State Fair, China Style

“Lewa International Food Palcae”

In the U.S., we have state fairs, where people set up crazy stands and souvenirs and stupid amounts of food.  I’m pretty sure that I just experienced the Chinese version of that today.

The music festival at the park started tonight.  It goes through the National Holiday, ending October 7.  Just outside the front of the park, an entire new “Food Palcae” went up, in a matter of days.  Maybe even two weeks ago, it was flattened ground.  Now there are huge open-front buildings that house nearly a hundred different shops and food stands.  We spent the afternoon wandering through and trying different foods.

First, we tried the coffee shop.  Jan confirmed that it actually had real coffee, which is exciting, but expensive.  I opted out of coffee and tried a chocolate mint smoothie instead.  After a crazy fiasco involving performing many charades that I’m not admitting, I found out that they have no soymilk (common theme in Chinese cafes), but the smoothie does not have milk in it.  The smoothie was delicious, although it was more of a drink and not enough ice.  I think the owners are figuring out their blender.

Live scorpions ready for roasting!

A lot of the shops had samples out in front, and we tried a lot of different things as well.  I tried these vegetable fritter type things for 10 RMB, and a jar of goat’s milk yogurt for a measly 6 RMB.  The vegetable fritters were awfully oily, but otherwise they were fantastic.  The goat’s milk yogurt is plain, creamy, slightly sweet, but I like it a lot.  I’ll have to see if I have any issues with it, but I like it better than regular yogurt.

Then Jan and I passed a stand selling roasted scorpion and cicada.  We tried the scorpion.  It was ok, nothing special, and didn’t taste like much.  But we ate scorpion!  The shop also had bottles of what I think was alcohol with scorpions floating inside it.  Weird.  Later when we went back and passed by the stand again, we took a closer look at a huge vat of alcohol with a large scorpion floating inside.  The man pointed underneath the vat, and we looked directly down and saw two large tubs of live scorpions right in front of us.  We spent a few excited minutes watching the scorpions run around and fight, much to the amusement of the shop owners.  Yes, they took pictures of us gawking over the scorpions.

We passed a stand where a man was making candy designs and we spent at least 15 minutes just watching him.  Each design only takes a couple of minutes tops, so we watched him make at least 6 different designs.  We saw a dragon, a butterfly, a snake, a pig, and a cartoon girl, among other things.

We then came to a shop with something covered in spice that looked delicious, so we tried a piece.  I had no idea what it was, so I tried to ask.  Well, the shop owners spoke absolutely no English, so I tried my Chinese dictionary app.  It doesn’t translate sentences, so I have to pick the best word and translate that.  I tried “what” and pointed at the food and looked confused.  Nope.  Ok, maybe a different translation of “what.”  No luck.  Ok, fine.  I looked up the word for “chicken” (it’s clearly not meat), pointed at the food and gave them my question mark face.  Nada.  Crap.  Well, fine.  I pointed at the food and started bawking like a chicken and flapping my elbows like wings and then shrugged my shoulders to ask a question.  Seriously?  They had no idea what was going on, but they did get a good laugh at my antics.  Finally we gave up and turned around to walk away and move on, and the entire street is staring at us.  Hilarious.

They stare a lot in these shops, even more than in Gaoling.  And with the Chinese, they openly stare, and with no shame.  We watched this Indian guy making his super thin Indian pancakes (can’t remember what they’re called) with a large crowd gathered around him, including Jan and I, and half of the people are staring at us.  When we are really interested in something, we gather a crowd, because they want to know what we are so excited about.  I’m sure that we are helping business when we buy something.  I saw quite a few people try to sneak pictures of us.  The shop owners are very excited to use their English on us, which generally consists of “Hello” and “You want?” and “Very nice.”

My favorite shop (and I need to ask Jeff exactly what it’s called, because I’m curious) sells coconut milk (yum), dirt pudding (cookies and pudding and candy made to look like a potted plant), and candy penises (wait, what?).  Ok, I think they are candy penises.  The stuff on display is plastic, and they are in boxes.  I think maybe tomorrow I will buy one.  If it’s ice cream, great, it’s for me.  If it’s candy, gifts for all!  What a weird store.

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