Shaoxing

Our most recent weekend excursion was to Shaoxing, a city just under an hour southeast of Hangzhou by train. Shaoxing is a big Chinese tourist destination since it is full of history, with sites dating back to the Southern Song dynasty and gardens where Ming and Qing dynasty poets and intellectuals hung out. Neither Owen nor I are experts in those periods, but Shaoxing is also the ancestral home of Lu Xun (and it turns out Zhou Enlai), two figures from modern Chinese history which our reasons for paying the place a visit.

Lu Xun Old Town

In 2003, the government reopened the "new and improved" Lu Xun Old Town. Admission is free to explore Lu Xun's family homes, grade school (there were eight students), and a new museum devoted to his life. There was some sort of reservation system to get a free ticket that we never quite figured out - both the website and the electronic board in the visitor's center said that there had been 4000 tickets and 4000 had been given out so there were no more. All the Chinese visitors were hurriedly lining up and upon reaching the front spouting out their ID card numbers to the women behind the desks. We were in the "no advanced reservations" line, but everyone seemed to already have reserved tickets. When we got up there - Owen did the talking (I don't always get the time of day because they think I am Chinese) and we were handed two tickets. We think they must have a foreigner quota or something as there was one other foreigner who also seemed to not understand the system but came away with a ticket. For 60 RMB (just under $10), we got a Chinese-speaking guide who came with us to all the sites and gave comprehensive explanations. It was definitely worth the cost to have her, as we came away with a greater understanding than if we'd just walked through the homes on our own.

Portrait over the entryway altar of Lu Xun's grandfather (surname was Zhou) and his two wives (Lu Xun had good relations with both his real and step grandmothers and actually spent a lot of time as a child with his step-grandmother who was more "cultured" and would tell him classic stories)

Zhou family kitchen

Lu Xun's desk (or at least that's what the sign says)

百草原 (aka Hundred Plant Garden) - a place the child who would become Lu Xun liked to play

塔山公园 (Pagoda Hill Park)

Aptly named, this park had a small hill and at the top of that hill was a tall pagoda. Ascending to the top of this pagoda was enjoyable for two reasons - you had a great 360 degree view of the entire city and there was a nice breeze which provided a break from the intense humid heat down below.

One of the views of Shaoxing from above

Food in Shaoxing

We wanted to try 典型 (most typical or best representative) Shaoxing food. The Chinese guide book we bought said that Shaoxing is known for dried vegetables (干菜), steamed chicken (清蒸越鸡）and a dish we couldn't immediately translate called 霉千张. Not really knowing our way around town, we went to a restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet as a place to get good local food. We wanted to order at least one of the three famous types of Shaoxing food. We saw that they had a couple of 霉千张 dishes and decided we'd try one. Upon ordering, the waitress took one look at us and decided it would be in our best interest to let us know that 霉千张 was rather 臭 ("stinky" - a way to describe very fermented foods). We asked her how 臭 it was and her response was "比臭豆腐还要臭" ("stinkier than stinky tofu" - which says a lot). Turns out that this mystery dish is made up of highly fermented tofu sheets and must be a VERY acquired taste. We weren't ready to acquire this taste in one night so we opted for an order of steamed chicken topped with salty fish instead.

We also got a safe order of claypot beef and potatoes

Overall, we think we did everything we set out to do on our short trip to Shaoxing. We'll end this post with a few words of wisdom borrowed from the Shaoxing City Language and Letters Committee:

Speak Standard Chinese (Mandarin), Please Use Standardized Characters