Hot Pot Cooking

So we had heard about it in Portland even, but until this week we had yet to go, and now we have gone twice. It is very delicious.

They start you out with a soup, both places had a spicy, a normal, and a mushroom. They had many soups besides these but they apparently don't translate well.

We then went to this central table that has all sorts of sauces and vegetables like green onions and other stuff good for putting in sauce. Lots of choices, and you combine them in your bowl and mix it up as a dipping sauce for what you take out of the soup.

You then fill your bowl of boiling soup with tasty things (besides the mushrooms which were already in, though you can add some if you didn't get the mushroom soup. They had beef, shrimp, clams, leafs, corn, octopus, and all sorts of stuff they couldn't name in English. You let the soup boil until the things you added are cooked and then dig in (literally, the clams are really hard to get out, even for those used to chop sticks.)

A very fun and delicious dinner.

Xitang

This past Saturday we went to Xitang, just an hour and a half car ride south of us in Zhejiang Province. It is also known as the water town as it is built on the convergence of 9 different rivers.

They had many boats in the canals, but they seemed to mostly carry goods, not people. Then I found out its because most Chinese don't learn how to swim.

It was very hot out and we were very glad for the short break. But a very fun day overall. I learned how to eat snails too...

Shanghai

This past weekend I woke up and took the 9:30 high speed train into Shanghai on Saturday morning for a weekend of tourism. There I first went to the City God Temple and YuYuan Gardens, in the older part of the city on the river called the Bund. At the temple I met up with Juliana, a longtime friend of the family, who is currently interning in Shanghai. We think it has been more than 10 years since we last saw each other, so it was very strange that it took us meeting in the most populous city in the world 7000 miles away from home to see each other again.

The high speed train hurtles along at 280 kmh, getting from Suzhou to Shanghai in less than 30 min.

The YuYuan Gardens in the Bund area of Shanghai. Just as beautiful as the Suzhou gardens, but much of this garden was off limits, only for viewing, not walking through.

The following pictures are taken from the 40th floor of this building.

Shanghai at night, although this is only a small part of the city, and even the edge of this part is lost in the smog.

Juliana and her two roommates.

 At the top of the Jin Mao Tower, on the observation deck, 340 meters from the really hard looking sidewalk.

My favorite (contemporary) building in Shanghai, one of the major radio broadcast towers.

In front of the Shanghai Museum. It was a great weekend.