Yangmei

Yangmei (杨梅), sometimes also called Yang Mei Berry, Chinese Bayberry or Waxberry, is not a fruit frequently available in Singapore.

This is an interesting fruit the size of a large cherry with a knobbly surface. The surface of the fruit is a deep red, almost purple. The flesh color is similar to surface color but somewhat lighter. The flesh is tart but sweet, with a single seed in the centre of the fruit.

I first came across Yangmei as a child, when my late grandfather brought home some fresh and dried ones from China. I was initially put off by the fruit, because Grandfather said it was prone to have worms and needed to be washed properly, with salt water.

But then Grandfather said they was delicious and gave me some to try. I remember they were pretty good!

After that time, the next time I had Yangmei was when I was living in Beijing. These were usually available in summer, and not for very long periods of time. Yangmei has a short shelf life just like raspberries, and has a very short growing period of just 2-3 weeks.

The Husband and I came across Yangmei quite by accident on Saturday and decided to buy a box home.

I wished we brought home a few more boxes.

These are the best Yangmei I've ever eaten - fleshy, juicy, tangy yet very very sweet.

Yangmei is a really healthy fruit - loaded with vitamin C and high in antioxidants. Do give them a try if you come across them!

Fresh on the tree. Photo from here

How Yangmei looks like on the inside. Photo from here

Hainan - Haikou

Hainan (meaning South Sea) is the smallest province of the People's Republic of China. It is also, I think, the only province of the country with a tropical climate.

I went to Hainan a couple of weeks back with 2 other girlfriends - G and R. It's been more than 10 years since I've travelled with both of them.

We went to Haikou for 4 days.. and actually, if you were to ask me, I wouldn't really recommend Haikou as a travel destination for Singaporeans. It is 4 hours away by flight but there isn't really anything terribly interesting or different about Haikou because a lot of the sights are really familiar to those of us living in a tropical climate - mangroves and lush greenery.

And for all the good Hainanese food we have in Singapore, you would think that Hainanese food in Hainan would be fantastic. However, I think I had the worst Hainanese chicken rice in my life in Haikou.. and the Hainanese noodles were so awful, we couldn't eat much of it at all.

But it was overall a nice getaway from everyday work and I enjoyed spending time with my 2 friends very much.

Hainan is supposedly one of the places with the best climate in the whole of China and with the least pollution. I would agree that it is much less polluted compared to the other major cities I've been to... but the noise pollution is just as bad and if not worse. Cars in Haikou drive using their horns, not signal lights.

At a volcano crater (It looks very dormant.. thankfully!)

A nice view of the surroundings.. and a pretty nice weather!

 

Hainan food - the big disappointment - very bad chicken rice 

(best in town according to our driver and a few others) and odd tasting noodles

A boat ride through a mangrove swamp

A big park in the city. We actually took a ride in those swan boats!

Our last meal at Haikou is.... KFC! I like KFC in China - this is the Peking roll. 

A bit like Peking duck but it has fried chicken fillet instead of duck

The Duty Free shop at the airport - I like the vintage look!

Tight Connections

You know you are old when you feel exhausted in your bones.

Either I'm old.. or I was crazy to travel like that.

On Thursday, I left for Shanghai for Beijing. I had 2 meetings in Shanghai on Friday.

My plan was to leave the office at 4:30pm.. to catch a 7pm flight back to Beijing. Then arrive in Beijing airport at 9pm, have my dinner and then check in for my midnight flight back to Singapore at 10pm.

The plan was simple enough.. but I was a little worried the entire day in Shanghai. You see, in my experience, the evening flights from Shanghai to Beijing (and vice versus) tend to be late. This is because the airline does this to-and-fro thing between the two cities with the same aircraft. Any delays during the day gets "carried over" and the later flights just end up more and more delayed.

Fortunately, my flight from Shanghai that day was just delayed by about an hour. (I was lucky - the weather in the 2 cities were perfect that day..) So I still made it comfortably for my midnight flight.

The point of this post?

Make sure you leave enough time for delays when making connections, especially if you are flying between Shanghai and Beijing later in the day.

The Beijing T3 at 11pm at night. Nice, quiet and HUGE

Oh, queue up!

I wish I’m the kind of person who is not disturbed by bad behaviour from others.

But I am.

And people who do not queue annoy me a lot.

It annoys me when people do not queue up when queuing up inconveniences them. And somehow it still happens quite a bit in China.

I made a bad decision by agreeing to travel to Shanghai from Beijing on the 530pm flight. My colleagues and I reached the Hongqiao airport at around 740pm.. during what seems to be the “peak hour” at the airport.

The queue for cabs was I think, at least 2km long. Okay, so maybe not 2km. But it was the longest I’ve seen.. and I have been to the Shanghai Hongqiao airport a number of times.

A couple tried to squeeze in front of my colleagues and I while we were queuing.

It reminded me of what happened to me in Beijing a couple of days before at a fast food restaurant. It was my turn to place my order and a man just stepped in right in front of me to place his order. I chose not to interrupt him.. but allowed him to order. Then I told him, “I think you just cut my queue”.

Instead of an apology, he said loudly, “Alright, isn’t it YOUR turn now huh?”

"...."

Determined not to allow this particular couple to cut my queue, I spoke up and told them to go back. The man said brashly “Huh? Yes, of course.. We ARE queuing.. We ARE queuing” But he and his partner fell back behind us (and cut the queue of the lady and everyone else behind us instead).

And when we almost got to the end of the line about 40 minutes later, an lady in her 50s strolled leisurely in and stepped right in front of us to board the cab we were supposed to take.

Sometimes, you just have to give up.

Lamb Hotpot

Lamb is not my preferred choice of meat. I like chicken and beef.. pork is tolerable but I tend to avoid lamb. It just has this strong smell and taste that I am not that partial to.

Some say you have to have lamb hotpot if you go Beijing, especially in winter. And Dong Lai Shun (东来顺) is one of the most famous lamb hotpot restaurant.

I have never been to this restaurant in spite of its fame. This trip to Beijing, I finally managed to make a trip there with some colleagues.

Dong Lai Shun is famous for a few things.

Firstly, it uses a traditional kind of copper pot. Copper conducts heat evenly and quickly and so the copper pot is supposedly better. I didn’t get to try out the difference the special pot makes, though. My friend thought that there isn't really much difference.. especially given the price difference. She is probably right.

Secondly, it is famous for its excellent lamb. It supposedly does not have the strong lamb taste. This I found to be true.. and in fact, I couldn’t taste anything at all. The meat tasted rather bland and my colleagues thought that it wasn’t up to standard.

Thirdly, it is famous for its sesame dipping sauce. I found the sesame dip particularly good. It was very smooth and extremely fragrant, and so all the vegetables we had that night turned out extremely good because of the dip.

Many of my friends have told me that Dong Lai Shun is an overrated restaurant.. and I think I have to agree.

My favourite hotpot restaurant Haidilao is way better.. in terms of food.. and especially so in terms of service. The folks from Dong Lai Shun were just not friendly at all. In fact, we could hardly get their attention even though there were quite a few of them and the restaurant wasn’t packed by the time we started our dinner.

Clockwise from left: The charcoal-fuelled hotpot, appetizers and sesame dipping sauce.

The thinly sliced lamb that looked pretty good.. but were strangely tasteless

Sesame Shaobing 芝麻烧饼 - Something usually eaten with lamb hotpot

东来顺 Dong Lai Shun

There are a number of outlets. I've only listed the one I went here. You can search in this website for more.
地址: 西城区西直门内南大街2号成铭大厦D座3楼(西直门桥东南角)
电话: （86）10-51901730

Service is an attitude

Whenever I go to China, I find my friends and I often complaining about service there.

(Not that the service in Singapore is really any better but that would need to be covered in a separate post. And let me also clarify I like China - my ancestors are from there and I have great friends from the country.)

I have collected a few interesting stories to tell about the service industry in Beijing and Shanghai from my 3 years of living in China.

One of the funnier stories happened to my friend in a restaurant.

A Caucasian friend found a strand of hair in a dish and called the waitress over. She politely pointed out to the waitress that there was a strand of black hair in the dish and then waited, hoping the waitress will offer to change the dish. The waitress took a look at the plate and the hair and then said nonchalantly, “是你的”(It’s yours). We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Firstly because she was suggesting that the hair belonged to the customer who pointed it out and secondly because the customer had golden hair.

Yes, it is a funny story. But not so funny at that particular point in time.

The quality of service is generally poor in most (not all) restaurants. This same service quality extends to most air flights.

During my flight from Beijing to Shanghai on Thursday, it suddenly dawned upon me that perhaps one of the main reason for this bad service is that these service staff are simply.. not happy.

Customers treat waitresses and flight attendants very poorly. They are often being yelled at or spoken to with a harsh tone. Even my normally really nice colleagues have a change in the tone of their voice when speaking to these service staff. To their (my colleagues) defense, I have always tried to speak nicely to waitresses and consequently, am often being ignored or treated badly by them. Those customers who raise their voices and appear really fierce often end up getting better and more prompt service. So is it the service staff or the customers that cause this phenomenon of poor treatment of service staff? I really don’t know.

The other reason why I think these service staff are not happy is because of their more senior colleagues. I have observed on more than a few occasions that the senior waitresses or flight attendants tend to boss over the more junior ones. Perhaps they have once been abused as well by their seniors and think that it is now their time to do this.

But being treated badly by your customers and colleagues wouldn’t give one much reasons to smile and be nice.

And so, they come to work feeling unhappy and with the attitude that customers are a source of great nuisance and should be properly “managed” so that they remain minimally annoying.

I’m writing this post on a flight from Shanghai back to Beijing.. and as I write, the flight attendant is walking around the cabin with a slight scowl on her face asking if one would like more drinks, as if we are all being a burden to her.

With such an attitude, it is really hard to expect her to be all sweet and polite if one were to respond with “Yes, thank you, I’d love to have another cup of hot Chinese tea”.

Pan Jia Yuan

Entrance to the Panjiayuan market

Pan Jia Yuan Antiques Market (潘家园古董市场) is a fascinating place.

When we stayed in Beijing, I liked it whenever we went there, apart from the parking part (Finding a parking space nearby the market is.. challenging.)

The name is somewhat misleading because I don't believe that you can find any antiques at Pan Jia Yuan. Of course opinions differ but I think if you do buy anything at Pan Jia Yuan, pay for it as if it is not an antique. Unless you really are (or think you are) an expert.

A documentary I've once seen on National Geographic called "Faking China" illustrates my point. A museum curator from Beijing once thought he had found some greenish bronze antique pieces at Pan Jia Yuan that were national treasures and proceeded to buy them all up for the museum. Then he realized the more he bought the more there seemed to be available in the market. With deeper investigations, he found that the "national treasures" were actually made in a little workshop in the country-side.

But I digress.

Although you can't find any real antiques at Pan Jia Yuan, it is still a really fascinating place. You can find all sorts of things at Pan Jia Yuan - wooden Chinese pieces of furniture - both new and old-looking (Note I said "old-looking"), fantastic looking ceramic pieces - old and new, practical or otherwise, all kinds of paintings - traditional Chinese calligraphy, oil paintings etc, all kinds of art (embroidery pieces, sculptures, pottery etc), antique replicas (Qing vases, Ming Horses etc), lots of various jewellery (jade bangles, Chinese beads and any kind of stones you can wear, more pearls than in the South China Sea and anything you can think of), old books and magazines and oh yes, lots of trinkets... If there is any trinket you can find in China, it can be found in Pan Jia Yuan - Mao clocks, Tibetian clothes, opium pipes and anything else you can think of.

The amazing variety of things.. or junk.. on sale..

The market swings into full operation on weekends, but I think you have to go in the morning, or early afternoon, to see the market in full operation. The entire market is actually pretty big (to me) but is relatively well organised into different sections for different things.

I like going to Pan Jia Yuan just to take a look at the stuff for sale there. It's quite amazing. Of course the bargaining that people do also amazes me. The bargaining part, plus the dazzling variety of things for sale, makes the Pan Jia Yuan shopping experience a very unique one.

We have gotten a few things from Pan Jia Yuan for our home.

My favourites are a tiny little Chinese-styled bench that we use to sit on to wear our shoes and a small Chinese painting.

Our little wooden chair - the coffee cup on the left is to show the size of this bench..

Nan Luo Gu Xiang

The entrance to Nan Luo Gu Xiang

Nan Luo Gu Xiang (南锣鼓巷) is a small street in Beijing's DongCheng district, near the famous Hou Hai area.

It is a charming little street, or what the locals call "hutong". This hutong has been undergoing a facelift for the last 2 years and is now a pretty little street with cafes, bars, handicraft, clothing and other quaint little shops hidden with traditional courtyard-styled houses.

Nan Luo Gu Xiang was built 700 year ago in the Yuan dynasty and used to be where the homes of court officers and literates are. The walls and tiles on Nan Luo Gu Xiang are a grayish tone, not the royal red of the Forbidden City just one street away. Even with the relatively recent refurbishment, the place is still charming and has a slower pace compared with the rest of the city.

The hutong..

I went there this trip for coffee with a friend. Can't really remember the name of the shop we went to now, but I had very good coffee and a surprisingly good chocolate cake. It's a nice feeling to sit in the "open" courtyard in winter and have coffee and cake. Of course, the entire area actually has a clear covering on top and also heating to protect us from the cold.

Surprising good chocolate mousse cake

It is nice to sit in one of the cafes at Nanluoguxiang, 
sip a hot cup of coffee and watch the world go slowly by..

Bread and Ice-cream

I was in Beijing in December and as usual, my very nice ex-colleagues would try to bring me out for nice dinners almost every night.

For lunch, because of work, we usually have to go somewhere nearby.

And all of them know I like this particular restaurant nearby called Charme Restaurant (港丽餐厅).

The restaurant serves pretty good food in general but I like it because of this particular dessert:

Toasted thick bread and vanilla ice-cream

It is a super thick piece of bread - almost like half a normal breakfast loaf, toasted golden brown until very crispy on the outside with some butter and sugar on top and then topped off with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

The crust on the sides are kind of like the "bowl" of this dish - the chef has cut up the centre part into bite-size pieces so you just eat those. The pieces of bread on top, are of course crispy and hot and comes with melted butter, sugar and ice-cream. The ones inside are soft and chewy and comes with melted ice-cream.

Such a simple dish... but so yummy!

港丽餐厅 Charme Restaurant

Address: 西城区西单北大街131号大悦城6楼01号

The Best Bao I Have Ever Eaten

I like to eat baos.

I tend to prefer the savoury kinds.

In Singapore, I like Chicken Bao, or sometimes also called 鸡肉大包. It is the typical kind of baos you find in Singapore, with a sweetish soft outer skin and chicken pieces plus a small bit of an egg inside.

I also like Char Siew Baos, but only the kind with super fluffy skin and small pieces of char siew in a sweet, sticky and thick sauce. These are usually found in good dim sum restaurants but when I was studying, NTU Canteen 2 has this store that sells this particular bao done just the way I like it.

The only sweet bao I like is the Custard Bao (奶黄包) and its cousin the "Golden Sand Bao" (金沙包). The Custard  Bao, as per its name, is a kind of bao with a creamy and smooth custard filling. The "Golden Sand Bao" is the same but the filling has some salted egg yolks added to it, so the filling is more liquid, deeper in colour and has just the slightest bit of taste and texture that really enhances the taste of custard. (Yum!) Unfortunately, my favourite custard bao can only be found in Hong Kong. The ones I've tried in Singapore are not that great..

The best bao I have eaten though, is found in Shanghai.

Shanghai has many different kinds of baos.

Forget the Meat Baos that look like cousins of our Pork and Chicken Baos in Singapore - they taste different and no matter how good they claim to be, the Singaporean cousins are far more superior.

Xiao Long Bao (小笼包) is very good in Shanghai. In general the standards for Xiao Long Bao is good in most restaurants in Shanghai.. but a particularly good one can be found at this place called Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao (南翔小籠包). Just search this on the web and you'd easily get pictures of the long queues for these great snacks.

Personally, I think the Xiao Long Bao at Nan Xiang is good.. but I can get a pretty good proxy at Ding Tai Fung (鼎泰丰) so they are nothing to shout about.

Xiao Long Soup Bao (小笼汤包) is more interesting to me. This is a slightly bigger version of Xiao Long Bao, with soup inside and almost no meat. This is one classy bao because you usually get a straw to drink up all the soup... And you usually don't eat the skin or the meat inside. It's interesting to me because you don't really find it in many restaurants (not in Singapore anyway).

But the best baos I have EVER eaten... and I'm absolutely serious about it... is from this very humble little shop found in a very humble looking street in Shanghai.

This shop serves the juicest Pan-Fried Bao (生煎包) I have ever eaten.

A single serving gives you 4 humble looking Pan-Fried Baos with golden brown bottoms. The golden-brown parts are crispy and the rest of the skin is chewy with a generous sprinkling of fragrant sesame seeds.

This is how you would (and should) eat it.

You bite a little hole and carefully suck out the hot soup. It takes a while because there are lots of soup in the small little bao. Just when you think that there can't be anymore soup in that bao and proceed to take a bite at the meat, you'd find an explosion of meating flavour and juices in your mouth.

And since the bao would have cooled off quite a bit by then, in no less than a few seconds, you'd find yourself polishing it off, juicy meat, chewy-crispy skin and all.

And then you'd be repeating the entire process all over again on the second one.

And then the third and fourth... and if you have a good appetite, you'd proceed off to queue for another serving.

I had the chance to go Shanghai for 1 day in December and of course, I had to make time to visit this shop when I was there. They have a lot more branches in the city now but apparently, the original store does it best.

Xiao Long Soup Bao (left) and my favourite Pan-Fried Baos from Xiao Yang

Xiao Yang Pan-Fried Bao 小杨生煎包

Address: 静安区吴江路54-60号(近南京西路)

A nice Korean Restaurant in BJ

I know.. I know my phototaking skills suck... and on certain days, especially when I have a raveneous appetite, my photos turn out worse than usual.

But I still insist on blogging about this Korean Restaurant that I like a lot in Beijing.

It's not the fancy type of Korean restaurants with dim lighting, great red-wine, private rooms and excellent service... where you can host friends visiting from other cities or go on a nice date with someone special. (Not that I don't like those type of Korean restaurants.. but they are not somewhere you'd often go..)

But no, 麻浦烧烤, or Ma-pu as I would usually call it, is a very down-to-earth, bright lights and busy kitchen type of Korean BBQ restaurant where you know they serve good, hearty meals at reasonable prices from the number of Korean customers they have there during dinner time.

They serve very good seasoned beef and pork, a reasonably refreshing Korean cold noodles, excellent soups.. and most of all... very good rice in a sizzling hot stone-pot.

The rice is white rice, mixed with purple rice and a little bit of mixed beans. They usually need at least 15 - 25 minutes to serve it.. but it's always worth the wait.

I brought an ex-client-turned-friend who recently moved to Beijing to this restaurant this time around.

The seasoned beef is very good.. The seasoned pork even better

(From someone who doesn't take pork, that's saying a lot)

The many side dishes and purple rice in a hot stone-pot.

They'd pour some tea into the hotpot after the rice is taken out.. you get porridge!

麻浦烧烤

Address: 朝阳区新源里14号

Tel: 010-64620316

Now, I just need to find a similar place in Singapore...

Fiery Cuisine

I think Sichuan food can only be described as fiery.

The Chinese would describe Sichuan food as 麻辣 (mala), which means spicy hot in a numbing manner. You will understand why "numbing" if you try Sichuan food. They often contain an ingredient called 麻椒 (majiao), which is sometimes also called Sichuan pepper. It is not spicy hot actually.. but gives a numbing feeling to the tongue. In English, I find no good word that explains 麻辣 in a more appropriate way than "fiery"

2 Sichuan dishes that I like have interesting names.

The first is 水煮鱼 (shuizhuyu), which literally translates to "Water-boiled Fish". You won't see any water when the dish is served though. It is actually fish boiled in water and drowned in a LOT of chilli oil. The chillis are usually removed at your table by the staff. If you like it even spicier, you can request for the chillis to be removed later... (Not advised)

The fish is very tender because of the way it is cooked and even though it may seem very oily, because you kind of have to "fish" it out of the chilli oil, it's actually okay. Just avoid the odd Sichuan pepper still in the dish.

The second dish is 口水鸡 (koushuiji), which literally means "Saliva Chicken". Doesn't sound good but it is really just steamed chicken with a really spicy mix of chillis, peanuts and assorted spices. Very simple but good. It is usually served as a cold dish.. although there is nothing "cold" about it.

Sichuan food is gaining popularity all across China now.. and even though I didn't really appreciate it as much in the beginning, but over time, I'm really getting quite hooked on it and would request to go to a Sichuan restaurant whenever I visit Beijing.

This last trip, we went to a popular restaurant to satisfy my cravings.

渝信川菜(长安店)
Address: 东城区建国门内大街7号长安大戏院1楼
Telephone: +86-10-65171012

"Water-boiled fish" - No water in sight.. 

Delicious cold dishes.

Any dish you see with chilli will be spicy hot and numbing.

The "Saliva Chicken" is the one at the bottom right.

Prawns in chilli oil - can't see the prawns, right?

They are under the chillis. Surprisingly, this dish is not as spicy as it looks.

Super spicy frogs. I tried one and stopped at that.

Not just because it's frogs.. but it's so so spicy!

One of the few non-spicy dishes at the table. Home-made tofu.

Goes really well with spicy food. It kind of "relieves" your tongue a bit from all that spiciness

What makes a good hotpot

I think that I am easy to satisfy when it comes to good hotpot. But unfortunately, it is not always to either find a good hotpot restaurant, or else find enough friends who also want to have hotpot together.

Fortunately, most people like to have hotpot during autumn or winter in Beijing.

One of my favourite hotpot places in Beijing is this restaurant called 海底捞, or Haidilao in Hanyu Pingyin.

(I find the name of this restaurant rather special, actually. I always get the impression that it comes from the Chinese phrase 海底捞月, which translates literally to "fishing for the moon at the bottom of the sea". It actually means "striving for the impossible", since you can never fish the moon out of the sea, the only thing you end up doing is disturbing the reflection of the moon. I don't think the restaurant name means that though. It is probably called that because having hotpot is kind of like "fishing" food out of a pot of soup...)

To me, there are 3 things neccessary in every good hotpot.

Number 1: An excellent soup base

A good soup is very important to any decent hotpot. Usually, I like a light soup like mushroom soup. Some restaurants offer a hotpot with 2 or 3 types of soup, to give more variety. At Haidilao, I like the light herbal soup and tomato based soup. The tomato soup is nice and just a teeny weeny bit sourish and the herbal soup is light and doesn't have too overpowering herbal taste.

The spicy Sichuan chilli soup base is very good too.. but only if you have friends who can take lots of spicy hot food. I usually give up on the spicy one after a while.

Number 2:  A good dipping sauce

Haidilao has a dipping sauce counter where you can select and mix your own dipping sauce.

I usually choose sesame sauce and add lots of grounded peanuts, sesame seeds, celery and spring onions. A little bit of garlic and vinegar will help make the dipping sauce a whole lot yummier.

Number 3: Fresh ingredients

You can't really blame anyone or any restaurant for overcooking or undercooking your food when it cames to hotpot since you decide on the doneness of your food. Fresh ingredients is therefore key to make any simple hotpot great.

I find that Haidilao usually serves really fresh food. It is probably due to the huge crowd queuing at its doors all year round at meal-times.

Herbal Mushrooms and Tomato Soup

DIY sesame dipping sauce

Fresh hotpot ingredients - I always liked frozen tofu,

beef and lots of vegetables in my hotpot

Apart from the above, Haidilao also has one of the best service for a medium-range priced restaurant in Beijing. They have quite a few outlets scattered across Beijing, but I've only been to the one near the financial district.

海底捞火锅 (西单店)

Address: 西城区西单北大街109号婚庆大楼7楼

Telephone: 66174063

High Security in Beijing

For friends following my blog, I have a very good reason for not blogging for the last week.

The reason is due to the number 60.

For the Chinese, the number 60 is a special number. It signifies one full cycle.

Every 60 years, your birthday will fall on exactly the same day on both the Chinese lunar and Western solar calendar as the day when you were born.

To the Chinese, the 60th birthday is a very special one.

It's no wonder, therefore, that Beijing is painted red for the country's 60th birthday. Lots of flowers, colourful banners and decorations adorn the streets. Tiananmen is decked with huge red beams and red banners.

But as with every big events in China, the capital is on high security alert. The streets of Beijing, and especially Chang An Avenue is filled with volunteer security teams, policemen, military police and anti-terror police.

The security measures extend to hotels, restaurants, offices and yes, even the internet. Access to more "sensitive" websites are closed in China. And Blogger.com is one of them, although I'm not quite so sure what's so sensitive about blogger.com.

Which is why I haven't been able to moderate comments, post blogs and view blogs for the last 6 days.

My favourite Peking Duck

Dadong Restaurant (大董烤鸭店) is undoubtedly my favourite restaurant for Peking Duck.

Come to think of it, it could even be my favourite restaurant in Beijing. (But I have too many others I like too..)

I try to make it a point to go there each time I go to Beijing to have Peking Duck, which is something you can't really find in Singapore. Well, actually, you can have Peking Duck.. but it will not be in the same class, or even come close to it.

Mostly, I go to that restaurant with the same group of ex-colleagues. And usually, Mr E places our order.

Each time, there are some dishes he'd almost always order. These include:
- 盐水鸭肝 - Salted water duck liver, a cold dish of that is simple but good.
- 奇妙虾球 - Fried prawns coated with mayonnaise, my favourite dish.
- 栗汁娃娃菜 - Baby cabbage with chestnuts in an egg-like sauce. Yummy.
- 风味豆豉辣鱼片 - Mr E's favourite chilli fish slices. Spicy and very smooth fish slices.
- 大董烤鸭 - The must order - Dadong's Peking Duck.

Dadong's Peking duck is a lot less fatty and oily than the Peking duck served in other restaurants. There are 3 ways to enjoy it. One is to eat the skin, dipped in a little sugar. The skin is so crisp that it'd melt in your mouth. The other way is to eat it with the little sesame bun, with both the skin, meat and garlic paste. The third way is to eat it the "traditional" way, which is the duck slices wrapped in a little round piece of "flour paper", with cucumber, some onions and sweet sauce.

This time, we didn't go to branch we always frequent at 东四十条 (which is really nice because the restaurant is in an area where the buildings are built the traditional way with a little twist.. and has a nice ambience to it. Address: 东城区东四十条甲22号南新仓国际大厦1-2楼).

Instead, we went to the newest branch at 金宝汇 (Address: 东城区金宝街88号金宝汇购物中心). The new restaurant is built in a super swanky and modern setting. There is even a central "stage-like" area where the ovens are kept and you can watch the chefs roast the ducks. I especially like all the Chinese words which are projected onto the dark walls, because they give a bit of a scholarly feel to the place.

I didn't manage to take a picture of all the food we had this time.. but here are some of them...

红烧肉 - This is a cold dish. The waitress recited
some poem as she served this dish. Of course,
I couldn't hear a word she said.

奇妙虾球 - Really yummy and in my view,
better than the wasabi prawns at The Humble House风味豆豉辣鱼片
豆腐两吃 - Nothing special, really
My favourite Peking Duck - they'd slice it in front of you

Crispy duck skin slices

The crispy sesame buns, to go with the duck slicesThe complimentary dessert - iced chestnuts.
Yummy, though personally, I prefer the frozen
persimmon they sometimes serve.

32 Hours

It’s now 2:30pm, Friday, 7 Aug 2009. Calculating from the time I exited and then re-entered the Beijing International Airport again, I’ve spent exactly 32 hours in Beijing this time around.

And in total, I’d have spent about 18 hours on the road – on taxis getting to or from the airports, at the airports waiting to get on the planes and on the planes hoping to land safely.

My plane has been delayed for more than an hour.

So here I am, sitting a little away from the gate, waiting for time to go by.

As I look around, I see many fellow business travellers, heading home from work, on a Friday afternoon, tired after a week of work.

There was a time when going to the airport was something special. When leaving the country by plane meant a special vacation, a long trip away for studies or something similar.

There was a time when taking an aeroplane was an exhilarating experience, even a little scary to some. When eating plane food was an experience in itself and watching the inflight movie felt almost like a trip to the cinemas.

There was a time when we stared out of the plane windows when the airplane took off, when we gasp at the beautiful views outside that little window and try to point to our fellow travellers how we could see familiar buildings or landmarks as the plane taxis into the airport.

But those times seem far away now.

Now, we frown at the long queues at the customs at the airport, take a nap when the plane takes off, frown irritably the passenger next to us laugh out loud when watching a comedy on the inflight entertainment system and reject the food served by the airline.

What used to be once a luxury has now become just a means for us to get to work and then get home to spend the weekend with our family.

Picture taken from my seat in the airplane when
I was flying from Beijing to Shenyang in the winter of 2007

Travelling on a Red-Eye Flight

I’ve written on a previous blog post on how much I dislike travelling on the red-eye flight to Beijing, and won’t ever hope to do it again.

But you know how such things are.

Because here I am again, at 11pm at night, at Gate 46 of Terminal 1, waiting to get on the red-eye flight to Beijing.

It’s bad enough that I’m taking a flight at this hour. But this time, because I really have to get into town by 930am in the morning, I’ve chosen not to take Singapore Airlines, but The Other Airline, which is supposed to reach Beijing at 620am, a full 50 minutes ahead of SQ flight. (Knowing full well that there will likely be delays that will make this flight just maybe about 20 minutes ahead of the SQ one. Ah.. the value of time..)

The Other Airline, is usually cram full with tourists, both those heading towards Beijing and those returning home to Beijing. At 11pm at night, facing a night-long flight, you can understand that I’m feeling kind of grumpy.

And having fellow passengers who are packing and repacking their endless bits of plastic bags don’t really help (for tourists returning home). And shouting excitedly whilst doing so. Nor do those who are so bubbling with excitement about their upcoming trip that they have to shout excitedly to their fellow tour companions(for tourists going to Beijing).

But honestly, the worst kind of fellow passengers are those that allow their children (I wanted to use monsters but even at 11pm at night, that’s not a kind thing to say) to run about on the travelators , screaming and shouting at the top of their voices. Now, I can understand when travellers with infants have no choice when their yelling infants scream and cry on flights (although, I do wish and hope that they are travelling with such young one only out of absolute necessity). Honestly, I do. But when you have children at an age where they can comprehend simple instructions such as “Be quiet”, “Come over here” or “Stop it”, I really have the greatest urge to give these parents a good shake.

Actually, I am wrong.

Those are not the worst kind of fellow passengers. The worst are those who are no longer children, or even teenagers for that matter, but who are behaving very much like a 2 year old – yelling at the top of their voice, exclaiming over the smallest thing (like oh, there is internet connection at the Gate, and free phone calls to town!).

OK, I feel much better after all that ranting. I guess I have to just try to pretend that I’m going to sleep at a market later on the plane. I’ve to go now, gate’s closing.

Blocked from my own blog

I just came back to Singapore on Saturday (almost Sunday actually, since I arrived just before mid-night).

This trip to Beijing, I found out that I was not able to access my blog... or any other blogspot websites.. Nor was I able to access the GCS forum.

Hmph... It's probably due to heightened security in Beijing in June due to June 4 related activities.

Nonetheless, is nice to be able to blog again.

Each trip to Beijing is always packed with visits to my favourite restaurants and also trips to new ones. This trip, I went to the new Park Hyatt near Jian Wai SOHO - great view at the Level 63 bar and really really nice decor at the Level 6 bar. The Japanese restaurant at the basement is great too.

Too much good food and drinks means a lot more exercising is required now that I'm back..

Back to Beijing

I arrived in Beijing on Tuesday morning.

Yes, it meant I took the red-eye flight again. Even though after every single time, I tell myself that I'm too old to do this again. But of course, I always forget how unpleasant the experience is after a couple of weeks.. "Mdm! Wet Towels!"... "What drinks would you like?"... even though I was obviously drifting off to dreamland.. And then "Mdm! Breakfast for you!?" at 430am.. sighz...

But I digress.... this blog is meant to be about Beijing.

Having lived in this city for about 3 years.. it's nice to be back for a week after 3 months of being away. When I arrived, it is strange how familiar, yet distant everything has become. But then, surprisingly, after 2 days.. it is as if I never left.

It is great to visit my favourite restaurants, plan for shopping in the weekend and all.

But best of all, I get to catch up with my friends. :)

It is lovely move back home to Sunny Island - there's nothing I like better. But it's nice to be back in Beijing. Especially in Spring..