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Published: August 1st 2009
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The 1st food scene change after enter Sichuan was no more cross-the-bridge noodle, instead in Yibin region the speciality is "rian mien", dry noodle mixed with different kind of spices and sauce, very tasty indeed. You could find it everywhere in Yibin region. Beside the noodle, grilled and bbq stands was almost un-existed, you still saw some, but compared with the number in Yunnan, here in this part of Sichuan...this smoky scene was miserable!
The Yibin rian-mien disappeared after entered Zigong, and the hot-pot dishes flooded the food scene. The town of Zigong seem more developed than Yibin, many good-looking baker, cafe and tea-houses, even couple of restaurants which served western dishes, though the taste I had no idea. and one of the obvious difference about Sichuan with otner province was the tea-house, it was everywhere, in any shape and size and style, but the contents are the same...playing majong or cards. It was so popular and common to hangout in the tea-house just like part of the daily normal life. But interesting was although so county-wide people drink tea in Sichuan, there was no outstanding brand of tea like the Puer or the Wuyi in Anhui, in those area people
talk about the age of the tea, the color of the tea-soup! But here in Sichuan the chat away with gossip and daily life! perhaps that was why and more affordable for general people that made tea drinking more popular.
31/7/09
Like many cities or towns in Sichuan, they al has long history as this land is the center of the 3-Kingdom period. Not only human being fighting for power or survival 1000 years ago,here in Zigong area they even find dinosaurs fossils could traced back more than 100 million years, amazing! You could see many reconstructed dinosaurs skeleton in the museum, which cliamed to be the only museum in the world held that many unique variety. There was a bone exhibited the lower part of the dinosaur leg, it was amost 4 meter high,you could imagine how huge the dinosaur would be!
Zigong prospered with salt industry in the old day, a very important town for the empire's income, and many lf its salt were directly provided to the King. That how it got the name "GongJian", you could learn more about the history of the salt industry in Zigong by visited the salt museum, which was
held inside an old elegant mansion. And half way to the dinosaur museum was an 150 years old salt well, which still produce salt today, the Shenhaijian now also act as a museum, for 20 yuans you could walk in to understand more. They still produce salt in their old way by using soya-milk to extracted the useless elements from the brine.
Every year in Feb a lantern festival will be held in Zigong, you could still see many of the products in the lantern museum, but to have a first glimpse of how amazing they could created a lantern, took a look of the huge show pieces inside the lantern park. But look closely, not only they were big, and they were eithermade with many beer bottle, small perfume glasses, or ceramics plates, the huge ceramic lantern vase was just incredible!
Xianshi was an old town we had visited near Zigong. With the importance of Zigong area in the old day, I was surprised why only one old town was named? There should be much more town growing up together with the salt trading? Anyway...Xianshi was turned into a tourist site to represented the glorious day of Zigong business.
It was a quiet little town(or perhaps because we visited on the weekday), clean street with shop front laid on both sides. The Banbian Street was most interesting area to walk around, couple of nice temple together with old opera hall, some with beautiful wood relief. "go up there, go up there"! A woman urged me into the opera hall, said something like"jinguabgkun", which I couldn't really made out what she mean. Finally she lead me inside and pointed to the ceiling, "that one!" she said, I looking at a round wooden beam abiut 10m, the woman added this is the golden rod, it gotbigger and bigger with time went on, "it was small like a tooth pick in the old day"she cliamed eagerly! "more than a 1000 years old" she said and pointing at the piece of paper which was stick on the wooden beam, written "thousand year" in Chinese. A solid proof was what she mean! I happily thank her for letting me know of this amazing story! Beside the growing beam, the interior of the hall were heavily decorated with tibetan favour in strong colour.
Walk further up the Banbian Street and the sweet smell would lead
you into the local wine factory where you could buy some local rice whisky. Then you hit the river front , a pleasant walk back to the main street where many small restaurant waiting for business. You could go to any one of them, because they all served the same menu with 4 or 5 dishes, no other choice. In Sichuan, beside the tea-house and hot-pot, the tofu-rice should be another name card. You could find it in many places in China. And Tofu Rice is said to be originate from this area. For couple yuans a bowl of soft tofu and a bowl of rice, together with its special sauce, the sauce was rather tasty actually! But of cause nowadays day they would presented in many different favour combined with different meat in many restaurant .
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