Food during the Chinese New Year break

By:  January 27, 2023 Categories: 

Chicken soup & (very oily) stir-fried niangao (年糕), made by a half-drunk chef in Lishui (丽水).

Pickled cabbage (雪菜) and pink white sugar cake (白糖糕).

Red braised pork belly with meigan cai (梅干菜红烧肉) in Jiangwan (江湾). Not sure if I ever had meigan cai before, it’s pickled, dried, and steamed vegetables from the Shaoxing (绍兴) region with a sour but unique taste.

Xiaolongbao (小笼包) & mifen (米粉) in Jiangwan.

Jiangxi-style, purse red carp (荷包红鲤鱼) — fried and then steamed — in Likeng (李坑).

The famous fishhead from Qiandao Lake (千岛湖鱼头).

And lamb kebab (羊肉串) in Qiandao Lake. All these authentic fish restaurants near the lake, and then these guys from Xinjiang just being the coolest guys in the coolest guys in town with loud disco-Uyghur-folk songs over a loudspeaker and butchering a lamb in front of everyone.

Latest

A candle in Minnesota

A candle in Minnesota

It’s Wednesday morning, and I’m in Saint Paul, Minnesota, attending the morning mass at St. Bernard’s church. It’s about twenty years since I last attended a mass, and the first time I’ve ever done so voluntarily. I’m sure I’m drawn to this church near my Airbnb, compelled to go in, but I find it hard […]
June 14, 2026
Revisiting Columbine

Revisiting Columbine

Growing up in the Netherlands, it’s not immediately obvious (even to myself) that the history of the United States is also partly mine, but through TV series and movies — as well as the news — it’s also a country I lived in and grew up in. And unlike presidential elections or the September 11th […]
June 8, 2026
Rich People Park

Rich People Park

We’re in TaiKoo Li QianTan (前滩太古里), a brand new, high-end shopping mall near the Huangpu River in Pudong. It’s a beautiful complex with four levels, viewing bridges, walls of white steel and vertical gardens (the first I’ve seen that actually look like on an architectural drawing), and paths of bright bricks alternating with patches of […]
June 5, 2026
Torrential rain and colorful umbrellas

Torrential rain and colorful umbrellas

I was planning a bike ride, but then saw it was drizzling, so I carried Hasse outside — underneath an umbrella — to go get a coffee. Yet the rain was so heavy we just hid underneath the canopy in front of a supermarket to see some of the chaos unfold. I’ll miss these streets […]
May 25, 2026