3 April 2013
Swedish horse meatballs
When I was in Chengdu last week, I tried to make it to the South Railway station and was thwarted by a bridge and construction work.
I keep reading about good places to eat in the area around that station, however the articles are a couple of years old, I didnt know if they were still there or were now just a hole in the ground, I set out to again try and find out.
The pictures can tell that story, I rate my success as partial.
Before that, a story. When setting out for my evening walk, I checked the weather, 23 degrees C, decided shorts were still ok, and off I went.
Now, so far I have only seen a handful of other people wearing shorts, and they were a football team on the train going home.
I walk past the hotel reception desk after exiting the lifts and one of the thousands of bored staff charges after me....
Hello? Hello! I stopped to see what happened, thinking maybe I had dropped something.
Turns out she was very concerned that I would go outside in shorts because it is going to be very cold, and I might freeze, and I should go and put on winter clothes.
I assured her I would be fine, its going to stay above 20 C, I dont consider that to be cold, and I have been out and about walking in this part of China every night for a couple of weeks now.
So I walk off, and shes just glaring at me.
As I left the front door of the hotel she chased me out of the door carrying a bright yellow disposable rain jacket, pleading with me to put it on. I graciously declined.
I exited at the metro station past the south railway station and was greeted by this. A giant construction site. Could it be that this area really is now a no go zone with nothing but building sites..
My hopes were fading fast, this array of guys on scooters and metal coffin tricycles waiting to take people from the station exit suggested there was nowhere nearby to get to on foot.
But then I went under a bridge and crossed a road, through a tunnel that appeared to be mainly a drain, and arrived in giant mall land.
It was a strange place, so many giant shopping centres, spread out, neatly cultivated trees and lawns etc.
Most of the shops were furniture stores, home appliances, and even kitchen design places. A bit like a Home maker centre in Australia, but indoors and multi level, with restaurants and a cinema on the top floor of each in case you need hot pot and transformers 3 whilst you are picking out a new couch.
Eventually I got to one of the places I read about, this was apparently the first modern mall in Chengdu, with foreign brands, and as such at one stage had a few restaurants set up by westerners. There is still a tex mex grill and pizza shop run by real italians.
Which meant I saw a few white people, who had trolleys full of peanut butter and western cleaning products.
Oh...OK
This area really is kind of like a different city, I havent seen the free bike setup anywhere else.
The menu in Ikea is not quite like it is in Australia (or England for that matter). Yes you can still get swedish meatballs which recently were outed as being made from horse, but theres also some Chinese influenced dishes.
I noted later that the hotdogs were 40 cents on the way out and they have no Daim chocolates.
The restaurant also had hot soy milk, free refills, and a section featuring things on sticks.
I gave in, I thought it was too amusing to not eat at Ikea in China. The meal was actually decent, especially the fruit salad. I didnt eat the rice!
The actual store part is largely identical to Australia, prices are similar too. I wonder who would buy stuff from here cause surely theres Chinese equivalents that are cheaper and already made for you that gets delivered to your door by a tricycle.
Back in another mall now, and this one had a hipster store that featured weird watches you cant tell the time on, backpacks made from recycled paper, t-shirts with Che Guavera, and of course a Porsche Panamera model. See my text from earlier today.
Last picture for the day is just because my camera is awesome. Theres basically no light here on this building site, and its a hand held frame stacked shot of darkness to reveal the cool structures under construction.