China Part III: Xiamen

Another first impression
Has left them all impressed
And though they've never seen my
Personality undressed
It seems they did it anyways
Judged me on looks and diet
And came to a funny conclusion:
That I'm so nice and quiet!

This leg of the journey was a bit different from the rest because it was mostly spent in the company of John's extended family (which was large, since it included even his parents' high school friends' kids, but really had nothing on my own giant family -- so at least I wasn't intimidated by numbers). We took a train from Huang Shan to Xiamen, a huge 22 hour ordeal on an assly slow train. While it was kind of boring, again, watching the countryside pass by killed a few hours, and then John beat me at Crazy 8 Countdown. Oh, trains. So strange. Think squatting to do your business is difficult? Try doing it on a moving train. Yeah...that's right.

We arrived at Xiamen in the evening, tired, dirty, and wet, because it was totally typhooning (we managed to experience a record rainfall in the region while we were there), but, in typical Chinese hospitality style, John's "cousin" decided that we had to go out for dinner, even if we weren't really hungry. However, it so totally did not disappoint. We ate all sorts of wonderful seafood (Xiamen being on the coast of the South China Sea) including sea bugs, which are basically just bugs that were caught up in the nets and boiled down. When these boiled things are cooled, the liquid that they were in congeals and forms this jelly like stuff...and then you eat it.


The next couple of days were sort of just a whirlwind of meeting people. One of John's aunts took us to a market and bought all sorts of seafood for lunch (that was one of the most amazing home cooked meals I have ever had...topped only by the dinner that same day, cooked by another aunt).

The market was very cool, so much live seafood. I tried to get a picture of a goat head that was on sale, but the guy yelled at me...


Even though the city was super rainy and overcast the entire time, the view was still nice, and it was cool because it's such a different look from what I'm used to at home.


Saturday was a day of exploring: we went to two famous fast food places for lunch. The first was a peanut soup place, and we grabbed a few bowls to go and took it to this famous noodle place that specializes in sha cha noodles. It was the best bowl of noodles I've ever had. It was filled with seafood: razor clams, mussels, shrimp, fish, squid. And the soup flavour was so good. Actually, that's what the place is famous for, its particular sha cha flavouring. It's a tiny mom and pop shop that's super famous around the city because it's so good. In fact, I had sha cha noodles again a few days later, but somewhere else, and it really wasn't as good. The story behind this place is that the giant pot of broth has been boiling for 20 years, and is never cooled down, it just keeps boiling and boiling, and the cooks just keep adding water and soup stuff. The peanut soup was also really good, and i managed to drink my entire bowl of the sweet dessert even though I was full from the noodles (I found this to be a theme for my whole trip -- that even if i was full, I'd still eat more, and this may explain the five pounds that I gained over the course of the China trip).


With heavy stomachs, we made our way to Gu Lang Yu, a small island near Xiamen. It's cute, quite quaint, and most of the archtechture was European inspired, and I'm sure there was a reason why, but it's hard to remember too much history in a short period of time. What I do remember though was that there was a "mountain" in the middle of the island, but it was really more of a giant rock. It's kind of got a fortress built into it, used during a seige...of Taiwan...I think (?) but I'm not sure I remember that correctly. Anyways...so the view of the Taiwanese Strait was not that nice from the top of the giant rock, owing mostly to the fact that we landed in Xiamen right smack in the middle of the rainy season, so all the sediments and general crap from the land had been washed into the water, making it all a murky brown. Apparently it's usually quite blue...and the timing was just bad. But at least the view of the rest of the island was nice.


I've also decided that my favourite berry/fruit things are yang mei, this awesome berry/fruit thing that I've never actually seen in Canada. I first had it in Tianjin, and I was a bit disappointed because they weren't that great (and super sour) and to top that off, John made me eat them all drenched in salty water, which just made it taste like a salty sour mess. But I had some fresh ones in Xiamen, bought at the market by John's aunt -- and they were sweet and AMAZING. I ended up buying dried ones and bringing them home...but they really didn't taste that great.