任是无情也动人

Just using this place to keep track of all the nice tempting food documentaries. So much yumminess that I can only look at but not eat, lol. (Because as someone from Jiangsu, I can't actually handle a lot of the spiciness levels common in China today.)

Channels:
美食中国 Tasty China
一地一味
The Bite of Canton (cantonese??)
Youku Documentary (section for food)

By 民以食为天 Food Adventure
《吃在江苏》 playlist
《味解乡愁》 playlist

By CCTV9

《舌尖上的中国》 playlist (S1)
NEW 5 hr collections: S1 S2
Playlists: S2 S3 S4

《寻味贵辣》 playlist clips
《辣椒的征途》 playlist clips
《四季流转年夜饭》 playlist
《螃蟹的征途》-- no episode playlist, clips
《澳门之味》 playlist
《中华老字号》 playlist clips
《行走的餐桌》S1 playlist S2 playlist clips
《过年》 playlist
《一城一味》 playlist clips

At first I thought I was getting errors reaching it due to the Great Firewall, but further research yielded that the site did actually go down about 2 hours ago (around 23:00 Beijing time). Rumors are flying about power outages, the HQ on fire, the CEO on his deathbed, etc... The exodus of crazed users (during the golden hour of online activity for youths) also initially DoD'ed a couple of other smaller social sites by accident, lol.

Currently there's sporadic reports of the site going back up, and down again, or partially up, in China. But I haven't been able to access it, even when I VPN to Cisco's Shanghai node. So. *shrug*

Man, you never appreciate how much you got dependent on various online sites until they become unavailable. I can't imagine what it would be like if youtube went down for a even a little while.

We made dumplings at home recently, and I had fun folding some squares and triangles and S-shapes I learned from the video below. Normally, I'm lazy and go with method 1, even though the formal method I was taught by my mom is actually method 14.



Which method do you use?

This is pretty neat. I didn't know ancient chinese had so many rolling R's.



Y'know...usually in time travel or crossover fics to settings in ancient eras never consider the dialect barrier. Of course it's so you don't want to bog down the plot. But still...

Other awesomeness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdO3IP0Pro8

The day started on a high(er) note. We had lunch out with my grandfather, uncle/aunt, older cousin, and the aunt staying with us. It was at a hotel my grandmother had a coupon for. The food wasn't all that great, as is normal for hotel restaurants, but it wasn't horrible. Just small portions I guess.

After food, my uncle/aunt left to deliver the portions we'd set aside for my grandmother (she isn't mobile enough to leave the house far). My mom and aunt went to a nearby bookstore to use up another coupon that they had for that place.

Outside the bookstore, there were some small seller stalls. One of them was for hats, and they had some really adorable animal ear hats. I picked up a grey fuzzy wolf ears hat. My mom and aunt also picked out a hats they liked, and we also got one for grandmother and one for my baby nephew.

In the bookstore, we picked up a novel that my uncle mentioned wanting at lunch. Then my mom and I went to the fourth floor to look at kiddie books for my nephew (he's very lucky with being the focus of the entire families on both parents' side). We mainly looked up educational and acitivity oriented children's books. I was reminded of the Where's Waldo and I Spy series books that I remember from grade school that might apply for him as well - if not now then in coming years. Unfortunately they don't carry any translations or equivalents of these books in Chinese bookstores, so I settled for writing down the names and passing it onto my uncle, to see if they can find/order anything online.

This evening, however, everyone gathered together for a 'family meeting'. My aunt has something of a person crisis going on in her life, and the meeting was to inform everyone and come up with ideas on what she should do. I won't go into much further on a public entry, but suffice it to say that it really is pretty depressing and I feel for her and for my absent younger cousin who was hit pretty hard by it as well.

Went to the newly refurbished Nanjing museum today, along with my aunt and my (older) cousin who was off today. My mom stayed home since she wasn't interested in historical stuff, and also someone needs to stick around with the grandparents.

Although the museum does say they need ID to get a ticket, it didn't seem like they were all that strict about things. That is, I don't recall anyone checking the tickets we got through the day.

There were 7 major areas of the museum, many containing multiple galleries within themselves. We went first to the Ancient History building, which holds artifacts spanning neolithic to Qing. Unfortunately, my camera batteries died out around the Tang section. On the bright side, I seem to remember that most of the stuff from this building seems to have been much the same as the time I visited the museum in 2011 (though my memory might be wrong).

After we finished that first building, it was already 12:30ish. So we took a break for lunch. It was raining lightly, so we didn't go far, just to a...something about Blue Gulf Cafe? Anyway, it was a fairly simple lunch, and I also picked up new batteries (which was also dying out later in the day before we even finished viewing all the exhibits, so pfft, Chinese quality).

In the afternoon, we hit the Fine Arts area next. The galleries in this area seems to be actual historical pieces interspersed with galleries of contemporary artists. (In retrospect, I should've really saved my camera on the the contemporary galleries. Meh.) For the historical galleries, there was an Ancient Arts, Ancient Calligraphy, Ancient Sculpture, etc.

After the arts area, we went looking for a restroom and found ourselves in the Special Exhibitions building. Supposedly its galleries holds many current/temporary shows, many which are joint projects with other museums/places. There was a floor dedicated to gold workings throughout Chinese history. Another floor was mostly Qing court artifacts. All of them were very pretty of course.

A lot of the other areas/galleries we only took a brief glance through as the day drew to a close. There was a Digital Gallery, which was a lot of digital educational stuff - movies, moving wall murals, etc. - great for kids, I suppose. There was also a Nationalist Era gallery, which was basically a small scale demo of a small block or two in early 20th century style. They also had a few actual concession shop business being sold there, though, which was a bit jarring if you looked too close. Another was something called the Intagibles Gallery - which consisted of live demos of cultural crafts/arts (as well as a brisk business of selling said products) and some videos/pictures/etc. of other cultural stuff (dance, medicine, food, etc.) Not really something all that museum worthy IMO. They're reaching a bit there.


It was pretty dark by the time we go back home, although at least it had already stopped raining by the time we'd left the museum. My mom had bought local river crabs for dinner, and they were delicious. We are apparently in precisely the right season for crabs, as both the male and female ones were positively stuffed. Still a bit of a pain to eat though. :p

Went out with my mom to meet two of her old friends (my aunts I guess). We had lunch at a seafood buffet. By seafood, here it's less crabs and lobster, and more every kind of fish you can think of. Of course it's all in Chinese so I didn't bother to remember what fish was what. There was also sushi and sashimi, which I haven't had for a long time now. Yum.

During the lunch, they mentioned that the Nanjing museum had finished renovations and has now opened as the second largest museum in China (behind Beijing). I recall that I had visited there the last time I was here, and it was right before the place closed for the major renovations. That was about 2 years ago. Also, apparently there's so many people aiming to visit, that they cap the # of visitors to the place, which kinda sucks. But, I was also told that foreign passport holders can get a guaranteed spot in admission compared to local visitors.

We also did some shopping. There was a clothing store right outside the building where the restaurant was, and they had some nice cheap clothing. I got a leather coat for 288 RMB, and a pretty shirt for 40. On the way home, we stopped by the shopping court underneath the local supermarket (where I had seen some nice fuzzy fabric type pants) and got 3 pairs of pants and 2 shirts for a total of 296 RMB. I think I've gotten all I need of clothing on this trip.

I had also checked in at a few telecomm stores to try and buy a SIM card for my old phone. Unfortunately, it seems most of them want proof of identity, typically the national ID card. We had also passed by a web cafe, which also wanted the same. So pretty much I would have to bring my passport out with me to see if that would work. Bleh.

Woke up around 4-5 AM and couldn't fall asleep again. I guess I'm still jetlagged.

We checked out of the hotel around 6, and took the metro to the airport. Actually had a second breakfast there, which was surprisingly yummy for airport food.

For that matter, the lunch we were served on the flight was surprisingly yummy as well. Good rice and tender fish. Leaps and bounds better than the stuff from the US trans-Pacific flights. I guess it's cuz this flight was a HK flight, and they really deserve the reputation for great food.

After arriving at Nanjing, we took the aiport bus first. Unfortunately, our stop did not have good access to taxis, so we ended up lugging the luggage up several flights of stairs and then further took the metro. And then, at our metro stop, we still had to walk like 2-4 blocks to get to my grandparents' place. Bleh. I still think it would've been worth avoiding all this hassel with the expense of just going for a taxi from the airport to begin with.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was as expected. A lot of small talk, greetings, phone calls (greetings and spreading the news). I am surprisingly sleepy so early in the evening though, unlike in HK. So going to hit the hay...

Started the trip on Friday morning. Got to the BART station and realized I forgot my passport (I know, shp). Dad had a doctor's appointment after dropping us off at the station, so no help could be expected there (both he and mom are horrible about having their cellphones with them and turned on. Thus, I had to spend $15 for a taxi to pop back home. Bleh. Silver lining - at least I didn't find out about it after we arrived at the airport; that would've probably caused a missed flight.

Long boring flight; the most surprising thing was that they gave us ice cream for one of the snack breaks, which was cool. This was an older model plane, so no personal TV screen. I didn't bother and just read on my nook. Finished Blindsight and a few other short stories I'd downloaded before the trip.

Got to HK at night. When we arrived at the hotel, it turned out there was an issue where the tour group had not cleared out when they should have, leaving no rooms in that building. We got shuffled off to the last remaining room in another building off in some dark iffy-looking alley. The room was a dinky thing that was maybe the size of the walk in closet in my parents' bedroom, with only 1 bed. Ugh. Not much we could do but make do.

At least to make up for it, this morning, they moved us to a much nicer 3 person (2 bed) room in the main building. No extra charge, which is better.

The downside of having gotten up so early this morning (whether due to jetlag or due to the accommodations), though, seems to be the problem that Hong Kong is not a morning place. Almost *nothing* was open before like 10/11 AM - museums, restaurants (I saw no breakfast places anywhere, seriously WTH), special bus routes to tour areas, etc. So we took a slow walk to the Star Ferry pier near the Cultural Center, then another meandering walk from Pier 7 to the Peak Tram.

We took some pics of some skyscrapers and interesting looking buildings, as well as several gardens/parks. And I noticed something else - everything is really really small here. Their parks for the most part are smaller than my high school PE grounds. The tram only had one car and one track. Even the sky terrace building seems smaller than the 101 building in Taiwan. We ended up leaving a lot earlier instead of waiting for the night view simply cuz there was nothing there to do for who knows how many hours.

So here we are taking a rest back at the hotel, in the nice new room. We'll probably hit the shopping districts tonight and if those turn out to be better than the tourist spots. I want to buy some lighter clothing, cuz I brought clothes expecting cold weather (for Nanjing) but HK is like 10 degrees hotter than back home in CA so I've been sweltering. Bleh.

Tomorrow we will know better and stay in until like 10. :p

EDIT: This evening we had a simple dinner and then took a brief stroll through Temple St. It was... typical of Chinese street markets, I thought. I didn't end up buying anything except another USB adapter for my Zen Mosaic, which for some reason refused to charge.

(Thought, turns out the new adapter didn't make any difference. When I connect it to my laptop, the charge light/icon don't come up on the Zen (actually it flashes once and then goes dark again), and my computer does not detect a new device. I tested the adapters on my camera as well since they use the same type of port, and I'm not able to pick up the camera either. I am able to pick up my nook and smart phone which uses a different time of adapter tough, which makes it seem unlikely to be a problem with the computer. I can't tell if there is some issue with both adapters, or with my zen and camera... Ugh.)

At 8 PM we went by the shore again to watch the symphony of lights show. It was pretty nice. I'll bring the camera and record some of it tomorrow.

“天之道，损有余而补不足。人之道，则不然，损不足以奉有余。孰能有余以奉天下？唯有道者，” 《道德经》

Came across this in a fic. I understand only 7/10ths of the words here, much less the meaning. Halp? T_T