Quanzhou

So 2 days before my trip I email U-Shore hostel about whether they provide bath towels…cos if i can save luggage space by not bringing my own why not right.

Reply: “Sorry, we don’t provide that. And are you a guest who has made a reservation for five days?We are sorry to tell you that we can not recieve foreigners, because the police station rules, so sorry. We already contact other YHA hostel for you, you can check that. At the meantime, you can cancel our order, it is so sorry.”

First thought: **** Second thought: How exciting!

The only other hostel listed on hostelworld actually does sound quite interesting. It’s run by an artist and designer (2 separate people btw, not 1 very talented person).

So after i make my booking, i email to ask that towel question again.

At 4pm as the plane lands, I stare out at the dreary buildings with a sinking feeling and the question WHY AM I HERE…and what am I going to do for 6 days???

An abandoned day trip over 15 years ago resurfaces as a 6 day trip without a plan – just a vague sense of the immense history underlying what is now a typical city in China (on the surface they all tend to look quite the same). It seemed a romantic premise - a city identified in Marco polo’s travels as Zaiton. A historic maritime port where various religions converged with some buildings still standing today. The other reason is that since it’s fairly unknown i expect it to be not too touristy.

The hostel - most of it - is charming in a somewhat deconstruct way - literally so actually, as they are doing some reno right now. Like right outside my room! I especially like the exposed staircase which I think is deliberate. Not really for the elderly though, as the steps are precariously narrow and steep and make me feel old as I can’t go up and down as fast as I like. And my knees feel wobbly too - or is that caused by the cold haha!

While wandering the touristy but quaint pedestrian street I turn off into a side alley and walk past a very small yellow-lit store that looks like it’s selling traditional pastries, except that it doesn’t really look like a pastry shop. No pastries in glass display cases.

When i finish walking the length of the small alley, I turn back and this time go in to check out the little shop. The shopkeeper welcomes me. The pastries are wrapped and nicely packaged in boxes. I ask if I can buy just one piece to try. He says you can just sample it, no need to buy and unwraps one for me. He tells me the pastries are made by an old man who specialises in these traditional snacks - and the quantity depends on how much he can make in a day. What I sample is pretty good - a bean-filled flaky pastry and a light crunchy twisted pastry coated in sesame seeds. As I talk to him I find out he is - can’t remember in what order this was revealed - a musician (who once used to like rock and roll, but now focuses on traditional music), a tour guide (he tells me he is Quanzhou’s most expensive tour guide haha. Apparently he gets hired by corporations who have visiting foreigners, and does max 3-4 pax at a time). What he does are walking tours within Quanzhou’s Old City. His name is 李以健 and he’s known about the town as 老李 Lao Li.

The shop sells some of the music he makes/composes (I’m not sure his role, just know he’s not the singer) - and he plays one of the CDs while serving me some of the shop’s tea. Something that sounds like ‘water tea’, and a red tea (which he says won’t cause me to stay up - after I tell him why the original Quanzhou day trip 15 years ago didn’t happen).

[Sidenote: after doing some online sleuthing back home, i think he used to work with a music label and promotes/organises band tours. One is a folk band called 秘密后院. That is, if you trust my ability to read Chinese websites with the help of google translate. Also, according to my mother, that ‘water tea’ is probably what is 水仙茶 (daffodil tea?).]

The best part of it all is when ask him where I can get a map. (When I asked the hostel, they gave me a tourist brochure listing sightseeing places, but no map. And there doesn’t seem to be a tourist centre to get such stuff from.) This is when he proceeds to take out an illustrated map (done by his friend) and goes on to give me my itinerary for the next day. He plots out the route on the map, marking out where I should make stops for food, sightseeing and cultural performances.

I was rapidly taking notes of the place names in pinyin while he spoke, as he wrote the names on the map in Chinese characters (in a fashionably sloppy script that is largely unreadable to me).

Blossomy Hostel & Cafe where i stayed

Check out the crazy exposed staircase. I love it. It does take a while to get used to going up and down but the view is pretty cool. 

Sitting in a performance hall waiting for a cultural performance to start. Old man next to me is complaining about how they don’t have a proper ticketing system. We’re stuck on second floor on the extreme left. The tics aren’t for sale and only 40 are released free to public (I think on day of performance). This means even those who are willing to pay are forced to join the queue and might get stuck with lousy seats. Have to check with Lao Li why they don’t sell them (unfortunately, never got the chance). It’s a mystery who gets all the non-public tics which accounts for about 90% of the seats.

All the visiting guests from various parts of China greet the audience with ‘I’m so Glad to be in beautiful Quanzhou!’

But to explain how I even got here. My original plan as i was feeling quite tired at 530 already was to just have an early dinner, then maybe go to a cafe to hangout so I even brought my watercolours out, thinking I would need something to occupy myself.

Then just as I was about to start on my bowl of beef noodle soup - at a noodle house called Li Mian (里面）near my hostel – Lao Li called me to say he had a ticket for a 730 performance and to come over after my dinner to the snack shop to pick it up – of course, this was in reference to something he had mentioned yesterday, and of course I couldn’t remember what performance this was about. I had already attended the wooden puppet performance 木偶戏 today and couldn’t remember if there was something else he recommended – that performance was superb btw and my favourite on this trip, but pathetically i didn’t have my phone with me to take pics :P  Anyway, i didn’t want to ask him to explain more as speaking chinese over the phone is twice as hard as in person - but of course I would go! So I went over to his shop. The performance hall was off the map so I would need to just follow the street directions he gave and hope I could get there!

Which i did phew. I was early and there was already a small crowd standing outside waiting to get in.

The good thing about Chinese opera is that it’s hard to fall asleep at it. I didn’t understand most of it of course. But most of it was pretty exciting/entertaining, and i found the visual backdrops and costumes quite interesting and attractive.

Day 2 what i did (stuff in bold was from the itinerary given by Lao Li):

Head towards Clock Tower on Zhongshan Lu

Walk up street for Mian Xian Hu 面线糊 for breakfast (not sure which stall was supposed to be the best, there were quite a few)

White dog temple - think i missed this? and argh later found out this was linked to the Ceylonese prince that i read about in the Maritime Museum and was curious about!!

Walk down Zhongshan Lu 中山路 (visit park and temple)

Up Xin Jie 新街

Down the adjacent alley Pei Xiang 裴巷, not sure the name (saw many old wooden houses, black-striped bricked houses) Later i find out from Lao Li it’s typically wood for common folk, stone for those who are wealthier, and the black stripes on the bricks come about when the bricks are smoked (i assume it’s the parts exposed to the smoke that results in this).

Buy red bean pancake (Man Jian Gao 满煎糕) from a specific shop － it’s only at the end of the trip that i realised this is the mandarin name of our mang chang kueh. Duh.

Visit house at no. 116 - he said it was ok to go in! this was really nice,  after the small front entrance, is a big courtyard from which you can appreciate the front view of the big house. Though from the sounds behind the front door, the inhabitants probably were wondering who was this busybody…

Can’t really recall what i did for rest of day between lunch and dinner. But i must have visited 十八芝 to report on my first day of exploring and also got my itinerary for the next 2 days. 

Dinner at Li Mian.

At Qing Jing Mosque: I’m sitting on a wooden swing in quiet shady spot when a trio of youngish men come by and start tapping and examining the palm tree (I think) near me. One of them turn to me and ask is this a coconut tree. With all the confidence of a tropical islander I tell him it definitely is not, I’ve seen coconut trees and this is way too tall to be one. If he asked me what kind of palm it was I wouldn’t know of course. Not that he could ask me cos I said I know what it is in English but not Chinese. How do you say palm tree?

They are visitors, too, but from other parts of China, here I think for a meeting or convention. The part I could catch was ‘selling houses’.

One of them asks to add me on WeChat - at least I’m not lying when I say I don’t have it.

This convo is a bit of a repeat of 2 earlier convos I had with service staff in clothing stores. When they find out I’m not from China, they are impressed (genuinely, not just being polite, like wah-your-Chinese-is-so-good impressed ). And I have to tell them mine is pretty bad, my friends back home who speak it at home speak it much better. I have a feeling what they mean is that it sounds good. Cos sporean mandarin doesn’t have the additional accents of mother tongue dialect as they would in China. So ‘good’ in that sense. But vocab-wise, obviously I would be pathetic.

At Wen Miao, waiting for Nanyin performance: One thing I like about being ‘tasked’ to find these sightseeing and food places is the streets I get to pass with the interesting old buildings and alleys along the way. And just exploring another part of the city that I wouldn’t have thought of going to.

The set up is basically a tea house with a stage at the front where the singers and musicians sit. The tables with chairs fill the middle area and have the better viewing seats - usually taken by the tourists. I think you need to order tea to sit there. Then at the back are rows of ‘free seat’ plastic chairs with cushions (wow having that cushion under your butt really helps to keep you warmer) mainly occupied by the local old folks. So that’s where i sat cos i wasn’t going to drink a pot of tea and stay up all night. It’s quite cute the old people, probably regulars as they greet each other when they come in, will sing or hum softly along to the songs as they are performed. 

Fujian tu wu - recommended by Guangdong lady at Nanyin performance.

Day 3 what I did:

Left hostel late. 11 something.

Found temples. Yuan Miao Guan, Chen Tian Shi.

Walked to Nanjun Lu, did some shopping. Spoke to 2 salesgirls.

Found veg restaurant Guan Yin Zhai

Found Qingjing Mosque. Sat for a while. Encountered the 3 guys who asked about the coconut tree.

Found Wen Miao.

Walked down to Zhongshan Nan Lu to Xiao Long Bao - these had a tasty meat filling, but if you’re a fan of din tai fung, just a warning that the skin here is more like bao pastry. And Lao Li was right about the ladies who serve having a bit of attitude haha. He was like, just go there and eat and don’t bother about them. 

Walked back up for Nanyin performance at Wen Miao.