We're spoiled

We're spoiled in Portland with Stumptown Coffee. It's that simple. It's hard to find coffee in China, unless you're at a fancy hotel. We're also fat, but I'll leave that subject for another post. This morning, Megan took me to a *gasp* Starbucks. It was the best darn coffee I've had in quite some time. It is surreal to listen to Ella Fitzgerald and Jimmy Smith playing keyboards in China. I also heard a muzack version of "Stairway to Heaven" in a hotel lobby.

After the coffee, Megan and I met up with a few of her colleagues to have lunch, do a little shopping, go to dinner, and have a couple drinks. Megan's colleagues are great. Their hospitality was incredible. They couldn't have been more welcoming and friendly.

For lunch, they took us to a Sichuan restaurant. Hot spices are representative of Sichuan style food. The "meat curtain" picture I posted earlier was from this lunch. I ate the chicken feet, the meat curtain, and a variety of other noodles, veggies, and spicey goodness. At first, I was a little frightened of the heat as it has a reputation for being hot, hot, hot. However, everything was well within my range of pallatable goodness. In fact, I was able to taste the spices as it wasn't too hot. The flavor was out-of-this-world.... well, at least out of the USA.

After lunch, we took a subway to the Lu Sho (sp?) district on the border with Hong Kong to shop and hang out with with Hatty and Ryan. The "mall" where we went was about 8-10 stories tall with an open air court in the center. Most shops were the size of a small bedroom in the US. I would guess the stores were about 8' X 10'. The shops sold everything from traditional Chinese clothes to knockoff Dolce Gabana gear to paintings. There were stone/stamp carvingmanicure stations, food stalls, and more. There are no set prices here in this area, and the art of the bargain was at play. We spent a couple hours there and headed to another, more westen mall. The second mall was truly upscale with no discernible differences of high end malls in the US. We sat for about an hour at an ice rink and relaxed until we met up with the others for dinner.