Malte Timmermann's Blog

I am here the 5th days now, so it's time for a blog with my first impressions about China/Beijing.

Beijing itself is really big, and I didn't expect so much traffic, and Smog. I always thought there would be more bicycles than cars. And it's really very warm here...

The food is really great. I tried a lot of different things right now, and everything was very tasty. It's really different compared to Chines restaurants in Germany - not only the taste, but also the way you eat it. The people here eat everything(!) with chop sticks. With chop sticks, the most difficult things for me right now have been the loin ribs, and the Beijing duck.You don't simply eat the duck, you wrap that with some vegetable and sauce into small pancakes - of course only by using your chop sticks. And if you managed that, try to pick up that roll, which is not very stable, with your chop sticks...

The company (Redflag Chinese 2000) does a really great job with organizing everything for me. Somebody is picking me up every morning, so I find my way. You might think it would be easy to use a taxi and simply drive on your own, but until now none of the taxi drivers knew how exactly to find the company. It's located in a new area in the south of Beijing.

I am giving technical presentations or talks every day, so I think the developers understand a lot of things much better now. Too bad that a lot of information can't be found on the OpenOffice.org site, because it's only in the head of our developers...

Comments:

I used to like a dish that consisted of bacon fat and green beans. Many of the restaurants didn't have heat or indoor seating, and one was just a big steel drum outside in which the chef fried his noodles, so in the winter we needed all the calories we could get to keep warm! But it was so delicious.

Posted by Benjamin on July 27, 2007 at 05:17 PM CEST #

Malte,
I envy you for your experience. You are right, Chinese restaurants in Europe or the US are usually limited to a couple of regions and only the most popular dishes. I have resorted here in Boston to go with Chinese friends, who can ask and get the extended menu in Chinese language. Then they get it prepared to specification and that is really a revelation.

China is a huge country and so it has many, many regional cooking styles, just like Schweinshaxe in Bavaria, Rollmops in Hamburg, Speatzle mit Linsen in Swabien oder Kasseler Rippchen in Hesse.

Enjoy your time!

Posted by Kaj Kandler on July 28, 2007 at 02:54 PM CEST #



Malte Timmermann's Blog Malte about some of his work at Sun Microsystems, Inc.