On the way I followed this little man down a couple of side streets to get this picture of his 'sauce jars', some full, some empty, probably containing soy sauce and a variety of delicious concoctions in which they cook their food
....and here is the caner. She is hidden behind her wares.
Unfortunately she wouldn't let me take her photo but she was a very old traditional looking woman with grey hair clipped back, a hunched back and wearing the old fashioned grey Mao uniform. A real character. Wish I could have got her picture but as she held up a very big stick I opted to ride on.......in haste!
Stopping as a crossroad I spied this young lady. A common site in winter - wearing your coat back to front to stop the wind eating away at you, and also seen in summer though with a lighter coat or a long sleeved blouse, again worn backwards to prevent the sun getting on your arms!!!!
I ended up in the huge clothing and commodity market and thought you'd like to see one of the monstrous packages of clothes that litter the aisles in the hundreds. The activity is frenetic with clerks and shop owners packing hundreds of shirts or trousers or coats into these sacks, then labelling them and sewing them up and calling the carters to load them onto trolleys and cart them to waiting vehicles. The market acts as both retailer and wholesaler it seems, hence the activity level. However it is not surprising when you consider how many little shops selling clothes there are all over Hangzhou and beyond. Literally every other store sells some form of clothing or food and they line every available walkway, roadway, thoroughfare or apartment complex. Busy busy busy. The economy here seems built on selling.
And then as I approach home, exhausted from the hustle and bustle, I come to my favourite 'hole in the wall' where I can treat myself to this wonderful street food snack called 'Mei gan cai bin' or as we say 'our favourite light pancake'.
The owner, seen here rolling out the dough and filling it with seeds, and his assistant know us now and they chatter away to us in Chinese and I answer in English, neither understanding the other, except for the pointing and smiling....but it is fun and these dry pancakes made inside a round oven and cooked on the wall of the oven by the heat from the charcoal fire, are so tasty. They have several different seeds in them, a bit like flax seeds or black sesame seeds so that they are both sweet and savoury - just a hint of each - and eaten hot on the way home they are crispy and so delicious I will certainly miss them - especially as they are only 1.5 yuan (less than 25c) each.
This is the oven taken from over the top with a pancke on the side. I couldn't get a really good picture of it because the coals were just too hot for both me and my camera. He holds the pancake on his outstretched hand and reaches into this inferno and slaps the pancake on the side of the oven. How he does it I don't know as it is so hot. I'm sure he has had lots of burns on his arms over the years. 
and lastly here is the one I brought back for Mick as his snack - I had eaten mine hot from the oven on the way home. We like these because unlike a lot of street food they are not oily or fatty but crispy and tasty.....and because they are hot and cooked in front of our eyes they are safe to eat.....or so we think!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment