Mike's Chomping Cheesy Chinese Chow Challenge #9 – Sweet Potato

Disclaimer: That is a sweet potato and not a Christmas poo...

The temperatures are plummeting and the Beijing skyline is full of feathery white snowflakes. The city may be transforming into a winter wonderland, but of course that will not stop me from continuing my cheesy Chinese chow challenge.

At this time of year, you would be foolish not to seize the opportunity of scoffing a baked sweet potato. There are a number street vendors selling these winter warmers all around Beijing. If you see someone standing next to a metal drum, then it’s likely they are baking a batch of sweet potatoes! Once you choose the potato you desire, the seller will weigh it and tell you the cost - but don't worry, you can buy a spud the size of your face and it will still be a pretty cheap snack.

Many happy customers can be seen gnawing on a freshly baked potato straight out of the serving bag. I decided to give my sweet potato a cheesy challenge upgrade. After I selected the most scrumptious-looking spud, I took it back to my apartment. I then sliced it open and added baked beans with grated cheese on top.

I was instantly transported back home to the UK, with memories of jacket potatoes, bonfire nights and cosy autumnal evenings flooding back in a delightful nostalgic daydream.

The baked beans and melting cheese were the perfect companions to the fluffy, warm potato. This is a seasonal treat that cannot be limited to just once a year. I feel confident that a cheesy baked bean sweet potato will be a regular item on my winter menu.

Seven Signs Of Beijing Winter

I am going to channel Game Of Thrones and send out a warning about the impending cold season known as winter. Well, truthfully Beijing's annual two-week Autumn (Shortumn) is pretty much over already. But the deepest, darkest, depressing depths of winter have yet to reach the capital...

Ned Stark would be the first to tell you that the coming of winter can be a pain in the neck, so it is important that one prepares for the dry, cold, grey months ahead. I may not be the most observant person, but aside from the drop in temperature, I have noticed some other signs that show us when the cruel mistress we call Winter is well and truly on her way:

1. Candied fruit

As the temperature cools, it is only a matter of time before swarms of street vendors start selling 糖葫芦(Tang hu lu). The candied fruit on a stick is traditionally Chinese hawthorn coated in sugar, but a lot of the stalls now sell cherry tomatoes, strawberries and pineapple, which I feel could help people meet the recommended five-a-day fruit and vegetable intake for a healthy lifestyle.

2. Getting flap-slapped

Another sure sign that winter is arriving is when you notice establishments hanging large, thick, cumbersome curtains over the entrance to buildings. The main aim of these chunky drapes is to keep out the cold, however from personal experience, I have noted the following issues with the curtains:

a) Fumbling your way through the curtain can often end in an awkward collision or an accidental grope with a person on the other side of the curtain.

b) If a person ahead of you releases the curtain as you are walking through the doorway, you can end up taking some seriously heavy fabric to the face. A beefy curtain slap is the last thing you want on a cold day. But it wouldn't be a true Beijing winter without getting flap-slapped.

3. Static shocks

When winter comes along, I get an incredible amount of static electric shocks. It may be the work of an electric demon stalking me and taunting me with its painful shocks. But more likely, it's the synthetic material of my winter coat building up a powerful electric charge as I shuffle around the city. I have to pay particular attention around escalators and taxi doors. It's not a pleasant sensation but there's nothing quite like an electric shock to blast away the winter chills.

4. Street sweet potatoes

It's a bittersweet moment when the street vendors start selling sweet potatoes around the city. Yes, you have easy access to a cheap and deliciously warming snack, but it is also a harsh reminder that the heat of summer is rapidly diminishing. Wipe away those frozen tears and grab a tasty baked potato. It certainly makes the colder weather more bearable.

5. Cold weather bike accessories

When you spot a person riding a bike while wearing what appears to be oven gloves, stop whatever you're doing and put on some thermals! During the cold months, people on motorbikes and scooters cover themselves in a thick blanket and attach large oven-mitts to the handlebars in order to shield themselves from the biting cold wind.

6. Barmy for lip balm

There is no time to feel bored during the cold days of winter. You will be kept busy by the incessant need to apply lip balm and other moisturisers, in a vain attempt to prevent oneself from drying up into a flaky husk. The lip balm activities are mainly focused around:

a) Wincing in pain when you crack a smile and your chapped lips burst open.

b) Militantly applying lip balm every five minutes and getting the occasional comment from a friend that perhaps you have applied it too aggressively and it now covers your entire lower face.

c) Constantly checking where your lip balm is, resulting in anxiety attacks if it cannot be located. This can also create a panic-driven, bulk buying situation whenever you are in a shop that sells lip balm - you will always need those 'back-up balms'!

7. Counting down to Central Heating Day

Autumn is officially over when you start to notice that it is colder in your apartment than it is outside. November the 15th is the official date for when Beijing officially turns on the government-subsidised central heating system. If you cannot wait until Central Heating Day (供暖日) then you have to huddle around an electric heater and clutch a hot water bottle, while staring longingly at the calendar. Once the central heating system is switched on, it stays on until March the 15th!

Take care this winter wherever you are!

Mike's Chomping Cheesy Chinese Chow Challenge #8 – Harbin Kao Leng Mian

Recently, my work load has intensified. However, this has not kept me off the bustling streets of Beijing. If anything, being so busy has just increased my hunger and subsequently deepened my dedication to finding delicious Chinese street food and adorn it with tasty cheese.

Sometimes, the street sellers have to take zoom off on their little frying-snack-stalls-on-wheels (henceforth known as fry-mobiles) when there are police in the neighbourhood. But when the police are preoccupied with doing policey-type-things in other parts of the city, there's generally quite a gaggle of fry-mobiles that cluster around the subway station. This provides me with ample opportunities to select a new snack and combine it with dairy products in a controversial yet fulfilling experiment.

One of the many snack stalls on wheels

With the temperature getting cooler, I decided that this time I would opt for 哈尔滨烤冷面 (Harbin Kao Leng Mian)。This is a wide, flat noodle that looks very similar to a lasagne pasta sheet. It is then coated in cooking oil and fried with onions, coriander and slathered in a paste of your choice. It can be made with a spicy, savoury or even a sweet flavour. Once it has been fried, it will then get folded over and sliced into bite-size chunks. 

Once I'd bought my warm cup of kao leng mian, I took it back to the safety of my apartment where I added a fine cheddar. As I have found with other Chinese street snacks, grated cheese works so well with food that's been coated with chili. It cooled down the heat of the chili and the melted cheddar tasted great with the fried noodle (unlike when I've dabbled with parmesan cheese in the past). 

I decided that I would also add a healthy dollop of red onion chutney to the cheesy fried noodle concoction. Some people may say that this would make the meal far too oniony (especially people within close proximity to me after I finished eating it). However, I think that the onion chutney gave the fresh onions a wonderfully tangy boost and it wasn't too overpowering. 

I am already plotting my next Chinese Chow Challenge...stay tuned!

Beijing gym on a whim

It began as a rather normal Sunday. I was furtively hunting for some new teaching materials to bring to school. On this particular occasion, I was searching for sandpaper so that students could test the durability of rocks...but let's get back to the story.

After a forty minute walk I still hadn't located any kind of paper, except for the occasional discarded leaflet drifting solemnly in the breeze. If I kept walking on this unsuccessful mission then perhaps my worn down feet would suffice as an abrasive material to test rocks. This lack of sandpaper was starting to rub me up the wrong way.

Suddenly, I saw something promising in the distance. It was the characters "五金" which I knew meant hardware. Just like the mirage of a water fountain in a desert, I stumbled onwards to reach the beautiful vision before me. It was not my imagination - it was a real hardware shop! The shopkeeper gave me a strange look when I requested sandpaper, but to my relief and sheer euphoria, I became the proud owner of eight sheets for approximately 80 pence.

The shop in the centre with a blue sign is a sandpaper utopia

Feeling quite happy with myself, I left the hardware shop and was met by a young man trying to entice members of the public to join a nearby gym. This is quite a common occurrence in Beijing. If I had one yuan for every time I was handed a gym leaflet by someone on a street corner, I could afford a hefty supply of sandpaper by now. However, I had been considering joining a gym for a while and since this was the first person to offer me an actual view of the gym , I decided to check it out.

The gym was just a short walk from the sandpaper paradise shop. I was still buoyed by my triumphant mission and quite enjoyed the labyrinth that was the gym entrance. To get to the main gym, you must first enter the building, then take the lift to the basement -1 level, sign in at reception and finally find a different lift which will take you up to the third floor.

Following a quick tour of the basket ball court, bike machine room and swimming pool on the lower -2 level, I ascended to the third floor and checked out the equipment. I was still undecided about whether I wanted to commit to a gym. It could have been the incredibly cheap one-year fee of around £200. Or perhaps it was the promise of a free swanky gym bag if I signed a contract. But I decided that I would indeed join.

With this bag, I am now a legit exerciser

I am not a social exerciser. I don't want to play a team sport and have people watching me sweat and suffer. Thankfully nobody I know seems to visit this gym which is another good selling point. Plus the free gym bag would make me look like the real deal.

Once I signed on the dotted line, I filled in some forms and a personal trainer asked me to stand on a machine which measured my weight. The jovial instructor became suddenly very serious and said that I was a number "8" on the machine's scale. If I reached number 9, he warned me that I would have terrible health issues. It is true, since coming to China, the only running I have done is occasionally running a bath. But I knew for sure that my health is not as dire as he would have me believe. I found it quite amusing but nodded all the same.

I returned to the gym the following day for a free session with the personal trainer. His English is limited to saying "OK" and counting to ten (generally leaving out number seven). I realised that not only will I be developing my health, but also my Chinese skills. He explained to me that I should run on the treadmill for thirty minutes and then he would give me a one hour class on weight training and exercising specific muscle groups. He was keen for me to him some English and also give him an English name. He seemed pretty happy that he could now be called Colin.

Colin's gym poster

After just a short time of going to the gym, I did begin to feel more energetic. I wasn't sure if it was just a placebo effect or if I was actually already feeling the benefit of exercising. I have likened it to eating a delicious yet spicy curry. The after effects the following day can be a little painful but you know that it's been a worthwhile experience. It has now been three and a half weeks since I started at the gym and I was rather chuffed to beat my personal best time by running over 6km in less than 30 minutes.

Woohoo! See you later number "8", I am going to be a "7" soon!

Colin is a trained Kung Fu teacher. He is quite strict and during one session decided to teach me some basic Kung Fu. I am guessing he did it just for a laugh. I am not the most co-ordinated or well-balanced person. After a couple of minutes of teaching me some shaky moves, he chuckled and decided to go back to weight training. Colin may be fit and healthy, but timekeeping is definitely not his forte. Although he stated that the training sessions would total one hour after I finish on the treadmill, he will often work with me for an hour and a half, sometimes almost two hours. Even though I end up exhausted, it is definitely value for money.

One thing that is a little peculiar is that after each session, Colin gives his gym members a massage. This may seem like a good idea in order to relax people's muscles after a strenuous workout. However, Colin uses a large rubber tube (almost like a thin tyre) in which to "massage" his clients. This in itself is not too uncomfortable. It kind of feels like he is trying to roll me out like a piece of dough. Once this ritual has been completed, Colin then decides to beat me with said tube. I still haven't figured out how this helps me in any way, but I'm guessing that he is trying to beat the fat out of me so that I am no longer an "8". Not so much an exercising session, more like an exorcism session. But the whole thing is funny and I usually end the class chortling on the floor (with the occasional "ouch" involved).

Instrument of torture. Apologies for the blurry quality - I was still shaking from the post workout beating.

I do live in an often highly polluted city, so I hope that I can maintain this healthy decision to regularly go to the gym. We shall see!

Chaoyang Park

What do you do when the stars align and the "powers that be" create a Beijing where the air pollution is low, the sun is shining and there is a gentle, pleasant breeze that allows you to bask in beautifully comfortable surroundings? Where do you go on those rare occasions when the gloriously golden sunlight beams down lovingly on you and the fresh air merrily caresses your lungs and encourages you to venture outside into a fantastic albeit rare, clean environment that yearns to be explored and enjoyed? 

- You visit one of Beijing's many parks of course! If you are feeling extra adventurous, you can go to Chaoyang Park which (to my knowledge) is Beijing's largest public park. It has its own small amusement park (with fairground/carnival rides), football and basketball courts, water park and lakes. You can watch people perform tai chi, flying kites and playing jianzi (in which the players must keep a weighted shuttlecock-type object in the air without using their hands).

I got lost inside this mammoth beast of a park a mere few weeks after moving to China. It's still too painful to go into too many details. Let's just say that after several hours of trying to locate friends, I soon began to panic. If only I had bothered to watch some Bear Grylls episodes. But I didn't want to resort to drinking my urine in the park. Instead I turned on my survival mode and used all the resources I had brought with me - a bag of Tsing Tao beer cans and a packet of chewing gum. I was alarmed to notice that a gaggle of stray cats had decided to stalk me around the park. They could sense my vulnerability but thankfully I struck upon an excellent idea. After a couple of cans and a quick brainstorming session, I happened to think about the Hansel and Gretel story in which they ventured into the woods but left a trail of breadcrumbs to follow in order to get back home. I had not left anything that would direct me out of the park, but in a twisted version of the fairytale, I decided to follow the trail of phlegm globules that had been hacked up by other visitors and placed sporadically around the pathway. They would have to eventually lead me to one of the exits. It was dark when I stumbled out of my temporary prison. I had not managed to meet my friends, but I did visit many, many areas of the park.

Anyway, my first experience of Chaoyang Park was not enough to scare me off from return visits. In fact, on the 16th August I decided to go the Chaoyang Park with Liz and joined in with an organised water fight. The "Water Wars" was run by a group called Imagine. People were organised into teams and Liz decided that our team should be called Team Pug. A Filipino girl called Ella and her friends also joined our team. Most of the people there decided to throw water at anyone - even their own team mates so there was definitely friendly fire involved and the water supplies quickly ran out.

Ready with war paint on!

There is something extremely liberating about throwing water balloons, firing water pistols and launching a large plastic container of water over complete strangers. I spent the majority of the battle guffawing heartily at how funny it was to watch everyone getting totally drenched (including myself).

After a couple of hours, the organisers decided the water fight was over (perhaps they were tired of refilling the tubs of water that would need replenishing every ten minutes) or maybe a water fight just meets its natural end after two hours - the water balloons were all gone, the water guns had broken and people had taken to filling their drink bottles with any dregs of liquid they could find (I am almost ashamed to say that at one point I decided to wring out my T-shirt into a plastic bottle in the vain attempt that I could get more ammunition).

It was such a fun afternoon! After the water fight, Liz and I fancied going to the newly opened Pizza Express in Solana. On our way, Ella invited us to play laser tag with her and the rest of Team Pug. How could we refuse? We got changed into camouflage T-shirts and ran around the woods of Chaoyang Park while trying to shoot each other with laser guns. 

After an hour, we were exhausted and decided it was definitely time to gorge on pizza - we had certainly earned it. We took a photograph so that we wouldn't forget Team Pug and the battles that we had fought together.

Days where you can enjoy outdoor activities really make you appreciate low pollution levels and also remind you how amazing Beijing is. Let's hope there are more opportunities like this day!

Bonus photo: Mum and Dad in Chaoyang Park (June 28th 2014)

Having a whale of a time in Wales!

While sitting on my sofa and guzzling some frozen mango and peach yoghurt, I find myself reminiscing about my summer holiday. In July I returned to Wales for the first time in almost two years. TWO YEARS! That’s almost as long as it took me to successfully navigate around Chaoyang Park (truthfully speaking, it’s still hit and miss as to whether I can efficiently maneuver from one place to another in that beast of a park!)   

Om Nom Nom!

Since coming back to Beijing, I haven’t had much time to write a blog entry about Wales, so I am going to use these last few hours of my four-day weekend (thanks to the parade marking the 70^th anniversary of the end of Japanese occupation) to write about my wonderful summer experience…

The best part of being back home was of course seeing my family. Living in Beijing is great and apart from the high-pollution days, the only other negative about being here is the distance from loved ones.

Returning to my hometown was incredibly relaxing, going back to “normality” and a lifestyle, language and culture that I am completely familiar and comfortable with. The icing on the cake was being lucky enough to enjoy Tenby town during a sunny period, as this is when it is most beautiful.

I have to say that my favourite day of the summer holidays was visiting Caldey Island with my parents, sister, her boyfriend and my cousin. It was a sunny, clear day and so lovely to spend quality time with my relatives.

On our hike around the island, we were able to sample Caldey Island fudge, although my sister’s boyfriend Michael was crestfallen to discover that the monks of Caldey Island were not beavering away in the fudge factory. It was instead occupied by a horde of singing Oompa Loompas. Just joking, a group of youths were busily attending to the fudge making and selling. Michael was indeed disappointed that the cloaked monks were nowhere to be found for the entire duration on the island.

The new series of The Darling Buds Of May, coming 2016.

Walking around the cliff tops enabled us to take in fantastic views of Tenby, other areas of Pembrokeshire and beyond. After we rambled our way around the island, it was time to catch the boat back to the mainland.

Once we returned to Castle Beach, I munched on a Mr Whippy ice cream while we waited for the tide to recede far enough for us to visit St. Catherine’s Fort. It had been closed to the public since 1979 so I was extremely interested in taking a look inside this landmark that I have grown up seeing from afar.

The fort itself is still undergoing renovations, but it was super interesting to look inside, learn about the history of the building and listen to plans of how the fort will be utilised in the future. It also presented mum and I with the opportunity to take the following photo...

I really did have an amazing summer back home and too many fun memories to list in just one blog entry, so I will have to write more about it soon.

It was great to return to Surrey and enjoy a pub quiz with Mr and Mrs Mann and Mrs Breen. Naturally, Mrs Breen and I were victorious! 

My family decided to mark this special occasion of having all the family back together, with a traditional Christmas dinner…in July! Those midsummer glad tidings provided me with a roast dinner fix while also tending to my sweet tooth. Most importantly, I was able to spend it with my marvellous family!

Spending time back in Britain has definitely made me realise that I cannot wait another two years before my next return visit! 

Luckily I took a stash of Caldey Island chocolate back to China with me for a timely binge whilst I recollect my summer holiday...

Gia đình tôi ở xứ Wales đối với tôi thật đặc biệt :)