I’ve been meaning to get a photo of this crazy fruit since we first saw it, but here’s one from Tomato Egg Noodles:

Tomato Egg Noodles also has this to say:
The mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana)????? is a small, round purplish fruit native to Malaysia. To eat it, one must remove the thick outer skin to reveal the […]

Yesterday, Stick and I went exploring at the famous Lady Street (Nuren Jie). They have some gorgeous flower stalls, manicure and massage places, and lots of clothes shopping. The shopping was kind of like a less pushy, more expensive Silk Market. I saw a couple cute t-shirts and sundresses, but I wasn’t too impressed and […]

I’ve hit a frustrating plateau with my Chinese-speaking. When I speak, I give the tones a good shot, and hope for the best. If I can’t get the tone of “glass” right, hopefully the rest of the sentence, usually “I’d like one of beer” will make my meaning clear. Unfortunately, my vocab’s hitting a point […]

When I lived in Yantai, I believed I had been offered every bit of sealife imaginable. Like most theories I had about China, this turned out to be inaccurate.

I think the seahorses might have been a novelty item even for locals, but we saw three or four people chowing down on starfish kabobs.
It was […]

Stick and I went exploring down the Russian street between the Ritan Park Jenny Lou’s and The Place. It’s at the eastern end of Ritan Bei Lu, where it meets Dongdaqiao Lu. The last time I was at The Place, it was all done up for Christmas. I thought it was fairy-light overload then, but […]

It’s time for another trip to Wangfujing to visit the foreign-language bookstores! I’ve read everything in the house at least twice (Except for Scarlett, because seriously, once was more than enough.) and needed to restock, and Stick was looking for a German-English dictionary because he’s decided to learn German instead of Chinese.
On our way to […]

Chris Anderson , the editor of Wired, is interviewed on 123-reg blog about what Anderson calls the long tail effect, that is, our shift from a few major mainsteam products to a “long tail” of smaller niche products. The shift from bestsellers to blogs is interesting, and really encouraging for a small-time writer, but I […]

This afternoon, Stick and I took a long walk to our new favorite restaurant. Our new spot isn’t very different from any of the other little not-dumpling restaurants in the area, but the differences are significant ones. The tables and plates are clean, and the staff are friendly. The first time we went, I asked […]

This is Stick about to eat hot pot (did I mention how awesome hotpot is? ‘Cause it is. Unless it gave me food poisoning…) We went to Da Bu Tong, apparently it’s pretty famous for varieties of hotpot broth and ingredients to put in it. (Da Bu Tong or Not The Same is on […]

Last night we went to a little restaurant a few blocks from the school. From the Arabic on the sign, and the lack of pork on the menu, it’s probably a Muslim place. (This is always reassuring to me because they tend to have really clean kitchens, something that is not always part of […]