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

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
Streetside in the AI Park

Streetside in the AI Park

Be skeptical of sweeping stories about China, regardless of how good or bad they portray things. The technological advancements mentioned in the news may be even more profound in reality, but not as widespread as shown. The GDP growth has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty, but real wealth is mostly concentrated in coastal […]
May 16, 2026
Clothes Making Clouds

Clothes Making Clouds

There are so many ways to define Shanghai, yet a few popular icons do a lot of the talking. As the international metropolis and a symbol of China’s rising economic power, there’s the Lujiazui (陆家嘴) skyline — with the Oriental Pearl Tower (东方明珠) and high offices of Chinese and multinational corporations. There’s the Maglev train […]
May 5, 2026