Kuming, The City of Eternal Spring

A view from my hotel window

One of the perks (or curse, depending on how people look at it) of business travel is the chance to see other parts of the world. Of course, the traveller can forget about visiting the places of interests in that particular city. Any free time would be spent reviewing the presentation--over and over again, memorizing the statistics, doing the lengthy and tedious presentation dry-run. And after the presentation was done and the traveller thought that she could have sometime to take a look at the city, the organizer surprised her by asking her to do another presentation that she's unaware of. And there went another cycle of preparation for her.

Let me introduce you to Kunming, City of Eternal Spring. Kuming is the capital of Yunnan province, located in the southwestern part of China. I was there for 5 days for business purpose, with no intent on extending my stay for the touristy purpose of visiting the places of interest or the more famous town in Yunnan, Dali and Lijiang.

For the reasons I mentioned above, I did not really get the chance to see the city. And I refused to bring my digicam with me, as it will only add more burden on my overstrained-with-laptop shoulders. So, I've got to rely on my mobile phone to capture the moment of interests.

Considering that this is supposedly a culinary and miscellaneous blog, not a travel blog, let me tell you something about the food in Kunming:

"Kunming is a mushroom lovers heaven".

The city's climate fosters the growth of literally hundreds of species of mushroom which are consequently a predominant feature of many dishes. And being the mushroom lover that I am, I was beyond excited to be introduced to the carnivore's worst nightmare: mushroom hotpot.

Mushroom Hotpot

Larvae was also in the menu, for Fear Factor training

The guys that I went out with for this dinner were devastated with the fact that the chicken drumstick we ordered turned out to be the chicken drumstick mushroom. It's amazing how many varieties of mushroom that I've never got to know in my whole life. We only ordered less than 15 kinds, while the restaurant actually served more than 100 species of mushroom.

The mushroom hotpot turned out to be very tasty, with the soup that oozed the sweetness derived from the mushrooms mixed with the chicken broth. It was especially nice to be eaten piping hot that it would cause serious damage on the larynx, tongue, and lips, on a chilly autumn night. I will come back to this city just for the mushroom hotpot itself.

The restaurants also has some larvae in the menu, quite interestingly, the guys chickened out from ordering, while the ladies wanted to try some. Talk about Girl Power!!!

Another dish worth mentioning is the famous Yunnan Guoqiao Mixian (Across Bridge Rice Noodle). I love the presentation of this dish. The thinly slices of chicken and fish, various vegetables and spices were served in front of us. We will have to put them into the boiling hot chicken broth, together with the rice noodles.

Qiguo Ji or the steaming chicken pot is a chicken cooked in a little pot and served steaming hot. Yep, the Yunnan people apparrently love to have their dishes steaming hot. While the pot functions to retain the flavour of the chicken, it also manages to keep all the oil in the pot. The one that I had, though, was so oily that I refused to take more than a spoonful of the soup.

I also tried the duck. It's indeed delicious, crispy in the outside, but still moist and tender in the inside. And at RMB 20 ($4) per duck, it's really a steal for duck lovers. Well, after the recent melamine incident in China, I just hope that they don't feed melamine or formaldehyde or any of that chemical to the poultry (this post is written after the recent update on the melamine tainted eggs in China).

Smelly tofu, that did not smell

I stayed in a 5-star hotel in Kunming, The Grand Empark Hotel. The hotel reminded me so much of the grand buildings in Jakarta in the eighties. With big chandeliers and overzealous shimmer of gold everywhere. I really question this hotel, being categorized as a 5 star hotel. For one thing, the staffs did not really speak english, so communication was a big problem. And the big thing for me was the food in the hotel! It was terrible with a big T. And especially so with the chinese food. I wonder how the Chef in this hotel could sleep peacefully at night, with people cursing and swearing about the food that they eat. The food was always served cold and it was too oily. Come on, terrible horrible chinese food, in 5-star hotel in China???

Food aside, this was my first encounter with a hotel that actually provided condom as part of toiletteries. Just to be safe!!

If there is one thing that I prize about Kunming, it was the weather. Kunming was not called City of Eternal Spring for nothing. The weather was very lovely, ranging between 15-20 C. After one of my dinners, I actually went to one of the parks by the lake. It was very fine weather, with nice cool breeze. I walked in the park, looking at the willow tree, and there was a melody from this lady who was playing the chinese harp. It was just so peaceful and so oriental, I wished I could stay longer in Kunming.

Unlike my excitement of visiting Japan, I had mixed feeling about visiting China. Heard too many stories about this land of my ancestors, about the people being so greedy and will rip you off whenever they have a chance, dirty toilets, and people who spit all over and did not care about their personal hygiene. This trip has changed all that. Okay, some of them are true. But, I still met decent, honest people in Kunming. People I met were nice and so far, I think they take their bath regularly. I wish I can get more chance to get to know China better. So maybe next time, I hope, it will be Beijing or Shanghai.

And there's a dark cloud ahead..

One minute I read that we are doing well, suddenly the next minute I read about the looming recession. And that happens within weeks.

It did not happen overnight of course. All the analysts have predicted this 10 years cycle. Somehow, we just refuse to admit that it's happening.

When it happened 10 years ago, it did not affect me much. I was still enjoying university life, happily unattached, with no family responsibility. I still carried on with life as usual.

But this time, it's different! Now I really understand how this financial turmoil affects our life or others. And never a day passes without me thinking about "what if". It's my two children that I worry about.

I know that our company have laid off contract workers in the factory due to decreasing demand of the products. It just saddens me to learn that in the city where the factory is, most of the people are actually dependant on the factory to make a living. What will happen to the family, when one day, the parents come home telling the family that they no longer have a job.

And so, there's this big dark cloud ahead! We'll need to go through it before we can see better days. I am so blessed that I don't have to go through this alone, I have Y with me.

I only know one thing:

This too shall pass...

This too shall pass..

Just an excuse to have cake

I did not have time to come up with a cake for hubby on his birthday. We were in Jakarta on his birthday, and we went to Kidzania with the children on that day. We had dinner to celebrate Y and my mother's birthday together, but we did not have cake. With the holiday season in Jakarta, my parents have got two cakes that they have not finished eating yet. One cake was from Dapur Cokelat and the other cake was from Harvest. Both were chocolate cakes, but not up to my standard. Both were disappointingly dry. Or I am biased, because I am just not a fan of chocolate mousse cake.

Since Y went back to Singapore a few days earlier, I asked him to buy a cake from Awfully Chocolate. Maybe it's a post birthday cake, or just another excuse to have cake. I am not sure. Y always wanted to try the banana chocolate, although I love AC's chocolate rum & cherry better. I was thinking, I should try out something that I've never tried before and figured that chocolate banana should be a good choice.

So, here's the cake:

I usually love Awfully Chocolate's chocolate cake, but this one, is definitely not my thing. Or I just hate the combination of banana and chocolate. Y's uncle and aunt also commented the same thing about this cake. There is nothing fancy about this cake.

But then again, Y loves his banana, tracing down from his Darwinian origin. And he loves his chocolate.

I asked Y if we are going to buy the cake again. He said, "No! Your cake is much better than AC!" I am so happy with his compliment.

So, I have this entry, although I don't bake this cake, and I am still disappointed with this cake! But I figure, Y's compliment is worth to be blogged!

So, everyone, if you want to buy Awfully Chocolate, don't buy Chocolate Banana. If you want to have better cake, you can even contact me for some pointers on how to make a mean chocolate cake, okay! Even better, when I have nothing to do, I can even bake chocolate cake for you!