A gastronomic reprieve

After the sea-cucumber (a giant slimy sea slug), oysters, deep fried ice-cream and abalone soup among other unidentifiable foodstuffs last night we are settling into our new hostel in Xi'an with a lasagne and spaghetti bolognese eaten off a fork - thank goodness for backpackers.
Having said that I think our ordering of food is improving. We've had a few interesting meals turn up courtesy of the English translation of Chinese menus - tripe instead of 'sausage', fruit salad instead of 'cake', and green ice cream when I thought I'd ordered pink. And our handling of chopsticks is getting there too. This is great for the laundry situation as you get fed up with washing those greasy spots off your clothes when you flick the noodles by mistake or drop a scoop of rice in your lap, not that it would be a big scoop from a pair of chopsticks. Can you believe China gets through 45 billion every year.
In Xi'an we have rejoined the tourist trail. Harbin wasn't exactly the most popular tourist destination - we enjoyed being in a definite minority and only saw a total of about 10 non-Asian people all week and they were probably Russians. We have discovered here in North-east China that Russia appears to be considered part of 'Europe'. We even visited a Russian coffee house just to feel 'at home'...... We loved Harbin though for all its fumes and traffic. The markets were incredible. Yesterday we explored our local market areas - a wonderful mixture of the most delicious fruit and veg, clothes, hot street food (30p for a large rice and veg takeaway wrapped in a lettuce leaf), plastics, bicycle repairs, carpets, bedding. At one point we strayed into a 'mall' - not the upmarket type - about the size of the big Asda in Taunton but on 2 floors - and it was filled with groups of women making duvets and pillows and all sorts of bedding. Not just selling them, but layering the fleece and stitching the covers on. You could choose whatever size and thickness you wanted. The next 'mall' was divided into hundreds of tiny units - each one containing a workbench, a dressmaker and an old treadle sewing machine - just like my grandmothers antique one I used once to make some curtains. And they are producing the quality of clothes we would buy in M&S. We are filled with admiration for these hardworking people.
Lasagne finished, and we are fortified to explore Xi'an and the terracotta warriors...