The Dynamic Dumpling

No two dumplings are created equal. In every province I have visited so far I have found them, eaten them hand over fist and realized there are a lot of takes on the traditional dumpling. I love these things and have walked hours looking for the perfect dumpling joint. As there are no signs that say "Hey, American! Come over here, we have dumplings!" I am relegated to looking for the clues - or someone shoving else them in their mouth. I have learned what I thought was the Chinese word for 'dumpling' but when I exercise it, all I get is confused looks - I suck at Chinese. However, I have gotten pretty good at scoping out the stands for steamed dumplings. Seventy-five pricent of the time they are in stacked bamboo baskets of 10 inch diameters - any bigger and it's these partially cooked doughy things that I end up throwing away. The dumplings are either, steamed, boiled or fried and stuffed with various meats or veggies. You would assume they are all pretty much the same, but after awhile I start to feel like Bubba in Forrest Gump describing shrimp dishes. Anyway, this morning was a "top-3" dumpling breakfast in Nanjing and I can't get them off my mind so I thought I would purge a little bit on the blog.

So as for my whereabouts: I am in Nanjing now and this is the first opportunity I have had to send out the update - all I can say is that it was Shanghai's fault - I swear. But before I get to that - Suzhou! This region around the mouth of the Yangzi river in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces is fairly well-to-do. Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing and Shanghai are similar in many ways - clean, friendly, lots of english, great transportation, lots of westerners and, in general, quite different than the previous, more inland places I have visited. The people too are different. While the Chinese in general are incredibly fashion-conscious, this region is the penultimate (so far). Additionally, the dialects here are softer and not as abbrasive while 'yelling' is not part of normal discourse. While pushing (on sidewalks, in lines, boarding trains, etc.) is still acceptable, spitting and public urination is much less prevalent.

As for Suzhou itself, it is apparently often compared to Hangzhou. Marco Polo claimed it was the best Chinese city. I have to disagree with Marco on this one - Hangzhou was way better. Nonetheless, Suzhou did have it's charms. If you got off the busy thoroughfares, the back alleys were filled with locals strolling around along the network of canals. One of Suzhou's claims to fame is their gardens. Maybe due to the overcast weather or my pre-spring timing, I found them to be under-cared for and over-priced. The museums were a better deal. The 'general' museum has your standard presentation of jade, pottery, scrolls and Taoist statues that are primary pieces in most of the Chinese museums, but the works are displayed quite well in the Suzhou Museum. The unexpected highlight for me was the Silk museum - good explanation about the history of silk development and the Silk Road. Best of all though, was the displays of the 1000+ year old loom design. It is about 15 ft high and 25 ft long and requires 2 people to operate. There was one in use while I was there and I spent nearly 20 minutes trying to figure out how it worked - I think I need to go get another PhD first.
I stayed one night in Suzhou. The hostel was great, except for the drunk chinese girls breaking down the glass door at 3 am - I went back to sleep. Here, I also had the pleasure to meet 2 South Korean guys (both named Huang). Their english was a little limited, but 'hey, so is my Korean'. They are both halfway through college and are getting ready to serve their mandatory 2-year army stint. From what I understand, they must complete the service before they can finish their degrees (??? - maybe something got lost in translation). They are total pacifists and were praying for some sort of job like cook or driver. They had two weeks of free time before their service and hence came for a 12 day blitz of China. We hungout in Suzhou for a bit and then parted ways. I told them about my plans to hash in Shanghai. So after a quick visit to Hangzhou, they met back up with me in Shanghai - I will get to that in the next blog entry.