The chairman’s place
(Interior of ‘Chairman Mao’s’: Suzhou, China)
There are some things I never expected to find in China; a themed restaurant serving a selection of Mao ZeDong’s favourite dishes being one of them. As we walked up to the entranceway, festooned with lanterns, along with a faint red glow emanating from the interior were the sounds of communist chants and songs filtering into the street. Upon crossing the threshold, the big man himself looms into view as an enormous mural on the wall, and a set of wooden stairs appear on the right – that’s all. It was at this point that Ying and I exchanged glances – instinctively it was as if we knew this place would be more condensed and outrageous upstairs and that we might not be able to make an exit from the first floor if we had made a gross error of judgment coming there at all.
Despite our slight misgivings about how politically correct this meal might be, we giggled our way up the stairs (it felt quite naughty) to reveal an expansive Spartan room filled with simple wooden furniture, such as Mr Mao might have been used to in his youth – growing up as the son of a peasant farmer (for want of a better description). We were led into a room by a smart man wearing heavy boots and a tailored military style jacket. The room, as you can see, was also very light on furnishing and décor, aside from a picture of Lenin on this wall and the Chairman on the other. Aside from the jazzy 1950s wallpaper in gold and red on alternate walls, the room was bare and simply furnished. The menu arrived, mercifully with pictures. We were recommended several dishes by the red-jacketed waitress; honey and cashew ribs, tofu soup with needle mushrooms, beef with chili and vegetables, steamed pumpkin. The food was really very tasty and the novelty of the restaurant itself was enough to tempt us back again. Perhaps my family would like to see it next week… Only six more days ‘till they arrive in Shanghai – watch this space!
By the way, just to introduce you to a couple of changes in ‘china meets rosie’; you might notice that the ‘search’ field has been moved to the top right hand part of this page – you can search any word and a selection of posts should come up relating to that word. Also, if you click ‘archive’ just next to that, you will notice it has had a complete renovation and re-vamp. Now you can see every single image I have ever posted, all on the one page! Hooray! My very good friend Simon has done a stellar job on it and it looks very fancy indeed! Many many thanks to him for making ‘china meets rosie’ look smashing. Enjoy!
Hope one and all had a Happy Easter and/or a successful Tomb sweeping Festival (yesterday).
Hi Rosie and Ying,
Chairman Mao also offers chinese cooking lessons on Saturday afternoons around 2pm. Wouldn’t that be fun? Just wait, until we’re back in Suzhou, could be a very nice Saturday afternoon entertainment….
wow, that wasn’t long before you visited there – and you enjoyed as I see
Cheers
Stephan