Special China tour: Just dinner and guests
Details of the evening events – culinary specialties along the journey, as well as information about the invited guests who will join us for dinner.
Bild: Thomas Hartmann
Day 2: May 11th (Sunday) - Beijing
Dinner: Lao Hanzi Restaurant.
We shall go to a restaurant named Lao Hanzi (Old Chinese Character) next to the Houhai area and directly at the northern gate of Beihai Park. The owner of the restaurant, Chi Nai, is an artist who has been a compelling figure all the way back to the 1980s. He himself was a wonderful painter and has been a part of all the artistic movements in China since then. As such, he is good friends with many well-known Chinese poets, artists, and intellectuals. The restaurant itself is a piece of art, designed in a very beautiful and elegant style. With the view of the lake as night falls outside the window, one can feel the timeless beauty of China.
The style of cooking is called “hakka” or “kejia” (Guest People). The name came from the northern Chinese who moved to the south of China long ago, keeping the very special and traditional cooking style that has been lost in the northern China, and developing it into a very unique taste. Chi Nai loves this “lost tradition” and opened this restaurant to re-introduce the cooking to the north. You can taste the typical, traditional dishes there, as well as dishes newly created by the artist himself.
Day 3: May 12th (Monday) - Beijing
After seeing the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, it will be ideal to partake of some imperial style cuisine. There is a famous restaurant named Bai Jia Da Yuan (Bai Family's Great Court) situated in a former king's garden (King of Li). It is one of only very few imperial kings' gardens that survived all the turbulent history. The buildings and the rocks, the trees and the water, the little bridges and young ladies in imperial dress will all keep you feeling the past. Most importantly, the food is made directly from imperial recipes, which combine some typical Chinese dishes and Manchurian dishes, and have therefore been called the full banquets of Manchurian and Chinese.
Because this restaurant is very close to the University of Beijing, the site of almost all artistic and political liberation movements, we shall invite some artists and well-known intellectuals to attend the dinner, so that people can exchange ideas on China, culture, arts and politics.
Among these artists and intellectuals will be Zeng Laide, the best-known and expert calligrapher, who has wonderful knowledge of Classical calligraphy and developed his own very special style (his studio is nearby, we could even visit it, depending on how tired people are); Qin Xiaoyu, a young but very talented poetry critic, who wrote six excellent essays for Jade Ladder; or Zang Di and Jiang Tao, two wonderful poets who have been published in Jade Ladder and teach at the University of Beijing... there are many possibilities. This dinner will be the first time the group has a chance to meet with current Chinese cultural figures and a time to start the direct exchange of thoughts (see notice at the end).
Day 4: May 13th (Tuesday) - Beijing
Dinner: Zhangshengji – writers' dinner.
After the temple, we return to Beijing for dinner in the restaurant Zhangshengji. The dishes there are typical Zhejiang style, which is very fresh, using mainly produce from freshwater lakes and rivers (as in the landscape of Zhejiang province), eaten together with the warm, yellow rice wine, representing the typical cooking style of southern China.
During dinner, we shall organize some very important Chinese writers like Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao, the authors of “Will the Boat Sink the Water. The Life of China’s Peasants,” which won them the first prize in the Lettre International award for reportage in 2004. The book was published in Chinese in 2003, and sold 100,000 copies within one month before it was banned. After that, it is said another 10,000,000 illegal copies sold and the enormous pressure that resulted forced the Chinese government to simply cancel all taxes on Chinese peasants in 2008. This should be a very thoughtful dinner.
Day 5: May 14th (Wednesday) - Beijing
Dinner: San Ge Guizhou Ren (Three men from Guizhou Province)
This restaurant is near 798. Its owner is a poet, Dao (meaning knife) who cooks wonderful Guizhou dishes famous for their spicy taste, as well as creating some very special dishes found nowhere else. We will be joined at dinner by a group of artists, poets and intellectuals, with whom we can further discuss the Chinese situation and understanding of the world.
Day 6: May 15th (Thursday) – Yangzhou
Dinner: evening banquet at Heyuan Garden (He Family Garden).
This unimaginably beautiful garden restaurant is NOT open to the public, but by special arrangement, it will open just for us. The best way to enjoy it will be to enter the garden at about 6 p.m., when it is closed to other tourists, then take a walk through the rocks, the lakes, the gardens as a purely private experience, like a home garden.
After that, we shall have Yangzhou cuisine, which I call “the literati's food” in order to be in tune with the poetry and paintings of the intelligentsia, because of its extremely elegant style very light, very delicate, touched with nothing but some salt, just to show off the original flavors of the very fresh ingredients. The salt here is like an ink wash in water, simple but creating many layers of different “colors”, thus you feel are not eating, but looking at highly styled art.
To go with this, local Yangzhou poets, writers, and artists will join us to introduce the city and its history. Some of them can sing beautiful local opera, almost everyone can write very good calligraphy. This place will give you a good look at some very much alive Chinese cultural traditions!
Day 7: May 16th (Friday) - Yangzhou
Dinner: Ye Chun Restaurant (Restaurant of Melting the Spring).
If Yangzhou's food is the literati's food, then Ye Chun might be great art, because it shows how tasty and fresh the food is. The restaurant is located by the ancient canal, very near the “Emperor's pier” where the emperors docked their boats. Yangzhou is to the north of the Yangtze River, thus the dishes are extremely tender and soft, but the drinks are northern – strong with 50% alcohol. So you feel the northern bones hidden inside of the southern flesh, just as it is expressed in the local people.
Day 8: May 17th (Saturday) - Yangzhou
Dinner: Fu Chun Restaurant (Restaurant of Rich Springs).
I call the more than a century-old restaurant Fu Chun “the mountain peak of Chinese cooking.” That means Yangzhou dishes are the highest mountain among the mountains, but Fu Chun is the peak of the mountain. People are surprised at the simple dishes on its menu, not colorful at all. But each dish is rooted in Yangzhou cuisine and can match any challenge from other restaurants. The delicious tastes are tender, fresh, delicate, and very lightly salty – ink wash paintings shown in your mouth – with an extremely exquisite and smooth style. Every dish is a piece of art. Our journey through Yangzhou cuisine reaches its highest point – Fu Chun's own tradition.
Day 9-10 – Yellow Mountains: no special restaurant and no guests
Day 11: May 20th (Tuesday) - Yellow Mountains
Dinner: in Huangshan.
This dinner will be held in a very good restaurant that cooks typical Anhui dishes, We shall invite some local well-known poets, artists, and musicians to join us, and show us their art, music, and calligraphy. Yellow Mountain is famous for the classic cultural traditions of the intelligentsia because the best-known inkstones, rice paper, and inks were produced here. The local artists might show us some extremely valuable antique inkstones that they have collected themselves.
Day 12: May 21st (Wednesday) - Shanghai
Dinner: Nanling restaurant.
Nanling means “actress and actors of southern theater.” The name stems from the fact that it is located in the back yard of the Shanghai Peking Opera house. The restaurant has some very typical Shanghai-style dishes, which were developed from Yangzhou cuisine, but transformed into softer and slightly sweet tastes (Shanghai is farther south than Yangzhou). These dishes go wonderfully with the warm yellow rice wine, creating a musical harmony in your mouth. The softness and tenderness let you know you are in one of the most decadent cities in the world.
There are many poets, artists, and intellectuals living in Shanghai. On the first evening, we could invite Yan Li, a talented poet and painter who has known YL since 1970s. Or perhaps Chen Dongdong, another very good poet, who was sent to prison for almost a year, then composed a wonderful sequence titled “Unbanned Book” (published in Jade Ladder); or Xiao Kaiyu, another talented poet who has been living in Berlin for quite some time and speaks German....etc. They might give you some very first-hand experiences of life and literature in China today.
Day 13: May 22nd (Thursday) - Shanghai
Dinner: restaurant with typical Shanghai dishes
We shall invite more local Shanghai artists, such as Hai Chen, a wonderful contemporary porcelain artist (who has a shop selling her beautiful wares for everyday use), or Jiang Cheng, a well-known film director who has won many international prizes, or Wang Yan and Huang Shuhui, two of the new generation of publishers. They published YL's books and have always used creative means to break through the official restrictions on publications, or Prof. Chen Sihe and Prof. Chen Xiaolan, who teach at Fudan University and the University of Shanghai, so they are very familiar with the state of the Chinese educational system. The dinner will be a brainstorming session on China.
Day 14: May 23rd (Friday): Shanghai
Surprise dinner: a good restaurant with newfound artist friends, or follow their recommendation to some unknown place (like the small but so delicious restaurant named “St Paul's Bar”). You will not be disappointed.
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NOTICE: When we put together the plan for this tour, it was clear that friends of Yang Lian and Yo Yo would be happy to meet with the group, but of course, nobody had a daily diary yet for May 2014.
We will be spending a few evenings each in Beijing, Yangzhou and Shanghai, and will decide shortly before the start of the trip who will be joining us for which evening. It is also possible that one of the guests mentioned here will be unable to come at the last minute. In that case, we will be joined by somebody else, perhaps not listed here. Thus list of artists is not definitive, but rather representative of the people who will be our guests.
