post trip blog — Jake and Jesslyn's World Tour

It’s been a year and a half since we’ve been back from our trip, and we haven't had any exotic excursions worthy of a blog since then, until a couple weeks ago when I traveled to China for work. I was excited to go, but had low expectations based on some bad experiences of my co-workers. My boss, John, and I were only there for 3 full days, which meant we spent just as much time traveling as actually being there.

While the jet lag and travel were a bit tiring, the trip overall was good. The travel to Beijing was long, but relatively comfortable in my premium economy seat right behind the bulkhead. Then a short 2 and half hour flight to our final destination of Changsha. A car picked us up at the airport and brought us to the Intercontinental, one of the nicest hotels in which I’ve stayed (and about the same price as the Hampton Inns I usually stay at when traveling in the States). Making things even easier was the fact we were there with our Chinese coworkers who doubled as our translators, tour guides, and food curators. It took some of the adventure out of it, but I was totally fine with that. Thank you Gavin, Alan, Jim, and Blues!

Changsha is the capital of Hunan province and home to 7 and a half million people, making it only the 19th largest city in China! For comparison, NYC has 8.5 million and the US’s second largest city is LA with only 4 million. Changsha is famous for being the place where Mao Zedong converted to communism. A 100 foot tall statue depicting the head of a young Chairman Mao honors him in a large park in the city.

The first thing that struck me about Changsha were the hundreds of tall (~50 story) apartment buildings. They are everywhere you look, and many more are under construction. With all that housing, I would have expected to see many more people on the streets. Where were all of the people who live in them? The other thing that stood out to me were the cars. There are many new cars from all of the familiar US, German, and Japanese brands. There were also a lot of high end German cars as well, like BMWs and Audis. The people of Changsha are doing pretty well, it seems.

I was most looking forward to the food. I couldn’t wait to try authentic General Tso’s chicken. Our first dinner was at a local, typical Hunan restaurant. We had a private room with a large round table. The place settings consisted of a small plate, small bowl, small cup, and even smaller cup, and of course chopsticks. Each set of dishes were shrink wrapped in plastic, presumably to let you know they are clean and to keep them that way. Despite this, they provided the table with a pitcher of hot water which we poured over the dishes to further disinfect them. We then dumped the hot water in a large bowl on the table. This only happened at a couple places, and not the nicer restaurants.

That night we ate crawfish, fish, duck, lamb, snake, some sort of green vegetable, and bitter melon. That was my first time eating snake, and it didn’t have much flavor. Due to the many small bones, it was a lot of work for very little meat. The stewed duck included the organs, bones, beak, and feet. I think it was only missing the feathers. Even the lamb (which was my favorite of that meal), included the skull so we wouldn’t miss out on the delicious face meat. Hunan is known for its spicy food, and much of it was, but I didn’t have anything that was unbearable.

All of the meals were family style, with the shared dishes placed on a rotating platform in the middle of the table eliminating the need to pass them around. When you want something, you simply rotate it until the one you want is in front of you. This is done slowly allowing others to nab food as it passes by. Most of the time the food was plucked directly from the communal dish with chopsticks and straight to your mouth. The small plates we had were mostly if you grabbed something that required more than one bite.

What's the most widely consumed type of liquor in the world? Vodka? Whiskey? Nope, it's baijiu. The 100 proof, clear liquor that Gavin refers to as "rocket fuel". It is consumed straight - that’s what the smallest of the cups was used for, or for tea. At the store I saw a huge range in price of baijiu, from a few dollars for a bottle, up to 50 dollars. So, I assume the quality varies quite a bit too, and the stuff we tried wasn’t too bad. The most popular drink however, was Tsingtao beer. It is served in large, room temperature bottles, but a few are kept cold for westerners. I was asked, why we like to drink cold beer in the winter. I don't know, that is a good question. The least small of the 2 cups is used for beer. Most often someone else will fill your cup for you as a sign of respect. And typically, someone will "cheers" you by saying "ganbei" at which point you are expected to empty your cup. Ganbei is similar to saying cheers, but more literally means "empty your glass". The ganbeis were done person to person, as opposed to the whole group. If you wanted to ganbei someone across the table, you would stand up and walk over to them so you can clink glasses. It’s a fun tradition that makes meals more sociable.

One day, we sat outside at a farm for lunch and my favorite meal of the trip. All the food was local and and seasonal. Once again, our hosts went a little overboard with the food. We had beef, chicken, fish, pork, tofu, and various vegetables. My favorite that day was a very simple roast pork served in big chunks with plenty of fat.

We ate at the West Lake restaurant which boasts seating for 5000 making it the largest restaurant in Asia. You wouldn’t realize it though because of the separate entrances and private dining rooms. The best thing we ate there was the Beijing duck (aka Peking duck), which the chef sliced at the table, and we then wrapped in a very thin “pancake” along with some thin sticks of cucumber and some hoisin sauce. It was here that I also tried the worst thing I ate on the trip, the infamous stinky tofu. That is actually what it is called and the name couldn’t be more spot on, the aroma is that of rotting food. Everyone is in agreement that it smells bad, but some people say it tastes good. I, however, cannot separate taste and smell, so to me, it tasted as bad as it smells. Funny enough, it is very popular with young women.

- Jake

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changsha

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_population_and_built-up_area

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baijiu

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-most-popular-liquor-in-the-world-2015-10-02

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lake_Restaurant