Guilin: Day 2

The correct way to see Guilin and its attractions is to visit Longji first after arriving in Guilin because Longji is north of Guilin and all the other attractions are in the south. You don't want to do the south and lug all your luggage (which will build up as you go) up to the north like we did. Longji is famous for its terraced rice fields, golden in the fall and green in summer. Two hours north of Guilin by car or bus, Longji is the one place I want to visit again some day.

Instead of going to Longji, I decided that we should go to Haiyang Xiang, a small town 1 hour's drive south of Guilin, because I wanted to catch the gingko trees in their golden splendor. Haiyang Xiang is famous for its aged gingko trees; the oldest tree we saw was 1,600 years old. Gingko trees are considered living fossils.

We hired a taxi from Guilin to Daxu, a town halfway to Haiyang Xiang, for 60 Yuan/RM30/US$8. The great thing about taxis in China is that our family of five can all sit in one car. It is only slightly more expensive to move around in a taxi than a bus but you can make stops wherever you like and there's no schedule to stick to. We made a stop for breakfast at the driver's fav Guilin mifen shop and my kids now remember the mifen as the best Guilin mifen. Unfortunately my daughter lost the memory card of the photos she took on the first 2 days and I don't have the photo of the shop to show. Nearly all shops and other buildings in Guilin don't have signs in English so it is rather hard for people who can't read Chinese.



After getting your bowl of mifen, you go to the condiments station and choose your choice of toppings. The large stainless steel pot holds the soup.



The toppings are pickled long beans, dried radish, Guilin chili sauce, fresh chopped chilies, spring onions and crispy fried soya beans which I prefer to the fried peanuts that some shops serve. Guilin mifen is very simple, humble food but it is SO delicious! The noodles are super smooth and silky even though they are made from dried noodles. I don't know why we can't find them in Malaysia because they are exactly the same thickness of assam laksa noodles, except our noodles are coarser, drier and lack the fragrance of rice.



The driver wouldn't sit down with us and ate his noodles standing up, which I found was common practice in small towns.



You can imagine how hot the stuff was. We realized after this that we had to go easy on the chili. Imagine chopped birds eyes chilies (yes, they have them in China) and Guilin chili sauce in your noodles. The driver also taught us to eat our mifen without the soup first and add soup halfway so we get to taste both dry and soupy noodles. Clever but I still prefer my noodles in soup especially on a cold day.

We stopped by the town of Daxu to visit the ancient street but for me, it was mainly to eat the best bowl of Guilin mifen which I had 3 years ago. Unfortunately, the restaurant had been renovated and I wasn't sure if the cook was the same one so we went to another shop a couple of doors away which was filled with locals. It looked dirty ("dodgy" in my kids' words; they used that word so many times in reference to so many things in China that my husband banned it). The Guilin mifen was great, a bit too oily, and I felt uneasy eating it.

For 2 Yuan/RM1/US$0.28, you can visit one of the old houses. It was so cheap Hub paid the couple double.



You enter into the hall/sitting room where pictures of Mao and Chou remind you that you are in communist China.



The husband was cooking lunch (fried greens; it looked delicious) on a firewood stove, much like the rest of rural China.





Upstairs, the wooden bed is typically set by the side of a wall, and mosquito nets drape the canopy. The bed area used to be a small silo for unmilled rice.



The house has many skylights to illuminate it, reminding me of Baba Nyonya houses. This skylight shines into the courtyard below and the 'well' allows you to see into the courtyard.



At the corner of the room, a dusty Chinese coffin made my heart jumped. The wife said this was 'investment for the future' and I politely nodded. Many older Chinese make preparations for their death, buying shoes, clothes and coffins. This coffin is made from a large tree, and it still scares me to see one because when I was little, there were a couple of casket shops in Menggatal that freaked me out when we drove by because I had never been to a funeral. Chinese coffins look extra spooky to me and I am surprised by the sombreness in this photo. However, my kids didn't find it any spookier than a log so I think it's conditioning of the mind.

Guilin: Dinner Day 2

After the defeat of Kuomingtang by the Communist Party, my father had to escape to Hong Kong, leaving his young wife and a son and daughter behind with his parents. Sometime later, he crept back one night and would've been captured if he had not run away after getting news that they were searching for him. By then my grandfather had been taken away by the Commies and found dead with a bullet in his nose days later. He was considered an enemy by the Communists because of his relatively better living conditions (because my father and his older brother sent money back from Malaysia and Singapore where they worked as laborers initially) and maybe because my father was a strategy officer (he had a reputation for being very bright and was the only one from his village to have been selected for military school) with the defeated Nationalist Party, the Kuomingtang. My paternal grandmother too died under the indirect hands of the Communist Party, which led a purge of all 'rich' people although Grandma wasn't rich. In those days, friends and relatives turn against each other in order to gain favor in the eyes of the Communist Party. She had apparently made the mistake of complaining, after sneezing one morning, that she should've worn some socks. Socks were a sign of wealth in a place so poor people were eating roots. The person who turned her in was her own friend, a woman whose child my grandma had taken in so that the child wouldn't starve. Her fellow villagers, frenzied by the new-found liberation and propaganda by the Commies, kicked her until she was half dead. She couldn't afford a doctor, and died of her wounds. Dad's first wife too suffered physical and verbal abuse, but she was (and still is) a clever, fiery woman and is credited by all relatives as the person who held the family together in those times.

When Malaysia finally allowed Malaysians to visit China in the mid-80s, my father returned for the first time to China, after 30 years, with my younger brother and my mother (I had refused to go because of fear of the dirty conditions in the countryside), whom he married in Hong Kong. He was in his 70s and that was the only trip he would make to China.

On my second night in Guilin, I had dinner with my cousin, the son of my father's older brother. He was the first, and I am the seventh, in the line of the grandchildren of my grandfather. In China, you are numbered by your birth rank so my father's older brother's children, who were born first, was No 1 and the next No 2 and so on. It was strange to have a cousin in his 80s even though I am not young myself. After a very delicious dinner hosted by my cousin's daughter (my niece, who's my age), my cousin started to talk about those years when they had nothing but sweet potatoes and roots to eat, and a pair of trousers to share with four people, each taking turn so they won't freeze. It was amazing to think that in one single generation, China has gone from abject starvation and poverty to prosperity. Stories of the atrocities and sufferings during the early Communist years were told again, this time with names of people and dates, making it unbearably hard to hear. It was hard for my kids to understand why people were so cruel in those days. Wey couldn't understand my cousin's Chinese and walked out to discover the surroundings, just like me when I never fully paid attention to my dad when he told us about his past during dinner every night.

My father left us his diary, complete with hand-drawn maps of his village and the places where events took place. I have never read this diary because it is written in proper mandarin, not present-day mandarin. Back at the hotel after the dinner, I stayed awake in bed remembering my father with sadness and longing and a lot of regret for not remembering the things he told us. I also realized why my father was not able to love us totally. He loved us and provided well for us, but he was always very distant. Now I understand why: he had left too much behind. I don't blame him anymore for always longing for his other family. So you see, I have my own Joy Luck Club book to write one day. Maybe that's why he wrote his diary, so I can remember his story for him. For the whole night and the next day, I longed to go back to my dad's village, more than 6 hours away by car but I knew we could not, because we were not prepared. My girl wanted to go but I knew the boys would not appreciate it, not yet.

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My niece and her husband drove us 45 minutes away from Guilin to a special restaurant by the bank of the Li River. The restaurant was a cluster of single rooms, all connected by walkways and canopied by vines, making the place very rustic and ancient China. Unfortunately it was too dark to see the Li River.

These are whelks from the Li River, fried in a very tasty but hot sauce. There isn't much meat in the shells and you have to suck the fellas out, sometimes choking yourself because the hot sauce would hit your throat before the meat does.



A stir-fried dish of peanut sprouts with winter-cured bacon, very light and delicious.



Minced pickled cabbage with meat and other veg, went well with plain rice.



Fried lotus with vinegar, a dish my mom loves because she studied in Guilin and many of her dishes are Guilin-influenced.



This was our favorite dish of the night, so good my niece made a second order. It's baby taro, very tasty, aromatic and fluffy. I marvel at the skills of the chef who can use such simple ingredients to cook such a delicious dish.



The first time I ate flour-coated pork, a famous dish in China, I wasn't impressed. This time again, I am still not impressed.



The star dish of the meal was a fish stew but although it was delicious, it was too hot for us.



Gui fish is an expensive fish from the Li River. It has many bones but is very sweet and fine-fleshed.

Guilin, Day 1 (Updated)

We had a great holiday the last 11 days and boy, have I got stories for you.

Guilin is a city in the Kwangxi Province of China. Known for its sharp 'karst' (which most people know as limestone) hills and the Li Jiang (Li River), Guilin and the region around it are considered one of the top beautiful places in China. Unfortunately for us, it was a bad time of the year to visit Guilin because it is winter and the water of the Li River is very low. I am told that the best time to visit is from April to October.

We avoided organized tours because we knew all China tours will include visits to silk/pearls/herbal pharmacies/tea stores, which are a waste of money (because the prices are much higher than that in the local stores) and time (at least one visit a day to these stores because the guides make a commission from your purchases). Travelling on our own is more fun than in a large organized group, and we can choose the places we want see. However, there are disadvantages, such as having to look for accommodation and transport. We learnt this trip that Chinese taxi drivers are also in the rip-the-tourists game, and if they recommend you a hotel, you can be sure you'll be getting a bad deal.

On arrival at the Guilin Airport in mid-morning after a 4 hour flight from Kuala Lumpur, Hub was taken in by a guy who told us he could drive us to a good hotel in his mien bao ce ("bread car", because of the shape). The Education Hotel (yes, we wondered what education we would be getting) was reasonably clean and we were happy to know that our driver turned out to be a tour guide for a tour company so the rooms he got us at 260 Yuan/RM130/US$36 for the 2 + 1 beds and 210 Yuan/RM105/US$29 for the twin bed room were discounted. It wasn't until our last day in Guilin that we realized that at that price, instead of a 3-star hotel, we could've got a 4-star hotel. The lesson learnt here is that it is best you do your homework and get information from people who've been there before. Like me.

Driver was very persistent, a very Chinese trait it turned out. He insisted we visit the Prince Palace that's older than the Summer Palace in Beijing. We went, and it was a bummer at 65 Yuan per pax. The highlight of the Palace was a cave in which the elixir of life could be found. Before we knew it, we were trapped in the cave etched with pictures of warriors and idols on the walls and we were told to seek out our respective life guardians/spirits according to our birth year according to the Chinese animal zodiac. These life guardians will supposedly give us a long healthy life if we bow to them. One of my kids said it was spooky, but this was where I told them, and felt it, "Greater is He who is in us than he that is in the world" because Jesus is way greater than a few hundred wall carvings. I just thought it was so stupid to believe that everybody born under a certain sign will have the same life, and that praying to a carving on the wall will make anyone's life better. After that we were told to climb a small hill to get a view of Guilin, and again it turned out to be some spiritual climb because at the top there was a shrine. I took it positively; my thighs needed the exercise.



Driver took us to his favorite Guilin mifen place but the mifen was not exactly what I wanted. The noodles were Guilin mifen but not prepared in the famous Guilin mifen style. It was ching tang mifen (clear soup noodles), light and tasty. Soup on a cold day is so comforting. And at 2.50 Yuan/RM1.25/USD 0.35, how can we not love it?






Pickled long beans, a very essential condiment for Guilin mifen. Ming immediately loved this.



Most Asians think that Chinese aren't big on chilies. Wrong, because in many parts of China, no meals would be complete without chilies. My father's first wife still eats a chili everyday and she's in her late 80s. In Sichuan, dried chilies are used in every dish. It is said that Guilin has three jewels: Guilin wine, Guilin fermented bean curd (foo yue) and Guilin chili sauce. Authentic Guilin chili sauce is totally different from the Lee Kum Kee's Guilin chili sauce in Malaysia. The real stuff is fresher, hotter and very lightly salted, sometimes not even salted except with black beans.

In a Guilin mifen shop, you have to tell the cashier what size noodles you want. Sizes are by weight, in Chinese liang. One liang is 100 grams and there are 10 liangs in one jing. We usually had two liangs, which is a lot of noodles. That size usually costs 250 Yuan/RM1.25/US$0.35, the cheapest bowl of noodles we've ever eaten.

You pay the cashier and she gives you a receipt which you take to the kitchen counter and get your bowl of noodles, with your choice of thinly-sliced meat topping. Then you take your bowl of noodles to the condiments station where you can add as much pickled long beans, pickled radish, chilie sauce, spring onions, pork soup and flavored soy sauce called lu sui (which is the most important condiment for Guilin mifun and the recipe for this is kept secret) as you want.

The driver wouldn't let us go and we had a hard time getting away from him. Hub paid him 150 Yuan/RM75/US$21 for the fare from the airport to the hotel and another 100 Yuan/RM50/US$14 for taking us around and we were relieved to finally get off the van. It was quite chilly, and we went into ' Little Hong Kong', a large basement mall in the center of the shopping area, and got ourselves winter jackets at unbelievably low prices--men's jackets for 150 Yuan/RM75/US$21, a woolen trench coat (which became my coat for the trip) for 240 Yuan/RM120/US$33 and a trendy jacket for 120 Yuan/RM60/US$17.

We wandered the shopping area, filling up with snacks and drinks. Although it was cold, it was fun to walk because there was so much to see. The main street is closed off to traffic every night and stalls are set up along a long stretch of the street.

We got back to the hotel around 9 pm, dropped our shopping bags and ventured across the road to a row of wooden run down stalls with dim lighting for more food. I started with bbq meat and veg, and then decided to try what most Guiliners eat for breakfast. I have never heard of you cha (oil tea), a dish considered so authentic to Guiliners that if you can eat it, you are one of them. There are many indigenous tribes in China, and you cha is a dish of a certain tribe in Guilin.


Guilin you cha, about 10 Yuan/RM5/US$1.40.

A bowl of you cha is made up of rice puffs and a your selection of toppings that include peanuts and fried tid bits over which you pour a tea made of pounded and toasted tea leaves, ginger, spring onions, garlic and oil. Ew! It was slightly bitter but the aroma was like the onion bath my mom gave me to wash away fever when I was little. All of our faces puckered at first sip but Wey surprised us all by drinking 2 bowls of the vile soup. I think it was just to prove to us that he was more courageous. I shudder when I think of it. I would rather drink yak tea.


Wooden huts and stalls usually provide little tables and stools, making us feel like Goldilocks.

After that disastrous snack, we hopped into a coffee shop next to our hotel for another round of Guilin mifen, fried and with soup, before dropping flat out in our beds.

Re-post: Chao Sou

Sichuan wontons are called chao shou. Yummy with a hot and tangy sauce (I've overdosed on Sichuan peppercorns in the pic above). Malaysian are more partial to Cantonese wontons, thin egg-wheat flour dumplings filled with chunks of crunchy prawns. However, feed a 'real' Cantonese from Guangzhou or Hong Kong our wontons and they'll turn up their noses because Malaysian wontons are a poor version made usually of a pinch of fatty minced pork and no prawns because fatty pork is cheaper than prawns. Northern Chinese wontons are filled with either minced pork or beef (no prawns), with veggies like chives, spring onions and in Shanghai, a delicate veg called xi cai, and the thicker wrappers are made of plain wheat flour. Sichuan wontons are not called as such; they are called chao shou, meaning crossed arms, for the way the dumplings are folded into triangles and the lower corners crossed over. Sichuan dumpling wrappers are also made of plain wheat flour and much bigger than our local wonton wrappers. Another difference is instead of serving the wontons in a lightly-flavored 'superior' stock, Sichuan chao shou are served in a bowl with a delicious sour, sweet, hot, tangy, flavorful sauce spooned over them. My initial taste of authentic Sichuan food was a shock. It was so different from the Sichuan food we get here. While I took to the numbing 'ma' Sichuan peppercorns immediately, I didn't like the oiliness. I couldn't understand why Sichuan food is the second most loved Chinese food, world-wide, after Cantonese food. However, because we are so lucky to have Leila, who's a Sichuan girl studying here, cooking for us sometimes, I am now addicted to Sichuan cuisine, and I now love chili oil and Sichuan peppercorns, which are present in almost every Sichuan dish. I now never order the local version of mapo tofu which is totally unauthentic. Unfortunately, the Sichuan peppercorns we get here are usually stale and they don't give that numbing effect or a strong flavor. I suggest you get it from friends who visit Sichuan, like I do. It's best to get whole peppercorns because you can grind them into powder or use them whole. I don't know if eating Sichuan peppercorns has any health advantages but Sichuan girls have excellent skin--smooth,fair and pink like white peaches. Honest. I was flipping the TV channels the other day and the cooking program on making Sichuan chao shou was nearing the end, and gosh, the little dumplings looked so delicious especially with the black vinegar sauce. Leila came to my rescue by calling her mom back in Sichuan for this recipe: Chao Shou ( Sichuan Wontons) The Sauce: 1 T finely chopped fresh ginger* 1 T finely minced garlic 2 T light soy sauce 2 T dark soy sauce 5 T black vinegar 1/2 t fine sugar (optional) 1/2 T sesame oil 1/2 cup finely sliced spring onions* 2 T chili oil* oil-fried Sichuan peppercorn powder or whole peppercorns* Mix all the above ingredients together. Adjust to your liking by adding more soy sauces or vinegar etc. You may prefer to serve those ingredients with an asterisk * separately so that each person may add or omit them as he likes. The Chao Shou: 1/2 kg shoulder pork, chopped finely# 1 egg 1 T very finely minced fresh ginger 1/2 T cornflour 1 T rice wine 1 t salt 1/4 t white pepper optional: 1 cup finely sliced spring onions or Chinese chives

150g (or more) Sichuan preserved veg (ja cai), sliced, soaked 20 min & chopped

Buy or make: wonton wrappers, 10cm/4" square

Note: #Adding the 1 t salt (if you do this, omit the 1 t salt when seasoning the pork) to the pork when you are chopping it will make the pork sticky and the texture 'bouncier'.

1.Mix the above ingredients (except the wrappers) together in a bowl, churning the meat paste round and round in one direction (esp so if your pork is machine-ground) when you mix it so that after a while it will become sticky and develop a bounce. I like to use my bare hands because they mix better than a spoon or chopsticks. Chill. 2. Put a teaspoon of the chilled meat filling onto one corner of the square wonton wrapper, fold it over twice, turn over, then wet the left corner with a dab of water and pinch the left and right corners to seal. Repeat until all filling is wrapped up. 3. Boil a large pot of water and throw half the dumplings in, stirring them so that they won't stick together. Cover the pot, and when it boils, add a large cup of room-temp water to stop the boiling, cover the pot again. When it boils the second time, scoop the dumplings out with a slotted spoon. Divide among bowls. Cook the remaining dumplings. 4. Sprinkle spring onions and spoon sauce over the chao shou and serve hot.

Re-post: Shanghainese Veg Rice

This is similar to the Cantonese chicken and mushroom claypot rice in that everything is cooked together. Since it has protein, carbs and fibre/vitamins, all you need is to add a good soup and its a complete meal. Simple yet very good. I always swear I'd stop at one bowl and end up eating two. This recipe, from my Shanghainese mom-in-law (MIL), has been adapted for cooking in the electric rice cooker. You can opt to omit the sausage or meat because true Shanghai veg rice is just that--rice and veg. To go with it, you need to serve other dishes but at home we often add sausages and meat and that, with a good soup, makes a simple meal. Shanghai Vegetable Rice 4 cups long-grain uncooked rice (serves 4-6) 4-6 chinese sausages, cut into 1 cm chunks 1 kg 'pak choi' cut into 2 cm lengths 1/2 bulb garlic, chopped fine 1 chicken stock cube or home-made stock 1 1/2 t. salt 1. Fry the sausages till lightly browned. Remove. You can use the oil that has seeped out from the sausages (saturated animal oil but fragrant!) or use veg oil, then fry the garlic 30 seconds, add the veg and 1/2 t. (teaspoon) salt and fry till veg is reduced to half, or wilted. Remove. 2. Wash the rice, add stock/water upto level 2 1/2, top it with any water that has seeped out from the veg. (Remember that the veg will give out more water as it cooks and you don't want a soft mess, but you also don't want rice that's too hard or uncooked in the middle). Add the sausages, remaining 1 t. salt and crumble the stock cube (if using) over the rice. Stir and set it to cook. 3. Let rice cook till it is almost done boiling. Add the veg; do not stir. Quickly close the lid and let the cooking continue. 4. When the rice is done, press the cook button again to let it cook a while longer. 5. Before serving, stir the rice well to mix everything together. Note: If concerned about the lard in the sausages, reduce the sausages to half and make up with lean diced pork marinated with salt and white pepper. My MIL now omits the sausages altogether and uses pork or chicken, for health reasons. By the way, Shanghainese food is known to be super oily (not getting back at my MIL; its a fact) among all Chinese food so don't scrimp on the oil when cooking this. In fact, the traditional way to cook this dish is to fry the uncooked rice in oil before boiling it but really its extra work plus extra oil. In my pic the rice is too soft; blame it on my helper, Vero!