This Sunday Zoe and I went to Xidan (an area of town) to take a look at store selling wedding stuff. One place we went to was a huge building with about 3 or 4 floors of wedding related stuff. It was all actually quite expensive, but it was interesting to look through. Definitely a place for newly rich people.
We found a couple stores that make wedding qipaos (cheongsams) and the people there said they charge 800 rmb to make a tailored one. At the current exchange rate that's about $160 Canadian....so not too cheap. I hope that it would be possible to bargain them down, but I'm not really sure. Some of the qipao stores we looked at in the complex above cost more like 10,000 rmb, which is insane!!! Anyway, I tried a couple on and I thought that they looked pretty nice (especially if they fit perfectly....they fit better here than the ones I tried in Vancouver, which was a kind of humiliating experience due to my body shape not being quite right for the dresses they had in stock). I will definitely be getting at least one made....it'd be nice to get one in a non-wedding colour as well, but I'm not sure I can splurge that much. We'll see.After looking at all the wedding stuff, and successfully finding a bank for Zoe to withdraw money from her Canadian account (I had no idea that was possible), we went for dinner. Here I am eating "Across the Bridge Noodles" a dish that originated in Yunnan province. So delicious! To get into this restaurant you even have to walk across a bridge....clever.
Next to us was a family...the little boy was eating KFC, but the parents were eating the Yunnan noodles. The boy had run off somewhere when Zoe was surreptitiously taking this picture. You can sorta see the KFC cup and burger box on the table.
Tonight (Tuesday night), I went with Zoe to meet Adam and Steve, her friends from Vancouver. Adam has been working and living in Shanghai for almost a year now. We met them in Wangfujing and then decided to go and have Peking duck at a restaurant called Quanjude, which is apparently famous for its duck. It has been around since the mid-1800s. Here are some of the ducks and the ovens they are about to be cooked in. The little tubes sticking out of their bottoms are for blowing air in, in order to separate the skin from the flesh, so that it cooks up nice and crispy.
Here are Adam and Steve with their beer in wine glasses. Steve is wearing a hat with a fake queue attached.
The place was packed:
We ordered one veggie dish, a fried rice and a whole duck to share. The veggie dish was a gai lan-like veggie with mushrooms:
They bring the duck to your table and prepare it in front of you:
Posing with the duck and the chef. Steve is like the emperor or like the elderly relative who gets to sit in the family portrait.
The sliced duck, all ready for us to eat. It was delicious and sooooo fatty. Yummy.
After dinner we went to the Jishuitan subway station and walked from there to Houhai. One of my favorite things we happened upon was a huge crowd of people dancing. I was so happy to see this and I really wish Vancouver had activities like this at night! I took some videos and I hope they work. Let me know if you can't see them.
Next to us was a family...the little boy was eating KFC, but the parents were eating the Yunnan noodles. The boy had run off somewhere when Zoe was surreptitiously taking this picture. You can sorta see the KFC cup and burger box on the table.
Tonight (Tuesday night), I went with Zoe to meet Adam and Steve, her friends from Vancouver. Adam has been working and living in Shanghai for almost a year now. We met them in Wangfujing and then decided to go and have Peking duck at a restaurant called Quanjude, which is apparently famous for its duck. It has been around since the mid-1800s. Here are some of the ducks and the ovens they are about to be cooked in. The little tubes sticking out of their bottoms are for blowing air in, in order to separate the skin from the flesh, so that it cooks up nice and crispy.
Here are Adam and Steve with their beer in wine glasses. Steve is wearing a hat with a fake queue attached.
The place was packed:
We ordered one veggie dish, a fried rice and a whole duck to share. The veggie dish was a gai lan-like veggie with mushrooms:
They bring the duck to your table and prepare it in front of you:
Posing with the duck and the chef. Steve is like the emperor or like the elderly relative who gets to sit in the family portrait.
The sliced duck, all ready for us to eat. It was delicious and sooooo fatty. Yummy.
After dinner we went to the Jishuitan subway station and walked from there to Houhai. One of my favorite things we happened upon was a huge crowd of people dancing. I was so happy to see this and I really wish Vancouver had activities like this at night! I took some videos and I hope they work. Let me know if you can't see them.In the first one everyone was dancing to a song with english lyrics telling them which foot to put out (left, right, left, left, right) and so on. Not everyone had the right foot out all the time, but it looked so fun I really wanted to join in.
I couldn't get the other videos to work on blogger, so i put them on Youtube. Here are the links:
After the dancing finished, everyone started jumping rope. It was so wonderful and made me so happy for some reason:
1 comment:
Looks like fun. The world can never get enough dancing.
Joan
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