On Friday afternoon we arrived in the city of Shenyang, in the north eastern part of China. We are visiting Tim's brother. Alan and Tricia have lived in Shenyang for a year and a half and we are thrilled to be exploring the city with them!
Our first 24 hours has been full of eating and shopping, Chinese style. Our first meal was actually a Korean BBQ. Eating out in China is very reasonably priced and wonderfully delicious.
Tonight's Chinese food was surprisingly similar to North American Chinese food, but with added flavour and freshness. The one difference is that the dishes are placed in the middle, rotate around the table on a large "lazy susan" and everyone eats from the same dish -- no individual plates! We are getting reacquainted with using chopsticks of course.
Our shopping experience has been varied. We saw the "underground" shopping mall, and Max bought a beautiful carved comb in this "comb store". Combs made of wood, shell, horn, and bone ranged from 20 to 1500 Yuan ($3 to $225). Max's comb is made of wood and lacquered in red with gold decoration -- beautiful! Simon bought a T-shirt with a panda face.
We went to another market that is seven stories high and each floor has many shops dedicated to one item. We especially enjoyed the candy floor and the nut/spice floor. Beautiful smells. There was also a floor of natural medicines. We saw bats-on-a-stick, dried mice, seahorses, Ginseng, sliced horns (and there was probably eye of newt and tongue of frog)!
One of the most fun parts of shopping today was to watch the reaction of shopkeepers to our presence. There are not many North American tourists in this part of China and there are even fewer teenager tourists. As Max and Simon walked by, people stared and smiled, followed them with their eyes, and exclaimed "How good looking!" Tricia's excellent understanding of the Mandarin language allowed us to hear what was being said. Sometimes she would reply to a comment and that would start lots of questions about our boys! Great fun!!
No comments:
Post a Comment