Going out to lunch with Stephanie

yummy crab

Mandarin fish. The head and tail of this was eaten as well!!

Stephanie and her colleagues

Duck tongues

Whole roasted pigeon. And yes, the head was eaten. Including the brain and the beak. But not by either of us!!

Stephanie from the dematic office in Shanghai very kindly took us out to lunch with two of her work colleagues. It was truly amazing!! We ate soo much, and Nick drank his weight in jasmine tea. They even sent us a present of jasmine tea to our hostel afterwards!

The food was amazing, albeit adventurous. I am learning more and more that the chinese use all the meat in an animal, rather than just specific sections as in England. For instance, when we eat chicken the head and the feet are cut off and the insides removed. Here, you get the whole bird. We had whole roasted pigeon (see the photo!); duck tongue (I was previously unaware that duck's actually had tongues. I was incredulous when the dish arrived at the table that the chinese ate this. The chinese were incredulous that we didn't!!); crab; shrimp dumplings; mandarin fish and an everflowing supply of jasmine tea. None of the food was particularly easy to eat elegantly - you constantly got bit's of crab shell of small bone in the mouth, which you spat out. Did you know that there is a small bone in the tongue? I almost choked on it.

All in all, it was a great experience, and Stephanie and her colleagues were really friendly and good fun.

After the meal, we took a taxi to Yu Gardens, a narrow old-fashioned street of shops where you haggle for everything. I loved it!! We accidentally bought a sword, because I got carried away with my haggling, and we had to run away from one vendor because we didn't actually want to pass over money for the two chinese scrolls I had bought unintentionally. We did end up with a good haul though.