Eating in Asia

In Suzhou: I've always loved bento boxes, where everything has its place.

In Nanjing: I love duck, though eating meat off the bone while also using chopsticks always challenges the line of how to eat in a lady-like fashion

Ditto for challenging eating in a polite tableside manner with ribs and chopsticks in Shenzhen, though these ribs were quite tasty

I prefer them like in this fashion in Hong Kong: this crispy pork and peking duck is much easier to eat, though I won't mention how much fat I had at this meal. I know crispy pork looks terrible for you (and it is) but it is so richly melt in your mouth.

I was actually thrilled when this was ordered by the Chinese co-worker in Shenzhen,  since I was suffering from severe lack of greens in my diet. These were stir-fried with garlic and unidentified little black caper-like things.

How can you make tofu taste better? Deep fry it and stuff pork in the middle. These tofu "bricks" were incredibly tasty with the mix of the firm tofu, the flavorfully seasoned pork inside, and the sauce outside was a mix of sweet and sour in a way that is not like traditional sweet&sour sauce- it was less thick in texture and had a lighter taste, definite improvements on sweet and sour sauce.

Hotel Breakfasts: those hash browns were at *every* hotel I went to. They must be making lots of money. Generally, I could not resist those damn things, as well as the cheese and the rest of my meal was usually very traditional Chinese offerings. I was surprised to see the cheese: most Chinese don't eat it, but that's what they offer anyway for the tourists who stay in the hotels it seems. The New Jin Jiang hotel in Shanghai actually had a cheese dome whose offerings included blue cheese, which I know for sure most are not a fan of. Oddly, my ability to get cheese is what allowed me to keep my daily interest in Chinese food, because cheese is usually the first thing I miss.

Street Food:
Nanjing's little pan fried rice square

Egg Tart Custard in Hong Kong

A 7-11 Breakfast in Hong Kong of a little bit of iced coffee and a egg and corn bun. There's something about the bread in Asia which is so soft, buttery goodness not found in the US.

Mos Burger, which is a rice burger- instead of buns there are "patties" of rice (the rice is just formed into that shape, it's not actually a patty at all). This is a interesting Japanese chain that also has locations in Taiwan. I could totally see a branch of this doing well in Portland or LA, as it's combination of "burger" with well-marinated meats is not too far off from the Korean taco trucks

Other street food in Taiwan, from the night markets:
like fresh dumplings at the Linjiang market

or these at the famous Shilin market


(yes that's a potato topping "bar" cart" which was wildly popular with long lines)
My quest: giant fried chicken steak

or at the Jiu Fen shopping area all I did was snack, including the area's famous taro dumplings.




My favorite were the ice cream/nut shavings wrapped treat, which i had twice. One person of the two-person team uses a big knife to scrape off shavings of peanut into each of those lil thin rice pancakes, puts in two lil scoops of ice cream, and wrap.

Honeymoon Dessert, one of the few times I had dessert (though in this case, I had it as a "snack" before going up to the Big Buddha. This is a mango pancake with cream. Their setting and offerings reminded me a bit like Finale, a famous dessert chain in the Boston area.

Finally….

Why supersize your meal when you can overload it!?? Awesome… or just go to a place offering a liquid dinner.
 

 

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Airline food and pretty lights from my Asia work trip

I have been insanely busy at work. Besides continuing the huge project I am leading on understanding and innovating a product, I also do the regular work I give other projects. Unfortunately for me, almost all those projects are planning updated releases in the near future so I am trying to keep up with pre-work that it takes to make sure the product design for each project is heading the right way before getting to the support-as-needed during implementation. Usually this not too bad except that there are multiples of these at the same time. Some of the planned releases also have major updates or even completely new features- which I'm glad for since I advocated some of these changes or I am enhancing the original proposed feature capability to be more strategic. But it's a lot of work to juggle. I'm a great multitasker, but I have found my limit.

This blog entry I just wanted to recap some of the visual highlights of my trip to Asia. Just as a summary of the Asia trip, it was for work, I left from Chicago to arrive in Shanghai, took a train stopping in Suzhou for a customer visit to then arrive in Nanjing and continue visits there. Then I flew to Shenzhen, spent the weekend in Hong Kong, then back to Shenzhen to complete my customer research visits there before heading to Taiwan to wrap up a few visits there.

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how different airline in-flight service is in Asia. The flight attendants on Asian airlines (yes this is a generalization and it's my blog, my opinion) just have a totally different demeanor bent on making customers comfortable and less grumpy – this sometimes takes on a interesting mix of both subservient and motherly (yes even male attendants). This was a contrast with my flight back. Also, even flights of 2 hours or 1.5 hours still get meals. The meals on Asian airlines are also a lot better then the stuff on US based airlines. My favorite airline now is still Korean Airlines, but on the Japan Airlines flight/China Airlines flight offerings of the soba/curry meal wasn't too bad. Of course, I am also a pretty brave eater (ok except for fruit), so I always opt for the Asian style meal rather then American one.

I was only in Shanghai for one night before leaving to other locations in China, but the city is beautifully lit up. In general, the skyscrapers in Asia have a much higher tendency to be all lit up with colored lights and even light shows on the buildings, something which you might see in the US in Vegas but not major cities unless there are major events the city is trying to support. I can imagine that if the same thing was tried here, there would be protests of electricity consumption, causing traffic jams or accidents because of the lights, visual pollution that decreases housing values of those who live in the area, etc. To me, the pretty lights of the buildings are such a vast improvement over the smog of the day though.

Shanghai

Shenzhen

Hong Kong

Taiwan

In Nanjing though, we were lucky enough to be there as they were preparing to celebrate a festival, and so it was particularly beautifully setup for evening viewing with lights in the Qinhaui Scenic Area. This area also had a Confucius temple, market area, and was an area where scholars used to take the officers examination to become politicians/government workers back pre-Communist era.

Next post, I'll go into a few highlights of food I had.

 

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