Xi'An, the day trip - Part One

I have been wanting to visit the famous terra cotta warriors since we arrived in Shanghai three years ago.  It seems they are the oldest relic in China.  Having seen the great pyramids in Egypt and being fascinated with archeology I felt that I could not miss seeing this sight.  Tony, who travels like crazy for work didn't really have any passion to see them.  So I decided to take a day trip last Saturday while Tony was away in the States.  The flight from Shanghai leaves at 7:25am and arrives in Xi'An at 10am.

The landscape I noticed was very different from Shanghai.  Shanghai was originally one big muddy flat land near the Hungpu River.  Today it's been developed into a vibrant and bustling city, never-the-less it's still flat. Seeing the mountains from the window was very exciting for me! Which then gave way to lush green fields of rice.

And lovely terraces of rice carved from the side of a mountain.

I invited my friend and boss, Pam, to come along with me.  Her husband was visiting from the US so he joined us as well. We were very lucky as the weather in Shanghai ,when we left, was rainy and cool.  As you can see the weather in XiAn was sunny and by the way it was 55F degrees.  It had been raining in Shanghai all week so this was a nice change.

We were picked up from the airport by Xiaoqing, a lovely young girl who grew up in Xi'An and attends University in XiAn.  She is the friend of one of the students who I have been working with in Shanghai. Xiaoqing  was our guide for the day.

First stop, downtown Xi'An and the city wall.  We entered through a tunnel which gives you a clear indication of how thick this wall is, this wall will be standing for a long time, it's been standing for about 1,500 years Xiaoqing told me.

(From the internet) When Zhu Yuanzhang, the first Emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), captured Huizhou, a hermit named Zhu Sheng admonished him that he should 'built high walls, store abundant food supplies and take time to be an Emperor,' so that he could fortify the city and unify the other states. After the establishment of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang followed his advice and began to enlarge the wall built initially during the old Tang dynasty (618 -907), creating the modern Xian City Wall. It's the most complete city wall that has survived in China, as well being one of the largest ancient military defensive systems in the world.
After the extension, the wall now stands 12 meters (40 feet) tall, 12-14 meters (40-46 feet) wide at the top and 15-18 meters (50-60 feet) thick at the bottom. It covers 13.7 kilometers (8.5 miles) in length with a deep moat surrounding it.

Here we are at the top of the wall!

This is the most beautiful garbage can I have ever seen. 

View from over the wall.  Someones farm?

More wall.

Pam and Xiaoqing!

Dunkin Donuts and Baskin Robbins - every where in the world!

This fella had a variety of foods on his small cart. 

These are noodles.

Steamed bun which the guy will stuff  the filling into for you.  Looks like a pickled vegetable and bean curd.

He cooks the noodles in the spicy soup and then serves just the noodles to you.

This pretty tree lined street was the entrance to the local snack food street.  This is where we had our lunch.

Nice grilled beef or lamb on a skewer.  These are very very good!

Potato's with peppers and onions and cumin, it's quite nice but a little greasy.

Special buckwheat noodles with bean sprouts and hot chili and soy sauce.  The buckwheat noodle gives the whole dish an interesting flavor.  Not a bad flavor, just different.

Here is Pam giving them a try.  We all shared a bowl as we were not sure if we would like it, but we were curious to try it.

Our lunch, rice with ground lamb and spicy peppers, a very special local soup that has sliced beef, and small bits of bread in it.  It's called a bread soup. The bread is very dense - think heavier then an oyster cracker, yet fairly similar in taste and texture when soaked in the soup.  The broth and bread were very tasty! We also managed to eat 15 skewers of grilled lamb and beef!

Next stop, the warriors!

Kakadu

A wine dinner with friends, what's a better way to spend the evening I ask you?!  The Australian wine club (hmmm or was it the Australian club I wonder) had a lovely little dinner at Kakadu Restaurant with 3 wines, 3 courses and a yummy dessert.

Robyn and Rob on the left and Fiona and Matt on the right! And it seems I may be their token American friend.  OK, just kidding they have one other American friend! Both ladies are great and I enjoy their company immensely.  Echo Hill was the winery of the night.  We began with a Chardonnay and a pea soup with a large roasted scallop in the center.

The scallop was nice but the soup a bit bland for me.  I added what I thought was a nice swoosh of salt but it ended up being pepper, which was a good thing, as had that amount of salt fallen into my soup it would have been overdone! 

Next up a Shiraz and duck burritos - alright it was really called Roast Duck Crepes, far more elegant then my description.  Fortunately no matter what you call them, they were delicious.  But as a Hungarian is there any duck or pork dish that I don't like? 

 Here are my three wines and a water......as it was a Wednesday night I really had to take it easy on the wine part of the wine dinner.

 Third Course, another type of Shiraz with Lamb shanks and a cheesy polenta on the bottom, fantastic!

 Very clever dessert, a chocolate lava cake baked inside a coffee cup.

A wonderful evening!

Thanksgiving Tea at the Joint Insititute

 Preparing for the feast!

 This is Mr. Wu who promised to cook a turkey!

What a nice invitation to the faculty and staff - we were to come to the student center to enjoy some turkey, pie, cakes and snacks.

Of course it was Chinese style.  No pie, no snacks, no turkey.  But beautiful confections and chocolates as well as tea and soda were presented.

And a nice holiday "Chinese Turkey" a.k.a Ham. No condiments just a plate of ham.  I'm not complaining, pork is pork, what's not to love?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Sunday morning on the street where I live....

I woke early, dressed and headed to my favorite breakfast street vendor - the guy who sells Jiang Bing - this translates to a what like to think is a Chinese breakfast burrito.  I have posted about these great foods http://surpriseshanghai.blogspot.com/2010/12/chinese-breakfast-burritos-again.html, here.  After a great breakfast I walked around the block and encountered these ladies, dancing their little hearts out!

The street was full of them, maybe 100? Maybe more.  You cannot see their faces but they are all over the age of 50.  Clearly retired.  I watched them and thought, are they practicing for some event?  Remember the 1,000+ beautiful 18 year old Chinese girls who performed in the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony?  I thought hmmmm, is there some other event coming up? Targeted to the seniors?

There was music playing on loud speakers and they were waving their fans and dancing around in a very organized fashion.  Clearly they had been rehearsing.

After about 15 minutes I decided to continue my walk and I found this sign.  I also began thinking, didn't I see this last year?  And the year before?  I was beginning to put it all together, this is an annual or perhaps even biannual event.  The Ladies Dancing in the Street Event. They even have an official sign, so it must be good and I assume sanctioned by the government.

Every Friday you can visit the Muslim Market

Excited about the prospect of going to the weekly Muslim market I headed out on my next marvelous adventure.  I imagined a wonderful street blocked off for several hours, 10a -2p to be exact, and lots of great things to eat and buy.   I had heard lovely things about the market from friends but perhaps I didn't listen carefully to the details as I was so enchanted with the idea of seeing something new and eating lamb prepared lots of interesting ways.

The market is set on a busy street on the sidewalk. It is about 400 feet long and is comprised of about 95% food items.  Raw meats and cooked.  As you can see below, a nice rack of hanging raw meat is for sale as cars, trucks and bikes go racing by.

Here is an interesting and totally unexpected 'tower of offal'. Yes, offal, I think it is the insides of  lamb but who knows could be beef definitely not pork.  See how nicely the links of  mystery meat sausage stack up on top of pure fat and the lovely large brown kidney perched delicately on the top.  And next to it a sort of meatloaf of mixed meats.  Various parts of this tower are sliced and then sauteed with rice and served for lunch.  Next please.

Beautiful nuts and dried fruits were available for sale and admittedly they looked tempting enough to buy. I didn't.  They had lovely raisins and dried cherry tomatoes.  I have had dried tomatoes in Singapore when visiting our friend Daniel and his wife last November.  They were served as pre-dinner nibbles with nuts and chips.  I think they are more of a dessert snack as they are very sweet, like candy, and very delicious.

The nut sellers were in traditional Uighur costume. The Uighur people come from the southwest of China and it is said that they are related to the Hungarians.  Too bad they don't cook food as nicely as the Hungarians.

Here is a HUGE block of sweets.  It's nuts and dried fruits pressed together with honey and sugar. It's $10.00 a pound and a small slice weighs about a pound as it is quite dense.  When you look at it you see a lot of walnuts, when you bite into it you taste a lot of peanuts.  Yes, I bought what I was hoping to be a small bit and ended up with a pound.   The walnuts were so tempting.  I do not like peanut butter and I do not really enjoy peanuts, although with a lot of salt I like peanuts.  Anyway, a big bust but I am glad I tried it.

This fellow was making small pockets of bread stuffed with lamb and cooked in a hot stone oven.  Now THAT looked good.

Fresh and hot!

And tasty!!

I did not try these,  lamb on a stick, as each stick is liberally laced with fat and it's very rich and greasy when cooked. I know this as I have eaten these before in another part of town. Do they really like the taste of the fat, perhaps more then the meat? I don't know.  They are good, I just didn't have the taste for it this morning.

Here is where you get dessert, shaved ice from the block, and sweet condensed milk and coconut on top. The preparation is a bit 18th century for me.

Lovely fried rice with carrots and lamb.

Another Offal Tower. It's very popular.

Steamed instead of baked, bread with lamb inside.

More grilled meats.

An interesting morning, I think I will go back when I have another hankering for some lamb!