360° of Plastic

Restaurants wrap their dishes in plastic after they have sanitized them. These dishes and chopsticks are not new, they are simply re-wrapped every time they are washed.

An extremely strange practice to Americans, but very common in China, includes wrapping absolutely everything in excessive amounts of plastic. Stores make a point to wrap and double-wrap candy, books, refillable water jugs, and fruit in at least one layer of plastic.

It should come as no surprise to me that restaurants also wrap their sanitized dishes in plastic; Chinese people seem to equate plastic with the word “clean”. One of the first phrases I learned how to say was “wo bu yao bao,” which means, “I don’t want a bag.”

If it’s in plastic, it must be better, right?

Coffee/tea shops all use a machine that adheres a thin layer of plastic to the top of cups, instead of a plastic top.

This is a great example of a Chinese convenience store. Everything (like cakes, candies, fruit) is individually-wrapped in bins, and they will weigh it for you on a scale.

Zoo Coffee

Every week, we meet here at Zoo Coffee for English corner.

Many cities in China have “InTime”, which is basically a big mall with some restaurants and coffee shops. Our InTime City in ShaoXing sits near Walmart, Bravo (another grocery store), and Zoo Coffee, where we meet for English Corner, also is in the complex.

This is the InTime City in ShaoXing.

Zoo Coffee has a bunch of large, plastic zoo animals on display, including wild Tonys.

Photo Shoot

Most of the plazas in ShaoXing have children’s rides that run during the evening once it gets dark.

This is Shimao, a plaza in ShaoXing where we get some food that we cannot usually get elsewhere. It is kind of far away from where we live, so we do not go there very often, but it has more foreign products there than many places in the city.

We have a lot of people take pictures of us, but this man was particularly obvious about it. So I took a picture of him, too.

When restaurants open, they go all out. There was about thirty girls dressed in traditional garb up at the front, getting ready for a performance.

Shannon Serenades

The Mexican restaurant we went to.

Our boss, Shannon, came to visit us for the weekend, and we not only had a decent Mexican dinner, but also brought the guitar down to shao cao (Chinese “bbq”–I will show photos of it next week). Somehow, I ended up serenading most of the people we were eating dinner with.

The most amusing part of our dinner was when Carina ordered a “bacon burger,” that came with all bacon, and no burger.

Making Noodles and Friends

The restaurant owner let Tony try to make noodles.

Many places make homemade noodles. They seem like a ton of work to make, but they are super good.