Originally Posted by
moondog
A few questions/comments:
1) Did you buy any saffron or other spices?
-when I went, the going rate for saffron was seriously 1/20th of the Safeway price, and the quality was better
2) I actually like China's approach to the time zone thing
-given that 80% of us live in the east, the "Beijing Time" concept makes sense
-but, it might make sense to move the bar a little bit to the west
*in addition to benefiting the folks out west, this would spare us of those 430a sunrises during the summer
3) Did you get a chance to try any rice pilaf out there? I found it to be delightful, though I refused to eat it with my hands (minor standoff occurred).
1) Yes, but not a lot, some saffron, cardamom, couple of others things in small quantities, to take back to USA for family use. If my family lived in a bigger and more cosmopolitan place where there was serious demand, I could imagine some saffron profiteering could be done.
2) Disagree. Again, this attitude smacks of Chinese "the East counts, the West doesn't." It's disrepectful to a huge land area (though relatively small) population of the country. I don't like the single time zone and since the US, Canada, Russia, Australia, and other large west-east spread countries manage really well with the multiple time zones, China should take page from its normal operating playbook, and COPY THEM.
3) Yes, I tried the rice pilaf. It's OK, but I found I preferred the spicy noodles. I agree with you--I refused to use my hands to eat. Particularly when it's difficult to keep things sanitized. I usually keep some supermarket plasticware like spoons/forks, disposable chopsticks, and drinking straws, in my daypack for times like these. On cuisine, I also liked the samsas (those lamb-filled pies that they bake on the inside walls of the oven) and most of the kebabs. I was going crazy for decent Chinese-style vegetables though.