Song Fang Maison de thé, Shanghai
suxiaoya
June 22, 2010, 09:52 AM posted in General Discussion
suxiaoya
Hi svik, I just saw this message!
A nice cup of tea would have been very good at that point, absolutely. Something calming, maybe chamomile.
The episodes aren't getting any more relaxing to watch. Tonight's episode is going to be quite the emotional rollercoaster for a number of teams... :-)
svik
Hi Sarah, Now I have seen the episode where you turned down the chance to do that funny tea ceremony, and ate the 四川 food. I have seen that performance several times at tea meetings where they have entertainment. The old tea guys must have seen it a million times. But you made a good choice. Very clever to eat the yogurt with the chili peppers. (although your eyes lit up for a second) How did you happen to have the yogurt. :-)
Anyway, 加油！And, you are a very good sport.
suxiaoya
Haha, yeah, that tea ceremony looked difficult! I was impressed with how Deep and Naresh coped with it.
The yogurt was a story of lucky guessing. Molly and I had been trying to anticipate where we might go for the next leg (all teams passed A LOT of waiting around time pondering this question!). We were still in Qingdao, but we guessed it might be about time they'd send us south. I thought it might be worthwhile pinching a yogurt from the hotel, just in case we'd be made to eat spicy food and could benefit from a coolant. I can't tell you how much time we spent trying to work out what was ahead, and how we could prepare for it. Mostly it didn't help one bit, but in this case it paid off :-)
Anyway, thanks for the support, svik- we've just seen episode 10, which was tough to say the least...
svik
Good guess! I look forward to more adventures :-)
bababardwan
oh brilliant. I didn't realise that's why/ how you came to have the yoghurt and no-one else did. Now I'm extra impressed.
..so hang on, just to clarify..this was from a hotel in Qingdao you grabbed the yoghurt from?
suxiaoya
uh, yes, that yogurt had stayed in my bag all day! To be fair, we were all taking food from the hotels; we never had time to stop to find food during the day, neither did we have much money to spare, so we resorted to packing small snacks from the breakfast buffets! I am not exactly proud of this, but the hotel chain was a sponsor, so we didn't feel toooooo bad or tooooo cheap ;-)
bababardwan
suxiaoya, hehe "baba" just took on an extra meaning. Your sins are forgiven. Nah, I'm sure it was all valid..part of surviving the race. I gathered that there was little time if any to stop and eat [ I think deep and naresh specifically commented on this in the last couple of episodes]. But that wasn't what I was trying to clarify. I was just wondering whether I needed to modify my "brilliant" comment....if it was taken from a hotel in Sichuan then it would still have been a clever move, but not entirely unpredictable, but if it was taken from Qingdao as I initially thought you meant then it showed tremendous forsight and the brilliant accolade still stands. Somewhat brave too I might add, hehe.
bodawei
When Karl Pilkington (An Idiot Abroad) goes to India he meets a Baba -- I had a good laugh. The Baba is starkers and stands on his head. :)
suxiaoya
ok, i see. Yes, a yogurt stolen from the Hilton Doubletree on the outskirts of Qingdao saved my butt in a hotpot restaurant in Chengdu. Who'd have thought?!
svik
September 12, 2010, 02:52 AMHi Sarah,
I didn't get to Shanghai this year, but I watched episode 4 of 冲刺中国 yesterday. While your teammate was eating that huge bowl of rice, I thought you could have used a nice cup of tea.
One of my students was in a similar contest a few years ago-in the US and Europe. He won a lot of money, and he sat through a class with me, keeping all that information to himself. I found that after it was all over, he and his teammates never talked about the experience much. I guess for them it was long over by then.
Anyway, it looked like a difficult adventure you were in!