Shanghaied: Chinese Beach Weekend

Danny had a work conference at Xiamen University so I flew down to Xiamen for the weekend. We stayed at the University guest house, which was ok but nothing special.

On Saturday the conference organizers planned a guided tour. We took a ferry to an island called Gulangyu. It was a pedestrian only island with a bunch of narrow windy roads and fancy looking western style houses. Afterwards we went to a show of Qing Dynasty Guards firing cannons at Hulishan Fortress. We also went to a piano museum and a botanical garden. We had a Chinese banquet meal at a Cantonese restaurant that turned out to be my favorite Chinese banquet meal ever. They had fried noodles, corn with pine nuts, and bok choy. I wasn't terribly impressed with any of the sights but it was fun to hang out with all Danny's co-workers.

That night I had dinner at Pizza Hut. I used to love Pizza Hut as a kid but then it became a bad quality fast food place. The Pizza Huts in China are more like the was Pizza Hut was as a kid. Their deep dish Pizza is great and they are all over China.

Afterwards we walked around Zhongshan Road Pedestrian Street. It has some Night market type streets with foods Danny likes. We got ice cream, shaved ice, and bing tang hu lu... we may have gone overboard on desserts.

Sunday most people left early. All the grad students took a 10 hour train ride back to Shanghai. Our good friend Jo went with us to explore the city a bit more. We had an early lunch at Nanputuo Temple. Buddhist Temple's always are totally vegetarian since monks don't eat meat. I'm not generally a big fan of Buddhist vegetarian food because it is not allowed to contain garlic or onions and doesn't usually have much flavor. The temple's restaurant was geared towards tourists so it had some flavor. The temple itself was a pretty standard Buddhist Temple. I'd have been really excited a year ago but I've seen so many temples now.

Afterwards we took a walk on the beach. Beaches are really the main appeal for tourists in Xiamen. They are about equal in quality to going to the beach around Margate (at least how I remember it last year before the storm, I'm not sure how it looks now) We weren't expecting it to be that warm in December but it turned out to be about 60 degrees. If I had packed a bathing suit I might even have laid out. It was finny though, all the Chinese people were fully dressed. There were a few foreigners in bikinis though. We bought some coconuts from some guy with a cart who had to pull away halfway through selling them because the cops came to make them leave. They returned five minutes later.