On my second full day in Guangzhou, my traveling partner and I set off on an adventure that we had anticipated since we discovered that both of our families hailed from villages near Xin Hui, a small city near Guangzhou.
Armed only with hand-scribbled characters of the village names and the knowledge that buses did in fact go to Xin Hui, we set off on a hazy, cloudy day from the monstrous Guangzhou central bus station. Surprisingly, we managed to find both ancestral villages.
Unfortunately, I have no living relatives left in my village, Zen Jia Li Cun. But an aged old woman, whose cackling card-playing friends said "knew everything", said that she remembered our family.
A helpful village elder led us down a dirt road, past the village incense-making factory, to a small temple. Hanging on an inside temple wall was a plaque my uncle had commissioned years earlier. Engraved next to the names of all the ancestors who had lived in the village were my family's names (in Chinese), including that of my great-grandfather, grandfather, father, uncles and aunts, as well my cousins, my sister's and my own. Pretty neat.
After riding four buses back to Shamian Dao, we were pleased to find that our hostel mates were waiting for us to embark on... Dim Sum Round 2! A local took us to "The Lucky Fellow" -- an appropriate name for our lucky day.
Here we have some gorgeous pork and shrimp dumplings. Oh, so fresh.
More succulent spareribs (I have to say that I'm terribly good at extracting the meat from these).
I'm a huge fan of these bean-curd bundles -- they were similar in taste, texture and structure to a meal I had in Hangzhou back in October.
Ah, incomparable char siu, this time in a sloppily constructed, powdery bun. We all know these, don't we?
This was a dish of pork skin. Very tasteless... I wished that we could have put it back. The vegetables added no discernable flavor.
A jongzi of sorts, this one with minced pork.
Here was a dessert that I recoiled in fear when I saw, but was eager for more upon tasting. It's cold mungbean cake, which combines layers of subtly sweet cake with cool, mealy mungbeans, clinging together with an uncloying paste. I really liked this. Anyone tasted this one?
A few more photos didn't make the upload cut; if I have better access to a computer later I'll add them. We had a delightfully fresh version of those egg custards, and some fried taro birds-nest-like things, too.
We left stuffed, naturally.
The Lucky Fellow
111 Taikang Lu, 5/6th Floors
Guangzhou, Guangdong
Tel: +86 (20) 8339-3800
Posted by Astrid at March 14, 2005 07:58 AM