This past weekend we did something we had been saying we would do for a while, visit the hometown of one of our Chinese friends. As out time here is ending...21 days left, we scrambled to get a few trips in last minute. We took a trip about 2.5 hours away by car (for those that don't recall, we don't drive here, so this meant having our driver take and pick us up from here) from the city we live in, Changzhou to DongTai. The city is north East of our city and is much more of a natural city, there are forest trees, farming, more nature than you find in typical Chinese cities we have visited. While here we stayed in a traditional Chinese hotel, which to be honest we usually avoid because the beds are like sleeping on plywood, and this was no exception. Usually in a hotel there will be hard beds, a few bottles of room temperature water, a few tea bags, a electric kettle and that is it....no mini refrigerator, no cold beverages, we couldn't even get ice in the restaurant. However, we did have a nice time, this is just to give a little perspective on how out into the forest we were! Here are some views of the countryside from the car ride.
DongTai is a small town from everything I have experienced in China. There were very small shops that we passed in clusters near farm style housing. The restaurants we ate at were very small, probably family-owned restaurants. There was no McDonald's in site, we ate Chinese food for all three days which really isn't typical of our eating habits. This city is also close to the "sea" and therefore a lot of sea food was to be had. Here are some of the photos of our adventures!
There was a lot of land to bike or walk around. A children's park was a highlight for the kids. Everything there was made of wood and seemed so natural being right there in the middle of the forest.
Another area, part of the hotel but cabins were off in the distance. There were bigger ones for maybe 4 people but we were only able to see the 2 person cabin which was literally a bed and bathroom, I am not really sure where you would have even kept your bag. Side note: It is very typical here in China when traveling to wear entire outfits two days in a row, sometimes at home you find wearing your jeans two days or a sweatshirt but whole outfits here, not something I typically experience at home. The cabins were cool little places set in the forest where i imagine you could see the moonlight and watch the sun rise.
On Saturday of our adventure we went to a wild deer preserve, our friend told the kids it was a zoo so they were looking everywhere for zoo animals! We saw by boat many of the deer they have there and a few birds as well, mostly it was another part of nature to explore and walk around.
The city is known for producing most of the vegetables for Shanghai and also for watermelon. If you know our family well, then you understand this was a good thing! We ate a lot of watermelon on this trip and even brought a few home with us!
While the trip was nice, we got into nature and had some fresh air and lots of running around with the kids, here are a few odd things along the way....at breakfast there was an automatic chopstick dispenser that sanitized the chopsticks, a whole crab that was staring at me before I pulled him apart to eat, a "squatting pot" sign on the toilets....and a wooden man in the lobby of the hotel.
Before I leave ChinaI had to make one last trip to the hair salon....this time I went lighter with my hair color, what I think happened is they bleached my hair and then painted it yellow...and I do mean Yellow if you look closely in one of the photos. There were at times 5-6 people watching and giving their opinion on my hair that day, I was under two machines, one with steam and the other a heater with foils in my hair ......and on the way there I also saw a sign for a "themed room" open 24 hours. I have no idea what a "theme room" is and I didn't stop to find out but it was an interesting sign I hadn't seen before :)
Last but not least this week my friend and I decided to try the Icy Dumplings that Starbucks had been advertising. So we talked with the barista one day, found out that we had to pre-order our Icy Dumplings as they would only be available in stores for a limited time. In addition, we had to buy a coupon for this, we received a free backpack with it, and we had to go online with our coupon code to reserve it....all in Chinese. So I made my best attempt and was able to schedule my Icy Dumpling pick up for May 2nd. We met at the Starbucks I pre-selected in the online survey (thankfully it was the right one), got in line and provided our coupon to receive our dumplings! We even received a free coffee and they wanted to take our picture and ask our favorite drink! Haha
The dumplings flavors are as follows; cold brew coffee (a new thing here in China as you can image), yogurt blueberry, mango grapefruit, peach, and what we decided was panda or something green. The outside of these were like a very dense gelatin, and the inside of the flavor was paste......I have to say I might have preferred one flavor over another but I prefer never to eat these again. They came packaged nicely in a Starbucks bag and sealed, they were individually wrapped in banana leaf type greenery and then tied as a traditional dumpling would be....but I have to say, this was a taste testing and fun experience I won't repeat.
And finally there is an update on the house, we have carpet! The kitchen is almost done and moving day will come before we know it!
Until next time.....
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