Nanxun

Jeniffer and Samuel took me to Nanxun on Thursday. It is very beautiful ancient water town outside of Shanghai. There are lots of canals and there are many shops and homes built beside them. I think the water towns are like small ancient Chinese Venices. Nanxun is about 2 hours from Shanghai but the drive wasn't so bad. I got to see the "Turtle" cars, three wheel motorcycles modified to fit two to four people with an outer shell to make it look like a tiny minivan. I thought they were the cutest thing.

We had lunch in Nanxun and I tried some local foods. Had my first try at "Chao Doufu" / "Stinky Tofu," it actually didn't smell as bad as some others and tasted pretty good. But I like to eat a lot of things so I can see if others would not like the taste. I also tried the local lake crab. I think the tour books call it "Hairy Crab" because it has lots of hairs on its claws. Very hard to eat but definitely worth all the work. The flavor of the crab is so good. We used some old modes of transportation to get around the city. Boat, motorcycle and bicycle.

There was a candy shop that sold hand pulled candy. They also sell the sugar candy with three sticks that you can pull yourself. It was really fun to play with and tasted like caramel.

This is Da Tou Cai. Literally translates to Big Head Vegetable. It is basically a root that is soaked and preserved in clay pots for several months.

Some more pictures around Nanxun.




When we got back to Shanghai we had dinner at the shopping mall in the Hongqiao area, seems like a very nice part of Shanghai with many new buildings. We had dinner at this pretty "hip" Hong Kong style restaurant. We had some curry soup inside bread bowl and some pumpkin mushroom soup inside a small pumpkin. Really western style presentation. It looked very pretty and all tasted really good. The mall is pretty big and has many international stores. But the subway doesn't go there just yet.
The entire trip was really great. I can't wait to visit the other water towns outside Shanghai. Big thanks to Jeniffer and Samuel.