he ma sushi

Hong Kong is a place of food. If you eat at one place, you immediately see a lot more places you want to eat at. Such happened to us, after eating at Tamae Sushi. We decided to eat at Tamae, instead of Komenya, sushi because there was not a line of about fifty people there. Mistake number one, (there will be plenty more to come), filling out the Take-out menu. The menu outside was the classic sushi check mark list, so we checked the ones we wanted. Twenty minutes after we finished, we asked a waiter to take our order. He said that we had filled out the wrong one. So we filled out the other one. Twenty minutes after filling that one out, we got the waiter to finally come into our secluded little corridor, and take our order. Mistake number two, figuring out what was what on the table. We immediately knew that the soy sauce was soy sauce. Wasabi was a little different. I took the lid of the small chopstick container like-container, put my nose as close as I could get, and inhaled very strongly, sharply, and deeply. I spent the next thirty seconds coughing up the dead. Mistake number three, reaching for the water the restaurant gave us. Most of the food places give their customers water just out of the boiling pot. So as I reached for it, I had the idea that I was doing something wrong. I spent the next thirty seconds sucking my fingers. Then the hand rolls came. These are just loads of rice with some salmon or corn or egg on top. So no problem there, you just bite it. Then the actual rolls came. There was tuna, a roll with some sort of avocado, some mayonnaise covered rolls, and a pair of massive rolls just waiting to be stuck in a mouth. So we start munching on these sushi rolls, some sashimi comes, and still the massive rolls wait patiently. Mistake number four, trying to eat one of those rolls like I would normally. With a huge blob of food in your mouth, it is quite hard to chew. It is also very difficult to keep your mouth closed. And if your tongue is persuaded to help that piece of salmon attack your gag point, it is even harder. And if you are trying to savor the blob, it is even harder. And if your mouth does not have the extensive properties of a large mouth bass, it is even harder. However, doing all the even harder things, I succeeded in, one, not throwing up, two, not letting a grain of rice escape my mouth, three, savoring the sushi, four, swallowing, and five, actually enjoying the sushi. Then, as I walked out of the place, I wondered if the Neon tetras, crabs, turtles, carp, koi, goldfish, and more at the fish market were ever to be eaten in sushi. I doubted it.

Mucky icky chinese peppers

Everybody knows that Mexicans like spicy food. Some Chinese people like spicy food too. But you could never know how different the peppers that they use are. Mexican peppers, habanero, jalapeno, and the like, are like barbarians. Chinese peppers, Hozai la and the like are like poisoners. Barbarians invite their prey; in this case your innocent taste buds, to dinner, get them drunk, then slaughter them. Poisoners, assasins, Grand Viziers, and such people, put muck in your food. The bad thing is, you don’t notice, or know that you are going to die, until after you swallow. This is what the Chinese peppers do.

shang shang shang hai sea food (UP UP upsea food)

On the first floor of the Longham place mall, there is a food court. And in that food court there are several restaurants. And in a certain restaurant called Shang Shang, they make great food. And in that great food of theirs, there are turnip pastries, spicy sour soup, fried pork ribs and cucumbers with peanut sauce. And with this food we ordered we got very, very full. The turnip pastries were extra good. The inside was soupy and the outside was very flaky. There was no trace of crisp uncooked turnip or fibrous cooked turnip, which made us wonder how the turnip came to be in there. There was no meat and even though meat makes the world go round, this was one of the best things I ate. Ever.

Are we there yet?, is that him?, AAHHG, Wheee, and Please Don’t Talk Chinglish.

A TX4 is an incredible car. It has five seats for customers, two facing the other three. There are just enough seats to fit my family. Of course, like on any two hour car ride in a taxi, the sentence “are we there yet?” happened to be said at least twice every ten minutes. Finally, when we got near our destination, the Great Wall, the supposed sightings of this long defensive investment shut the questions up. However, we never actually saw the Great Wall until we were right at it. If you want to get up to the wall from any of three ticket counters you can either cheat by taking a cable car, or you can walk up a thousand plus steps to tower eight which is closer to the alpine sledding station, destination 1, and the end of the Mutian Yu section of the great wall, destination two 2. Tower ten which is also an option and is closer to cable car station one, destination 3, and higher. We took tower ten, but the destination was debatable. I knew that I was going to destination 2, or to destination 1, just a little further than destination 2. There was however, a miscommunication.

This fail lead to my family thinking that I was going a different way, so they split up to look for me. My dad found me on my way to the highest point on the wall. After a while of walking back, we found the rest of the family and walked on our way. Unmentioned in the last part, however, was a set of very steep, slippery metal steps. Not that they were wet, they just were slippery. And so a banana peel effect happened. And as always, it happened to me.

This is where the AAHHG section of the title comes into play. I had just bought a great wall medal from an old man, and he was coming behind me. Behind him was my dad, then my mom and my siblings. Three steps down, I fell ten feet to the 1,550 year ancient Chinese stone floor. Broken bones, smashed faces, concussions, and, god forbid, death, all could have happened. None however did. The only things that happened were two scraped knees and one swollen knee with temporary extreme wobbliness. After that I climbed to the top of the MutianYu section.

There is a certain form of going down that includes a lot of fun, and certain amounts of whoops, yells and “Whee”s. This is called Alpine Sledding. I however call it Alpine AWESOME!!!!!! No joke, this thing is the BOMB!!!!!! A small black sled with certain foam parts that lift up when you push on a certain lever creates your seat. There is one lever and no steering wheel, but there are turns. It is awesome. Going down was part of the reason we came up. Lean with the turns, and you will go faster. Once the five minute ride down is up, you can go shopping in several stalls.

Some of the stallsmen/women (actually more women than men), when you try to bargain will say “low si le,” which means low to death. I only figured out that they were speaking chinglish when one particularly eccentric lady did hand motions. We bought four panda hats, two Tibetan hats, one army hat, one set of ten pins, one knife, five Tin-tin T-shirts, two daoist shirts, and a bunch of other stuff that came into our hands by money burning a hole in our pockets.

What to do when you see a fried insect on WangFuJing Food Street,

Insects are crunchy. That’s just how the things are. If insects weren’t crunchy, then they would be arachnids, or maybe some sort of sluggalia. If it is crunchy, however, you could not say that it is an insect. If it is on a stick, and/or bought on a street stall, then it probably is an insect. You can also associate crunchy things with insects. Like bee cocoons. Crunchy, as bee cocoons should be. Of course, you can have your choice of spices, although some culinary artists say that is cheating, to make your insect/bee cocoon/other crunchy item yours. Such spices include: poisoning peppers (see next entry), salt, cardamom, and other USFE (Unidentified Stuff For Eating) that create your insect/bee cocoon/other crunchy item into a tasty crunchy item on a stick. And if you see bee cocoons on a first stall, wait until you get to a couple stalls over, because the first is the most expensive.

Maoism

In a nation where one man set in motion a rage that killed tens of thousands of people, you would think that man would be hated. Instead this uncle was revered like a god. Killing sparrows, criticizing teachers to the point of death, and sending people to starve and re educate in the country side are these cat’s most famous deeds. He meows his name a lot but leaves out the ‘w’ and changes the ‘e’ to an ‘a’. He has approximately 1.3 billion minions who like to say his name the same way, “Mao.”

Among these minions are 100,000 people who stay in a “line” for two hours just to see his body. This line, however, is more a surging mass of pushing people, knife-elbowed grandmas, and almost-squashed five-year-old children. And on Saturday the 17, 2009 at approximately 10:00 in the morning, five foreigners joined the fray to see contestant in Baddest Person Ever (along with Stalin and Adolf), responsible for the deaths of seventy million people, former president of the People’s Republic of China, Chairman Mao Zedong.

In an enormous mausoleum, covered by a glass wall and a glass case, His body lies. His body is very orange, and it has an unnatural glow to it. But that is not the scariest thing. The line is horrible. At any break possible, everybody runs to get ahead of everybody resulting in no one getting ahead of anybody. Grandmas are especially good at pushing you aside because of their short height, and because of their extremely sharp elbows that just happen to come flying into your ribs. Several men try to push past and you have to be firm—very, very firm. So when you go to China, pop over to Beijing, get the Mao’s Mausoleum Line experience, see a very orange body. Have some fun.

AAAAAAAHHHGGGHHH!!! HEEEELLP MEEE!!!!

As everybody gets their fresh squeezed cucumber juice, chocolate milkshakes, and corn milks, mine is the last to come. The cucumber tastes like a liquefied cucumber, the milkshake tastes like chocolate, and the corn milk tastes like milk. Mine, on the other hand tastes like poo. Bisam pear, is just like bitter melon. I am not joking when I say it tastes like poo. It did come with a small pitcher of honey, so I added that. That only made it so the drink tasted like poo mixed with honey. And it leaves me spluttering for something tasty.

This time it is DIN DIN!!!

(PLEASE NOTE THIS ARTICLE IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE TEXT OF Dimning Dim Suming or Dining, How to eat Dim Sum AND VICE VERSA)

Cantonese food. Just as bad as Mandarin food. PSHYC!! If anybody loves Chinese food, you will be amazed at just how horrible things can get. But this is not the case if you go to GuangZhou. This is the place of amazing Chinese food. For breakfast, dim sum is what you will get. This is definitely not your eggs and toast breakfast. To give an example, there are these little triangular buns, they have barbecued pork in them, and they are so good. The bread is just like eating a roll, and the meat is just the right amount of sweet, with the consistency of pulled pork. With some sesame seed oil along with the seeds themselves sprinkled on top, it is hard to get better than these rolls.

Pasteis de Nata, pastels de nail, or Egg Tarts.

(PLEASE NOTE THAT [see previous note{down one article}])

If you think of a tart, you think of a small pie, usually a lemon tart, or an apple tart, or something of the sort. Your child hood memories might include mom’s roast chicken, or grandma’s feather bed. But even if you go to New York, people there will not say, “my mom/grandma made the best egg tarts ever.” Of course, in Portugal that might not be the case. Egg tarts are mini pies that taste like custard that in Portugal are called pasteis de nata. The choice of cinnamon, lemon cocktail herbs (?????) and more is yours. What makes it better is if you are sitting on a jetty, with the tide coming in, every move stirring up at least fifty crabs and twenty flying fish, and the pie still warm in your hand from Lord Stow’s Bakery. But choose a spot without a four inch dead fish.

Dimning, Dim summing or dinning. How to eat Dim Sum

(PLEASE NOTE THAT THE TITLE IS JUST TO ADD A LITTLE SENSE OF HUMOR)

Of course then you have the lunch/dinner stuff. This could easily bomb dim sum. If you recognize it, you should eat it. If you don’t, then eat it anyways. Among one of the recognizable dishes was beef. Not just beef, but beef with peppers, onions and mushrooms. The peppers may seem daunting to some, but it isn’t really spicy. Of course don’t get all freaked out that only Guangzhou has all the good stuff because it doesn’t, it only has most of them. And don’t get all pshyced up that it will have all your favorite stuff because it won’t, trust me, it won’t.

Shrimp or GIANT CREEPY LOBSTERS!!! and Why the &#$$ is cantonese food so much better than Shenzhenese?!?!

(PLEASE NOTE THAT THE TITLE HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH THE ACTUAL THING

Worrying is not a good thing. And, as I sat down on the train, I had many things to worry about, such as; Am I on the express train? What will I do when I finish my book? Of what nationality is this guy next to me? Am I in the right seat? Why are the other seats my family are in at least an aisle away? Etc., etc., etc. Of course everybody knows that worrying speeds up the aging process and I could have lost half a month in that period of time. And as the train moved I attempted to calm down by reading my book. Guess what? It worked like it always does. The thing is that it only works if my book is open and I am reading it so if my book is finished, I am worrying again. Plus I finished my book extra fast because of my worrying. Now I have half an hour to worry. So I try to distract myself with my dad’s phone, but he says that he needs it for the trip to Guangzhou. And of course I end up with nothing to do, just like I do on all vehicles. But worrying makes time pass wonderfully quickly, and we ended on the metro on the way to Zhong Guo Da Jiu Dian, our hotel, faster than I would have ever expected. But with my karma, we don’t actually check in until 4:00, two hours after we got there. There was, of course, a restaurant apparently five minutes by taxi, and ten minutes walking, away. Good thing Guangzhou is in Guangdong because Guangdong really is Canton and Cantonese food is what you would call Chinese food. Let me introduce you to, DIM SUM!!! There are these wonderful things called baked barbecued pork rolls, let me describe them to you. They are wonderful things that taste like barbecued pork. They have some sesame oil and seeds on top, and a pastry like bread enveloping the pork. There are also things like dumplings, mango pudding, and taro root cakes. It is so good. Then there are the lunch and dinner things. These include an arrangement of fresh seafood (more on that later), nice and tender meat, and then there is, well, offal. The first things are good, and so is the latter stuff, if you don’t know what it is. Offal is not byproduct. It is what is left after an animal is butchered. After that there are terrapins (???? Why are these not turtles?????) and other such things. This whole experience is made way better if you know that the red snapper you just ordered came live just right outside the door from a nice and dirty tank. Even better, see it come out of the tank and flop around outside. Now if fishies scare you, or if you are deathly afraid of GIANT shrimp that look like small lobsters, do not go right outside and to the left. But then again, you don’t have to order seafood. There are several things like beef, pork and chicken to order. Too bad that they don’t have crab Rangoon though, since that is really, really good.

Da Peng or Da Fen, and WHERE DO YOU GET THOSE SHELLS?!?!

Walls that stand twenty feet high. A drum tower. At least one hundred houses and people to inhabit them all. A small museum with a couple of swords, cannons, punters and other artifacts. The house of a general. Some stalls selling ice cream. This is what the fortress Da Peng holds. This fortress was bombed in the Boxer wars, more commonly known as the Opium Wars. In these wars, the European nations, and America, bombed China into letting them sell opium. China, being at a technological disadvantage lost. The plates in the museum describing these events are just what you would expect them to be, censored so that China did not lose any battles.
With a colleague of my mothers born in Israel, we came to this poorly rejuvenated fortress. The streets were marked by the occasional Chinese person, chicken, or dog. Stares abounded. After two ice creams, we had the energy to walk on. We walked past the last houses, past a dog lying in the shade and into a courtyard where smashed vases, ceramic bowls and more lay, evidence of the Cultural Revolution. Walking out of the yard we took a left to where burning in the sun statues of men stood. Playing Chinese chess, and getting a hair cut, ranked among their poses. We walked on past these men, and through a small alleyway that led us to a big street. Without noticing it, we had left the compound.
Several shops were stationed around and we poked inside one with kids’ toys, notebooks and more and bought some stuff. Then we went to eat at a noodle restaurant. I ordered potato noodles while my sisters and others ordered shaved and strung noodles. I ended up not liking mine but the other dishes were great. There was a TV set and I turned around and watched that for a little just for the fight scenes. Then we realized that we had lost our way so we found the direction we came from and walked that way. It turned out to be a good choice.
We came out the main entrance hoping to grab a taxi. With a long and painful conversation, we got the driver to take us to a beach. The driver had said “not far” but that was not the case. The price was okay but the distance was a little far. We had fun anyway. Even with no change we immediately started swimming. The water was a lot warmer than any natural pool I had ever swum in, in the US. There were pieces of coral on the bottom of the floor along with several shells. I saw one person with a piece of a chain link. There was no sharp stuff further out. I tried several times to touch the end of the swimming area rope, but I had to return to get water out of my eye. We left a little early because we did not know how to get home, but we met some people who spoke a little English and they helped us.
We ended up taking a bus that stopped at the stop we needed, and then a detour was taken to go shopping. There was a big mall and we entered the massive grocery store called Ole’ to buy cheese, ketchup, and other American stuff. When we got home we collapsed.

A Salty Piece of Balsa Wood, or a Fish?

The east coast is almost the best place for cod. If you want baccalao, you need to go either to Portugal, or to Macau. At teatime in the IFT hotel, they serve baccalao cakes, egg tarts, and more. By itself, baccalao is like eating flexible balsa wood loaded with salt. Nothing else, just salt. But if you soak the cod for a day, changing water every three hours, and cook it correctly then boards of salted wood can be good. Breaded on the outside with chives, these cakes are just like crab cakes, but better. If you are sitting on couches, at three o-clock, with waitresses racing each other to fill our glasses, the experience is enhanced greatly.

I could go to an animal cage to drink this (No JK) and A Restaurant, NOT a Hardware Store.

As everybody gets their fresh squeezed cucumber juice, chocolate milkshakes, and corn milks, mine is the last to come. The cucumber tastes like a liquefied cucumber, the milkshake tastes like chocolate, and the corn milk tastes like milk. Mine, on the other hand tastes like poo. Bisam pear, is just like bitter melon. I am not joking when I say it tastes like poo. It did come with a small pitcher of honey, so I added that. That only made it so the drink tasted like poo mixed with honey. And it leaves me spluttering for something tasty.

At the same restaurant, I ordered a t-bone steak. I thought it would be impossible to go worse than the Bisam pear drink, but I was wrong. My first bite was of rubber fat, with no black pepper sauce, so it was okay. But then I tried another bite, of sandpaper meat. Terrible things invaded my mouth. What made it worse was that the sauce was like disinfectant. If I wanted that I would just go to a hardware store, instead I find myself eating it in a RESTAURANT!!

A Random iIsland in the Middle of the South China Sea

If you think of a tart, you think of a small pie, usually a lemon tart, or an apple tart, or something of the sort. Your child hood memories might include mom’s roast chicken, or grandma’s feather bed. But even if you go to New York, people there will not say, “my mom/grandma made the best egg tarts ever.” Of course, in Portugal that might not be the case. Egg tarts are mini pies that taste like custard, have a flakier crust, and are way better. Cinnamon, lemon cocktail herbs (++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start) and more sits on a forlorn shelf waiting to be poured. What makes it better is if you are sitting on a jetty on an random island called Macau, with the tide coming in, every move stirring up at least fifty crabs and twenty flying fish, and the pie still warm in your hand from Lord Stow’s Bakery. But choose a spot without a four inch dead fish.