I ate huge amounts of delicious food for so little money. You can go out with two friends and order plenty of food and beer and pay around £8 altogether. I only cooked one meal whilst I was there and ate out for the rest of it.
Some more weird things I saw included a newsagents type shop where on the counter where all the gum was, was a clear bag with water and boiled eggs! I found that hilarious and bizarre. Also a lot of the shops have pet cats, in restaurants, greengrocers or even clothes shops there would be a tiny little cat usually sleeping in a corner somewhere.
I saw lots of unusual flavour combinations such as tea boiled eggs, "refreshing" kiwi crisps and so many different flavours of pocky I wanted to try them all. I tried my first dragon fruit for about 30p as well as wax berries.
I saw the famous century egg and pig snout or duck beak, boiled and on a stick and also the equally revolting balut and also fish being decapitated so its sold fresh, the separated head still gaping for air.
One restaurant in Hangzhou had the funniest menu I've ever seen including one dish called 'print hot spice plant belly movie' and another 'sauce explodes the pig does'.
The food I ate the most whilst I was there was silky braised aubergines they were just amazing I've tried to get them back in England but they are not the same.
The street food in amazing all over China. You can get tiny sticks of barbecued lamb and fish for 10p. For breakfast once we went to a lady who made incredible pancakes, she'd clearly been doing it for years.
Another delicious food over there is at KFC oddly enough. They have these Portuguese egg custards which are seriously one of the nicest desserts I've ever had. Its probably for the best that they don't sell them over here...
I went on a 24 hour long train ride with bunk beds and people eating weird vacuum packed chicken leg and boiled eggs and noodle cups. The toilets smelt so bad I ate and drank minimum so I wouldn't have to use them. It was worth it to see the terracotta warriors in Xi'an though.
My last night was spent dining out in one of Shanghai's more expensive restaurants which was still cheap by England's standards followed by a walk by the river and then the best cocktails I've ever had in an expensive bar with the most incredible view of the shanghai skyline.
