User Comments - meihuar2006
meihuar2006
Posted on: Terracotta Warriors
September 14, 2012 at 12:56 AMAmerican Style screeners mean the screening is obtrusive and extremely inconvenient.
Posted on: Terracotta Warriors
September 10, 2012 at 3:19 PMHi Jamesbrown151 (OK to call you Jim? ;) )
I was thinking of Luoyang!!! The Shaolin temple complex was beautiful! And the shiku was breathtaking. I visited in 40 degree (centigrade) weather and it was a death march climbing those steps to see the grand Kuanyin that the woman empress had commissioned centuries ago, but it was worth the struggle.
We saw the Shaolin performance inside the monastery, which was less grand. There was a crowd and I had to squeeze into the chamber and stand on my toes to see the performance.
Posted on: Terracotta Warriors
September 10, 2012 at 3:12 PMI'm curious to know about your (everybody's) interests in Chengdu.
I've been to Chengdu City and the Civil Aviation Flight University of China (中国民用航空飞行学院）a few times. The people in Chengdu do seem generally more friendly and the food is good. OK, the women are very attractive--
OK, and the weather was good--cool (I'd just flown in from Guangzhou, a sauna in October).
Nevermind, Chengdu is a great city. :)
Anecdote:
On the flight from Beijing to Chengdu you have to go through "American-style" security screeners because the Chengdu flight continues onward to Tibet. The Chengdu flight out of Beijing gets its own special security line.
Posted on: Superstitions and Urban Legends
July 24, 2012 at 12:27 AMI've heard urban legends about a woman who takes her two young sons to the train station, buys a ticket from the counter, then turns around to discover that both her sons have vanished, presumably abducted.
Posted on: An Insider's Insights into Chinese Tourism
July 15, 2012 at 11:52 PMI don't believe you are expected to tip them...(?)
Posted on: Eating in Korea
July 10, 2012 at 6:06 AMThanks for forwarding me the link to that lesson!
Again, I'm not sure what the deal was with burning the dogs alive, though the "panic makes the meat more tender" was something I'd heard from Koreans as being a concept within Korean cooking (we're talking early-mid 1990s, a generation ago).
But, maybe I should let the topic pass back to less controversial and more delicious foods, like Kimchee. Really good kimchee is difficult to find in Beijing.
Another great Korean food tradition is Panchan (side dishes). At a good Korean restaurant (and good often means the small restaurants in out of the way places), you get nine or more panchan prior to your main dish. Panchan comes in all shapes and styles local to the area the restaurant is in. Panchan outside Korea, however, tends to be simpler with less variety, usually only six dishes. I've yet to experience exciting panchan in Beijing (same goes for the USA). There's nothing terribly complicated about panchan--I guess outside Korea, Korean restaurants don't try as hard!
And, then there is Kimbab, which is Korean sushi (rice rolled in seaweed, not the raw fishmeat).
My favorite all-time Korean dish is Ojingeo-Paekban (Squid with Rice Entree). Hunan (?) cuisine serves a very similar dish, but the Korean Squid is peppered up with a spicy paste called Gochu-Jang and other Korean red peppers. As far as I can tell, Gochu-Jang is unique to Korean Cuisine.
Posted on: Eating in Korea
July 10, 2012 at 2:35 AMI lived in Korea for one year, speak Korean, but never once found a Korean restaurant that served Dog Stew.
BUT--
In Beijing, every Korean restaurant serves dog stew. ;)
Maybe it is a North Korean or Manchurian Korean cultural thing. I did once find dog meat for sale in a farmer's market in Pyoengtaek City, South Korea. A dog's head and four upright paws on display. ;) Actually, it was far less hideous than the pig heads I've seen for sale in the USA. Now that's disgusting!
For all the controversy, Dog Stew is one of the blandest, most toughest meat that I've ever eaten.
Purportedly, in Korea, dog meat is prepared by setting a living dog on fire because the dog's panic makes the meat more tender. An American friend of mine while in Korea showed me photographic evidence that he'd taken of one of his neighbors hanging a dog by the neck and setting it on fire.
I remain skeptical. Like I said, when I lived in Korea, I never once found dog meat on a menu, and trust me I would have eaten it for the shock effect alone. I had to wait over ten years until my wife and I wandered into what turned out to be a Beijing Korean Restaurant run by the North Korean Embassy. Of course how could I resist not trying the dog stew (kae-gogi-tang).
Bland, sinewy, tough. Blech.
There's a Korean Fast Food restaurant in a lot of Beijing mall food courts that serves a pretty flavor-less Dog Stew also.
Posted on: The New Intern
June 24, 2012 at 2:44 PMIn my company, I worked for a short time with our Chinese translators to create "Chinese names" for American employees who wanted them. When choosing names, the characters are more important than the tones, and two-character names really should not "spell words" -- example: if my name was Larry, choosing 厉害 for my name would be weird. That's a word, not a name.
For 迈克, the "ke" is a purely phonetic sound. I see that character and know I am looking at a loan word. Same with 吧 in 星期吧克
Posted on: Terracotta Warriors
September 14, 2012 at 12:58 AMHaha, I meant "Chengdu is a Great city" as a very informal statement of pleasure. I liked Chengdu. I'm glad I went.