My flatmate was going back to Shantou for the weekend to celebrate his grandfather’s birthday. I didn’t want to laze around alone in Guangzhou either, so I pulled another Tencent colleague along to Shantou for fun.
We arrived Friday night. It was already late when we reached Shantou station, and the station’s sidewalks are anti-human — I suggest taking a taxi directly.
Saturday
We got up too late in the morning and dawdled in the hotel until 11. Our classmate drove over to pick us up for the outing. Originally we were going to Xinghua Wuji beef hotpot for lunch, but then he said his family strongly recommended Yuanye beef hotpot instead. So we all went there.
The shop was fairly old and the pot not big — it felt just like eating hotpot at home. A small dish of shacha sauce is provided, and then you order the beef. Many Shantou shops have no menu; generally you order whatever you see. What differs is the taste of the beef. I think it’s much richer than in Guangzhou. The chest oil (xiongkou you) also looks completely different — the chest oil I ate in Guangzhou had already been boiled into a foamy state, while in Shantou it’s still ordinary freshly-cut meat.
In the afternoon our classmate drove us to Xiao Gongyuan (Little Park).
Actually by noon, after several plates of meat, we were already very full — yet the afternoon eating began again. First we met sugarcane juice and a fruit platter. Sugarcane juice spares you from chewing the cane yourself, though it’s very sweet — maybe extra white sugar was added.
Then we found a guozhi (rice-cake soup) shop; the three of us ordered one braised guozhi. I’d never eaten it before, but the other two both thought it was so-so.
Then we moved on to Magong Temple zongzi balls. Zongzi in March! As a northerner this was my first time eating a pork zongzi. I imagine it’s rice stuffed into pork intestine and boiled — it has the feel of sausage-rice.
Afterwards we reached “Master Zhang Plaza Old-Brand Tofu Pudding & Sweet Soup”, near Shantou’s People’s Square — a few minutes by bike from Little Park. Although the shop is run-down, it’s really crowded, including quite a few older uncles and aunties; even buying tofu pudding requires queuing. It felt like an offline internet-famous little shop.
In the evening our classmate had to attend the birthday banquet, so he dropped us at the hotel on the way and pointed out “Fuyuan” along the road — we could go there for dinner. This shop also has absolutely no menu. Almost all the dishes and seafood are laid out on counters; you need to find a waiter and tell him you want this one and that one to order.
For Shantou prices this place is a bit expensive — the two of us ate about 300 yuan. But there were gains: we got to eat fish rice (yu fan) and raw-marinated crab.
Afterwards we returned to the hotel to lie like corpses — tired and stuffed after a whole day.
The Weekend
Early in the morning (well, not that early — after 9), we got up and went with umbrellas to eat changfen (rice rolls). Shantou has two changfen brands: Jinxin and Sanshenren. We were quite lucky to spot a “Sanshenren Jinxin Changfen Shop”, about a ten-minute walk from the hotel. The flavor of the changfen differs quite a bit from Guangzhou’s, and the dipping sauce is completely different too.
After one plate we went back to keep lying like corpses until 12 (during which I even watched “Love in a Puff” — really, when traveling, book a nicer hotel; watching movies in the hotel when bored is also great). At noon we ate brine hotpot. The hotpot was quite good; we ordered some duck intestine and goose liver. A brine hotpot base was something I’d never eaten — another life experience.
In the afternoon we swung by the Shantou Museum — not many people. I learned that Ma Huateng (Pony Ma) is from Shantou; shallow me finally broadened my knowledge a little.
In the evening, unable to resist my colleague’s insistence, we ordered from the nearby Guiyuan White Porridge, and I finally ate raw-marinated shrimp. After marinating with special ingredients, the shrimp’s flavor is truly unusual. One dissatisfaction: the shrimp weren’t big (if there’s a chance, order shrimp at Fuyuan — they might be bigger). We also ordered some fish rice; although it’s called fish “rice”, essentially it’s still fish. It’s just that after steaming it looks like rice, with very distinct flesh — hence the name fish rice.
After the meal, since we had to catch the train, we took a taxi away immediately.
The trip was March 1-3. Actually I hand-wrote notes on my pad at the time, but didn’t organize them until the end of March — quite lazy of me.