Xinjiang food and the Suzhou Sheraton
by chris
Last night the Monkey Kings and Queen went with our agent and friend, Maggie, to a Xinjiang restaurant called 北疆饭店. The food was delicious! Almost all of it was spicy, but not too spicy. The bread with meat in them (新疆肉夹馍 I guess!) were fantastic, and we also had a big stew of meat, potatoes, ginger, and other things. The only thing that was disappointing were the mutton skewers–good but only as good as you would get on the street. Either way, the food was good and so was the company.
We met some people from… well, hard to say where they were from, as they had lived all over the world. They had lived in Thailand for the past five years, in China for two years before that, and other places before that. We ate with a little white boy who, if you asked him his nationality, would say Thai. It was an interesting example of what AIESECers and others call nomads. They (eg. my mother) always say that moving around too much screws children up, but I asked them and they seemed quite well adjusted. You gain much flexibility and understanding of the world when you live in different places. We will do more research on the question before we have children and move all over.
After dinner we went to the Suzhou Sheraton, just across the street. The rich know how to travel! We expected it to be flashy, of course, but we did not realise quite what it would look like. The front is of a city wall and old Chinese pagoda. Inside is an art store full of beautiful paintings and other works, and a waterfall that changes colour. My favourite part, however, was the garden. It was rocks and grass, with a stream running through it, and a beautiful pool that I would have loved to swim in. Makes you want to get rich, doesn’t it?