11.11

November the 11th is a very popular day for the Chinese!

1. It is known as the Valentines Day for all singles, because of the 11 which looks like two single person.

2. Its a online shopping festival known as Double One Festival for taobao.com and its subsidiary Tmall.com when you get huge discounts on almost all the items you buy stuff online.

I, for one, was camping at home to get some very good deals to prepare for winter. The event was huge, with hourly discounts on stuff for 1yuan, the festival was hugely successful.

Just look at the numbers:

A whopping total of 19 Billion yuan spent on online shopping, Tmall alone had 13 Billion yuan of sales, tabao had 5.9 Billion yuan. Its so crazy!!!

So the next time you want to buy something near November, wait till 11th November for great discounts.

Zhu Jia Jiao

My friends were here for the weekend so I brought them to Zhu Jia Jiao, a bus ride away from Shanghai

Here's how to go from Wikipedia:

The most affordable way to get to Zhujiajiao is to take a bus from the bus station at the Puanlu（Chinese: 普安路）bus station near People's Square.
Be aware, People's Square is a very large metro station with twenty different exits! To get to the bus stop at Puanlu, exit the metro from Exit #1 and follow the street (Xizang South Rd.) toward the Yan'an Elevated Road. Cross the street going under the elevated road and turn right. Walk underneath the elevated road as it runs along a park (housing the Shanghai Concert Hall) on the left side. At the first street crossing, you should see bus stops on your left. The bus to Zhujiajiao is one of the first ones on the left after crossing the street. Make sure you take the bus line called Hùzhū Gāosù Kuàixiàn (Chinese: 沪朱高速快线) - they usually use pink buses.

This should take around 1 hour and the fare is about 12 yuan. The buses each way leave every 15-30 minutes. There are other bus lines, but they can sometimes take up to 2 hours. These cheaper options do not take the main highway, are much more crowded at peak hours and stop at every stop, filling the bus to absolute standing capacity. Don't worry about where to get off, Zhujiajiao is the end terminal. Also, make sure you don't miss the last bus back to Puanlu, which departs at about 9 PM.

you actually don't need a ticket to get into the town (unlike Xitang), but u could get enterances to some attractions with the purchase of tickets.

The Qing Dynasty post office looks vey interesting.

Using dianping app, we found a restaurant for lunch.
Most restaurant sells the same stuff, seafood.. meat.. vege.. etc. so its just a matter of taste and price.

We walked around the ancient river town, its very similar to xitang but the river is much closer to the walkways and its smaller.
Its really a lot like venice (athough I haven't been to venice before) with the river by the side and some riverside dining or coffee sipping would be perfect in this weather.

You can see these everywhere, most of the shops sell the same old things but we didn't buy it because it looks too fattening.

you actually need less than 5 hours to finish the entire town so it could be a half-day trip and then head back to shanghai for more exploring.

Xitang

Xitang is an ancient river town 1hour bus ride away from Shanghai.

It is well known because Mission Impossible 3 was filmed here. Remember the scene where Tom Cruise was running along the river?

Yeah, they were proud of it that they put up pictures of Tom Cruise in most of the attractions in the town.

In the morning we took a 1 hour bus ride from Shanghai North Bus Station for 32rmb to arrive somewhere near the town.

Entrance fee was originally 100rmb, but you could get a lot of discounts from external vendors like YHA (youth hostel association) in Xitang.
We got ours for 60rmb from one of the hostels.

In a nutshell, the place was very beautiful and well preserved.

There are a lot of places to eat, you can use dianping app to see how the restaurants are rated.

One of the highly popular cafe in the town is the Postcard cafe called 猫的天空之城 where you could purchase all kinds of postcards and get them to keep it to whichever date and they will send it to you on that date. its pretty cool, its like receiving a postcard from the past.

I had a cheesecake pudding and their signature milk tea for 40rmb. just average, nothing special.

Most of the shops in the ancient town were selling the same things, mostly food.
But the famous snacks are the ones opposite the postcard cafe, as you notice with queues.

It takes an avereage of 5 hours to check the whole place out (including eating).

Most people would recommend staying a night there for bar-hopping but I didn't have time to stay, perhaps another time then.

Bloc

I went for another restaurant during restaurant week, this time it was recommended on a magazine and it was new in the dining scene so I wanted to see if BLOC was an underdog.

First up was the usual: Bread with garlic butter
It was okay, not as freshly baked but the garlic butter was worth highlighting which complemented very well with the bread. The bread were in small sizes so that you won't be full from too much bread.

Fresh fruit salad with goat cheese
A refreshing start to the meal, I love the fresh salad that has blueberries and raspberries, rockets etc. The berries added crunchiness and a little sweet touch to the salad. I'm not sure for others, but the fried goat cheese was too overwhelming for me. The smell overpowered the rest of the fruits and vegetables. Or maybe I'm just not used to goat cheese

Salmon loaf
At first I thought it would come as a piece of salmon fillet but it was like a bread with salmon bits. For many years, my mum used to cook for lunch and put the food into the fridge so that I can heat it up in the microwave for dinner. I know how microwaved food taste like. Enuff said. The loaf was rather disappointing, not only it is microwaved but it was too much for one to eat. The mashed potato was okay, nothing bad about it but sun-dried tomatos is a refreshing touch to the loaf, which has too much flour.

Only for restaurant week, they were giving patrons a free shot of honey infused vodka from a nitros can

It was unexpected because it is in a form of foam and served fresh on your table.
I love it because of its acquired taste of honey and ginger and mixed very well with vodka.
One shot is definitely not enough.

Molten chilli chocolate cake with ice cream
I didn't taste any chilli though. The cake was average, perhaps overbaked because my cake was burnt on the bottom and the chocolate lava didn't flow out when i half-ed it. I am an ice-cream person, and I hate ice cream with shards of ice in them, it only means that they did not prepare the ice cream fresh but they scooped the ice cream into the cup and put it in the freezer.

For 168, the meal was worth it but I won't go for its regular menu. The best part of the meal was probably the shot of honey vodka. The service was very good, waiters could converse very well in English and very friendly with introduction of the food and checking with you occasionally.