We were treated to lunch and dinner banquets whilst in Yixing, the most impressive being the 1st dinner banquet the night that we arrived. It was huge with tons of people, loads of food, and performances and speeches up on stage. I was especially eager to see what a traditional banquet would be like in Yixing, and we were really pleased to be able to try out lots of new food at each meal and make some new friends. We were especially delighted with the French wine that they served at our table.. so much so we insisted a bottle was left at our table, hah!

I do wish that we’d had a change to go to the hole-in-the-wall type places, but it was impossible since a government sponsored event would never have their guests eat at such low-brow places 😛 So our meals were all at fancy restaurants and hotel restaurants. It also meant that we ate Chinese food for every meal, which was really good… but the first chance we got, we ran out to KFC and stuffed our faces with fried chicken. Heh!

The banquet hall

Hurray for great French wine!

Taking pics cos the food took ages to come out

Selection of cold appetizers

Soup with unidentified stuff inside (I think it was intestines)
which I avoided, but the soup itself was fantastic!

Shrimps

Someone told me it was “like a small wild chicken” so I just ate it.
It was really good.. kinda like KFC 😛

Dark purple Japanese sweet potatoes. Man these were gooooooood!

Pan-fried dumplings

Bamboo shoots, I think? Didn’t have any

Tofu and mushrooms – tasted way better than it looked

Some sort of veg with mince pork

Thin beef slices in Sichuan sauce. The best dish of the night!

Steamed fish

Pumpkin rice/congee. Really didn’t like this….

Something called “white carrot”. I have no idea what that is,
but it tasted great – full of flavour and all tender

A big pot of soup

Video of a German guy singing FLUENTLY in Chinese. Impressed!

(link for China visitors)

Video of a guy playing the “erhu”, a Chinese instrument with just 2 strings.

(link for China visitors)