We spent our days in Yangzhou exploring the city centre, biking in the countryside, taking some lessons at some Chinese arts and enjoying our farewell dinner on our last evening.
The main city centre of Yangzhou is quite small and consists of two to three main streets which house many different shops and stalls of vendors selling their goods and many small restaurants and cafes. West Street is one of the more famous and central streets and houses many small coffee shops and cafes where you can have a meal or sit back on the patio and enjoy a drink while watching people pass by. As noted by its name, it is very Western and most of the establishments here serve Western food with bits of traditional food and are owned by foreigners. Some of the places that Jess recommended and which we at some point visited were 7th Heaven, Buffalo Bar, and Drifters.
Biking through the countryside of Yangzhou was fantastic. Seven of us hopped onto some killer bikes (not the dainty ones we had in the rest of China and in Vietnam) but real bikes with gears and shocks and went for a morning/afternoon ride. We rode past beautiful limestone formations, rivers, mountains, rice paddies and water buffalo. It was a great way to get away from the busyness of the city and just relax. At one point, we stopped at a not so nearby river where we had to walk through muddy rice paddies to get to the water to take a nice cool dip. I almost drowned at one point but luckily I had Chris and Liz by my side to help me out. We stuck around at the river for a while watching bamboo rafters glide by and playing in the water.
Local experts in various Chinese arts are plentiful in Yangzhou. If you’re looking to pick up the language, try your hand at calligraphy or watercolour painting or learn how to cook or kung fu, you can do this all here. Chris had an attempt at watercolour painting and was taught the basics of brush strokes. He found the class rather basic as most of you know he has painted before but found it interesting to learn how to paint bamboo trees as they do in many of the art pieces they sell in this city.
I took a cooking class to learn some basic and traditional Chinese dishes and had a fabulous time. Big Chris, Naomi, Adam, Liz and myself signed up for the class and had a wonderful morning. We started our day with a visit to the local market which was something else. The market was split up into sections with a vibrant and colorful vegetables and fruit section, followed by a noisy and busy live stock section and ending with a very large and not so eye appealing butcher section where all types of fresh meat were hanging around everywhere to be sold. You could get anything here. Intestines, feet of some large ass animal (which I’m still unsure of what it was), pig snout and the worst of it all was when the tour leader pointed out the hanging dead dog on the other end of the market. This section of the market was not very appealing for most of us. We carried on out into the countryside to a small home where we started our cooking lesson. We made a variety of local dishes which included steamed stuffed vegetables, beer fish (pijiu yu – a common dish in China), chicken with cashew nuts, eggplant Yangzhou style and green vegetables with garlic. Definitely more recipes to add to our recipe book back home. We’d watch the instructor do one dish at a time and then each had a chance at our own. The place was wonderful. It was clean, well organized and everyone had their own cooking area. At the end, we all got to sit on the 2nd floor of the home where we enjoyed our own cooking and soaked in the beautiful scenery around us. It was a great way to spend our last morning in Yangzhou.
We decided to have our formal farewell dinner night in Yangzhou instead of Hong Kong as we knew it would be ten times more expensive for food and drinks in HK. We enjoyed our last evening in Yangzhou laughing, drinking, playing Sociables and just enjoying each other’s company. We started the evening with a wonderful dinner at Drifters where the food and yes, the drinks were delicious and plentiful. After dinner, we made our way to a small bar called Lulu’s where we spent the next several hours playing Sociables and of course drinking. Although we were missing Liz (who didn’t feel well) and Joanne (who went home early), it was a wonderful way to spend our last night in Yangzhou although many of us were hurting the next day when we had to get up at 9am for the cooking class but it was all worth it as the pictures below prove.
And the drinking games begin...give a kiss to the person next to you rule….oh my…
The end of Yangzhou brings us closer to the end of our tour. China is now officially finished and our next stop is Hong Kong. We leave on our last overnight train to Shenzhen where we arrive at the border and complete formalities before taking the rapid train to Kowloon. Although we are looking forward to HK, at the same time we are saddened as we know this means our tour is coming to an end and goodbyes will have to be said.
1 comment:
again; more scenery, less drunk!
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