Six weeks ago I was on the Silk Road. This week I was in the Silk Road.
The first was the famous trade route which runs through Kashgar in north-west China; the second a Xinjiang restaurant in Camberwell Green, London.
- At Kashgar’s animal market in Xinjiang six weeks ago
It was probably only a matter of time before I went searching for China life in London.
My friend, also a former Shanghai expat, had heard of a restaurant “run by Chinese students for Chinese students” and so we went there unsure what to expect but secretly hoping it would make us feel ‘at home’, amongst our own.
When we were handed a plastic folder with a poorly translated menu we knew we had struck gold. Tucking into a meal with a ridiculous chilli to meat ratio washed down with tsingtao beer and surrounded by Chinese people and sinophiles we couldn’t have been happier. Hell, we even spoke Chinglish with the fantastic waiting staff. I was amused to hear one of them jokingly recycle a typical prejudice speaking half Chinese, half London: “Wo bu xi huan Shanghai ren. Shanghai ren f*king tight b*stards.” It seems there are more than one or two of us straddling both China and Britain.
Continue reading at Expat Telegraph.