frauke at large

With the weather finally improving (temperatures went up to a whooping 21C this week), things are looking up again… trees and shrubs are starting to bloom and life on the streets is slowly resuming after several months of hibernation:

The first week of teaching and endless meetings over, I went on a well deserved trip into downtown Ningbo. After my mandatory stop in Alibaba’s cave – or our local, friendly, dodgy but cheap dvd shop, where you can get the most random and scarily up-to-date selection of movies, I ventured off the beaten track and unintentionally stumbled into a bustling food parlor/converted temple type thing. The sensory overload is quite hard to describe really … from the outside the place looks like an old temple, with all the usual temple features, yet through its doors intensely flavoured wafts of air emerge, smelling of spices and freshly prepared food … and once you step through the doors, a huge space opens up in front of you with hundreds of food stalls selling any kind of food you can imagine … skewered fish, snails, little birds on sticks (I KNOW!!!!), noodles, rice, soup and jelly … mmmmmm jelly. Jelly made of all the colours of the rainbow! I found food heaven …

  

And there were dumplings … delicious looking, steaming hot dumplings with savoury and sweet fillings. They looked mouthwateringly good, but I didn’t indulge/dare: had only just had lunch. Everyone else though seemed to be sat on benches devouring delicacies and enjoying the sunshine. There was even candy floss for the kids.

 

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