So, day 2 of the holiday trip! Again, prepare for a barrage of photos!
Ah we went to Xi Dan on the second day. Took the train there. We passed by one of their major bookshops along the way and dropped by. It’s like… a 6 or 7 storey building. All books. Mostly Chinese books of course… which didn’t interest me much… :P Mum bought some books though. Xi Dan is a local shopping district. Loads of clothing shops. Our aim was to buy more winter clothes for wearing in Harbin. This photo was taken in some shopping centre in Xi Dan… forgot the name, didn’t take note! Opps!
Burger king, starbucks. Globalisation.
Well well. It was lunch time by then, so… FOOD! We looked for a sichuan restaurant cos my parents want to eat shui zhu yu. Literally meaning ‘fish cooked in water’. A totally misleading name though. The name is referring to something about the cooking process…. which my mum did tell us about after we came back from the trip, but I’ve forgotten it now. Opps. Anyway, you’ll see the dish in a moment. The above picture. Looks like ice cream doesn’t it? Well it’s a really healthy dish though, and really delicious. It’s Chinese yam (or nagaimo in Japanese) mash with blueberry sauce. Absolutely wonderful. It’s served cold. And the blueberry sauce is a little sweet, so it really is like a dessert.
The Chinese yam, with beef cuts (and some sort of garlic + oil sauce that was extremely salty), and congealed pig blood with a bunch of other ingredients in chilli oil! It tastes a lot much better than it sounds, really! Well for one I really love pig blood. It has a unique taste and this extremely smooth, silky texture that’s not found in other foods. It’s silky and soft, yet more resistant than tofu. It really sucks that the sale has been banned in Sg. It used to be available when I was young. I loved it! Now I can only eat it in Taiwan, China etc… :(
Oh this is yummylicious too! And another sweet dish! It’s lotus root stuffed with gluttonous rice! And the whole thing has been soaked in a really sweet sauce with osmanthus.
Ah this. Is the shui zhu yu. Ah there isn’t as much chilli oil in this one as in those from other places. Yeah. What water boiled fish? This is chilli boiled fish man! Normally the fish would be one whole fish rather than sliced like in this restaurant… And ah the fish is deep fried before being dumped in chilli. And yes, apart from the mess of dried chillies, there’s a lot of sichuan pepper added too. So eating this dish was a really numbing experience. Really it was the first time I experienced such a numbing experience. My whole lips were numb! And you can feel you lips kinda tremble from the chilli! But really, this dish, at this restaurant in particular… it was wonderful. The fish was so fresh! Well when we ordered we tried to ask for the smallest fish they had, cos we can’t eat so much. Dad asked the waitress how big the fish is, and she gave an estimate before asking if we wanted to see the fish. We said ok, not knowing what awaited us… and then lo and behold! She brought out a fish, jumping energetically in a red bucket for us to inspect. Talk about fresh indeed. Really one of the best fish I’ve had in my entire life! Even though I’m not a fan of overly spicy food. Or rather, my tolerance level for spicy food isn’t very high. But still even with the numbness and spiciness, you can still taste the fresh, sweetness of the fish. And the oiliness! Ah the perfect mix of fat and meat. DELICIOUS!
Ah back to Wang Fu Jing Street already. Hahaha. Didn’t take much photos on Day 2 since we spent most of the time shopping for winter clothes (cos there’s a really limited selection in sg, plus it tends to be rather pricy since Sg is a tropical country after all. Were 1 degrees north of the equator so… -.-) I bought the most clothes out of the whole family. Got a whole new down jacket, and some inner wear. Also got two pairs of regular jeans… for wearing back in SG… since I was running out of jeans. Only had two pairs, and one is full of holes! (Ah I think I’ve still not posted the photos yet ne? I’ll post it! I promise! ><)
We walked around the food street a little, and got some food. Tried the yoghurt drink, which was delicious. It was like… curdled milk? Very yummy. Darn. I need to get the photos from my sis. Because apparently I didn’t take any photos of the scorpion that we ate! Darn darn darn! Well I’ll describe it then. At the stalls, the skewer sticks of scorpion alive. Yes, alive! You can still see them moving their legs and all… my sis took a video with the camera, but I didn’t with my phone darn. Then they get bbqed. Taste wise. Well it didn’t have much taste actually. It was nice though, kinda like deep fried prawn shells? Yup, very crispy! We had some other street snacks like bbq quail and stuff… and that was our dinner.
Gloves! Cute right? Got them at Xi Dan. The brown ones are mine…
And the green ones are my sis’s. It’s really fluffy, and very warm indeed. Not very convenient though, because you can’t do much once you stuff your hands in. Towards the end of the trip I just left this in the hotel and only wore my cotton knitted gloves from Daiso. Just SGD $2 and it works great. Even better than the pair of leather gloves I have from last time! Tried and tested in Harbin! Of course this was really warm too, even warmer than then Daiso gloves, but I can’t take photos with this on! Whereas the Daiso gloves is specially treated on the fingertips so you can still use your touch screen phone. And my hands are pretty big, so I can’t stuff them into the porcupine anymore after wearing those cotton gloves.
Not much photos from Day 2 since it was mostly just boring shopping. Yes I hate clothes shopping…. TONS of photos on Day 3 though! I might even have to split it into two posts… hmmm… we’ll see lol!
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