Monday, 31 August 2015
Saturday, 29 August 2015
Sunday, 23 August 2015
A Walk Around A Lake
Originally posted on 30th April 2015
I’m going to take you on a walk around a pond. It’s quite a big pond by UK standards, in fact we would call it a lake and the surface is covered in water lilies which will make it look spectacular in the summer when the water lilies are in flower. But that is not the reason we got on the metro on Sunday morning and travelled all the way up to the north end of line 11 to Jiading North, a journey that took us about 2 and 3/4 hours door to door. The pond didn’t look much, but at this time of year during the last two weeks in April it is a very special place indeed and certainly worth the journey we made.
Imagine a garden that concentrates on just one plant, (with a few others to compliment the others) but has 28 different varieties planted in their hundreds in two rows either side of a path that meanders around the lake. The plants are climbers and are trained over a pergola structure a bit like the laburnum tunnel at Bodnant. Only this tunnel is about half a kilometre long and the flowers that hang down are highly perfumed when smelled en masse, and are a mixture of purple, white and pink flowers……..
Welcome to the Jiading Wisteria Garden:
There – half a kilometre of fragrant pink, white but mainly purple racemes. Isn’t it wonderful (and it was free as well)?
Lake at 45 Bole Lu Jiading District Shanghai
Looking South at 45 Bole Lu
I’m going to take you on a walk around a pond. It’s quite a big pond by UK standards, in fact we would call it a lake and the surface is covered in water lilies which will make it look spectacular in the summer when the water lilies are in flower. But that is not the reason we got on the metro on Sunday morning and travelled all the way up to the north end of line 11 to Jiading North, a journey that took us about 2 and 3/4 hours door to door. The pond didn’t look much, but at this time of year during the last two weeks in April it is a very special place indeed and certainly worth the journey we made.
Imagine a garden that concentrates on just one plant, (with a few others to compliment the others) but has 28 different varieties planted in their hundreds in two rows either side of a path that meanders around the lake. The plants are climbers and are trained over a pergola structure a bit like the laburnum tunnel at Bodnant. Only this tunnel is about half a kilometre long and the flowers that hang down are highly perfumed when smelled en masse, and are a mixture of purple, white and pink flowers……..
Welcome to the Jiading Wisteria Garden:
There – half a kilometre of fragrant pink, white but mainly purple racemes. Isn’t it wonderful (and it was free as well)?
Food in Fujian
Originally posted 29th April 2015
After we had been to the Botanical Gardens in Xiamen we jumped in a taxi to go to the International Ferry Terminal to get the ferry to Gulang Yu and finding somewhere to eat around the terminal building. Our taxi driver had other ideas and just dropped us in town……. which in the end was better, as we could then walk down a nearby food street to find some lunch whilst looking at the food for sale in the market as we went. There was a lot of seafood for sale – horse shoe crabs either the right way up or upside down, a couple of seafood varieties that I hadn’t seen before and a snake and fish waiting for someone’s dinner.
We chose the cleanest looking restaurant, which turned out to be muslim and went in.
The menu on the table top wasn’t much help, but there was a picture
of the dishes on the wall. I had a vegetable and beef noodle dish with
came with a delicious beef broth flavoured with coriander and spring
onion and Richard had a beef ramen style dish.
All over Xiamen there were people (mainly women) selling fruit from carrying poles. We hadn’t seen either fruit they had on board before and Richard bought a couple of the pears a little later on, when we could wash them properly. The pears were most unlike any pear we had had before. They were very watery – more like a water melon than a pear. He didn’t buy the other fruit, but it looked as if was a type of apricot.
These carrying poles are used to sell fruit all over south east Asia
– made from bamboo, the lids of the baskets are turned upside down and
the fruit displayed on top of the upside down lids. In Shanghai I’ve
not actually seen the bamboo baskets – always here, the baskets are
replaced by crates, but the lids are still there:
When we had got off the ferry back from Gulang Yu we went in search of the Kaihe Shachamian a no-fills noodle cafe that sells satay-inspired noodles that was reported by the Lonely Planet China travel guide as being
a perennial favourite with the locals. When we eventually found it
after walking back and forth down the road, we decided that neither our
stomachs or heads were quite ready for such things, or such places for
that matter, and we turned tail and went back to a restaurant we had
passed that was larger and cleaner. The restaurant was full, which is
always a good sign, but we were invited to share a table with a couple
of students who were at the local Xiamen university where both were
reading German. We got by by talking to them in the stilted English and
my very, very rusty German. They very kindly ordered the best local
dishes for us which consisted of a fish and chilli soup, cloud ear
mushrooms, sausages with potato sticks and a pork and beansprout dish.
The following day when we were at the TianLuoKeng Tulou the locals were selling some of the produce from their fields. There was green oolong tea and what looked like black fermented local Fujian tea that were drying on flat open dishes. Outside one of the round Tulou, chrysanthemums were laid out onto a blue plastic sheeting drying, although it is usually the flower head that is used for chrysanthemum tea, so maybe these leaves were being used for some other flavouring. They had various teas, bagged up and ready to sell, some with flower heads for flavoured teas:
and they had been drying various locally harvested mushrooms, and other foods which I couldn’t identify, also for sale.
In the first Tulou that we entered a woman was drying cut up bamboo shoots in a specially made dryer – the dried bamboo was then being sold elsewhere on the flat woven baskets:
There was other stuff being dried that I couldn’t identify – some fleshy green plant which had what looked like purple flower buds and a green-leaved vegetable:
Other things to eat were less vegetative in nature:
and I’m sure that the ducks were not just for decoration. Hens were
crammed into small baskets or coops – I don’t know if they were laying
eggs or for the pot, but they certainly weren’t given much space.
When we got back to Zhangzhou that evening we met up with Richard the
production manager at the factory (he’s originally from King’s Lynn)
and Alena the chinese sales manager who always comes out to meet English
people to practise her language skills. We all went out for a Thai meal
in the shopping mall next door to our hotel. It was said that Richard
is one of only three western people living in Zhangzhou – the other two
are french, and he arrived at the factory without a word of Chinese. He
lives near the factory – Alena lives in a dormitory on the factory site
and whenever they come into town they tend to head for the Thai
restaurant as it gives them some variety from the normal food. At lunch
the following day, as visitors we were served a meal with about 7
different dishes – Richard said that normally, when visitors are not
there, they are given only three dishes and it is the same food day in
day out. I think that’s quite sad for someone working in a food
factory.
After we had been to the Botanical Gardens in Xiamen we jumped in a taxi to go to the International Ferry Terminal to get the ferry to Gulang Yu and finding somewhere to eat around the terminal building. Our taxi driver had other ideas and just dropped us in town……. which in the end was better, as we could then walk down a nearby food street to find some lunch whilst looking at the food for sale in the market as we went. There was a lot of seafood for sale – horse shoe crabs either the right way up or upside down, a couple of seafood varieties that I hadn’t seen before and a snake and fish waiting for someone’s dinner.
We chose the cleanest looking restaurant, which turned out to be muslim and went in.
Muslim Restaurant
Menu in Muslim Restaurant
All over Xiamen there were people (mainly women) selling fruit from carrying poles. We hadn’t seen either fruit they had on board before and Richard bought a couple of the pears a little later on, when we could wash them properly. The pears were most unlike any pear we had had before. They were very watery – more like a water melon than a pear. He didn’t buy the other fruit, but it looked as if was a type of apricot.
Carrying Pole Shanghai-Style
When we had got off the ferry back from Gulang Yu we went in search of the Kaihe Shachamian a no-fills noodle cafe that sells satay-inspired noodles that was reported by the Lonely Planet China travel guide as being
Restaurant in Xiamen
The following day when we were at the TianLuoKeng Tulou the locals were selling some of the produce from their fields. There was green oolong tea and what looked like black fermented local Fujian tea that were drying on flat open dishes. Outside one of the round Tulou, chrysanthemums were laid out onto a blue plastic sheeting drying, although it is usually the flower head that is used for chrysanthemum tea, so maybe these leaves were being used for some other flavouring. They had various teas, bagged up and ready to sell, some with flower heads for flavoured teas:
Unfermented oolong tea
Fermented Fujian Black Tea
Drying Chrysanthemums
Various teas for sale
and they had been drying various locally harvested mushrooms, and other foods which I couldn’t identify, also for sale.
Dried mushrooms being picked over
Spongy yellow fungus
Flat fungus for sale
Dried fruits etc
In the first Tulou that we entered a woman was drying cut up bamboo shoots in a specially made dryer – the dried bamboo was then being sold elsewhere on the flat woven baskets:
Bamboo Drying rack
Dried bamboo shoots
There was other stuff being dried that I couldn’t identify – some fleshy green plant which had what looked like purple flower buds and a green-leaved vegetable:
Fleshy plant drying
Green-Leaved vegetable
Other things to eat were less vegetative in nature:
Terrapin in Box
Terrapins in disused Tulou Well
Farm ducks
Hen Coop
Battery Hens being the gas bottle
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