Beijing is one thing but the rest of China another. I wanted to get the feeling of some other city too. I knew my next longer stop will be in Guilin far at the south. So I randomly chose one city on the way. It was Zhengzhou.
Although we're talking about the capital of Henan province, it doesn't look anything special on the map. You have to zoom quite a bit before it's name pops out. That's why I was even more surprised when a local guy Pengkuo told me Zhengzhou's population is 10 million. Apparently I'm forgetting I'm in China :)
As you can see at the photos below I wasn't able to avoid busy streets neighter this time. Everything is so colorful and decorated in chinese way. On the right photo there are crossroads I crossed at least ten times but never knew which rules I have to follow. There are traffic lights but I had no idea for whom they are meant to be. No signs, not even on the asphalt. Cars, bikes, bicycles, pedestrians, everything is somehow moving by inspiration in all directions.
Luckily I was able to find some peaceful park. But peaceful only in the chinese sense. Even those are ful of people. And that's how we get to the most popular sport here - pingpong :)
The greatest surprise of all is food. I don't know what they sell in chinese restaurants in Slovenia. I'm already three weeks in China at the moment I'm writting this, but I never ate anything with soy sauce. In Slovenian chinese restaurants it takes 95% of menu. I have to admit that China is massive country and the food differs much between provinces. In general, southern you go, spicier the food. Soy sauce on the other hand is more common in the north.
In any case it's hard to stay hungry. Every second doors in the city offers something to eat. I wasn't expecting so many baked, boiled, fried this or the other way filled dumplings. And what is the most important, whatever you put in your mouth is tasty! According to the fact that I entered to China from Mongolia, where they almost don't use spices at all, is the food here like a taste revolution for me :)
But the best chinese dinner are Hot Pots (photo below left.) You get three hot pots on the table. In the middle one is soup and in the side ones are two boiling sauces where you cook raw food. One sauce is usualy spicy, but normaly you choose sauces and raw food by yourself. On the photo below you can see two types of meet. Left one should be turkey and the right one chicken. Later we got also potatoes, lotuses, spinach, shrimps, rice noodles, one more weird thing from sweet potatoe... A lot of food but after almost two hours of ritual the table was empty. Yes, a meal in China is not just a method to ease the stomach :)
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