Flavor of the week

I forgot all about this weeks Flavor of the week!
It was a tough choice, but here it is, the Flavor of the week:
*Drum roll*
Kiwi flavored chips!

So how does it taste? Like normal salty chips but with a touch of kiwi. It is really not as bad as it seems. No worries Jonas, I will bring you a sample when I come home.

I must also publish a picture of my latest shampoo, recommended by the good people of Ningbo and Jackie Chan.

♪♫ Everybody bought Kung Fu shampoo! *Didilidi didi li di diii* ♪♫

The shampoo goes perfect with my new Chinese haircut I got today. Maybe it will be shown in a picture or two later.

Today we will hit the city center in order to consume alcohol and practice dancing. Well earned if you ask me. I am very much looking forward to it. Cheers!

First sign of summer

It is finally here! I am talking about the summer. As I have mentioned in previous posts; Ningbo was very very cold the past week. But now that seems to be changing. Right now we have a radiating sun on the sky and it looks like it is 25°C outside, but it is really only 5°C and a bit windy. But, the good new is the weather forecast shows 16°C tomorrow and 24°C this weekend! We are going on a trip to the beautiful West Lake located in Hangzhou on Saturday, so the warm weather is mostly welcome. I am very happy about that, because it gives me a chance to use my camera in the beautiful surroundings. Tomorrow I will look for a nice and handy camera support.

Anyway, this post was meant to be about food, summer food. With the topic I did not mean the sun or the heat, I meant another sign of summer. Can you imagine anything more summer like than strawberries? We tried the first Chinese strawberry yesterday and it tasted wonderful! I have always been a big fan of Swedish strawberries, but the Chinese ones tastes as good or even better. Perhaps that is because it has been a while since we had them.

Simon with a Chinese strawberry

While shopping yesterday I noticed something in the shelves, something more usual than strawberries in March; blueberry flavored crisps. Because I promised myself to try new things I just had to give it a shot. Maybe this is the least weird thing that I have tried here, but still...

Surprisingly, the crisps tasted quite nice! I will get another bag next time I am in store, for sure.

Blueberry crisps

I just came home from a health examination. That was needed in order to extend my Visa. I will tell you all about that experience later. Now it is time for Chinese class, "Listening and speaking". Zai jian!

Early Saturday morning

Every day I wake up to the sound of birds and enjoy it most times, but today it was a little bit to much. Usually they are just a few birds but today they sounded like an army so I could not sleep past 06:50.
Maybe I am getting superstitious or the Chinese are right about Wakening of Insects. Actually, yesterday was the first time I saw an insect here, spooky.


I think it is time to write some about the food here in the province of Zhejiang.
Let me start like this;
I did not come to China to start a new life, but maybe a new chapter. In order to do that I need a open and positive state of mind about everything, including new food. I used to be very conservative about food, not willing to try new dishes. This has not been the case the recent week in Ningbo and I enjoy it a lot!


The evening of the arrival we went to a traditional restaurant famous for spicy food. Excellent start for me, I need spicy food. We gathered around a table and ordered several dished that we shared. This is a very common way of dining in China and personally I think this is just wonderful. Anyway, I decided to throw myself into the new culture so I ordered pig feet with chili, and I must say they were delicious. The pig feet is the dish with lots of red chili in the picture.

I already made up my mind, Chinese food is great! I love it! It tasted nothing like home, not even close to the food in Swedish/Chinese restaurants.


Next day we had lunch at a new shopping mall called Wanda. The restaurant was famous for meet with big bones. We ordered a pork with the bones along with 7-8 other dishes. It looked like a piece of a leg from a pig with meat, fat and ligament still attached. For a reason we received a short sucking straw from a waitress and surprisingly we were suppose to use it for sucking out the bone marrow. Did I try it? Of course I did! It did not taste that much, really, but it was not bad.

A get-together on Tuesday evening. Shot was taken with Simons Iphpone

Vegetables in China always looks perfect. Even the smallest food stand on the street serves vegetables that looks good enough to be in commercial. If they spot anything bad in the food it will be thrown away immediately. Bad food is bad for business, and lots of people are making their living out of it. My favorite vegetable dish is haricots verts with chili. Delicious!


More about Chinese food to come, but enough for now or this post will be enormous. Yet I have not tasted anything bad. It is the other way around, I love the food here. In Sweden I had some stomach aches for the past 2 years or so due to something, That has completely disappeared!

Dinner. All food on the table costs less than 20 RMB (~20 SEK)