I am so hungry!!!!!!!

I even want to eat this piece of lotus. And I don't like lotus. At all. Yuk. But still... mmmm.... yum.... (Oh, the girl in the photo is my friend Malin who came to visit last fall. She didn't like the lotus either)

I feel close to inhuman today. In 2 days I have lost around 5 kg but today I am ignoring my flu. I will eat. I will go to class. I will then go to Shanghai. And I will eat again. This thing about losing your appetite during a stomach flu doesn’t appeal to me. When I can’t eat I simply wanna eat more, if that makes any sense. One place where I won’t be eating ever again, however, is the Mr Pizza place in SIP, Suzhou. Not only did they try to keep my change last Friday, but they also did this to me. Bastards.

Did anyone feel the earthquake?!

Gosh, here I am whining about my sore belly meanwhile a strong earthquake, measuring 7.6 Richter Scale, jolts Wenchuan County of Southwest China's Sichuan province about one hour ago. According to the newspapers the earthquake were so powerful that it set buildings swaying in Shanghai, Beijing, Bangkok and on Taiwan too. I felt nothing though. Did you?

Street food

Since I (still) cannot eat anything today I thought I’d do some self torture and add some yummy looking photos of Shanghai street food. I was recently told that the big street food market near Nanjing Xi Lu metro station (near Shi men lu) has been closed down due to the fact that it is too busy and dirty!? I am so disappointed to hear this. That food market was great; crowded and crammed, cheap and loud –just like food markets should be! Now where should we go to satisfy our cravings for freshly fried dumplings, newly baked wheel cakes and greasy pumpkin treats?

Here’s what doesn’t exist anymore at the old food market in Nanjing Xi Lu…

Wheel cakes -my favorite afternoon treat!

Wheel cakes in the makings

Pumpkin cakes. Greasy but yummy.

Pancakes



Classic 'jiaozi' (dumplings). Another one of my favorites.

I hate when this happens…

My brother also got really stomach sick when he came to visit me here... Maybe sensitive bellies run in our family? Darn.

You think you’re fine, you’re having your breakfast, getting dressed, trying to ignore the pain in your stomach and pretend it's nothing. And then, just when u r about to walk out the door, the nauseous feeling hits you, you have to run back into the loo where u spend most of your day, feeling nothing like a princess…. Ah, I HATE stomach flus!? In China I am an instant victim if I accidentally eat something fishy. I think I’ve lost a good deal of kilos since I got here too, because the most vicious kind, where u cannot even keep water, seems to like me a lot.

Yeah, so no Shanghai yesterday, and no ‘enjoyable day in the sun’ either. Today I am contemplating if I should turn up for class or not. I am kind of mega hungry (and like always when I get bugs I don't feel like eating rice, bananas or those things you 'should eat'. Rather, all I can think about is ice-cream, candy and chocolate.... hm.. probably great for the belly, huh?) but I don’t dear to eat, nor drink, so I am guessing the headache that’s been creeping in on me will soon get heavier too… Oh, what a whiny way to start the week, huh? Something less self-pitying and more substantial will appear on the blog later on.

What people here do for fun

Singing stone

If you don’t want to be crammed with the crowd in Suzhou’s centre Guan Qian Jie, there are plenty of options for what u can do on a sunny Sat morning in Suzhou.

U can hear for the Jinji Hu in SIP (directly translated the lake is called ‘the golden chicken lake) and watch grown ups play games and fly kites, as well as listening to the latest radio hits from the stone-shaped speakers (why?!). Or, you can hear for the flash Ligondi area (located at the south-west side of the lake), which consists of a bunch of fancy bars, nightclubs, restaurants and cafés, combined with a large shopping centre called ‘Suzhou Outlets’ (here u find everything from Nike to Nine West). This area pretty much has everything, except for visitors, so between friends we call it the ‘ghost area’. So much stuff and so little people.




The development around the lake area is quite interesting: yet a new effort from the city planners to introduce their citizens to something they are obviously not ready for. (At least I am not ready to pay 40 kuai for a cup of coffee, no matter where I have it in Suzhou?!). Once u head to the opposite side of Jinji Hu you’ll be faced with another bunch of restaurants, nightclubs and fancy hotels that look sadly empty. For who is all this? I wonder. It seems like the majority of the residential buildings on this side of the lake are empty. The city council must have some grand master plan to move people out there, because they sure are making an effort into transforming this area into a high-profile, convenient residential area with tonnes of entertainment options.

Anyways, that was just some of my thoughts. Today it’s yet another sunny day, and we feel like we are ready to be crammed with the crowd, rather than walking around in a ghost area, so we’re off to Shanghai.

Suzhou ghost area

City on Steroids (or Country on Steroids?)

I just finished watching a really interesting documentary on http://www.current.com/. It's about Chongqing's (Chongqing is one of China's mega cities) rapid development and I think it reflect a 'movement' that is taking place at many cities in China today. Peasants are travelling into the cities in order to find work, so that they can earn money and send back to their families on the country side. At the same time, the unemployment rate in the city is high, and while the peasants are the people behind all the new buildings that are shooting up, the young, wealthier people, who eventually are those moving into all those new buildings, have little or none understanding for migrant workers, and simply think they cause problems because they lack in terms of education....

This sort of documentary leaves you with mixed feelings: you feel for the peasants that are working so hard for so little and basically are the people who are giving China new looks and shapes, and at the same time you feel a twinge of worry about the fact that China might be developing too fast. The building boom in Chongqing is over the top; in the next 10 years they are planning to make room for another 4 million people in the city (a city that already has a population of 12 million people -still many people in the world have never even heard about Chongqing!). At the same time, the price of pork (for instance) is steadily getting higher, due to less people being willing to live on the country side and raise pigs. Although people are aware of this, I don't think anything will change until maybe when inflation hits its peak, and then....yeah, what then? With China moving their population into the cities in order to create 'better living conditions' for them, I find it hard to imagine what it will be like when you have a country of megacities and a decreasing number of farmers.

When I say the documentary reflects a 'movement' taking place in China I mean that what is happening in Chongqing seems to be happening at a lot of places in China. Just take south China's Yunnan province for instance. I went there in 2006 and was amazed of how Kunming (the capital city of Yunnan) was booming, at the same time as I was surprised and disappointed of how little there was left of 'the old China'. (I feel the current correspondent Adam is experiencing the same feeling when he is in Chongqing) But after a 2 hour drive to Yuxi, a city known for its tobacco trade, where I visited a volunteer group called YID (Yunnan Institute of Development) and went with them to some mountain villages (about ½ a day's drive from Yuxi) the gap between new and old (also now referred to as 'rich and poor' China) stung me in my eyes. At these villages people have nothing. The yearly income is 500 kuai. The children are not growing properly due to malnutrition, and so on. Still, when I was there, families were all smiles and would invite us to their homes for dinner and tea.

This is also China. But when u watch documentaries like the one about Chongqing it's hard to even think these sort of situations can take place in the same country. I don't know how I feel about China's eagerness to build and construct mega city after mega city, but regardless of what I think, it is currently happening, all over the place, Chongqing being one of them. If anyone's interested to watch the doco, this is the link:

http://current.com/items/88938803_city_on_steroids

Dislike of the day: waiters that keep your change

I've been getting a bit annoyed lately by waiters at restaurants keeping your change as their 'tip' without even giving you a change to decide if you want to give it or not?

Yesterday some friends from Shanghai arrived, and we went to have a late dinner at a restaurant in Suzhou. The restaurant area is very popular, especially amongst foreigners, and I bet to a lot of foreigners, leaving a 20 kuai tip makes little difference in their wallet. However, I really cannot stand when waiters don't give u a chance to choose if u want to tip them or not, and especially here in China, where there is no tip-culture (I've been a waiter myself so I know the drill -tip culture or not, u should always return the change).

When we had paid for our meal yesterday we were waiting for 20 min for our tip before we went to ask about it.
The staff looked completely confused "Have you already paid for your meal?" they asked. "Who was the waiter?!"

Well apparently the waiter had mysteriously vanished but when he came back 10 min later we went to ask about it. It was only 20 kuai but at this point we were so annoyed about him just keeping the change and not even bothering about giving it back.

Eventually he appeared at our table, with an amused smile on his face.
"Did you want your change?" he asked. "Didn't I already give it to you?"
"Eh, no!" we replied in choirs.
"Oh okey... well here u go then..." he said, and reluctantly pulled a 20 kuai note from his pocket.

Gosh, that was the last time I ate at that place. We actually also noticed later that some extra 'beers' had been added to our bill? This is a big downside with going to restos that are popular amongst foreigners. Unless you pay attention u will often be cheated.