21 April 2018
The new old is new again
Eating street food in Zhengzhou
I already said that last night I went the wrong way, I really did, so wrong. Tonight I went no more than a hundred metres in the other direction before I found the shiny new parts of Zhengzhou. Here you can find huge interconnected malls with every western brand you can think of, even an apple store. So there you go, non Chinese speakers probably can come to Zhengzhou and find something to eat / buy / drink and somewhere to use a regular western style bathroom.
Before I crossed over to the shiny side, I also had another look around the old side, which is probably also the busy side and the dirty side. Above the massive street food areas at and below ground level, there are hundreds of restaurants, I ended up having dinner at one but I probably chose my dinner too early. As you will see I had the same as last night, because its delicious, and I can have all vegetables, in ridiculously spicy soup. The fact that you can boil it yourself to kill all potential pathogens is an added bonus, plus its very suitable for a solo diner. Thats probably enough about my dinner.
So there you go, last night I hastily judged Zhengzhou as tier 88, where as now its probably pumped back up to tier 3 on the Chinese tier ranking system hybridized with my actual experiences while visiting. The exciting thing about it is that you can experience both sides, and when you get sick of feeling clean, step over to the filth and vice versa, just remember to wash your hands a lot and try not to get run over.
On the old side, a clothing market has been set up in the puddles in the mall immediately next to the street food stalls.
This is still the old side, but things are looking up, these are all restaurants. Nearly everything was a hot pot of some kind, generally only suitable for groups of people, often featuring bullfrog.
Here you can see a whole heap of street food stalls. Everything comes served on a stick, obviously there is nowhere to sit and relax. The sticks make a huge mess.
I found the only place suitable for solo diners as mentioned above, it just happens to be the same as I had last night, which just happens to be delicious.
Then I found a different eating area with more street food inside a shed which I had assumed was a construction site, as you will see, it kind of is! This place was buzzing with excitement, the tiles were deathly slippery, a mixture of oil, mud and water.
You want crab? Its been there all day waiting for you. She looks thrilled.
And here we have the border between eating area and demolition site. See how the food stalls back directly onto a mini rubbish dump? Tier 88.
It seems it is pineapple season, heres another pineapple rice stall, but there were people dancing around selling pineapples in the street too.
Various meats on sticks for your dining pleasure. Maybe dog! Who knows?
Most Chinese cities seem to enjoy decorating their public spaces like this.
Here we have the busy Erqi square and tower, looking back towards the old side of town from a road overpass, with all the neon from the pedestrian street. The hotel on the left with the big LED design on it and flying saucer on the roof is where I am staying.
A bit more view of the chaotic street scenes. I stood here for a while just watching.
Now we move into new mall territory. This one is not quite as new as the next.
This is the newest mall around, its very fancy, I think MixC is an international brand, having also outlets in at least Taiwan and Korea.
Inside they have an are of fake blossoms for your selfie-ing pleasure.
The inside of this place is very nice, much like a brand new mall in Australia like Chadstone, only in China they cant get as much real estate so build higher instead. This one is 9 levels.
The basement has an excellent Ole international supermarket, and more pineapples. I love Ole. Ole please come to Australia!
There is also a xiao mi store, I also love xiao mi, their toothbrushes never wear out. I was able to check out some of their products other than their phones, before now I had only seen pictures online.
And for my last photo this evening, here is a shaved wolf. He seemed happy enough to be shaved, proudly parading himself for photos with everyone. I have not really seen many dogs here, in Beijing everyone had a silly little white dog, or a colored poodle. I suspect they do here also but there is not a lot of residential buildings where I am staying.