Sheung Wan, Hong Kong

I walked around a bit today during my lunch hour in Sheung Wan. It's an old neighborhood on Hong Kong island with a lot of character.

Grand Millenium Plaza

I passed a lion dance troupe on the way to work. They're practicing for a performance. Today (February 19) is the 10th day of the new year. There are 12 animals in the Chinese  zodiac, which are paired with one of five classical Chinese/Buddhist elements (wood, fire, earth, metal and water). 2013 is the year of the water snake. 

Lion dance troup at Grand Millenium Plaza

At lunch, I walked to Shun Tak Centre on the harbourfront. From Shun Tak Centre, you can take high-speed ferries (or helicopter!) to Macau and other cities in the Pearl River Delta. This is the view of West Kowloon district across the harbour, taken from the footbridge by Shun Tak Centre.

Hong Kong Harbour

Checking in (and a tuna Niçoise recipe)

I'm alive! *dusts off blog* Whew, it's been a while since I've posted, hasn't it?

Fried cheese curds at Bastille Days in Milwaukee

Work and a lot of travel has kept me crazy-busy. Since my last post, I went to New York for a week and a half, Vancouver for a few days (including a crazy YVR-San Francisco - Tokyo - HK return flight due to the Fly America Act and missing my flight because of delays), Bangkok again in June, and Jon and I just returned a few days ago from three weeks in the US. (It looks like there's going to be another New York trip as well as Shanghai trip in early September too -- I like NY, but I'm at the point where I just want to stay home for now and don't want to travel for work!)

We went on a pilgrimage to New Glarus Brewing Co in New Glarus, Wisconsin (which is a mock-Swiss chalet town)

But let me think about happier things - like the great vacation I just had :). We spent three weeks visiting Jon's family and friends in Madison & Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (or, to be more accurate, Jon was the one who drove), where we eat a lot of good fresh food and drank even more fantastic craft beer (we squeezed in trips to two breweries - New Glarus and Lakefront). We also went to the Packers Hall of Fame at Lambeau Field in Green Bay (it's an NFL American football thing, but it was pretty neat to see the Lombardi Trophy and Aaron Rodger's Superbowl ring).

It's funny, because I used to be such a geographical snob -- growing up, my family lived in Vancouver (Pacific Northwest) and I went to college in upstate New York, or having a transfer flight at O'hare airport, I didn't know much about the mid-West ("the fly-over" states?!) The only time I had been in the Mid-West was during a crazy 3-week road trip from Vancouver to Prince Edward Island and back (West to East Coast was through Canada; East to West was through the US on the I-90), where we ate Chinese food almost every night, thanks to my dad's need to eat rice with every meal. But that's another story for another time.

Cattle prices on the Agricultural reports on the TV news

What I want to say was I found myself really, really liking Wisconsin and the U.P. -- the commitment to sustainable local produce, the appreciation for the good things in life (cheese curds, sausages, beers, frozen custard!) and the friendliness and lack of pretentiousness that people had. It's very different from big-city Hong Kong or New York city, where I get tired about all the prattling about brand names and money and showing off. 

Jesse works for Alterra Coffee, which has awesome coffee and baked yummies. Their graphic designer is really talented - I love my Alterra T-shirts! :)

Here's one meal that Jon's sister Jesse and I made one sweaty evening in Milwaukee during that heat wave where it was in the 90s (Fahrenheit, which is about 32 C or so -- but in a place where they don't have air cons!).

Tuna Niçoise

Jesse bought the tuna steak from Trader Joe's. The fingerling potatoes and green beans we bought from the local farmer's market (not really a market, more like a cluster of stands on a street corner) in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee where she lives. The lettuce were grown by Jesse in planter pots on her deck.  It was one of the best meals I've had in a long time -- the potatoes were fresh and sweet, and the beans were crisp and tasted of sunshine and good things.

Travels near and far

It's been rather quiet around here lately. As well as starting a new job (chaotic!), I've been hopping around Asia too. So please forgive me if my updates are a bit sparse. First, we went to Cebu in the Philippines for the Easter weekend, where we lazed around and went island hopping and I ordered at least six green mango smoothies (much tangier and tastier than regular ripe yellow mangoes).

Then it was back to HK and work. I saw some pretty Japanese candies at the local supermarket. I had to get a smartphone for work (urgh! I have a terrible, compulsive email-checking habit) so I got an iPhone 4 and have been playing around with the Instagram app.

This weekend, I hopped on a plane and visited an old college friend for her birthday. She runs a chocolate and confectionery factory near Xiamen, in Fujian province. Here's a photo of the sea there, in Zhangzhou. Xiamen was prettier and the air was cleaner than I expected. It's a fast-developing middle-tier city, but it's also a relatively nice beach town with some good boutique shopping and an appreciation of music and arts culture.

I've got three more cities to visit before the end of May: next week I'm headed to Bangkok for work, then to New York the week after (also for meetings) and then a couple days' layover in Vancouver so I can renew my driver's license. Then it's back to Hong Kong and hopefully no more travel until July when Jon and I head to Wisconsin and the UP (Michigan) to visit family.

Shanghai, Zhujiajiao, Nanjing, Suzhou

上海，朱家角，南京，蘇州之旅

My family is originally from Shanghai - Zhujiajiao (朱家角) water town in Qingpu (青浦) district to be precise. (Well, further back another few hundred years we are from Manchuria but for the past 700 years Shanghai has been the family "ancestral town".) My aunt and cousin still live in Shanghai, and my brother and his girlfriend were visiting from the US so we made a short trip up there to visit the old hometown.


Jon and I only went for two days because of work, but the others went for four days. They also went to Hangzhou to the West Lake, which I went to back in 2008, I think.

Anyway, not much to say about Shanghai - modern, polluted, expensive, lots of good food, and lots of photo-taking opportunities.

Here are the photos from Nanjing and Suzhou first as Blogger seems to have a photo limit:

Jon taking a photo of the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, Nanjing.

Sun Yat-sen is considered to be the father of modern-day China. Personally I find it a slightly creepy Communist propaganda tactic to put their embalmed leaders on display (Lenin, Stalin, Mao...). Sun Yat-sen's body is not on display but his marble sarcophagus is. I guess you never stop working in the service of the people, even after death!




The Nanjing massacre memorial. (An estimated 300,000 people were killed by the invading Japanese forces.)


KFC street advertising in Suzhou

Our gluttonous, gourmet banquet in Zhujiajiao. I love Shanghai food - my mom makes it sometimes at home. My favourites are the Dongbo pork belly and the bamboo, but frankly, I love it all!

You can rent these boats to go up and down the canals.

Making pork belly wrapped in bamboo leaf.



Despite it being a bit touristy these days with souvenir shops, new cafés and art galleries, Zhujiajiao is still home to quite a few people.



You can see many more photos here.

Eating out in Taipei

Jon and I visited Taipei this past weekend for a quick pre-Christmas getaway. The last time I visited Taipei, I was less than a year old, so this trip was essentially the first visit not only for Jon but for me as well.

We only had two and a half days, so we mainly wandered around the city, snacking and eating nonstop. Our hotel was in Ximending (West Gate), the main shopping and hangout spot for young people; the area reminded us of Shibuya in Tokyo. We also visited some other parts of the city, including Yongkang Street, Shilin Night Market, and Xinyi (for the giant Eslite 24-hr bookstore).


Overall, I enjoyed Taipei. I would definitely go back for the great food (especially local Taiwanese, eastern Chinese [i.e. Shanghai, Fujian, Chiuchow] and Japanese) and the relaxed café/coffee culture (local family-run cafés, not Starbucks, dominate). Shopping-wise, I can see why people love to go crazy in Taipei, but many of the home goods, tchotchkes, clothes and accessories can also be bought in Hong Kong for pretty much the same price. Chinese-language books are a bargain for Chinese readers (not me, unfortunately) while English-language books are at the same unfavourable rate Hong Kong bookstores use.

Souvenir shopping tip: Taiwan pineapple pastries (fenglisu/鳳梨酥) are famous and crazy-good. The best place (recommended by bloggers and guidebooks alike) to buy these super-yummy little shortcakes is at Kong Kee in Ximending (opposite the East Dragon hotel). Staff here are friendly and speak English, Cantonese, Mandarin and Japanese. You can try before you buy, i.e. free samples. The fenglisu's shortcake-like crust is crumbly, buttery-rich but not too sweet, while the inside pineapple filling is light and slightly sticky. It's like a lighter, airier version of Fig Newtons. I never really liked pineapple pastry as the ones I had before were very dense and brick-like, so authentic Taiwanese fenglisu was a revelation. Beware though, good pineapple pastries are very addictive...

Some of our stops included:

Jolly Brewery and Restaurant - A Taiwan microbrewery (not brewed on site due to municipal restrictions) that doubles as a sports bar and Thai eatery. Their home-brewed beer are respectable and reasonably priced (a 6 x 100ml sampler of their six home brews was NT$240 [US$8] if I recall correctly). I liked the sweet malt of the Scotch Ale (7.2% a.c.) while Jon preferred the lighter Weizen and the Pale Ale. Worth a visit for beer-lovers: don't expect amazing beer but it's not bad compared to all the Heineken, Carlsberg, and other supermarket beers that are served almost everywhere else.



Shilin Night Market - The mother of all Asian night-markets. A must-visit for foodies and everyone else. The temporary market building opposite the Jiantan metro station mostly contains some food and a few desultory amusement stands/games such as shrimp fishing, balloon shooting, etc. Oyster omelettes are one of Taiwan's classic dishes but Jon and I much preferred the Chiuchow version - the Taiwanese version had some transparent gooey stuff which was a bit too slimy in texture for our liking. (I later found out that it was tapioca starch.)

While the Taiwanese share the same intense foodie mania with most of the rest of Asia, they really up the stakes in craziness. Famous street dishes included the small sausage in big sausage, small bun in big bun and giant fried chicken steak (a gargantuan breaded fried chicken meat steak that's famous for being bigger than one's face and ridiculously cheap at NT$50/US$1.50).



The "big sausage" is actually a delicious mixture of garlicky, spicy glutinous rice stuffed into a sausage casing. The "small sausage" is a sweet, porky Taiwanese sausage. A relish of Chinese pickles, cucumber and a spicy soy-based sauce combines to create an AMAZING street snack.

Delicious sausages...mmm...the neon sign says "Small sausage wrapped in big sausage"



A bunch of victorious food maniacs who have lined up to buy the Giant Chicken Steak! (Seriously, Jon and I wanted to get this but we were stuffed from Din Tai Fung and the line for this was at least 30 people long.)


Din Tai Fung @ Yongkang Street - While I've never been that impressed by Din Tai Fung's food (especially after being served a drunken-chicken dish that had actually gone bad/rotten at their Shanghai Xintiandi branch a few years back - an unpardonable offense that I have neither forgiven nor forgotten!), the restaurant's xiaolongbao does have a cult following throughout Asia (particularly China, Korea and Japan). So I was willing to give DTF another chance, especially as all reviews indicated that the original branch at Yongkang Street in Taipei was much better than the other. Verdict? The xiaolongbao was good, but nothing special. I've had way better xiaolongbao in Hong Kong at Faye's Nouvelle Cuisine (aka Xiaonanguo/小南國) and amazing xiaolongbao in Shanghai (particularly at the xlb ground zero aka Nanxiang Mantoudian/南翔饅頭店 where these buns were invented). Anyway, I guess the food there is OK but not worth the 30-minute wait (Japanese tours bring huge groups here a LOT so be prepared for a long wait and very antsy crowds)

Crowds at Din Tai Fung.

OMG! Buns! Xiaolongbao! Steaming pork juice spurting into your mouth!

Trip to Hanoi, Vietnam

I can't believe I forgot to post these photos earlier...they've been up on my Facebook for a while, though.

My boyfriend and I went to Hanoi for 4 nights over the Lunar New Year holiday in January. Unfortunately, what we didn't realize until after we booked the trip was that Vietnam also celebrates this holiday (called Tet over there) and that many stores would be shut...it was also bloody freezing, like 10-15 Celcius everyday, windy and grey.

I think we were a bit unprepared for the crazy traffic and incessant honking, too. Ah, well. We ate a lot of good food and walked around a lot. Hanoi is an amazing and beautiful city in terms of history, architecture, vibrancy and food. Next winter, it's definitely a bit of R-and-R at a nice sunny beach for us! Still, I'd like to go back to Vietnam sometime, visit Halong Bay and see the country when it's not half-shut-down for the annual vacances.

I took quite a lot of photos, and we did eat at a lot of places, but here are a few snapshots that I think turned out well. We had a drink at the bar in the Metropole (I had the Somerset Maugham cocktail, Jon had the Charlie Chaplin cocktail, but not the Graham Greene cocktail) and we also visited the famous Fanny's glacerie for some exotic ice cream (green tea, coconut, young rice..). We didn't visit the Beaulieu restaurant in the Metropole (too expensive) or the Bobby Chinn restaurant (heard mixed reviews).

Our first night in Hanoi. We arrived after dark, dishevelled and hungry. We had dinner at a streetside pho stand run by a taciturn middle-aged woman. Neither of us spoke Vietnamese, so we resorted to gestures and pointing. Cost of dinner? 20,000 dong for a fresh, steaming bowl of pho. (The going exchange rate was 17,000 dong to US$1 when we went.)

Jon's a real coffee addict, so in the morning, we went to try the real Vietnamese coffee. A bit gritty with coffee grounds, a bit too sweet with condensed milk - but boy, was it smooth and rich.

We ate a lot at streetside stands, squatting on tiny plastic stools that looked more for stepping on than sitting on. This lunch was from a restaurant in an alleyway near the big statue of Vladimir Lenin, and near the Hanoi Hilton.


Bánh cuốn (steamed rice rolls/crepes with pork, mushroom, spring onions) restaurant. It's like a variation of that staple Cantonese dim sum item, "cheung fun".

Close up of the Bánh cuốn. The one in the foreground had a whole steamed egg inside, silky and rich. It went well with the fish sauce, chili, lime and herbs. Yum.

We did try the infamous civet cat/weasel coffee. It was pretty strong and smooth, but cost about 40,000 dong (US$2.35) for a tiny cup of espresso, which is quite ridiculously expensive by Vietnamese standards (compared to 20,000 dong for a bowl of beef pho) - but in the US I heard it goes for US$30-60 a cup, a huge markup. To be honest, it tasted like a really smooth and rich espresso. Not poopy at all.

Shanghai and Hangzhou (March 2008)

My family's hometown is in Shanghai. Hangzhou is a daytrip by car away. It's one of the most beautiful cities in China, with the famous West Lake (of West Lake beef soup fame)

Japan

いただきます！ (Itadakimasu!)

A hot food vending machine (Shinjuku, Tokyo)

Japanese biscuits (Asakusa, Tokyo)

Mink whale meat (Tsukiji market, Tokyo)

"Toro" tuna (Tsujiki market, Tokyo)