Shopping adventure on Shengli Road.

Cookies and Hyo! (What?)

The Qingming (Ching Ming) Festival or Tomb-Sweeping Day was on Saturday was this weekend so a lot of students in the University as well as people all over Nanchang left the city to go to their hometowns to be with their families and remember their ancestors. After cleaning the tombs, you burn paper money, houses, cars, and sometime even people (!) as they represent their very real counterparts in the world where their ancestors are. Burn some paper people and your ancestors get some slaves...

Anyways, since this is a family affair, I didn't want to impose myself on any of these festivities so I stayed in Nanchang and spent the holidays with some friends touring the city.

On Saturday, my friend Susie and I decided to do a bit of "playing" around the city. We left the University at 10:00am and had to wait for an hour for a bus. It wasn't that there weren't any buses available, it's that there were so many students crowding the bus stop that we couldn't make it onto the first 5 buses...When we finally made it onto a bus, there was nowhere to sit and we were crammed in like sardines. With all the traffic (people trying to leave the city to go to their hometowns), it took us 2 hours on a hot and sweaty bus in stop and go traffic to make it to our destinations. Finally, we made it to Shengli Lu or "Victory Road" which is a pedestrian street that is full of shops and a few restaurants. We ended up spending most of our time in a shop called Sanfu which had clothes and a shit ton of accessories. So, I bought a head band, a small key chain with three black cats on it (representing my family's three black cats at home), some mascara, and a small hair straightener for the Summer (Frizzy Hair problems...). I wanted to buy so much more there...Everything for girls in China is so frakking adorable.

While we were there, we stopped to "buy some snacks," which seemed totally innocent and normal until we bought a bag of spicy Duck Necks and Wings. Although I was slightly shocked at first by the differences in what "snack" means in China and the US, they turned out to be delicious so I had no complaints. After that, we went to a nice restaurant and ate a variety of different dishes, including cabbage and egg dumplings, egg and seaweed soup, and some small clams in a sweet and spicy sauce. Super delicious!

After our little shopping experience (and me temporarily leaving my bag of goodies at a bubble tea shop...yikes!) we got on another bus and made our way to an area by the Ganjiang River that has a nice little boardwalk, an amusement park, and a huge Ferris Wheel called the "Star of Nanchang." Before getting on the Ferris Wheel, we took a few pictures by the water and bought a "Chinese Sandwich" on the boardwalk. This was was amazing and I was really glad to finally try some street food. A lot of people are afraid to eat street food from vendors because it's seen as dirty but I couldn't care less. A lot of really good local food is sold on the street.

Finally, we finished the day off by getting on the Ferris Wheel to see the city from the top. It was an awesome day with a lot of good conversations and a lot of walking.