Christmas In Nanchang

My folks came over to Nanchang for Christmas. I managed to impress my parents with Nanchang. Mainly with its cuisine. Hard to top actually. It's tough talking up Nanchang to people in the bigger cities, but for those who have actually been to it, they usually know what's good.

My dad was especially fond of the local food out by campus. Dirty little restaurants with phenomonally cheap and delicious food. Yuxiang rouse (fish fragrant shredded pork) and the tieban niurou (iron skillet beef) was the tops at the Close Restaurant for lunch on Christmas eve. For dinner that night we went to the Rowdy Chinaman down the street for some more tasty dishes. The ganbian sijidou (deep fried green beans) and ganbian tudouse (deep fried potato shreds--french fries essentially, but Chinese and with a lot more ingredients) impressed. Not to mention the new favorite, tieban qiezi (iron skillet eggplant). Christmas day we got lunch by the main gate. Hongshao quanyu (whole fish fried in soy sauce) amazing as usual.

We ate an actual Western Christmas dinner that night at the Detox restaurant on the Starwalk. The chef cooked us up some turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and all that classic American food. Pretty good, but I still think Le Bistro on Rongmen Lu does it better. We ended up going there a couple days later for a nice dinner. Some of the best food we've all eaten, period. Amazing how you can find such a great French restaurant in a city like Nanchang, where foreign food is sparse.

Food aside, Christmas itself was lovely. We weren't going all out too much on the gifting. I got a bunch of books and food basically. I quite like consumable Christmas presents. Now I have tons to eat and read at home during my long Spring Festival break.One of my co-workers threw out this ratty artificial Christmas tree that was sitting around his apartment. I took it and set it up in the corner of my living room. It was missing a stand, so I used an empty water containter to hold it up, weighted with dirty tap water. I think it's going to stay up all year. My place is pretty bland. Blank walls, aside from the little stickers on random household furnishing and appliances that have the Chinese names on them, left by the previous tenant, who I assume was trying to learn Chinese. This person left a few Christmas decorations here too, so it's only natural I keep the tree up.


It's nice to feel that Christmas spirit during the holidays. That's something I tend to miss when overseas. I tend to miss it in the States sometimes too. Shame really, but maybe next year will be different. There's Christmas decorations all around town. A lot of them are still up right now, and probably will be til Spring Festival. That Christmas energy that's in the air just isn't here though. Spring Festival is coming up and I'm actually starting to feel that energy, with all the locals getting ready to celebrate. Problem for me is, they'll all be celebrating with their families at home, so all of my favorite restaurants are going to be closed for several days for the holidays. I'm going to have to get out of here, because I really don't want to cook every meal in my measely kitchen. These restaurants have slowed down a lot anyway now that school is out.

Jess and I are planning on going to Shanghai for the festival. I think Nanchang will be a lot more impressive for the eve of, mainly because the fireworks restrictions are not enforced at all. In fact, we have nightly fireworks shows here, put on by bored students. I experienced Chinese New Year in Taiyuan, Shanxi province two years ago and it was unbelievable. A huge fireworks display on every block. Makes the 4th of July look like child's play. I can imagine Nanchang will be comparable to that. Shanghai though, probably not so much. Too much law. But nothing is going to be open here, so that's the trade off.