Being a Tourist

With our April rush of visitors here in Guangzhou, we took the opportunity to be tourists within our own city. Guangzhou is a huge city with many diverse neighborhoods and area. It is not, however, where people think of visiting when they go to China. When you think of China, everyone thinks of Beijing and Shanghai with a stop in Hong Kong, not Guangzhou. You will not see the Great Wall of China here. You will not see the ancient terra cotta warriors of Xian. You will not see Tiananmen Square. You will not see the bustling cosmopolitan city of magazines. Instead, you will see a city that has exploded in the last ten years. You will see a city of migrants. You will see a city of old and new built practically on top of each other. You will see a city of change.

While Guangzhou isn't heavily frequented by western tourists, there are a lot of cool things to see and do here. We love the Chen Clan Academy, the historic "dorm room/hostel" of the Chen clan for those who were coming to take the Imperial exams.

One has to check out the Qing Ping market with all its fun items for sale, including scorpions, turtles, assorted paws and hooves. Rumor has it Qing Ping used to be where one would go to buy the most hidden delicacies such as tiger's paw and assorted reproductive organs.

There is the Canton Tower. We have yet to venture to the top of the Canton Tower as it is quite expensive, but we certainly will one day.

There are markets here for everything. Some of the most popular ones, for tourists anyway, are the jade market and the pearl market.

No visit here would be complete without checking out Shamian Island, the former foreign concession.

Finally, the food. Oh the food. It is a delightful mix of traditional, fusion, and imported. There is northern food, southern food, western food, and everything in between.

XiaoLongBao: An American Guide

XiaoLongBao, or soup dumplings, have become one of our favorite dishes here in China. They are a bite full of everything delicious, however, they also are a dish that requires it be eaten a certain way if you don't want 2nd degree burns all over the inside of your mouth. This is *our* guide to eating them.

Step 1: Observe the deliciousness.

Step 2: Carefully remove your dumpling from the steamer basket using your chopsticks and place it onto your spoon.

Step 3: Use the end of a chopstick to gently poke a hole in the dumpling so it can let a bit of the steam from the molten hot soup inside exit the dumpling. 

Step 4: Eat!

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Only recently (like in writing this blog) did I realize that PM and I weren't taught the correct way to eat these buggers. I think we were taught the American Expat way of doing it, which is not the traditional way.

In doing a little research for this post, I came across this wonderful card that describes how to eat them according to one of the most famous XiaoLongBao restaurants in Asia, Din Tai Fung.

Now, I feel we must go eat them again so that we can do it the correct way and not look like fools!

The Land of 10,000 Leather Belts

In China, there is a market for everything. There is the ceramic market, the fabric market, the frozen meat market, the traditional medicine market, the Middle Eastern market, the jade market, the pearl market, the hotel market, and on and on. It's our goal to hit up as many different markets in our two years as we can. So far, we have been to the traditional medicine market, the frozen meat market, and many local wet markets. Continuing on our adventures in market-land, yesterday we checked out the Sanyuanli leather market. 

I had read about it online as being not only the area of town where you can buy anything you want made of leather, but also home to great street food. I have mentioned street food a lot on this blog and so far we have yet to really find much of it, so we were hoping this wouldn't be another disappointing quest. As the five of us (PM and myself and some friends from work) set out on our adventure, we all had dreams of meat on a stick, steam buns, and the many other delicious treats we knew exist somewhere in China. 

Exiting the metro station, we were immediately greeted with the sights, smells, and sounds of the China of our dreams. There were men frying up dough, women roasting corn, and families with meat on a stick. Mixed in with the food were people selling knock-off shoes, purses, and clothes. Several women were bent over machines making every color button you can imagine. Dotted throughout the street were Muslim families slaughtering ram on the street, turning it into a butcher shop with the freshest meat I have seen yet. There was a sad looking ram tied up to a fence and we wondered just how long it would be until his day turned from bad to worse.

We spent hours wandering and eating. We walked into a leather building where you can purchase any color, any thickness, and any amount of leather you could ever want. There were stores that only sold zippers, and others only selling buttons and clasps. We entered one huge building that was three floors of shop after shop selling only leather belts and belt buckles. Alligator is clearly in this season as it was difficult to find anything else. We debated whether it was real or not, leaning more towards it being fake alligator, until we came across a tiny glass cage with two live specimens. They did not look happy. We walked a bit further and entered another building- more belts and belt buckles. It was a bit overwhelming.

Between the five of us, we ate: deep fried meat stuffed pancakes, egg custard tarts, fried rice steam buns, meat on a stick, apple vinegar drink, red bean and mung bean cookies, spicy lotus fruit, fried soybeans, pigs ear, and my favorite, red bean sesame balls. It was all delicious.

When we walked back towards the metro five hours later, we saw that the poor ram from earlier didn't have as successful a day as we did...

Weekend One

Our first weekend here in China was a huge success, and much of that is due to our wonderful sponsors- P and J. They have been fantastic about showing us things and checking in. We are very lucky to have them. They invited us into their home to for a meal, helped PM buy our subway cards, and showed us both how to navigate the winding streets and alleys.

Saturday, P and J took us to the local Costco, called Metro. This was our first real trip to the store and there was so much that it was a bit overwhelming. None-the-less, we had a lot of fun looking at all the different products. I mean who doesn't want to try some Taiwan dried meat floss?!

On Saturday afternoon, P took us out to the frozen meat market. Much of the meat there is imported from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US, which means you can find certain cuts that you can't buy except at the expensive western stores. This was the first time I felt like I was in "real" China. China around our apartment is new China. Everywhere you look, there is another large shopping mall. But the meat market area matched the image I had in my mind of what China would be like. It was reassuring and I felt a lot more comfortable there than I have so far in all the ritzy malls. The streets of the medicine market and wet market definitely had some sights, and smells, that were new.

After wandering around the meat market, the traditional medicine market, and several fun streets, PM and I decided to wander around Shamian Island. The island was previously the foreign concession point during the first and second Opium wars and was home to many consulates back in the day. Our walk there was very peaceful and quiet and the island is home to architecture not found in the rest of the city. PM and I couldn't help but think of Skopje when we saw just how many statues they had there.  

Sunday morning we met a group of friends for some dim sum. It was delicious. We, of course, had way too much food. The pork buns, egg custard tarts (they make them without milk here!), and soup dumplings were definitely highlights. The turnip cake was the low with PM saying it, "tastes like the zoo". While a fun place to visit, it is not a fun thing to taste.
 

I think I can speak for PM, as well as myself, when I say that we had a great weekend and are excited to see what future weekends bring.