You have to pray before eating street food

The second day of our trip to Nanjing, we ended up at a Lantern Festival. We had planned to do some sightseeing and touristy stuff, but when we asked the taxi driver to take us to the Confucius Temple, he dropped us off at the Lantern Festival instead and insisted that it was where we wanted to be… Little did we know, it is actually where we wanted to be – the temple was just tucked away behind the festival.

Anyway, so the festival was interesting. It was mostly market shopping and a ton of street food. This was where I learned the fine art of bargaining and bought my first pair of Nike tennis shoes, along with a couple shirts, sweatshirts and some light put bunny ears (for the new year celebration, of course). Some people are fun to barter with because they are really friendly and happy, and very willing to negotiate. They always know just what to say… so pretty; beautiful lady; your best price. And even thought we don’t speak the same language and most of the communication is done via a calculator, there is a mutual respect for the positions. On the other hand, there are also the jack asses that hike up the price and are rude about bargaining. That is when I walk away and say, “Eff you!”

The other highlight of the festival was the street food. I must admit that it definitely looks interesting and sometimes is smells delicious but I am just not brave enough yet. Some people say that they come to China just for the street food, and the Courtney’s absolutely love it. I am sure that is probably is fabulous if you can get past the fact that the raw meat is sitting out all day, and that they cook with their bare hands (before and after dealing with money), and that once the food is cooked, it just sits there in the open until someone buys it. There are many things about the health and safety of the process which disturbs me, but if you can get past that… maybe it is edible.

Street food is everywhere and they have just about anything that you can imagine – fruits, veggies, squid legs, octopus, chicken heads, dumplings, beef on a stick, eggs, sushi, rice, noodles and lots of fried things. Sometime these people are set up in a stand where they cook the food on a large flat top, or fry it in a fryer, and have all the food laid out cooked to choose from. On the other hand, sometimes people pull raw meat out of their dirty van and cook it on a grill right on the sidewalk.

The Courtneys absolutely love street food, and they ate a ton of it at the festival, and there were even a couple things that I tried…  dough ball stuffed with red beans, sticky fruit on a stick (sooo delicious), fried dough on a stick, egg role, fried noodles, and quail eggs. The Courtneys also ate squid legs, beef on a stick, dumplings, chicken, and Nian Gou (I don’t know what this is but it was a really weird texture but it looked like potatoes). Each time we would try some street food, L would say a little prayer because everyone knows you have to pray before eating street food – honestly.

Let me tell you about STINKY TOFU… it is the most disgusting thing that I have ever encountered in my entire life. There is a reason it is called stinky tofu – because it is repulsive. Stinky Tofu is old, fermented tofu soaked in vinegar, and then it is fried. It smells like the worse combination of the most disgusting smells all rolled into one – like a farm, sour milk, rotten cheese, vomit, burning rubber and vinegar. The Courtneys don’t think it smells that bad or perhaps they are used to it by now, but I can smell it from miles away and it makes me sick to my stomach. I am pretty sure that stinky tofu is the only thing served in hell. I cannot imagine why anyone would want to eat something that smells so awful!

Sorry about that rant… anyway, so after we ate our way through the market, we finally made it to the Confucius Temple. That was pretty neat. It was really decorated for the holiday and there were a ton of lights to see. The temple itself was really beautiful and there was a lot of interesting history and traditions behind it, however, I feel like most of the spiritual aspect was lost for me. It was unfortunate that a lot of the information was not translated into English so we could not read about everything. Additionally, some of the customs were lost. There was a large bowl of water that people were throwing coins into. At the bottom of the bowl there were Chinese symbols that (it appeared) people were trying to get their coin to land on. We also threw coins into the bowl, but we don’t really know why. Overall, it was really interesting to see all of the artifacts at the temple.

That night, we tried to give Nanjing nightlife another shot. We had heard about another area that was supposed to be really lively, fun and a large expat area called Shanghai Lu so we headed in that direction. Turns out Shanghai Lu was an even bigger bust than 1912! We found only one restaurant/bar open along the entire street. We went in and had dinner and drink, but we called it a night early after three creepy expats invited themselves over to our table.