4.1.16

Ancient City of Yanguan in Haining ....

This is the first time I heard about Haining, which is a city located in between Shanghai and Hangzhou. We went to Haining after a day and night stop-over at Yiwu, which is another city I never heard of , till I joined this trip, though I have heard of Suzhou, Hangzhou, Nanjing and etc. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of our trip to Haining was the visit to the ancient city of Yanguan, as well as our DIY shopping at night in the city where our hotel is conveniently located at the shopping belt. Coming back to the Yanguan Ancient City, I always hope to visit those ancient houses with a canal in between, where I always saw it in those wuxia Chinese dramas. Well, I have my wishes fulfilled! It's so nice to see so many beautiful places over there, amid the cold weather. Well, the weather was very cold during these few days where it swing from 3 celcius to 8 celsius, but I love it! It's even nice to walk at the open pathways in the ancient city.

The entrance to the city, which is a fort. I climbed up to the fort and had good view around.


I am captivated by the ancient houses, which is as though I traveled back in time or I was at those filming sets 
Another view of the walking path. Those concrete blocks are so sturdy!

A picturesque view except 'bomb' by one of my tour fellow :) 

The river that I mentioned. What I understand is that during in the old days, the river served as a transportation line.
We also checked out the interior of one of the houses, which was maintained for historical and educational purpose. We also needed to pay to enter.

An intrinsic carvings of one of the entrance

The seats of the hosts

Not sure what is this, probably a decorative item?

Seats for guests

Another hall in the inner section of a house

A stage 
Another interesting one is an ancient brothel, where a 2008 Chinese drama, The Duke and  The Cauldron was filmed here. I did watch that serial back then!

The entrance to the ancient brothel

Drawings of ancient ladies 

A room in the brothel
Here's a view from the top of the fort, where I climbed up when leaving the city. Should have ask the lady to turn around...hahaha

A view from the fort

Another view from the fort showing trees besides the river
 Oh.. We also had our lunch at the ancient city and it's an healthy lunch as we ate mostly veggies except for one or two meats, where I enjoyed the pork braised meat a lot!

'Ma Lak' tofu or Spicy tofu.... good for the cold weather

Can't remember this dish ... err.. pork with yam or radish .. I ate too much there! hahaha...

Braised Pork meat ...yummy

Cauliflowers

Another veggie... I can't recognised this one too

Yes, veggie again ...

And more veggies....
We head off to the hotel for our DIY shopping at night later. And, again, I love the cold weather especially at night ... muahahahaha!

Have a great week!

31 comments:

  1. Food looks familiar, similar to what we can get here.

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    1. Yup , it looks very similar. I guess it was carried over from our ancestors to here.

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  2. DIY shopping? So many veggies, I scared! LoL!

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    1. Sigh .. They actually ate a lot of veggies , maybe it's cheaper but also fresher and nice. I didn't post the diy shopping here , later la... Hahaha

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  3. Beautiful place! It looks like the set of an old period Chinese movie! :)

    The first pork dish looks nice too.

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    1. Yes , indeed ! I felt like as though I was in s film set!

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  4. Really like in the period drama. I never heard of Haining too.

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    1. Yeah lor ... And they did have filming there !

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  5. The unrecognised veggie looked like fish maw

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  6. Sounds like a fun place to explore!

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    1. It's great to see such a place which has existed so long ago !

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  7. I love that brothel you visited and you should have posed lying on the opium beds! You make a good hamsap actor if they recruit you for the Part 2 drama series. I am surprised that they charge a fee to tour inside too. Some places in China allows free entrance and they were huge mansions while some desperate ones would charge for maintenance.
    The braised pork looks yummy and the cauliflower is my top favourite vegetables.

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    1. Lol.. We are not allowed to go in to the room, can only see from outside else I don't mind trying the bed ... Hahaha.... But then you dunno who have slept there aeons ago!

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  8. I don't think i visited this place years back when i went to Hangzhou...

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  9. The ancient rooms look scary to me LOL! But the scenery outside is really beautiful. The food looks not bad lah, got oink oink to eat :D

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  10. Wah. Seems like you almost had the place all to yourselves.

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    1. No la , there are a lot of folks but I took those empty lanes.

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  11. What a lovely view.......hm....the first few pic reminds memofbthe kungfu movies. Hahaha

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  12. HAPPY NEW YEAR, hope you enjoyed your new year's day (without missing too much about your Jiangnan trip), but most importantly, a wonderful and exciting new year 2016 to you and your family!! and oh, hope you have already get rid of your phobia to take flights, and you will have more overseas trip in the new year :)

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  13. I think TM will like this post a lot because it seems he like China a lot, love the food you showed here, is that a mirror in picture #8, looks like the mirror where Sadako will appear, muahaha

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    1. Yes, TM seems to comment my posts with lots of enthusiasm.I got a few more posts to go.

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    2. Oh, yeah, in fact I felt a sense of creepiness when looking at the mirror!!

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  14. indeed very beautiful place.. i have not been to Haining, Yanguan and Yiwu before.. i've heard of Haining and Yiwu from Baobao online shopping though, hahaha!! but i have to google Yanguan and got to know that it's name in Chinese is 盐官, so they have lots of salt there?? hehehe.. love all those picturesque scenery you posted, and yes, some of them really remind me of those dramas set in the ancient time.. :)

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    1. hahaha..Don't think it's famous for salt there but Hai actually means sea and Ning meant calm... go and wiki it. LOL

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  15. wah, so many dishes for your meals.. i think this is one advantage of joining a packaged group tour, if DIY sure will be more watchful on the budget, hahaha.. so how many calories have you taken in every meal?? i supposed you didn't work out and didn't run during your trip huh?? hehe, but nvm lah, once in a bluemoon, and i guess you actually burned more calories because there were lots of walking done, in addition, the weather was cold.. did not gain any weight going back home?? :p

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    1. Yes, that's the advantage of tours I believe. They served almost 9-10 dishes, though not all are good and mostly veggies but it did save me a lot!

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