fa feng le (part two)

so, jeff and i fa feng le and went to china during thanksgiving. we stayed at alice chen's place in beijing for a while. since alice chen had to work, jeff and i went around beijing going to all of the touristy places. we saw some old (bronze) mirrors:

we also went to see the temple of heaven.

after alice chen got off work, we went to eat huo guo

we also had some la mien. the cool part about the la mian is that they "la" it in front of you and put on a show.

the guy goes through this very elaborate and showy process for pulling the noodles. he only messed up twice! we only ordered the noodles because we wanted the show, but they ended up tasting very good! it was probably my favorite item in the huo guo. they also had brain, which sounded very interesting, but we decided we were all already smart enough.

so we spent thanksgiving in beijing. instead of eating the customary turkey for thanksgiving, we had a much more succulent fowl: beijing duck! here is a shot of jeff posing with the guy who cut up our duck:

after beijing, we went to shanghai. i much preferred the food in shanghai. with a lot of effort, we were able to push our way to a table to go eat the best xiao long bao in the world:
the place was extremely packed. you basically needed to stand beside the seat you wanted to sit on while the person was eating in order to reserve that spot for yourself. it's kinda weird hovering next to someone and staring as they eat their food, but it's definitely worth it. alice chen only had to yell at one person to get away from the three seats we were waiting for.

after xiao long bao we went to buy candy. alice chen liked her peanut candy.

and of course, we went to the bund to check out the view of pu dong.

we even went to the top of dong fan ming zhu

but it was really foggy most of the time we were up there. regardless, it was pretty cool to be able to look down on all the tall buildings.

after shanghai, we all went our separate ways. jeff was done fa feng le and went back to america (but not before getting a massage!), alice chen went back to work in beijing, and i stayed in shanghai.

if you want to see more pictures, check out my picassaweb album.