China Trip (1) *updated*

After reading Erina's question, I decided to blog about my recent China trip with my parents. Throughout this journal I'll be honest and point out the good parts, bad parts, interesting parts and of course, the food part :P As I have over 800 pictures, I will only select the notable ones to display.

Supper on board our flight there. Fly Singapore Airlines! The best airline & our proud home product! A warm box of Tuna something. hehe.. Looks quite glam,

but I would have preferred for it to be stuffed with more tuna and softer bread hehe... You know me, my food must be fulfilling hehe. :P

This was taken in the morning, at 4am I think. so pretty right? awww.... btw it was the time the breakfast was served. kinda early to eat at 4am but I think itz fine, we are landing at 6am anyway.

After boarding the coach bus, our first stop to light food & loo.

2 ham dumplings & a bowl of soup. By the way, these dumplings are super soft and nice, much much softer than the ones we have here. Know why? the secret? I think it's the rice. Theirs is different from ours.

Inside of the ham dumpling. Ham is salty but itz pretty nice and different from our flavours.

View from the Hotel window in Hangzhou, first stop in the trip.

This is the general view of Hangzhou as you move around. The truth? I wasn't impressed at all. At all. or maybe I came expecting too much.

Our first ever lunch stop in China! hehe interesting food discoveries slowly coming to me.

First, the Rice & the Rice Bowl.
See what I was trying to show? The size of the bowl kinda gave me a shock la haha.... so tiny!! especially for Ai Lin! I was like huh? when I saw it. lolz... I was so hungry and the bowl is so small. Subsequently, every time I get such tiny rice bowls, I will eat at least 3 full bowls of rice. Reasonable right?
Another thing to note, I wanna mention that China rice is very nice and is to my taste. It is different from the Thai rice that we have in Singapore where it is hard and big. The rice in China is small, rounder and softer!! I like soft rice :) Interestingly, after all the hype about Japanese rice, you thought that it's all so unique being sticky and different, you come to china and realize that hey, their rice is like the jap rice. It's slightly sticky too and the shape is the same, just that it is without the vinegary glaze. From here you can see that japan indeed has its roots from china even though they like to believe otherwise. bahhh...

Some fish dish. Boney but tastes not bad. I loved having the gravy to pour on my rice.

So this is how every lunch & dinner looks like. One big table and lots of dishes. This is not complete yet. Oh, about their dishes - there are 2 very striking things to note. It is generally Very salty and oily. Much more than our local food and it's very obvious to ur tastebuds.

The streets

The empty road. There is no order in the traffic there by the way. Even if there is a red light or zebra crossing, the motorists won't take notice. You better use your eyes. It's damn scary to cross when the road is full.



The West Lake area, with the Lei Feng Pagoda in the background. Remember the Lei Feng Ta in Legends of Madam White Snake? Ya it's that one. cool rite? one interesting thing when u come to china, you get to see the stuff in the stories and in the poems that we read in sec school. More later.



cute stuff on the bridge











Look at the liu shu on the right side. Know the kind that you always see in black & white chinese paintings? Tree with very long and flowy "branches" lol...

This is Gui Hua shu. Gui hua is the extra ingredient you find in the canned heaven & earth green tea sometimes. And this whole park gives off the gui hua fragrance. It was in season. Pretty nice, but personally I prefer some other flower smell. But if you like the smell of gui hua, this is for you.

Intro of this place coming up...

Did I mention that the weather was damn hot? and i was in long sleeves thinking it'll be cool cuz itz autumn plus the travel agent said it would be cold.

We went into the electric-operated boat.They opted for electric, no petrol to cut down on pollution. Hangzhou was said to be the green city due to their anti-pollution efforts. Even all the scooters in the area are electric-operated. However, we found the area to be very foggy. Maybe it used to be super polluted and foggy that's why they have to put in the effort. Just a guess.
However, did I mention that the boat, being in the lake just like that with no fan or air-con inside, on a darn hot afternoon was a killer? Seriously, it was so darn hot I thought I was gonna get a fever. If you don't know how hot it was, it's hotter than sg. In that situation, give it a 35degrees. If the boat was air-conditioned, the experience would be a much enjoyable and pretty one.


It was said that the famous West Lake is now very commercialized. Look at the modern white boat there, just when u wanna enjoy the old scenery. The tourism people need to know what to do man =.= Haiz. It's a spoiler.

This is much better. Anyway, the emperor used to walk on that bridge. hee.

More liu shu

More scenery on the West Lake.



Sign for the pond below. Thing to note abt this sign is: look the fish character "yu". As you can see, there are only 3 dots instead of 4, which is the correct one. Before you think that it's "misspelled", nope it was purposefully drawn that way. It is because the emperor said that putting 4 dots would make it look like a fire, and putting the fish on fire means they'll die. So, only draw with 3 dots.

There are plenty of kois in this pond

awww so nice, got free-roaming peacock and doves in the park... :)

Close-up of the Gui Hua, hee cute right? so now u know what gui hua in ur drink looks like.

We went to the fake song dynasty place

Watched a performance that showed stuff gg on in Hangzhou as well as the legends. Not bad I would say, it has dance, acrobatics, good effects (water, fire, laser, sound, etc), archery, cannons, all indoors. they managed to transit a waterfall in the middle of the show, good rite? But what I thought they could improve on is the costumes. should invest more and make it look more real.

Part about the Madam White Snake legend. It's her and Xu Xian dancing in there.

Dinner

Breakfast the next day. I was trying to very positive about the breakfast buffet already but hmm, the truth is, it's very average or below average hee.... and my dad said the dumplings were 2/100 points. Oops.

Sorry for the loss of this guy's privacy, but I just wanted to bring u all the photo of how stuff are like there on a daily basis. normal guy sleeping in the bus, pretty normal.

We passed by this view as we were walking along the road. Closer view of the Lei Feng Ta as seen yesterday at the West Lake



Following pics are what's on this signboard

Took this photo cause I was amazed with the urn. lolz, itz giant-sized as compared to the small ones we have at home. haha....



Beautiful sight

Cool to be able to see such scenery from inside the temple.

Chinese architectural design. yea i like capturing such stuff too, cause it all makes up the culture.

Welcome to Dragon Well Village, West Lake. The place where my parents S$400, $2000 RMB on the Longjing Tea (Dragon well green tea). Insane right? This shows adults can also lose their minds. Got lots of story about this tea later.

Guy drying the tea leaves on a hot pan with his bare hands.

Requires skill and technique of course! else u'll burn ur hand :P



Tea master telling us about the longjing tea in an enclosed air-con room, after which we are intro-ed to buy :P



Two of the grades of tea, the better one is on the right. And if I'm not wrong, there are 16 grades in total. First grade is usually sent directly to the govt and officials. Top few grades are not exported out. but ok la, this tea is good. Let me tell you more about it.

Firstly, this particular one sold here and grown on the surrounding plots of land are Non-acidic. Why? Because of the soil. If I'm not wrong, it's neutral and the colour is lighter. Anything just outside this place is all acidic because of the different soil. So hehe, be careful when you buy, although they can be of the same name, it is different. As for this piece of info, it is true because I drank the tea during the demo on empty & hungry stomach and nothing happened, no gastric. So not only is it good for people with gastric to drink, it is also good for people who want to diet. aha! lol...

Next, this tea has dieting properties. Take one cup every morning on empty stomach for a month and u'll lose 4kg. Lose 2kg for the subsequent month. We were told that jap girls frequently buy it for dieting purposes. Again, you probably wanna know if it works right? lol.. if it's really that good. Of course I didn't try this method, because I can't afford to lose 4kg right? else i will be skeleton and blown away by the wind. So, my parents and jesse tried. lolz...
The result? It's almost a month and they have already lost 4kg at least. Hmmm.. looks like it is working.

In additional, being a green tea, it is said to have the usual anti-oxidant properties etc so yea i'll leave that to you. Oh, one impt note! Deng Xiaoping drinks this tea everyday, and even though he was a heavy smoker and heavy drinker, he was still healthy and lived to a ripe old age. Ahh.. now this tea indeed sounds magical. Ok la not bad it has been working and when you drink it, you know it's good stuff too. (unlike the green teas we drink at sakae or sold at ntuc) You can even eat the leaves like that! due to the way it is processed. Other teas like oolong or puer can't be eaten directly by the way, take heed.

Last proof of its quality- this tea is so precious and treasured that when I wanted to give 2 tiny bottles of it away to people, my mum scold and nag like there was no tomorrow. For Days I had to be Consistently scolded and nagged at and sighed at, etc. In the end I bought the 2 bottles of tea from them but still with the scolding and conditions- have to be given to ppl who appreciate tea and will drink it. wah lao, really...cannot stand it. I bet if anyone tries to steal it, the thief is gonna get caught by them and skinned alive.

k to be continued...