Having arrived in Shanghai, I was told that I MUST visit the world’s best xiaolongbao restaurant in Shanghai.   Most likely true, since Xiaolongbao was invented in Shanghai.

So, the best xiaolongbao restaurant in Shanghai is located in the Medieval Yu Yuan Garden,  right smack in the middle of big city Shanghai – and it’s called the Nanxiang Mantou Dian.  You can’t miss it if you visit the garden.  The line up is always long.

Yu Yuan Garden was first established in 1559 as a private garden built by a son ( a Minister of Finance) during the Ming Dynasty to please his father.   This son is very very rich, to build such a huge place.  The setting is simply uncomparable.  Photo below shows Yu Yuan Pavilions, where the restaurant is located.

There was the lineup at the entrance, then there is the wait at the restaurant. 

If you have not tried Xiaolongbao before, you need a lesson.

HOW TO EAT XIAOLONGBAO:

1.  Firstly bite a small hole.  a very teeny little hole, since you don’t want to waste any juice.
2.  Secondly, suck the juice s-l-o-w-l-y.  Remember, it is BOILING HOT.
3.  Then,  dip it with the vinegar and take a small bite, savour slowly. The juice is the most delicious part of Shanghai Xiaolongbao. The stuffing of Xiaolongbao is the main part. It can be shrimp, crab, pork, chicken, beef, vegetables and any combination of each ingredients.

So, when I get back to Canada, I will stop by T & T and get some Xiaolongbao.

Related articles:
1. The making of Xiaolongbao at the Nanxiang Mantou Dian restaurant

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This is part 2 of my Hangzhou travel.  Read Part 1 about my Marco Experience

Hangzhou is the romantic capital of China, and all along the West Lake, couples, young and old, hold hands as they strolled along the lakeshore.  There are no private homes along the lake, the entire lake shore is accessible to everyone.

The West Lake is the setting of many ancient landscape paintings, poetry and calligraphy.  I would like to share one of my favorite childhood folk tales set on the West Lake of Hangzhou – the Leifeng Pagoda made famous by the Legend of the White Snake, also known as Madame White Serpent set in the Soong Dynasty.  The story has been made into movies, TV series, animation and operas.   The White Snake is supposedly held captive at the Leifeng Pagoda until she was rescued by her husband.

Leifeng Pagoda  is a five story tall tower with eight sides, located on Sunset Hill south of the West Lake in Hangzhou. Originally constructed in the year AD 975, it collapsed in 1924 but was rebuilt in 2002, since then it has been a popular tourist attraction.

Here is an ancient painting of the West Lake of Hangzhou:

And here we are on a boat ride on the West Lake of Hangzhou:

The basic story line of the White Snake Legend is this:
The White Snake is a 1,000 year old spirit whose attempt at becoming a goddess failed, and is thus trapped in the spirit world, not quite a goddess, not a human, yet is immortal and has magical powers.    She took the form of a human and seduced a young scholar who, unaware of the White Snake’s true form, married her.

A monk intervened in order to save the scholar’s soul and casts the white snake into a deep well at the Leifeng Pagoda.  Over the centuries the story has evolved from horror story to romance with the scholar and the white snake-woman genuinely in love with one another, but such a relationship is forbidden by the laws of Heaven.  A favorite ending for this love story is that the scholar eventually went and rescued the White Snake from captivity.

Here is a video clip of the movie with English subtitles (in this clip, the white snake seduces the young innocent scholar. Note the beautiful misty setting of the west lake:

There have also been variations on the telling of the story: like the scholar adopting the white snake as a pet while still a schoolboy; or himself being banished from Heaven and becoming a mere human on Earth.

An added character is a green snake who has also been turned into a woman and serves as the white snake-woman’s soul sister and confidante.

Related Articles:
1.  West Lake Impressions – Live Musical performed on West Lake directed by Zhang Zimou
1. A Chinese Opera on a Love Story between a Human and a Snake

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For the next two weeks, I will take a break from “business speak” and take you with me on my travels.  First stop is Hangzhou, the famous city that Marco Polo visited during the late 13th century.  Marco Polo was so enchanted with Hangzhou that he proclaimed it to be the “most beautiful and magnificent city in the whole world.”  Below is a painting of the place by a French artist circa 1412.  This is of course, an European imagined Hangzhou based on Marco Polo’s writings and description.

an ancient European painting of the lagoon city of Hangzhou circa 1412

According to Marco Polo, Hangzhou is -“without doubt the finest and most splendid city the world… there are said to be 13,000 bridges, mostly of stone… vast are the numbers of those accustomed to dainty living, to the point of eating fish and meat at one meal.”

Hangzhou in the 13th century, was the capital of the Soong Dynasty, (1127-1279), and the world’s most prosperous city.  152 years of peace and prosperity during the Soong Dynasty resulted in a wealth of poetry, calligraphy and painting from the era.    So here I am, reading Marco Polo’s journal and visiting Hangzhou.

I took this photo of a boat on West Lake.  Boats of all types sail on the West Lake.  Most of the boats are still of the ancient types.  Large ones ferry passengers from three points of the lake.  There are also several paddle boats for hire.    On West Lake, Marco Pole wrote: “On one side it skirts the city… and commands a distant view of all its grandeur and loveliness, its temples, monasteries, and gardens with their towering trees, running down to the water’s edge. On the lake itself is the endless procession of barges thronged with pleasure-seekers… their minds and thoughts are intent upon nothing but bodily pleasures and the delights of society.”

Any photographs taken of the famous West Lake of Hangzhou at any angle is simply postcard pretty.   There is so much history behind West Lake such that I will have to tackle this another day.  Below is an aerial photograph of modern Hangzhou and you can see that there is plenty of greenery for such a populous city in China.  A great park within a modern city.

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For the budget conscious entrepreneur, here are some free online tools that are quite powerful and useful. They can be used for email broadcast, communication/marketing, file storage, document creation (word processing, spreadsheet), social media.

1. Prezi – www.prezi.com – an alternative to Powerpoint presentation software. Free. A zooming presentation editing software. Great way to create stunning presentation.

2. Mailchimp – www.mailchimp.com – send up to 3,000 emails a month to as many as 500 subscribers for free. There is a tutorial that explains how to use the software. Choose from several ready made templates.

3. LinkedIn – www.linkedin.com – LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of 2010 , LinkedIn had more than 65 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. The site is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. Registration is free.

4. Dropbox – www.dropbox.com – Dropbox is an easy way to store, sync, and, share files online. Simply drop your file to an internet folder, which can be accessed by other computers. you can invite people to view private files in a public folder accessible by anyone who knows the address. Great for working and transferring files with clients.

5. Open Office – www.openoffice.org – an alternative to Google Docs or Microsoft Office. You can download free software that you can use for word processing and spreadsheet. Easy to install.

6. Hootsuite – www.hootsuite.com – Using one dashboard, the user can measure, monitor and post to social media including Twitter, Facebook and Linked In. Great for marketing communications and customer engagement.

7. Ping.fm – www.ping.fm – Ping.fm is a free social networking and micro-blogging web service that enables users to post to multiple social networks simultaneously. Making an update on Ping.fm pushes the update to a number of different social websites at once. This allows individuals using multiple social networks to update their status only once, without having to update it in all their social media individually. Ping.fm groups services into three categories – status updates, blogs, and micro-blogs – and updates can be sent to each group separately.

8. Google Docs – www.docs-google.com – a free web-based word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and form application software by Google.com. Free storage of up to 1 gB of data. Documents can be shared, opened and edited by multiple users at the same time.

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This is an interesting slideshow on the the New Entrepreneur of the Year 2010 and beyond. It is based on US statistics, but if you work with the ratio of 1 Canadian to every 10 Americans, you’ll get the approximate numbers. The percentage works out the same.

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