Mangshi: Burmese Ruili Part III

After breakfast, I continued my wandering through Ruili and made my way to the jade market. Ruili is very famous for its jade market, and a lot of the jade comes from Burma. There seemed to be at least 300 shops selling jade, rubies, gold, silver and wood carvings - most too expensive for me to be at all interested.

 

It certain parts of the market, everyone was Burmese. There were Burmese food carts, where I spotted someone else eating mohinga. There were also stalls where Burmese men were preparing betel nuts - I took a picture of a man folding up the betel nuts in the leaves. Inside the jade market, I was summoned over my a Burmese man who spoke some English. He invited me into his back room to chat - I told him that I definitely wasn't going to buy anything, and he said okay. We were joined by several other younger Burmese men, so we all sat there chatting. Like I experienced in India, they all wanted to know why I wasn't married, and they asked me questions about what I do. I told them I study food and was very happy to have tea leaf salad and mohinga.

 

The men I spoke to were all Muslim, and they said that in Ruili about half of the Burmese people are Muslim, while in Burma it's a smaller percentage. One man asked if I had been to Burma, and I said no. He said that the government of Burma was bad, and that things were better in China.

 

During our conversation, we were interrupted because a man from Guangdong who was shopping for jade came into the shop. He came into the back room and was seated next to me, so I got to watch as the man who invited me in tried to negotiate a sale. He was able to speak some Cantonese to the shopper, but after inspecting various pieces of jade, he decided not to buy anything and left. I stayed around chatting some more, then I left when a second customer came.

 

I went to a stall outside the market and tried some savory sticky rice topped with shredded coconut. It was very good so I decided to try more - a small bowl of beef curry (realllllly good), paratha, potato and chickpea curry and some pickled vegetables. Tea was provided in thermoses on every table.

Mangshi: Burmese Ruili Part II

Ruili was an interesting place to visit. Parts felt much like other Chinese cities I've visited (though with more palm trees), while other parts felt really Burmese, and quite different than anywhere I've ever been. The Burmese culture that I observed (mainly food, dress and appearance) reminded me more of places like Chennai and Madurai in India than anywhere in China.

 

My hotel last night cost only 50 RMB and was very comfortable - I slept well, and this morning my stomach felt a bit better. The shower, I should add, was one of the best I've had in China! I took another one this morning since it was so nice.

 

After a successful search for tea leaf salad last night, I set out this morning to find mohinga for breakfast - a catfish noodle soup which is a very common Burmese dish. It was even mentioned in the small Burmese food glossary of my China guidebook, so I knew that I had a good chance of finding it in Ruili.

 

The search didn't take very long. I found an alley with Burmese writing on some of the restaurants, and lots of Burmese people (easy to tell because the men wear longyi and the women wear colorful skirts or sarongs). I asked at one place if they had mohinga, and although I couldn't tell for sure, I realized that they didn't, since I could look into all the pots they had cooking. So I continued down the alley and into a big market.

 

As I was browsing in the market, a Burmese man and his 2 year old son walked up to me and said "Mohinga" while signaling an eating motion. Apparently news had spread that the white dude was looking for mohinga, and he led me back into the same alley to a different cart run by a woman who was making mohinga. Score!

 

I got to choose which kind of noodle I wanted - I chose egg noodles - then the woman put the noodles in the bowl, added lime and cilantro, some crunchy fritter pieces, a bit of dried chili flakes, and the catfish soup broth. It was delicious, and while the broth was thinner than versions I've had in San Francisco, the taste was quite similar! My small bowl cost 3 RMB, or about 40 US cents.

 

I sat at the table in the picture, while the woman's mother (also in the picture in the background) poured me tea.

 

I got to practice my Burmese today too. Jayzu tinbade = Thank You

Mangshi: Burmese Ruili Part I

I spent the morning in Ruili, then came to Mangshi this afternoon. I'll be here tonight, then back to Kunming tomorrow on a plane.

 

Here are some pictures I took of the restaurant where I had tea leaf salad. Later, at the night market, I saw that other Burmese places also had these same packets of tea leaves and crispy garlic, so it's a food available in many places in Ruili.

 

 

Ruili: Tea Leaf Salad on the Burmese Border

This morning I left He Shun and went to the bus station in Tengchong to catch a bus to Ruili. It was 9:45, and then 10 AM bus to Ruili was full already, so instead of waiting till 11:00, I hopped on the 10:30 bus to Mangshi. I got a good seat with legroom and a window - it was a minibus, and at times we had so many passengers that people had to stand.

 

The road we took toward Mangshi started out paved, then turned to a cobblestone-like consistency as we went up a huge ridge, with great views on both sides. After that the road was little more than a dirt track at times, as we past lots of tea plantations before heading down again (paved again) toward the Shweli River. The bridge across the river was a single track suspension bridge - along with half of my bus, I chose to walk across ahead of the bus, then got back on the bus on the other side. After the bridge, it was only about 12 km to Longling, a town on the main road between Kunming and Ruili....all of a sudden, the road had smooth pavement with street lights every 50 meters with pictures of nearby sites. This lasted for all 12 km - these street lights seemed a bit over the top and pointless, especially given the condition of the road itself only a few miles back. But whatever...

 

In Longling, our minibus stopped for a while, so I decided to switch buses there. I caught another minibus that was leaving for Ruili immediately, so I made a quick connection but didn't get to have any lunch. The drive to Ruili took about 2.5 hours, which made my entire trip today about 6 hours long. After Linglong, we made a big descent into Mangshi, where it became more tropical, with sugarcane and coffee growing all over. We passed right by a Burmese border crossing in Wanding, and I could see hills and buildings in Burma. Finally, we arrived in Ruili, a city with wide palm-lined boulevards and very calm traffic - mostly bicycle rickshaws and electric scooters. Here in Ruili, I'm closer to Delhi than I am to Beijing.....not to mention Rangoon, Calcutta, Bangkok, etc....so it's definitely a different scene from the east coast of China.

 

I found a hotel, and needed Leo's help checking in since the receptionist didn't speak English and didn't even attempt to communicate anything to me in sign language....she just sort of sat there until I called Leo, despite the fact that I was trying to hand her money and communicating the best I could. But eventually I got my room, then set out to find food (I hadn't had lunch). Since I was so hungry, I got a small noodle soup at the first place I saw...then I went in search of Burmese food.

 

I found a small street with lots of stalls and restaurants, all with pool tables. Apparently it's a pool-playing street. Halfway down the street, I spotted a restaurant with Burmese writing on the awning. I asked if they had La Pat Dok (Tea Leaf Salad, one of my favorite Burmese dishes that I often ate in San Francisco), and they did! The tea leaves and cripy garlic and lentils came in little plastic packets from Burma, and I ended up buying 3 more of these to bring back to the US (they are packaged, so I think they will be OK). The woman who made my salad chopped tomato, lettuce, onion, garlic and chili and mixed them with peanuts, the fermented tea leaves and the crispy garlic and lentils. It was excellent, and I took several pictures of the salad and the restaurant. The manager also came over to take a picture of me on his cell phone - I'm guessing I am the first American to ever come there and order tea leaf salad. The manager spoke a bit of English, but he wasn't Burmese - the woman who made the salad was though, and they were playing Burmese music videos on the TV in the restaurant. She was singing along.

 

There is a lot of Burmese influence in this city - Burmese writing everywhere, women dressed in colorful sarongs, all sorts of interesting looking curries and vegetable dishes on display at local restaurants. It's probably as close to being in Burma as you can get without actually entering the country.

 

After tea leaf salad, I walked around a bit more and then caught a bicycle rickshaw back to my hotel.......this evening my plan is to relax a bit at my hotel, then head to the night market to find more food. My stomach is feeling a bit iffy today, so I will need to be careful foodwise, but hopefully I'll be okay. There is no card reader here, so I can't load any pictures, but perhaps I'll be able to another day.

Tengchong: He Shun Village

He Shun village is really beautiful, surrounded by green hills and rice paddies. I walked around the town and took some pictures, then went up into the hills (fields, tombs, forests) for a view of the sunset. Notice the pagoda on the top of the mountain in the picture with the clouds and pine trees.

 

 

Tengchong: The Road to Burma

Yesterday I said goodbye to Mark, and to Dali, and headed off on my adventure westward toward Burma.

 

I couldn't buy a ticket to Tengchong in Dali Old Town, since the buses left from Xiaguan (Dali New Town, about 15 km away). So I took a public bus most of the way to the bus station in Xiaguan, then walked the rest. I got there at about 9:15 AM, in time to buy my ticket for the 10 AM express bus.

 

I was impressed by the public bus system in Xiaguan and Dali - the buses were big and spacious, and seemed to also be frequent and efficient (and easy to navigate).

 

I was assigned an aisle seat for the busride, which was annoying because I wanted a window. Luckily a man in a window seat in front of me switched to a different seat in the back of the bus, so I took his window seat, next to an older man.

 

Nobody on the bus spoke English. It took a while to actually leave Xiaguan, but once we did, the road was fast. The expressway has been extended west from Xiaguan - I'm not sure how far it goes now, but the aim is to connect it all the way to Ruili and the Burmese border. This new highway means travel times are a lot shorter - we drove on the highway for two hours, through several tunnels and across the extremely brown and fast moving Mekong River, and then stopped for bathrooms and lunch just outside Baoshan.

 

The man who was sitting next to me on the bus paid for my bathroom ticket, which was very nice of him. I think he thought I wouldn't know how to pay on my own. Later I shared my rice crackers with him. After bathroom, it was lunchtime, and everyone from my bus went into a restaurant where most people got a meal on a silver tray - much like a thali meal in India. Everyone got a small serving of several dishes: green beans and potato salad, eggplant with chili, cold salad of ma-la fatty pork, pork with pickled veggies, french fries, peanuts and rice. On the side everyone also got a bowl of vegetable and garlic soup. This cost me 10 RMB, which is about $1.25. While nothing was outstanding, I definitely prefer Chinese rest area lunches to American rest area lunches.

 

After lunch, we continued through the valley surrounding Baoshan, then went up into the hills again before making an impressive descent into the valley of the Salween River. The Salween River, according to Wikipedia, is the longest un-dammed (or however that's spelled) river in Asia...it starts in Tibet, then flows through Yunnan province before going into Burma and Thailand and emptying into the sea near the Burmese/Thai border. Many major Asian rivers go through Yunnan province - north of Dali, near Lijiang, the Yangzi River goes through Tiger Leaping Gorge before flowing north an east through Sichuan and out toward Shanghai....the Mekong flows south from Yunnan to Laos and Vietnam, and the Shweli River (which I would cross later just before arriving in Tengchong) is a tributary of the Irawaddy, which is the principal river of Burma.

 

At the Salween River, we left the highway to head west toward Tengchong on a smaller road. Down by the river, the landscape started to look a lot more tropical. I saw fields of sugarcane and coffee, as well as banana and mango trees. The bus got hot too, since it seemed like the air conditioning only worked when we were going downhill, which was only about 50% of the time.

 

We drove through a lot of forest - the least populated part of China I have seen so far - and then made our way down to the Shweli River valley, then it was about 45 minutes more driving on curvy roads before we arrived in Tengchong. As promised, the busride only took 6 hours (including the lunch stop), so it wasn't too bad at all - I was able to listen to my ipod which helped block out the movies blasting on the TVs in the bus, and the seats had decent leg room so I wasn't as squished as I was on the busride from Kunming to Dali.

 

When I arrived in Tengchong, I took a taxi straight from the bus station to He Shun, a small village about 6 km outside town. That's where I spent last night and I'll be staying there again tonight - it's very pretty and peaceful and there are a ton of nice houses and gardens, since many of the former residents are rich and have sent a lot of money back to the village. Tourists also come to visit the village on day trips, and there is a 30 RMB entrance fee, which I avoided since my taxi went straight through the gate without stopping. I will hopefully return to the village late enough tonight that the ticket collectors won't be working anymore, so I'll avoid the fee again.

 

 

Tengchong: All Around Erhai Lake

Here are pictures from various places around Dali and Erhai Lake.

 

A) View of central Dali from the West Gate tower.

 

B) View of Dali from the temple near Higherland Inn.

 

C) View of temple from the chairlift

 

D) Shuanglang Overlook

 

E) Shuanglang at the edge of the lake

Tongcheng: Dali Food Pictures

Here are some food pictures from Dali. Again, not sure what order they will show up in when the blog publishes, so you can play a matching game:

 

A) Cold Rice Noodles with Chicken in Dali.

 

B) Choosing Vegetables for the hot pot-like dish in Dali.

 

C) Individual servings of vegetables cooking in a communal hot pot in Dali.

 

D) Woman making traditional bread in Xizhou.

 

E) David and Mark getting ready to eat bread in the plaza in Xizhou.

Tengchong: Kunming Food Pictures

Just two pictures for this post.

 

Photo A) The big hawker center in Kunming was impressive, and I might have to go back there for lunch next week when I'm there again. Miao Miao told us that the city doesn't allow street food stalls anymore, so they have all moved to this big indoor food court. It was a lot of fun checking out all the local foods.

 

Photo B) Crossing the Bridge Noodles. I described this in the previous post from Kunming, so here is a picture.

Tengchong: Goodbye Yangshuo

During my last few days in Yangshuo, I went out to two big dinners with Leo, Kelly and Kelly's family - by this point, basically my Chinese host family. Here's a picture of one of the big meals, at a new restaurant in the center of town. The highlight was garlic bean thread noodles with cabbage (on the left part of the lazy susan). We also had roast duck, spicy beer frog with pickled vegetables, water spinach with salty tofu, pickled vegetables with chili, basket of fried shrimp, intestines and tea leaves, old duck soup with ginko nuts and longanberry, pork belly with taro served in bamboo, and sizzling squid.

 

I'm also including a picture of Leo and Kelly with Pippy (the dog) and Stella (Kelly's niece)