China Trip log

If you're waiting for my China trip log. I'm afraid it won't be much. It was almost 95% working. Not really stressful for me but I didn't get to have much time for sightseeing. The only time I had was about 1.5 hour after 9pm to walk around my hotel. Only food places and 24 hours convenient shops are open at that hours. Anyhow, I still got quite some amusement out of those places. The kind of stuff selling on the shelves, the super cheap prices, fried chicken wing or sausages on the road side (I didn't try any, I was too full)....
I passed by a florist, it was cold that night. The boss saw me looking around and just asked me in and started boiling tea, and we had a nice chat over some tea. That was surprising. He couldn't tell I'm not from China at all, Haha! I haven't met anyone in Shanghai who could tell I'm not a mainland Chinese, I guess my Mandarin accent is close enough.

The highlight of this trip is probably food. It's so cheap to eat in China. 8 people, in a VIP room with 1-2 dedicated waitresses, 8 entree cold dishes, 8 hot main dishes, soup, sweets, complimentary fruits, and beers - it never got over RMB600. So it's like about AU$100 for 8 people. A simple Penang fried horfun cost $6.80 in Broadway Fair here in Perth. A super posh dinner in Shanghai cost two hawker style lunch here!
Oh ya, I saw some small restaurant selling hawker style dinner for RMB6, that's like a dish pour on top of rice. The same thing probably costs $7 in Northbridge.

So much about the food, I think it's only fair to post a photo here to capture the variety of it.

Some of them are noteworthy:
[7,5] BBQ duck Lower jaw including tongue - so weird! Not much meat but taste good.
[5,6] duck head from the duck and bamboo shot soup [3,3], no one actually ate that head lah.
[7,6:7] wheat bun with hole to be stuffed with fried meat+vegies, 'westerners' seem to like that. Not bad for me too.
[1,6] another 'westerner' favourite - make your own burger.
[3,4] lotus root stuffed with sweet sticky rice. I like it very much.
[2,2] Horse Bridge (马桥) Tofu, Horse Bridge is a place not far from Shanghai I was told. Very tasty tofu.
[2,6] corn slab, very sweet and juicy.
[2,7] 梅菜扣肉 dried salted vegi with fatty pork on top (can't quite see the dried vegies). Taste great! Like mama used to cook at home.
[5,3] Pagoda vegies (塔菜). Very green, tasty. It's like a pagoda when alive, a bit like the purple gourmet lettuce but flatter.
[4,5] Pumpkin pudding with coconut milk on top. Yummy.
[6,4] Fish pudding with salty egg yolk on top. Yummy.
[6,7] Australian scallop. It's huge! 5cm diameter.
[7,1] One of my favourite soup. It's like shark fin soup without shark fin so it's not as thick and gluey. The white strips are very thin tofu, silky smooth. Very nice!
[7,3] Another one of the best soup. Fish head seafood soup. It's milky white and taste like all good stuffs are in there. Very very nice!
[5,7] seaweed that looks like centipede. Taste like seaweed.
[6,1] One last one, Chili chicken (辣子鸡丁). It's very difficult to find the chicken. So much chili I can't believe it!