Yes, I am that Asian guy putting up car videos.
Monthly Archives: June 2012
Oysters – Seattle
Earlier this month, I was in Seattle for a friend’s wedding and, with love already in the air, ingested enough aphrodisiac to kill a large bear.
Lost Heaven – (French Concession) Shanghai
One of Shanghai’s more acclaimed ethnic Chinese restaurants, Lost Heaven specializes in Yunnan cuisine, which I only know for the prevalence of tea leaves and the abundance of cilantro. Its two locations are in the city’s more chic (read: expat-heavy) quarters in Puxi – the Bund and the French Concession. I’d been to the Bund location, and we’d been at Mr. and Mrs. Bund earlier in the day, so we headed to the French Concession.
Yellow Dragon Cave – Wulingyuan, China
I recently visited Huanglong Dong (stop snickering), a winding cave system in the forested mountains near Zhangjiajie in northern Hunan province. The path leading to the cave’s entrance is lined with what seemed to be an homage to the region’s agricultural heritage, with a garden, small swatches of rice fields, watercress, an idle water buffalo, a few farmers with heavy yokes, and an intricate set of waterwheels.
Pasta Class at the New School of Cooking – Los Angeles
During the first months of my funemployment, I’d been looking for cooking classes decently close to Santa Monica – and had found a cooking school about twenty minutes away in Culver City that had an array of themed recreational courses.
Shanghai Maglev Train
Eight minutes to cover 30 kilometers from Longyang Station to Pudong Airport. I missed the part of the day when the top operational speed is 431 km/hr, but 301 km/hr (about 187 miles/hr) is pretty good for a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Chairman Mao Fun Facts – Farm-to-Table!
Why did Mao burn his tongue on the bighead fish soup?
He was supporting local agriculture before it was cool.
(At Di Shui Dong, the famous mountainside hotel where Mao stayed the week leading up to the Cultural Revolution in 1966)
Watermelon (Season) – Shanghai
Shou Zhua Bing (Streetfood Pancakes) – Shanghai
You can get these at little stalls all over town, a variation on scallion pancakes that includes a fried egg and a slice of bacon, drizzled with a little sweet chili sauce. Shanghai breakfast, in its many forms.
Di Shui Dong – Shanghai
Shanghai spicy-food restaurant Di Shui Dong specializes in flavor-heavy Hunan food. The joint also doubles as an expat attraction, perhaps in part because the menu is a voluminous photo album full of peppers, cilantro, and chili oil (and therefore easy to order from), but also because it gets some good press in Shanghai’s foreigner lifestyle magazines. None of which really matters so long as the food is tasty.
