Wednesday, April 11, 2012

China Trip Pt 3: Inside Yu Yuan (Shanghai)

We paid for tickets to go into Yu Yuan and boy, was I glad we did tat:)

Because it was a paid location, many people did not opt to go in. Walking inside the garden was like walking from a boiling pot of oil into a serene tranquil pot of warm tea:)There was not much of a crowd inside and because of the way the garden is being built, it is also much cooler inside...

This is an explaination of what Yu Yuan is about..

Ourt tickets..

The carving on the stone says "Famous Garden In Shanghai"..

Pic of this door knob taken at the request of Max...

Time to make use of my DMC Panorama app again!:)


Saw lots of blooming flowers inside too.. which somehow always starts to make my heart sing:)

Max and Ace pretending to be like the lion statue...

Relaxing by the pond to take a breather from the crowd...

I love this photo I took by chance.. I call this.. one fish, one leaf:) hahahaha

Anyway, while we were resting, we suddenly noticed tat the fishes were QUEUING UP.. when we looked around, we realized that the old grandma beside us was trying to feed the fishes some biscuits!:) It is amazing how the fishes just queue up to swim over for their food!:)

Once they came over though, it was a mad rush for the food..

Ace was so amused by this and started smiling happily away. Suddenly, what seemed like a boring trip with two old farts (me and max lah) started to look interesting:)


After a while, I heard Ace giggling non stop... As I was taking photos from far away, I din know what happened. When I went back, Max told me that when they ran out of biscuits to feed the fish, the old grandpa did what most PRCs love to do... he SPIT right into the pond!

The unsuspecting fish again swam up and had a mad rush to eat the yucky spit! And Ace was so amused that the fish were actually fighting to do that! Yew.....

Here is where the camera cannot go wrong.. anyhow point, anyhow shoot.. also super nice one:)









It seems that the garden had some sort of natural boulder within and to accommodate them, they build the buildings and the structures in the garden around them in harmony.. wat a clever idea!:)


Max was very fascinated with this dragon head...


He kept taking pictures of it! We found out later tat the dragons not only had heads but also a beautiful body each that twisted around as walls in the garden! How clever!:)
Ace pretending to be like this baby lion..


More fish shots...once and again, anyhow shoot also look like a painting!





I just love these willow trees.. make everything look so poetic;) I noticed though in the city areas, the road sweepers actually used DRIED UP willow branches tied to a stick as a broom.. and seems like quite an effective broom to sweep up leaves:) Very eco friendly!


This silly ang moh was trying to touch the fishes.. Max and me were mean.. we were waiting actually for him to fall into the pond.. Alas, that didn't happen:) hahahahaha





It is amazing to me how a tree trunch can be made into such a beautiful piece of art!:)



This is the dragon's body that I was talking about!

We actually found papaya trees in the garden! I never knew China had papaya trees!


We saw these lychees made from some sort of jade at the gift shop.. so life like right?

As you can tell from the many close ups on flowers, the camera was most probably in Max's hands!:P wahahahahahahaah






And then we bid farewell to the cool and quiet garden..

Only to be met with a road filled with people and more people! HORRIGIBLE!

We walked out to find food but got distracted as the policeman prevented us from walking into the alley that led to the vegeterian restaurant we wanted to go into.. so we walked a big round into the main street and found rows of cars lined up with policemen as well..

If you can't beat them, join them lor! So we also kaypo and see which VIP is it that is visiting this place.. there were so many people holding on to cameras i tot which star is coming..
Turns out to be some visiting delegates from some middle eastern country..

Mystery solved right? So back to our search for food.. it is not really a restaurant but more of a food court. You had to first decide what you want to eat.. then go to the cashier to buy tickets and use the tickets to exchange with the people at the counters for the foods you want.. Me and Max dun understand why they want such a complicated system..

Since you will walk to see what food they have, they should allow the counter people to give out tickets that you took to pay.. once paid and chopped, then use it to exchange for food lah.. then not so confusing mah...

The very hungry caterpillar.. hahaha..
Max ordered some dumplings that had glutinous rice inside.. very interesting...

And dao hway.. when I saw the giam cai and the seaweed, I was a little stunned.. when I tasted it, I realized it is savoury and not sweet! It is kind of like seaweed toufu soup.. only that instead of toufu, they used tau hway.. VERY NICE:) Ace loved it too.. Now I learnt one more way of preparing toufu... just add seaweed, soy sauce and kiam cai and you are done!!!!

Fried dumplings..

And the chinese version of deep fried carrot cake:)

This is something interesting I have never tried before. It is called Kao Fu (烤麩) – Wheat Gluten. It tasted very yummy braised.. I bought a packet of it in Hangzhou and when I was googling for recipes, I found out I can do pretty much wat I did for braised toufu to get what I ate:) Apparently, this is a common and popular dish in Shanghai:)

After our tummies are filled, it is time to say bye bye...



Goodbye Yuyuan:) On to our next location, THE BUND! (in the next post)

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