My life here in the suburbs has been mostly quiet and peaceful so far. That is, until the aliens landed. Some of you may have heard that this year is a big year for cicadas. Ya’ll here in the northeast know what I’m talking about, right? Those ginormous winged creatures dive-bombing you when you’re trying
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Life & Travel
Around the same time that we went to see the Yungang Grottoes and the Hanging Temple, we visited Huangshan (translated as: Yellow Mountain). Huangshan is a large mountain range in Anhui Province. It’s often featured in Chinese artwork and poetry and really does look like a Chinese watercolor painting come to life. Again, in our inexperienced
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When shopping with local vendors in China, every transaction calls for haggling. If you ever come to Beijing, you will most likely end up at a large clothing market like the Silk Market, or the one that’s closest to us: Ya Xiu (雅秀), located near Beijing’s Sanlitun Village (三里屯). My advice to you is to
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This picture was taken in one of the little hutongs, or old alleyways of Beijing, where they have little storefronts and cool shops selling knick knacks and souvenirs. The last two characters on the sign above the shop in this photo are: 商店 Translation: store Pinyin (i.e. the transcription of the Chinese words into Latin script): shang1
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Braised oxtails is one of Judy’s specialties, which she likes to whip out on special occasions. It’s an incredibly simple, flavorful dish, made with some really strong, pungent spices like star anise, bay leaf, and cloves. One particular ingredient is somewhat unusual. Rock sugar is what gives these Braised Oxtails their slightly sweet flavor and amazing glazed
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Dragon Boat Festival is a 2000-year-old holiday in China. Better known in Chinese as the Duan Wu Festival or Duānwǔ Jié (端午节), the 3 day festival usually falls in June. I’d never really heard of it before coming to Beijing, but apparently, the story goes that the holiday commemorates the suicide of ancient Chinese poet Qu
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Tea eggs are basically hard-boiled eggs infused with the flavors of Chinese tea, spices like star anise and cloves, and soy sauce. They’re sold all over China by street vendors, especially at breakfast time. In fact, there’s a vendor just down the street from our apartment, near where the local market is. They sell for
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This is a knockout recipe. You may have seen a similar kind of roast pork before. In most Cantonese places, they have the meat hanging in the window for all to see. Better to draw customers in, of course. This is our homemade version and it’s pretty much as easy as it gets! You get a really
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