.

 

Mr. Lion with the ball of power.

Mrs. Lion with the baby cub under her paw.

After some more shopping in the shopping area just south of Tian'anmen Square (where we discovered from an ad on a restaurant that one of the items of food we had had a few days previously was fried intestine), we checked out of our hotel and checked into a hotel near the airport.  We spent the rest of our Chinese money at dinnertime and then went to bed early, getting up around 4 AM to make our flight.  It was an uneventful flight home, and the end of another really fun trip.

Thursday, September 29, 2013, part II: Summer Palace

After lunch we went to the Summer Palace with Andrew.

The Summer Palace is about 10 miles northwest of the center of Beijing, occupying an area of about 750 acres.  Since Beijing University is also in the northwest, we were reasonably close and took the subway there. This is the largest royal park in China which was constructed in 1750 as an area for the royal family to rest and entertain, becoming a main residence for them at the end of the Qing Dynasty. In 1860 the Anglo-French Allied Forces looted it and then burned it, a fire lasting for 3 days which destroyed much but not all of it.  It was rebuilt in 1888 but then destroyed again in 1900. Supposedly the most interesting Empress Dowager Cixi embezzled navy funds to reconstruct it as a personal resort.

There are over 3,000 manmade structures, occupying a total building space of about 800,000 square feet consisting of structures such as towers, bridges, corridors, and pavilions. 

This is the building at the entrance to the north entrance of the Summer Palace

We entered at the Northern Gate, walking past Suzhou Street, a bridge over a canal set up to look exactly like Suzhou, the city we had visited while we were in Shanghai.  But this had been set up as a toy for the royal family where they could play at shopkeeper or shopper.

Another view of Suzhou Street

The entrance to the rest of the Summer Palace

Most or all of the Summer Palace was destroyed during the opium wars in the late 1800s.  Most of it has been recently restored, but this area is being left unrestored to remember the event.

In the background is the stone boat, financed by Cixi with funds embezzled from the navy.

Another view of the stone boat.

There were a lot of people lined up to take a ride on the dragon boat, mostly tourists.  

 The Long Corridor, built in the middle of the 18th century, it is about 2500 feet long and has more than 14,000 paintings.

Looking up on the Long Corridor roof

We took a boat ride farther back--no dragon and no long lines; mainly local people.  Much better choice.

Kunming Lake is a man made lade covering an area of  over 500 acres; the excated area was used to make Longevity Hill ,  about 200 feet high.

The view across the lake--I think this place belonged to some of the leaders.

Another view across the lake

And yet another

This is the island area.

The 17 arch bridge is in the background

17 arch bridge

Life size bronze ox said to have power to control floods.

Bronze Qilin: fire dragon said to arrive or depart with a sage or illustrious ruler.

These two animals (bird here and dragon in following picture) were in front of the Hall of Benevolence where Empress Cixi, a concubine who unofficially but very effectively took over the government from 1847 to 1908, handled court officials and received foreign diplomats.  It had electricity and one of the first phone in Beijing.

Picture of Empress Cixi

After we left the summer palace we were invited to Andrew's apartment where we met his wife, Jessie, and his son , Howard.

Jessie had made dumplings for us--delicious, my favorite Chinese meal.