This is pretty much a COMC (Clearing Out the Memory Card) post. During our time in China we stayed in Jianyang for one evening, here are some photos we took during that time.
The hotel provided a buffet style breakfast, that looked quite typical, but had quite a few breakfast items that were interesting.
Sure there was rice porridge and the like…..but there were a number of spicy Sichuan dishes as well. I had really never given thought to what the typical Sichuan breakfast would be…..the thought of having some "ma-la" (numbing hot) dishes first thing in the morning seemed very different to me.
Just as tomatoes are often treated like fruits in China, potatoes are treated like true vegetables. It's not uncommon to see them stir-fried.
I wasn't sure how my body would react to having this stuff early in the morning….but it turns out that I enjoyed it to some extent.
Even though the population of Jianyang is pegged at 1.2 million and I'm assuming growing as the local textile industry does, the streets in the area where we stayed were wide and pretty much empty. Perhaps everyone had already gone to work……
This seems really great, but as anyone who has tried to cross the street in China knows……other than driving on the correct side of the street (something which is rather flexible in its own right), the "rules" here are different. Because there was no traffic, cars and trucks were driving as fast as they could on these streets….shades of Phnom Penh!
Many of the smaller businesses were located on the side streets…..
I heard a familiar buzz as we passed the Baozi stand…..I immediately knew what it was, as we turned the corner I found that my hunch was correct.
It was the local morning market……
For me, the most entertaining set-up were all the meat hanging for display, it was a literal "meat curtain".
The meat did look quite fresh……
The market itself wasn't too crowded, so after a cursory walk-through we headed back down the street to a bit more exploring. Daily life in Jianyang seemed a bit more laidback, though the speed of things in Chengdu seemed quite relaxed as well.
You never know what you'll see wandering down the street in a city that you don't reside in.
You see things that are unfamiliar, greeting them with almost a child like wonder…..
I loved the makeshift "ramp" built from rebar. You relaly couldn't make out the rebar from a distance. You'd suddenly see a jug zipping across the sidewalk!
We saw this hanging in front of a Jianyang Mutton Soup shop(luckily no carcasses of wild dog in sight), we saw a typical display of how the Chinese stretch the law a bit….
There was an older man with a large cutting board squatting on the sidewalk chopping and hacking at the mutton. Imagine if you will, someone doing this on a major four lane road in your city! He was dressed in the typical stained white teeshirt, white paper hat (after all there are hygenic standards, right?), cigarette dangling from his mouth, hacking away. Suddenly, a police vehicle drives to the curb and one of the guys starts yelling …..I'm assuming telling him not to portion his mutton the the sidewalk. The "chef" ignores the officer. So what does the guy in the car do? He grabs a megaphone and starts using the darn thing, loud enough to shake the leaves off the trees (which are falling on the chopped mutton meat). He screams for about five minutes, but is just ignored. So what does the officer do next? Does he and his partner get out of his vehicle to enforce the law? Heck no, they just swear at the guy (so the Missus says – through the megaphone) and drive off. Jianyang's finest on the job!
Later that morning, the Missus' cousin took us on the short tour of one of the lakes in the area. There are islands in these lakes that house hotels and resorts. You can get to them by boat.
We ended up having lunch at one of the hotel restaurants. Nothing particularly memorable.
Like I said earlier; potatoes are treated as a vegetable…..
Actually, the "saliva chicken" (so good you can't stop drooling) was decent. Not very spicy (La), but it numbed half your face (Ma).
As a whole, like we were told, the food in this part of Sichuan isn't as spicy-hot.
For dinner we were taken to a Hot Pot place.
Which was more of a "hip" hot pot shop, where the young folks seem to going for hot pot and socializing.
Actually, the broth was pretty good, though again, more numbing than spicy.
It was a nice side trip for the Missus as She got to meet relatives…….
