If I have not mentioned it before in a previous post I will mention it again, most Western food places in China are both expensive and not very good. That is why I went to Henry’s Home with some trepidation. However we had been meaning to go there since arriving in Nanjing as the first map we received of the city had it clearly marked. This seems to be odd when many more useful places were not shown at all (Walmart). Henry’s Home is a chain, with at least two different restaurants in Nanjing, and I’m not sure how many there are total in China. After arriving and looking over the menu I order the two cheapest things possible, the beef/ham/random vegetable pizza and onion rings. My feelings:

1. Onion Rings: Very good. Kind of remind me of Burger King Onion rings, and I mean that in a good way. Also is probably the nicest presentation of onion rings I have seen, with a sprig of parsley and a half of a cherry tomato. Classy.

2. Pizza: The best non Pizza-Hut pizza that I have had in China. While certainly not good American New York style pizza, quite tasty.

3. Free Garlic Bread: A total bonus and pretty good. Free!

So overall a satisfying experience. Maybe if we go again I will be more adventurous and order a fancier dish, but the jump in price is pretty large from what I ordered to everything else. And I am a cheap bastard.

Afterward we went down the street to my favorite bread/pastry place here, Bread Talk. Bread Talk is one of the few places that you can get products that actually have cheese on them. Everything that I have had there has been good, except for the disturbing meat floss rolls. After trying it I now stay away from all meat floss products. The best thing there is this little pizza with onions and peppers on it that has hot dogs inside. Yes, that is amazing as it sounds.

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I usually don’t put news articles on here but this was too ridiculous to ignore. I’ll have to find out where they are doing this so I can go watch.

A woman in her 60s in Nanjing is trying to set up an elderly hip-hop dance troupe in the city, the Contemporary Express reported.

Guo has been passionate about dancing for many years. In 1995, while she was working in Shaanxi Province, Guo took out a provincial disco-dancing competition, beating many younger dancers.

When she saw a hip-hop competition on TV four years ago she was hooked and began practicing every morning in local parks, prompting hundreds of people to join her.

Guo is looking for elderly people who are equally enthusiastic about hip-hop to join her in giving street performances.

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As previously mentioned on this site, it has been raining here for about 3 weeks now with only 2 days that have been rain free. So when we get a day that is actually nice you have to take the opportunity to get out and do something. We decided to kill two birds with one stone today. To finally take the subway and to go and see the new stadium that has been built here in Nanjing.

The subway is just a little over a year old now, and the anniversary occurred slightly after we arrived here in Nanjing. Since it is so new it’s still really clean and nice. Sliding electric doors, clocks that count down to when the next train is arriving and a fancy plastic token/card swipe system. Of course compared to my daily trips on Boston’s ancient MBTA system it looks like heaven. Unfortunately the nearest stop isn’t close enough to use this system, which is why we hadn’t taken it till now. We would have to take a cab to the nearest stop, and that is the stop that we probably want to take a train to anyway. And the second line they are putting in will be done in 2008, so quite useless to us right now. A Canadian lumber salesmen who visits here frequently told me that the reason Nanjing is so dirty right now is because of this construction. But who knows. Anyway, we took the train to the western most stop, the Olympic stadium.

You might be saying to yourself “Are not the Olympics being held in Beijing?”. Indeed they are, and how obsessed this country is with said Olympics is another post entirely. But the training facility for the athletes before the games is here. At least I think thats what is. I’ll have to do some more searching before I am sure of that. But whatever it’s going to be used for it’s really impressive. Jenn has put some pictures up of it on her site and flikr account. Its truly massive. The only building that we could go in without paying was the swimming pool, but we walked all around the complex outside as its split into 5 different buildings. There was also no one around when we went, which is sort of eerie when you are used to being so crowded. I wonder if its one of those things where they have built the city out to where they think people are going to live but no one has made it there yet. All the structure is there, huge apartment building and large new highways. But there are no people. Very strange. Here is a picture of the road leaving the stadium. You can see there is one cop car ruining the point I am trying to make of how empty it is.

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Today we went to Walmart to buy our usually supply of cheap water and delicious diner rolls. It may give you some indication as to how my standards of what is delicious have changed when I consider Walmart diner rolls to be out of this world. Anyway we had picked up our goods and were about to leave when I saw one of the open meat bins that they often have in stores here. Basically they just fill a large display section with ice and some sort of meat. I find this generally interesting as I am used to meat being secured behind glass cases, not right there in your face. I walked over and saw that there was a guy, probably around 50, going through chicken wings with his bare hands! And it’s not like there weren’t tongs to pick the meat or that he just didn’t see them. In fact he moved them out of the way to look through more wings. I assume that he must have been looking for the ones with the most meat, since he would pick them up, examine them and then toss them to the side. This is dirty for a couple reasons. For the people who will later buy these wings that have been handled so roughly. And for the guy who could catch salmonella and various other diseases by handling the most dangerous of all raw meat, raw chicken. Also right by the chicken wings were, judging by their relative size, pig testicles.

Now I just want to clarify because of this post (and this post) that these are strange cases and do not represent the whole population. It just bizarre cases of weird behavior that I feel I have to document here. It certainly doesn’t negate, and in fact probably enhances, the awesomeness of being here. I would also like to stress that Mother’s brand beef jerky is a great jerky choice in China. Especially the new 10 RMB pack with bigger and juicier chunks. Amazing!

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My love of the squishy faced white dog lead me to search the internet to find out what breed he was. Of course it was an obvious answer, the Pekingese! From the American Kennel Club website:

The Pekingese is a well-balanced, compact dog of Chinese origin with a heavy front and lighter hindquarters. Its temperament is one of directness, independence and individuality. Its image is lionlike, implying courage, dignity, boldness and self-esteem rather than daintiness or delicacy.

Hilarious as the actual dog is the descriptions are almost as funny. About their gait:

It is unhurried, dignified, free and strong, with a slight roll over the shoulders. This motion is smooth and effortless and is as free as possible from bouncing, prancing or jarring. The rolling gait results from a combination of the bowed forelegs, well laid back shoulders, full broad chest and narrow light rear, all of which produce adequate reach and moderate drive.

And the best part, its temperment:

A combination of regal dignity, intelligence and self-importance make for a good natured, opinionated and affectionate companion to those who have earned its respect.

Keep in mind that they are describing a dog that looks like this:

HAhahahahahhahahah.

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While the trip was mostly a rainy mess, I did make two of my more ridiculous purchases while there. First is this Jesus-looking action figure that came in a little bag with a pair of skis and a sword

Secondly I bought this hand made picture of a kitten playing with a ball of string.

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Once again in the stinky internet cafe here in Suzhou, hoping I’m not getting 10 different kinds of diseases from breathing and using the keyboard. And it won’t let me play either WOW or Counterstrike. Outrageous!

Day 3

Another day of pouring rain. We ate at a Bruce Lee themed Chinese chain restaurant called Kung Fu for lunch. Surprisingly good. And then the rest of the day involved a lot of sitting around, mixed with some walking in the rain. Also noticed a lot of prostitutes by wandering around here at night. Jenn already mentioned on her blog the phenomenon of prostitutes in hair salons. If you wander just one street off the main foreigner paths there are a ton. A lot of these places are just a single room with a girl sitting in it with a seat, a barbershop style mirror and a bed in the back. Not exactly convincing as a hair cutting place. Many are marked by having only a pink light inside. Very strange, and very obvious as to what they are. Also, I saw a pekingese taking a crap.

Day 4

Actually nice outside today. We walked around the entire city and saw some pretty nice Buddhist temples and Pagodas. But I think at this time we are about ready to head back to Nanjing. Here it seems that everyone looks at foreigners as walking cash machines. In Nanjing they just think we are a curiosity.

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Day 1

A rather uneventful train ride brought us into Suzhou. As a harbinger of things to come it started to mist as we got into a cab. We got a ride to a youth hostel that we were going to stay at but it was way overpriced for the standard plywood board bedroom, so we wandered around. After haggling over prices at a couple of different establishments we then came to MYHotel on Shiquan Road. Now if anyone is reading this and is thinking of making a trip to Suzhou please listen to my suggestion and stay there. It is the nicest/newest hotel that I have stayed in China, and I think has the nicest bathroom of any hotel that I stayed at period. The breakfast that you get is actually pretty decent. And it is less then what for we paid for the rat infested hell hole in Tunxi.
Our first trip was to a totally lackluster Taoist temple, which isn’t really worth going into detail about. I think that the Chinese government has a color of paint manufactured that is called “Temple Red” that they send out as part of care package to these sites as they all look exactly the same. The mist became heavier and heavier until we had to go back to our hotel since their was nothing we could do outside. That was the first time we went to internet cafe that is near our hotel. It is dank, smells bad and full of a lot of guys (with a surprising amount of girls) playing Chinese RPGs and also Counterstrike, Warcraft III and some crazy field hocky game. I would have done a post yesterday but I spent all my time trying to log into World of Warcraft. I was unsuccessful.

Day 2

We got up early and after a pleasant breakfast we went to our first garden, the Master of Webs Garden. It was pretty cool. Then it started pouring. And it poured pretty much all day. Jenn and I bought some emergency ponchos and wandered the city, but didn’t really see a point in going to anything else as it was to crappy outside to do so. We went to the totally unimpressive Suzhuo Silk Museum. We told the cab driver, very clearly, that we wanted to got to the Suzhuo Museum and he just decided to drop us of at the silk museum instead Here are the 3 highlights

Today we had lunch with a couple of friends. It was delicious and they had my favorite dish there, shredded pork and onion with bread wraps. The closest thing I can relate it to is a McRib, but actually good. This place was close to the foreign language bookstore so after eating we decided to walk over and browse a little. While walking down the street I saw an old man standing by the large floor to ceiling windows of the store. He is probably about 60-70 years old. Now at this point I can only see him from behind but from that angle he is making a hand movement that can only be one thing. This registers in my mind, but it takes me a few minutes to put it together, that this guy is masturbating on the sidewalk. So I turn my head back around and there is absolutely no mistaking that he is standing there in plain view just going to town. At this point i think he sees me out of the corner of his eye and makes a ridiculous “OH” face while he slowly cover his area with his coat. Once we are inside I tell Jenn and can see that by then the store’s security guard has chased the man away.

After some consideration I can only think of a couple of things that could have excited him so. The store’s staff I think is entirely girls, so he might have just been watching them. Or the section that he was near is the photography and fine art section. Maybe the cover of one of the books had some naked women on it or something. I don’t know. It was certainly one of the strangest things that I have seen here so far, and that’s saying a lot. After that our Chinese friend had asked what happened, and we told her that and old man had been doing something bad outside. I have no idea how we would explain that situation in Chinese. It’s something that is not covered in the language books.

On a somewhat related note (well not really at all) I was looking through the advanced TOEFL book to see what kind of essays it contain. One of them was about a guy who was a cellist, a first person narrative of his playing. Now I am doing this from memory but this is pretty close to how it read.

I place the cello into the notch on the floor. I like to take my shirt of while playing and put the instrument against my bare chest. When I play the vibration from the body of the cello passes through into my body…

This is the kind of perverted stuff that they use to teach English to people? How useful is this to someone who is a non-native English speaker? And shouldn’t someone teach people how creepy this is? I once again don’t know.

It’s amazing how a simple trip to the bookstore can be so bizarrely entertaining.

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Jenn has detailed my early birthday celebration and the surprisingly delicious duck’s blood chunks in the hot pot. It’s a Nanjing specialty, and I knew that I would be trying it at some point. I will add it the ever growing list of new things I have tried here including chickens feet and cow’s heart soup.

The weather here in Nanjing has been pretty awful for the past few days. When it hasn’t been overcast and cold it has been pouring rain. While quite unpleasant it has given me the chance to try out my Gore-Tex infused North Face winter coat. It makes me look pretty ridiculous, since it is bright red and doubles my upper body size. However it keeps me warm and safe in any conditions. It is possibly the most water-proof thing in human history, and the rain flows off like water off a ducks back (notice the duck tie in). Bring it on Chinese winter, I am totally prepared!

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