February 4, 2005
On the Oriental-List, Bill Robinson shares a piece of advice that I agree with one hundred percent:
I have been travelling around China for the last few months with a native Chinese woman who is a very fine cook, and I have come to the conclusion that it matters more how you order than where you eat. We have eaten in places that I normally would not walk into because of their outward appearance and had wonderful meals. We ate in one place in Shanghai and someone else ordered and the food was terrible. The next night we returned to the same hole in the wall restaurant and my companion ordered our dinner. It was fabulous. We went back to that same place, having different food each night(and all of that food being of 'haute cusine' quality) for a week. We never paid more than $8US for the both of us, always had amazing food that was beautiful and too much to finish, and always wished that our hotel was a lot farther away so we could walk off some of the calories. The same thing happened in Beijing and Xian and I came to the conclusion that ordering is the secret to successful eating in China. It's an art I've yet to master.
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February 5, 2005
Sometimes in this weblog I like to highlight great writing by China webloggers. On the train ride back from Shiyan last night I tried my hand at translating the introductory chapter of Mian Mian's Panda Sex and was reminded how, no matter how great the writing one is translating, if one's own writing is poor then a translation will turn out poorly too. So this morning I was particularly impressed by Wanbro's latest entry on Hong Kong:
What’s that you say? Cultural wasteland? But can you not see the glittering lights of the Karaoke Palaces? Do you not notice the glass-walled elevators in the huge shopping malls? See how we are whores to both Japanese and European fashion! Behold the stuffed pandas we sell to show our allegiance to Beijing! We can even fix it for you to have a Kodak photoshoot with a wax rendering of Our Lord Jacky Chan!
And his reference to those twin sticks of sin
just about killed me.
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February 26, 2005
A couple weblog entries to point out today: the_dmz performs a public service, informing the people of Ha'erbin that the spirit of Mao Zedong Thought is still alive in Nepal; and John of Sinosplice teams up with Wilson of Racingmix to release the second, long-awaited installment of Junk Food Review: Off-shore Edition.
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