This past Friday marked the spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, signalling the astronomical start of spring and a shift towards warmer weather and increasing daylight. I've already been made fully aware of the latter over the past week as birds have begun twittering incessantly on my bedroom windowsill around 5am, as per my previous post.
Having slept in, and finally gotten up at an extremely unproductive hour, while contemplating whether I really did need last night’s Negroni, I decided that a trip downtown was on the cards. Being a Sunday, the Didi taxi journey wasn’t nearly as long as I’d anticipated - passing Yunlong Lake only took 15 minutes and then it was smooth sailing to Suning Plaza, currently the location of the tallest building here, and the unofficial centre of Xuzhou. I arrived mid-afternoon, and after a quick snoop inside at Uniqlo, I walked north for a block, my mind closed in on having a Beijing Duck Pizza. Battling the Sunday crowds as I crossed the road towards the famous food arcade, I immediately found myself at a festival - the Xuzhou Burger Festival
There must have been at least 20 yellow pop-up stalls representing all the burger establishments in the city - most I’d never heard of as the Golden Arches is my go-to. I wandered around looking at the giant placards featuring all manner of deconstructed triple cheeseburgers and chatting to a couple of friendly vendors along the way. A few of the places were quite busy with long queues, but most were empty. There were lots of wacky names including Orange Burger, Mobile Burger, Lazy Burger, Fortune Burger, Mongolian Mushroom, Bobo, and Mangy Dog, which apparently hails from Wuhan. I settled on a Hawaiian Burger from Missu Burger, as it didn’t look so big and therefore probably easy to hold. It was made within minutes, right in front of me.
Clutching my burger, I hurried back to the front of the festival area and found the group of girls dressed in burger costumes who had walked past moments earlier as my burger was being grilled. They were now doing a burger dance routine. I watched them for a minute then found a place to eat. All-in-all it was a good, solid burger, with fresh ingredients - crisp lettuce, tomato, a thick slice of pineapple, juicy patty, a very good bun, and was a decent size, not too big or small. The only thing lacking was any kind of sauce or relish - maybe they forgot? Nonetheless, I was satisfied overall even if it did cost 46RMB!
The sun definitely had warmth as I walked the ten minutes to my new favourite coffee shop, a kind of chill oasis away from the hustle and bustle and whose owner roasts the coffee beans herself. A cappuccino and friendly banter later, I strolled to Fushun Lu, Xuzhou’s big food street, and discovered the location of a sandwich shop I’d heard about last year, before I continued walking south. The roast duck stores weren’t busy at this hour - normally on Sundays they have long lines of punters waiting outside little shops with shiny dark orange ducks piled high on tables out the front. I sampled some mala duck at one, before purchasing a nice almond croissant from a little bakery cafe nearby happy that they still had items left.
Xuzhou used to be known as Peng Cheng back in the day and it has an open square with this namesake amidst all the construction around Suning Plaza. It also happened to be nearby, so I crossed it for the first time, then found a Hello Bike electric scooter and rode home, belly full of burger, croissant in my bag, weaving past the traffic congestion by the lake, enjoying the late afternoon vistas of the low-lying sun on the water with the mountain backdrop, and the scent of blossoms everywhere. A good end to the week!
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