2006-01-24 08:21:34Cabnolen
My Trip to China - 20/Dec/2005
8. 上海 豫園 南翔饅頭店 上海博物館 海外伊岸50 (青松城) (20th)
8th day in China:
YU YUAN (YU GARDEN)
After looking up the Guide book in the hotel, I actually found this place that even father didn’t know about, it’s called Yu Yuan. Remember, again, ”yuan” means garden, so obviously it’s yet another rich family’s house in the olden days. This place is in Ming dynasty, which is the one before Qing (the last one). Their building styles are quite similar to Qing’s.
They have changed this area to a tourist spot, so it’s not just the house/garden anymore, but it’s a whole section of shopping that leads to food court that leads to more shopping then finally the garden itself.
It took us a while to find where the garden was, and on the way we saw this bun store that’s apparently very famous, and you can tell by the queue, there are at least 60 ppl queuing for ”mini casket buns” - the most famous food here. Since we weren’t hungry just yet, we decided to go to the garden first anyway, and maybe when we come out the queue will be a little shorter.
I must say, the garden itself is a little disappointing, partly coz it’s actually not much different compared to the past 2 we’ve seen, and also that it’s in the centre of a modern city, so you can see a tall western department directly behind an old Chinese building, and it just looks really odd. Well I tried hard to eliminate the tall one from the photos anyway.
NAN XIAN BUN RESTAURANT
After some walking around in the garden, brother started complaining (again) that it’s too tiring and it’s boring and he just wants to go out. Hunger started to strike, so we came out of the garden, and walked towards the restaurant. Thinking there would be fewer ppl, we were right, they were cut down to about 40, and so we started queuing, hoping to find out what is so good about these buns that ppl would queue here for ages just for some. Btw, this is at 2pm, which is past lunchtime. After queuing for about 10 min, father found out that there’s actually just 2 tables worth of queue if we’re eating in, so why queue outside when we can eat in? Off we went, upstairs to queue there instead. After waiting for another 10 min, we were assigned a table combined with another group of ppl queuing behind us, couldn’t care less, we sat down and ordered. Their special ”mini casket buns”, one is crab meat and one is ”special”, are very different in price. Looking at the price of the special one, which is the one that everyone order and queued up for, is $40 RMB for 6 buns - that’s almost $7 RMB for a tiny mini bun - we weren’t planning to get more than that. We also ordered a combo, and that wasn’t the cheapest thing either, so that was all we ordered, and if we were hungry at least we’d be eating at a cheaper place. After the combo arrived (which btw was pretty good), our anicipated mini buns arrived, tiny and expensive, we took a bite each.
All we could say was: it’s not worth the money. We overheard the waiter telling another customer that although it’s owned by the same restaurant, it’s quite different compared to the one downstairs, and as we found out later, it’s not as cheap either. The one downstairs were 10 for $5 or something, forgotten by now, but way cheaper anyway, and by the look of it, much better tasting. Unfortunately we didn’t have much time left, so after the disappointing buns, we left straight to the museum at 3pm.
SHANGHAI MUSEUM
After a long traffic-jammed ride (it’s actually quite close by except we were too tired to walk there), we arrived at the museum which was due to close at 5pm.
What I have realised by this stage, was that I shouldn’t have assumed that a NZ’s Canty card is of no use overseas, coz apparently it’d have gotten me numerous student discounts by now.
The museum itself wasn’t extremely out of this world or anything, just some cool tribes’ costumes and accessaries, and lots of copies of past dynasties’ royal clothes and king’s robe etc, one comment - they were either fat or the clothes were too big anyway.
DINNER AT OCEANIC RESTAURANT
We got out of the museum just in time, and also have seen all the stuff, which was quite good timing. Tired we were, we walked back towards Wai-Tan area, and as brother needed to go to the toilet, we walked into a department store. After walking around, we saw a counter by an esculator, nothing but a lady and a huge menu with pictures in front of the counter. It grabbed our attention, and as the food (western, btw) seemed quite nice, we thought we’d have dinner there. The concept was nice, they attract customers on the ground floor by the esculator, and the restaurant itself is on the 3rd floor (in TW, ground floor = 1st floor), and we had to go up the esculator to eat. Up the esculator we went, the place was very nicely decorated. It was an ocean theme, the floor was glass with pretty pebbles underneath, and the walls have fishes and fish tanks with real fishes in them, it’s painted all blue and really atmospheric. What we found out, was that the food didn’t live up to the deco nor the service, everything were just bland, the steak was hard and lots of non-meat, the salad was boring and the spaghetti was generally a little spicy but boring too.
END OF DAY
We retreated to the same hotel, at least the sleep was nice :)
8th day in China:
YU YUAN (YU GARDEN)
After looking up the Guide book in the hotel, I actually found this place that even father didn’t know about, it’s called Yu Yuan. Remember, again, ”yuan” means garden, so obviously it’s yet another rich family’s house in the olden days. This place is in Ming dynasty, which is the one before Qing (the last one). Their building styles are quite similar to Qing’s.
They have changed this area to a tourist spot, so it’s not just the house/garden anymore, but it’s a whole section of shopping that leads to food court that leads to more shopping then finally the garden itself.
It took us a while to find where the garden was, and on the way we saw this bun store that’s apparently very famous, and you can tell by the queue, there are at least 60 ppl queuing for ”mini casket buns” - the most famous food here. Since we weren’t hungry just yet, we decided to go to the garden first anyway, and maybe when we come out the queue will be a little shorter.
I must say, the garden itself is a little disappointing, partly coz it’s actually not much different compared to the past 2 we’ve seen, and also that it’s in the centre of a modern city, so you can see a tall western department directly behind an old Chinese building, and it just looks really odd. Well I tried hard to eliminate the tall one from the photos anyway.
NAN XIAN BUN RESTAURANT
After some walking around in the garden, brother started complaining (again) that it’s too tiring and it’s boring and he just wants to go out. Hunger started to strike, so we came out of the garden, and walked towards the restaurant. Thinking there would be fewer ppl, we were right, they were cut down to about 40, and so we started queuing, hoping to find out what is so good about these buns that ppl would queue here for ages just for some. Btw, this is at 2pm, which is past lunchtime. After queuing for about 10 min, father found out that there’s actually just 2 tables worth of queue if we’re eating in, so why queue outside when we can eat in? Off we went, upstairs to queue there instead. After waiting for another 10 min, we were assigned a table combined with another group of ppl queuing behind us, couldn’t care less, we sat down and ordered. Their special ”mini casket buns”, one is crab meat and one is ”special”, are very different in price. Looking at the price of the special one, which is the one that everyone order and queued up for, is $40 RMB for 6 buns - that’s almost $7 RMB for a tiny mini bun - we weren’t planning to get more than that. We also ordered a combo, and that wasn’t the cheapest thing either, so that was all we ordered, and if we were hungry at least we’d be eating at a cheaper place. After the combo arrived (which btw was pretty good), our anicipated mini buns arrived, tiny and expensive, we took a bite each.
All we could say was: it’s not worth the money. We overheard the waiter telling another customer that although it’s owned by the same restaurant, it’s quite different compared to the one downstairs, and as we found out later, it’s not as cheap either. The one downstairs were 10 for $5 or something, forgotten by now, but way cheaper anyway, and by the look of it, much better tasting. Unfortunately we didn’t have much time left, so after the disappointing buns, we left straight to the museum at 3pm.
SHANGHAI MUSEUM
After a long traffic-jammed ride (it’s actually quite close by except we were too tired to walk there), we arrived at the museum which was due to close at 5pm.
What I have realised by this stage, was that I shouldn’t have assumed that a NZ’s Canty card is of no use overseas, coz apparently it’d have gotten me numerous student discounts by now.
The museum itself wasn’t extremely out of this world or anything, just some cool tribes’ costumes and accessaries, and lots of copies of past dynasties’ royal clothes and king’s robe etc, one comment - they were either fat or the clothes were too big anyway.
DINNER AT OCEANIC RESTAURANT
We got out of the museum just in time, and also have seen all the stuff, which was quite good timing. Tired we were, we walked back towards Wai-Tan area, and as brother needed to go to the toilet, we walked into a department store. After walking around, we saw a counter by an esculator, nothing but a lady and a huge menu with pictures in front of the counter. It grabbed our attention, and as the food (western, btw) seemed quite nice, we thought we’d have dinner there. The concept was nice, they attract customers on the ground floor by the esculator, and the restaurant itself is on the 3rd floor (in TW, ground floor = 1st floor), and we had to go up the esculator to eat. Up the esculator we went, the place was very nicely decorated. It was an ocean theme, the floor was glass with pretty pebbles underneath, and the walls have fishes and fish tanks with real fishes in them, it’s painted all blue and really atmospheric. What we found out, was that the food didn’t live up to the deco nor the service, everything were just bland, the steak was hard and lots of non-meat, the salad was boring and the spaghetti was generally a little spicy but boring too.
END OF DAY
We retreated to the same hotel, at least the sleep was nice :)