Travels with Jani
I recently had the opportunity to visit the Chinese cities of Xiamen and Taipei back to back. Located across the Taiwan Strait from each other, the cities are very similar in many ways: economically prosperous, around 5 million population, balmy Continue reading
During the summer holidays we drove our Tesla Model 3 from Sydney to Melbourne via the Princes Highway and back via the Hume, about 2500 km all in including various detours. We ve now had the Tesla for a year and this Continue reading
Singapore is the only country in the world where it’s legal to sell “cultivated” (lab-grown) meat for human consumption, and Huber’s Bistro in Singapore is the only restaurant in the world that actually sells the stuff. But you can t just Continue reading
Since early 2020, I ve been hunting down food from every Chinese province, special administrative region and contested island, all on this little red dot we call Singapore. My quest came to an end two weeks ago, and you can find Continue reading
In Singapore, vegetarian Chinese tends to be pretty much synonymous with Buddhist cuisine (斋菜 zhāi cài), which focuses heavily on replicating mainstream Chinese dishes using all sorts of inventive gluten or soy-based substitutes for meat. Many hawker centres have a Continue reading
Hunan, South of [Dongting] Lake , is a large province in central China, the mirror twin of north-of-lake Hubei. It is perhaps best known in the West as the birthplace and initial power base of Chairman Mao, and not surprisingly a Continue reading
Shandong (山东, East of the Mountains ) is a coastal province in northern China known primarily – to uncultured foreign devils like me, at any rate – for its peanuts. And if I really wracked my brains, I might also have Continue reading
Sichuan (Four Rivers), sometimes spelled Szechwan, is in southwestern China and probably second only to Cantonese as the most recognizable style of Chinese cooking in the West. From the US to Japan and India, it s shorthand for spicy , and even Continue reading
Liaoning, Liao Pacified after the Liao River, is the smallest in size but the largest in population of the three provinces that make up northeast China (东北 Dōngběi). Nestled against the Yellow Sea to the south and bordering (North) Korea Continue reading
Qinghai, Blue Sea , seems a singularly inappropriate name for this vast, landlocked, largely arid and barren province in the middle of western China. The name comes from its most famous feature, the strikingly blue Lake Kokonor ( Blue Lake in Mongolian), Continue reading