Pancake Soup and Tang Paradise

One thing I’ve learned in China is to never expect what you want. We were told we were eating pancake soup, but our dreams of Western pancakes swimming in maple syrup with fresh fruit floating on top were far from the truth. Probably a good thing, too. This specialty dish was amazing. You start by taking this dense, undercooked bread, shaped round like a pancake, and ripping it into tiny little pieces in your own bowl. We were so hungry by this step that we ate the bread. Pretty tasteless, but it was the only thing on the table. After our teacher saw us chowing down on the bread, she told us we would all get sick because the undercooked bread would expand in our stomachs. That turned out to be false, but we stopped eating the bread and waited for our soup. The waitresses take your bowl of bread pieces and go fill it up with lamb soup. Then, you add your own spices and cilantro. It was one of my favorite meals we have had in China so far, and that could be because of the cilantro.

Our next stop was a reconstructed Tang Dynasty palace. Not much of the architecture was actually antique, but it was absolutely beautiful with the landscaping and gardens to wander through.


Before we left, they had a water and light show on one of the man-made lakes. They play an epic cartoon movie on the wall of mist they shoot up out of the lake. The main character—the Chinese equivalent of Mickey Mouse—was an orange jack-a-loupe who helped three soldiers defeat a creepy witch woman. The effects they created with water and lights were really amazing. I’d never seen anything like it.