Chongqing eats and experiences

Having been to Bei Bei district, north of Chongqing, to review the latest Banyan Tree hotel, (we’re talking misty mountains, hot tubs, tall bamboo and a thousand year-old Buddhist temple) I was kindly chauffeured to the city of Chongqing.

I have no expectations after Googling travel ideas for the city, which pretty much lead me nowhere (no, I don’t want 364 ideas from Trip Advisor and I don’t want to head 50-100km out of the city again to see things like the town of statues of underworld gods or visit Foreigner City).

The city is huge, the traffic is so-so. It’s warmer here but the air is quite gross and I almost think we in HK should stop complaining. Then I catch myself and remember that we can always have better air, so we should complain and act. But this is China and the air isn’t bad for a big city like this.

// Something I like about visiting China (not Lo Wu) is that it reminds me that Mainlanders are nice. In HK it’s so easy to get into the habit of finding them ma fan, being rude, but that’s just a portion of the section of society who visit HK.

And whose fault is it that we don’t really have the infrastructure to cope with so many tourists crossing the border every day? Not theirs, they don’t make the rules. I realise this is a bit controversial but I want to say it. I easily get into the habit of ‘oh I HATE them!’ so I come here to recall what their history was and what their culture is, to be patient, instead of feeling harassed as I rush about my city, in my busy daily schedule.

So, that means, I accept the spitting and the talking shouting and the pushing in the elevator. Because there’s so much nice and awe-inspiring and quirky. And they actually stop at the red pedestrian light when there’s no traffic coming, which just blows my mind. //

I choose a more budget hotel, staying in a decent spot frequented by lots of local Mainlanders. I’m still in the area where all of the international hotels are, like the Intercontinental, Marriot etc so there’s lots to do, with Chongqing locals, Mainland tourists and international tourists around.

That said, I laugh out loud (really) when I see the Dairy Queen and Starbucks right next to my hotel, but there are also local fruit sellers squatting right outside the hotel, so I feel gratified.

It’s no joke that Chongqing is famous for hotpot – a short stroll down the road shows me that pretty much every other shop is a hotpot restaurant, mixed amongst more local cha chan teng (茶餐廳) that serve the popular xiao mien (not because the noodle or dish is small but because there’s not many different ingredients in it) along with ma lat tong meen (麻辣湯麵) and other regional dishes.

I’m staying by Hongya Cave, and soon realise that my hotel room is almost underground – that is, we’re on a cliff face and I’m facing the rock, not the river. But I didn’t book this place for lounging in.

After checking out a local shop to eat xiao mien (yummy, not spicy, containing choi (greens) preserved mui choi and meat which I didn’t eat) I pass through a local mall. Not much interesting for me, especially since the brands are either present in HK or too local to be my style (bright is ok, fru-fru is not). So, off I head to the Hongya cave, which my friends at Banyan Tree kept telling me about.

It’s pretty much what I want: Tons of fresh made local goodies like peanut candy, date candy, Chinese cookies, peanuts, chili products and so on as well as lots of local food stores that sell all kinds of local dishes, all of which I want to try (except the meat).

I’ve now picked out my breakfast of shun lat mai meen (酸辣米麵), lunch (more ma lat tong meen), sides (cold eggplant) (茄子) and dessert (any kind of local style tong yuen (湯圆) all of which I will have to consumer before I leave at 2.30pm. Oh and I also ate my second dinner in the form of dan dan meen, which was ridiculously good and might mean I never eat it in HK ever again.

// One warning: These small local eateries are cheap and yummy (5-15RMB per bowl of noodles), but there’s a ridiculous amount of MSG in the food. I know that’s what it is because there’s a half aisle dedicated to MSG at the supermarket and later, I find myself drinking litres of water  – with a slight MSG headache, which believe it or not, never happens to me in HK //

I also find a sweet shop on the ‘traditional folk shop’ floor CHECK of the cave, where they make Chinese name chops. As a painter LINK I like to collect these in different shapes and sizes. I’m even more excited that they have chops made of clay, which I’ve never seen before. It’s cheaper than HK and the skilled man is offering a range of styles, so I’m all in. As a pottery fan, I’m really excited by this. Call me a geek, I don’t care.

People here are friendly and will chat with you, even if you can’t understand. I’m pretty relieved that some bits of Cantonese are useful and I'm very proud of my highly limited and crap Mandarin (I’ve had 12 classes in my life) as well as what I hotchpotch together by trying to figure out bits of simplified Chinese (give me details any day, I’m a purist, let’s be traditional with the written, ok?).

At the chop shop, the owner’s daughter who’s about eight talks and talks to me; I finally get her to speak a bit of Cantonese (she can, a bit) and we connect. I tell her and her mum I’m mixed raced and later, other Chinese customers chat with me saying that Hong Kong people have nice names and take pictures of me.

I haven’t seen much in my 20 hours here, but I like this city and I’d recommend it for a fast weekend food break, just when you know, Thailand is irresistible (like that ever happens).

Bus musings

07-Mar-2010, #6
I recently read a letter from a reader — probably in HK Mag — in which the reader complained about the general attitude received when trying to access either empty seats or seats occupied by luggage next to the window on public buses. Having taken a group of blind people on an outing, he complained that he had to loudly request that passengers on the bus make room for the blind rather than shift a few degrees to one angle, forcing the seatless passenger to squeeze past to access the window seat (which, being blind, would not be so easy). I immediately sympathised with this issue but also knew that I was sometimes guilty of it myself.

With heightened awareness in the following few days, I boarded a busy #6 one Sunday evening. Finding very few seats free, I headed to one of the '2 facing forward, 2 facing backward' sections on the lower deck because it had two free seats. Of course, both passengers had left placed their bags on the seats next to them and I foolishly presumed that one of them would move their luggage, given how full the bus was, and it would not be considered an outrageous request.

As the bus pulled off I stood and waited as the two aforementioned passengers had a staring competition of "whoever looks away first must move their luggage so this annoying person can sit here". I asked once and again, "please could you move your bags so I can sit down?" Not to mention that I was carrying luggage of my own, this was going on far too long and neither had moved an inch! Finally, feeling fed up and somewhat inspired by the letter in the paper, I reached forward as if to move some of the bags, making it clear I was not interested in this game and had indeed paid as much as they had for my seat on the bus. I was pretty sure that their luggage didn't have it's own Octopus card in order to pay for a seat!

Finally, action! The moment I came close to touching one of the passenger's possessions, she lurched forward to grab it away from me, stood up, tutted loudly while looking wildly around the bus for witnesses to my insane behaviour. I couldn't be bothered to talk Chinese to her, but stated "I paid for my seat too, I doubt that your bags did." And as she grabbed her things so she could move far, far away from me — presumably because I am obviously crazy and/or dangerous — she gave me a firm slap on the head.

For more information on Chinese people who love to fight, visit the entry that tries to capture all that anger on tape.

05-Nov-2008, #973
There's this stench on the bus. I've smelled it before and I know it comes from this really overweight guy, because when he shuffles past to get off the bus it wafts by me and doesn't go, it doesn't go for ages so I have to breath into my cardigan. Women around me root through their bags for Tempo hankies to breath into. It smells like rotting flesh, and I can't get away from it.

Today, when he gets off the bus I am sitting in a seat near the door. I look over and realise... it is rotting flesh. He shuffles because his foot is injured, not because he is so overweight, and there is a hospital bandage around his foot but I can see skin and puss through it.

I feel sick. But what can you do?

21-Oct-2008, #970x
I am on the bus and this Chinese guy just pulled out a bag with like 10 of those yummy siropenwaffle things... from Amsterdam, that me and Liz love to eat, that me and Gair munched on during our last sojourn there. There's caramel syrup oozing out of them. They look so good.

Those things are so hard to find here, and I really want to ask for one but a Chinese person would only find that rude, and more importantly, unhygienic (a westerner would think I was a scabby chav).

It just crossed my mind that I could try to make some, but ironically, I think some things are meant to be mass-produced.

17-Oct-2008, #970
There's a woman sitting opposite me with a bag depicting a family of birds. It says 'Nestle Nutrition' on it. It makes me laugh because... none of the Nestle foods are that nutritious, and they certainly did a bad job at promoting nutrition when they gave all that milk powder to starving mothers to give to their starving babies in Africa.

I took a photo of it with my rubbish camera-phone, while pretending to text.







11-Oct-08, #5B
Man shouting on bus. MAN SHOUTING ON BUS!
This never happens, especially not in HK. I am on the bus and a man gets on, starts shouting, goes upstairs and continues to shout for about ten minutes.

People in HK don't know what to do about things like this. You could take your clothes off on the MTR and no-one would say anything. They would just look past you as if you weren't there.

People from upstairs start piling down, because they don't want to listen to the man shouting anymore. Meanwhile, the driver says and does nothing. In the UK, the bus driver would stop the bus, go upstairs and tell the man to leave. He would threaten to call the police. He would be a grumpy hard-ass.

I'm on the phone to my friend Katie in the US and she can hear the cacophony. She thinks it's hilarious that she can hear this man shouting all the way from Hong Kong.

After the famous Bus Uncle incident, people just don't want to deal with things like this.

Chinese people love to fight

It's come to my attention in the last year or so that there's a number of "angry Chinese people videos" out there on the Internet. I've titled this "Chinese people love to fight" which I think is a fair title. Living somewhere like Hong Kong you realise that there's a very odd kind of dichotomy – or should I say schizophrenia? – among locals here.

On the one hand, you could get on a bus naked and no-one would know what to do. They would most likely sit politely, without saying anything or even looking. On the other hand, often at the most surprising of times, uncouth screaming, shouting, hitting – yes, hitting – occurs. I was recently hit on the head by a woman on the bus who refused to move her bags so that I could sit down. After waiting for over a minute for her to finish her staring match with the woman opposite, also using a spare seat for her tired shopping bags, I went to move them for her in order to speed up the process of me sitting down. After a loud tut, she looked at me like I was crazy and hit me on the head before storming off (thus leaving me with two seats).

Anyway, enough preamble, enjoy the following international displays of fighting!

(This one is from San Francisco)

(This one is from New York)

Year of the Tiger, hear me roar!

Look at all the wonderful – and creepy – tiger things we made this year!

Go kitty...