gelatinous glass noodles
pear soup with red dates and jujubes
ooodles of nooodles!
I truly believe all those tales that Marco Polo took Chinese noodles and brought them back to Italy.. or perhaps they were gifts brought by the envoy, courtesy of the Emperor. If I did a blind tasting of hand-pulled noodles and handmade pasta, I honestly wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Having said that, I’m going to make the experiment and find out for myself. I haven’t eaten so much carbohydrates for a long time… since the days when I was still in competitive swimming and that one biathlon of a lifetime.
I think it’s a pity that the ancient glorious capital Xi’an degenerated into a neglected city so far behind today’s Beijing. Many of my friends said the terracotta warriors were disappointing and overated. While I couldn’t deny how commercialised it was and Mr Yang, the hero and face of the marketing campaign, a not very clever hoax. He actually hangs around the museum to autograph copies of books on the warriors.
All the silly marketing aside, I can’t help but think about the incredible feeling those farmers had when they were digging for a well and found the site for over 6000 terracotta warriors. What’s even more fascinating is that this is merely a tip of the iceberg, given that Emperor Qin’s tomb was 2km outside and speculation has it that the palace underneath created for him is filled with diamonds and gems on the ceiling for the sky and a giant world map lay beneath with mercury filling the rivers and seas of the map. (explanation for the high mercury content of the soil in the area)
