We woke up bright and early in Huangzhou and had a pretty good breakfast buffet at our hotel, the Grand Canal Crowne Plaza. I liked that it had a lot of savory lunch-type foods, since I’m not always the biggest fan of breakfast. Josh and I both ended up eating the same thing, in massive quantities.
Lo mein noodles, dan bing (egg crepes), pan fried pork dumplings (yum), fried spring rolls
We definitely filled up since we had a long day of walking ahead of us. Our first stop was the West Lake, which is famous for its beauty. We walked around the perimeter for a while (it’s massive), and then got on a boat and took a little cruise around the lake. The weather was great, and the boat ride was pretty relaxing.
After getting off the boat, we walked over to the temple area of General Yue Fei’s Mausoleum. He was a famous general known for his loyalty and was wrongly put to death. The mausoleum was built to restore his honor, and there are statues of the people who betrayed him who are now forced to kneel in front of his tomb.
Our next stop was the requisite “shopping” stop, this time at a tea farm to taste/buy tea. The tea we had was called Dragon Well green tea, and it was tasty but super expensive. We like tea, but any old tea bag does us just fine, so we didn’t feel the need to spend so much money on tea leaves. We did learn about the antioxidant properties of green tea though, which was kind of cool. And the tea fields were pretty, as were the grounds of the farm.
After leaving the tea farm, we went to get lunch at a restaurant called Sky Beyond Sky. There were some interesting local dishes, but still nothing that really wowed us, unfortunately.
Pork belly with a super dark, slightly bitter leafy vegetable
Egg custard topped with soy sauce and oil
Fried tofu skin
Shrimp with heads
Sauteed lettuce
Fried beef coated with curry powder
Sauteed peppers and beef
Whole fish covered in a thick brown vinegar sauce (I guess it's a popular dish in this region)
Soup with greens picked from the lake
After lunch we went to see the Buddha carvings at Fei Lai Feng, which is translated into “Peak Flying from Afar.” The Buddhas are carved right into the side of a mountain, and they’re pretty impressive.
Right next to Fei Lai Feng is the Lin Yin Temple, which is just enormous. It’s made up of several different structures, and it’s quite a climb to the buildings on top of the hill. They gave us a lot of time to wander the grounds.
After leaving the Lin Yin Temple, we took another long drive to the city of Wuxi. We had dinner at Hongli Dynasty Restaurant, a large banquet hall with multiple rooms. There was a wedding going on while we were there, and the restaurant was definitely one of the nicer and prettier ones that we went to on our trip.
Pumpkin cubes
Pickled vegetable
Pickled string beans
Pieces of black duck
Yet another pickled vegetable
Duck feet
Braised chewy balls made from flour (texture similar to tofu skin)
Pork ribs
Corn and peas and some weird pink thing
Curry chicken and potatoes
Braised bean curd
Soup with tiny white fishes
Cabbage soup with meatballs
Steamed whole fish
Wuxi style xiao long baos (soup dumplings) - sweeter than the usual kind
After dinner we went to our hotel in Wuxi. Can you guess what we did? That’s right, we went to bed immediately. Hey, it was a long day with lots of walking and a super long bus ride!
Tags: China