Month: November 2015

We left Hunnan and rattled on to Yunnan, to China’s equivalent to Venice, the very picturesque town of Lijiang.

The cooking in Yunnan is similar to neighbouring Sichuan, which is one of my favourite kitchens. Ma Po Tofu (vegetarian version) is one of my absolute favourite dishes of all time. I’ve had it countless times in China but the best one I have ever tasted is actually in Stockholm, at Lao Wai, hence one of the best restaurants in the world in my opinion.

Lijiang made my mind perpetuate “There is a willow grows aslant a brook” which I think is such a beautiful sentence. It is a quote from Hamlet when Gertrude tells Laertes of Ophelia’s death.  I know, I know, I sound awfully pretentious but I bet we all quote Shakespeare more often than we think, since it is entangled into the English as well as the Swedish language. See? We are all pretentious together.

In Central Asia people had such good phone manners, but in China they are almost as obsessed as the Europeans (I think Swedes are the worst). I freaking love internet, but it’s got out of hand when you get bumped into everyday by people that walk and scroll at the same time, or worse, when people can’t keep their hands off it during conversation/dinner/optional social interaction.

Speaking of internet, China’s internet is so incredibly controlled, even more so than the last time we were here, four years ago. It is so difficult to cope without Google! It feels like losing a really smart, although sometimes slightly mythomaniac, friend. But what is obviously a lot worse, is how it represents China’s undemocratic society, bringing thoughts to Mao’s former terror.

This is Jade Dragon Mountain, I love how “Crouching Tiger, Hidden dragon” that name is.

We left Lijiang to go hiking, on our way we were met by a gigantic land slide blocking the road. Luckily no one was injured, we were pretty close to our destination so we just climbed over it and walked the last few kilometers.

We were going to hike along the magnificent Tiger Leaping Gorge, one of the deepest canyons in the world.

When we finally got down to the bottom of the canyon we realised that we had to go through a nerve wrecking pass, vertiginously high up the cliff. You can see the narrow rim of it up to the left.

We were so freaking scared that we almost turned back, parts of it didn’t even have that shitty little fence!

Afterwords we were completely high of the adrenaline rush, which made the wondrous subtropical scenery even more beautiful in an almost psychedelic way. We walked through bamboo forests…

…waterfalls…

…wuthering hights and steaming rivers.

Almost as good as hiking, is ending up by a fire place with ice cold beer and Tibetan style yak-cheese burritos in Walnut village.

Hustle and bustle in all honour, we longed for some peace and quiet and headed for the beautiful national park Zhangjiajie in the Hunan province. It is heavily promoted as the Avatar mountains.

This is exactly how I picture Chinese poetry; misty karst formations, pine trees and bamboo.

Although very poetic and serene looking, this is pretty far from the truth. The paths are narrow and there are thousands of tourists (mainly Chinese), often in tour groups with leaders shouting hysterically in microphones. I never complain about touristic places, I always find it ridiculously easy to get away from the crowds. OK, maybe not in the Sistene Chapel, but we have spent hours by ourselves in Angkor Wat as well as in Machu Picchu and many other places. Unfortunately, this place was another matter.

Park management is very concerned about security, the poetic landscape seems to influence their writing.

Although I find this confusing rather than poetic.

We were hoping that Feng Huang, a beautiful ancient river town a few hours away, would provide some tranquillity.

Feng Huang is 300 years old, its epithet “ancient” surprises me considering how far back China’s history goes. I always thought of the word “ancient” as something that would stand in relation to the regions age, but what the hell do I know, I’m hardly an historian.

Pretty stilt houses. Feng Huang has UNESCO status and there were a lot of tourists around, but it was easy to escape them. Order restored.

There was a park with Cherbourgian influences. If you are thinking about buying a fancy brolly this is the place by the way.

I always thought it was the force?

Outside the restaurants you could pick your dinner. Those little fingers holding on to the bars broke my heart. It’s terrible how the animals are kept, but on the other hand I think it’s good that meat eaters get to see with their own eyes how much their dinner has been suffering. I find it hypocritical to eat meat if you can’t face its origin.

Speaking of hypocritical, I am sure that these laying hens has a marvellous life… Anyway, these eggs were cooked in batter, tasting like an EggMcMuffin. Another hypocritical thing I succumb to, I bloody love EggMcMuffins! I’ve tried to reproduce a fancy version with sourdough buns, aged Gruyere and homemade ketchup but mysteriously enough McDonalds do them better with their plastic Cheddar and sad looking eggs. That multinational, greedy, rainforest trashing company simply must have brainwashed me somehow.

I love how the Chinese people always walk around with their tea pots, like the Uruguayans carry around their mate (as in tea, not friend). Disposable Starbuck cups feel less romantic.

Bye for now.

Another 30 hours on the train brought us to Xian, former Chinese capital, famous for its myriads of Terracotta warriors. As most of you probably know, they were sculpted to protect the first emperor’s tomb about 2000 years ago.

It is incredibly fascinating to study their faces, hairstyles, clothes and different positions that have been crafted to such detail.

They have found about 2000 of them so far, but there are thought to be roughly 8000 figures, which they are still excavating.

These Hannibal Lecter looking lot are being restored.

They used to be painted, which you can still see some traces of. They’ve even paid attention to the shoe soles!

The warriors are obviously a very static bunch, in contrast to the very dynamic city of Xian. We love this kind of hustle and bustle! It makes me so happy that I can now enjoy it again, after having experienced severe stress related symptoms for the past year.

This region is famous for its pomegranates. One of those photogenic fruits that food stylists never seem to get enough of. I think it is often mentioned as a “super food” as well? The orthorexics have so shanghaied that word, I used to love the thought of antioxidants. Grumble.

Noodle twisting and turning.

Contemplating wether to buy scary monsters or super creeps.

My former food hygiene professors would not approve of this, that much I remember from those classes.

This is some kind of fruit that they have forced to grow into Buddha shapes. I am not sure if the Buddhists approve of such torturous methods.

We sat people watching and mentioned that this guy looked like a proper Hong Kong mobster when he suddenly pulled up a gun! When the adrenaline rush settled, we realised it was a lighter that he thought of buying. Something tells me he wouldn’t mind our prejudiced views of his appearance.

A member of the Chinese version of Hell’s Angels (?) thinking of ingesting some kind of hooves.

This is our third time in China, in total we have spent several months in this country, and we love it, but we will never ever get used to their spitting habits. There is constant fierce spitting all around; phlegm, discharge, sputum and spit infest every street of China. I have developed a perfect blurry downward stare, I see enough not to step in it but not the actual content.

We left the fertile land behind, hopped on the train in the middle of the night…

…and woke up on the Kazakh steppe, where they apparently managed to find some monstrous fish to sell.

As always, I also managed to find some starving stray to feed and ended up starving myself the rest of the journey (I was not tempted by that fish). You can also see our conductor, a woman!!! Meaning spotlessly clean toilets and no forced dehydration.

On the border to China, they thoroughly looked at every piece of our luggage and a white coat doctor came in and pointed some kind of laser to our foreheads? They asked for maps and were very confused to find about ten packages of Chinese tea in my bag, like bringing sand to Sahara you might think, but it’s actually not that easy to find good organic tea in China, which I simply can’t manage without (sounding like some eccentric, posh English lady).

Our destination was Urumqi, which not many people have a lot of good things to say about. I suppose it looks a lot like this, but luckily we are very easy to please and we really enjoyed, what felt like, being the only foreigners in town.

There is always some delicious local cuisine to marvel at.

We had some amazing food in Urumqi, although we left these H5N1 creatures to our imagination.

Urumqi is an Islamic region and we found lots of Chinese mosques, which we had never seen before.

We didn’t find a single person that spoke English but our hotel had very helpful signs.

Words of wisdom. To be continued, for sure.

* Fun fact: Steven Seagal has apparently done a cover of “Slow boat to China”. Hehe.