Nanxincanging - the further adventures of the CP team

Later someone said it was R's idea anyway, so if she got wet, well.....

R gets wet

But more of that later.

It's been May holiday here in China, and for a while now The Boss has been laying plans for a team outing to the seaside. The Boss had found a number of good excuses for this jaunt, being

(a) take Beachhutman for seafood

(b) A team building day

(c) Beachhutman wanted to buy a birding scope for his new home in Spain.

(d) It's May holiday anyway! 

So at the crack of eight o'clock BHM, V, (and R who came for the day on our traditional "friends and partners included" basis) assembled on a street corner at my local - depressingly - KFC. It later transpired that The Boss had been up since a dreadfully early hour, gone off and borrowed the people mover, then collected R2 and J and D, and negotated the early morning hell of Chaoyang Beilu. So while The Boss had his nicotine intake, we arranged ourselves for the journey.

V, R, R2, and D (hidden) wait to get aboard outside KFC

Then off we went in the misty morn to TianJin, by way of the 4th Ring east road and the Jingjintang Expressway. In the early morning mist it was easy to see why this is known as something of a death road, over a hundred kilometers of dual lane road with very heavy traffic, much of it either full of badly maintained lorries (often stopped in dangerous places for roadside repairs) or private cars whose drivers are entirely unfamiliar with the concept of staying in a lane, or with indicating their intentions.

A clear stretch of the Jingjintang expressway

But despite some scares for me in the front (see comments above, and I am a rotten passenger) we arrived in Tianjin safely and well at about 10.00, and navigated the former Wellington road (now HeBei Lu - Tianjin was one of the Chinese territories the British once "borrowed") to park near the station in a salubrious not-actually-a-car-park under the expressway. And off we jolly well went to find the legerndary Yanghuo Shichang ("smuggled goods" - once, now a sort of "free trade area" ) market.

I'm not sure what the horseman is all about !

Oh what fun!

As it happened locating and buying a birding scope for Beachhutman was easy and accomplished early, and I am now the very happy owner of a prismatic 23 - 66 zoom scope with a 600mm objective and a tripod. Oh, I may have paid a tad too much, because the shop owner was subsequently seen very happily entering the seafood restaurant near the market..... presumably with my cash in his pocket. But I felt it was a damn good bargain, so what the hell.

Anyway, from then on the fun continued. With a lot of help and the amazing bargaining skills of The Boss and our R, I acquired a genuine Longines watch and one for my daughter, then on a whim two genuine Nike watches (one each) and three genuine Loius Vuitton key and change purses, and The Boss acquired a fine African pig (a model, if we can't have a microwave in the office, we damn well can't have a pig).

Then we all assembled at the exit for a group photo.

We wandered along the road, and D and J bought us seafood snacks on sticks (thanks you two, very yummy) except R, who had a veggie ice cream. And I upset almost a whole display of genuine scents and colognes, and felt so guilty I had to buy a bottle of Genuine Hugo Boos man cologne to make amends.

I must say I liked Tianjin. It had none of the frenetic hustle of Beijing - compared to Silk Street in Beijing the market in Tianjin was an oasis of calm and silence. But time was limited, not least by the planned LUNCH. So we strolled to the restaurant, past among other things, street sellers with the most fabulous displays of dried and preserved seafoods:

Dried seafood stall

Boxes of dried shrimps

I loved these silver fish, but resised buying one

And less formally, wonderful displays of early peaches:

Note the scales - universal kit for street sellers, and the spray to keep the fruit looking good

And so to lunch. We had to wait a while, so R texted her friends:

R2 looks sort of hungry......

And The Boss and BHM sort of hung around. But then we were called.

There isn't a menu. Or there doesn't seem to be. There is a fish shop. Basically, you select what you want to eat, go up to your table, and wait.

For assorted seafood

Selection of shellfish...

Assorted fresh fish .....

Giant clams....

I estimated these giant mussels at at six inches long..

All of which became, amongst other dishes:

I'd eaten these before I remembered to take a picture!

We also consumed king crabs, jellyfish ( It's not "interesting") with cabbage, prawns and lychees, baby squids, assorted vegetables, baby crayfish, and many,` many  beers. A fabulous meal.

After lunch, it was raining. We made it back to the car, where we sat out (or snoozed through) a collossal downpour. I tried to lighten the tone with a couple of tracks from the mobile with references to rain. No comment.

Thirty minutes later we were off to find someone to look at the suspect rear tyre. Then part four of the adventure. We went off up the coast to find "the seaside", me going on about ice cream, sand, sunshine, and donkey rides. It was uinfortunately a filthy wet afternoon, and the roads north of town are currently a total mud bath, a construction site of enormous proportions, a disaster. There are mud traps, potholes, floods, diversions, and chaos. And it was raining. 

The goal was the Aircraft Carrier Theme park north of the city, where the old Russian carrier Keiv is docked, and they are building a somewhat militaristic theme park, and trying to sell desirable apartments. Hmm.

Which is where we all sat in the car, and R ran off to see if it was worth us getting wet for, and we decided it wasn't, and then we all called it a day and headed back to Beijing. On the way I attempted to entice the gang into a truckers' buffet, which looked jolly good to me, but everyone there stared at us ("I guess they can tell you're from Beijing" said the only European in the group) and the general feeling was.......... "not tonight".

We were all pretty tired at the end of the day, especially The Boss who had carried the main load of driving us safely to and from Tianjin, and we parted to our respective abodes about 10.30 by cabs and subways. Next time - and I want there to be a next time - I suggested we do the trip by train. I think The Boss nodded.

But is WAS a damn good outing. 

(PS. The Genuine Longines watch stopped working about 23 hours after I bought it. But as I said to The Boss, anyone can wear a watch that works, it takes real style to wear one that doesn't!)