Southern Summers and Northern Winters Episode 13 Transcript

Anders
00:17 – 00:17
Hello?

Anders
00:19 – 00:20
Hello, Mark, can you hear me!

Mark
00:20 – 00:46
 I can hear you. Hi, Willow! Okay. I don’t know how it’ll sound because I obviously can’t put my headphones on or I can’t share it between two of us. So I can hear you okay. So it should be all right. That’s fine. That’s fine. Great. Great to see you both. And thanks for taking the time. No, that’s all right. We’ll just have to share this microphone because obviously I don’t know also how to hook up two microphones. So I’ll be like.

Anders
00:50 – 01:10
So that arm comes in handy now. Yes. Well, good to see you. Let’s jump right into it then, because we haven’t been talking for one and a half weeks, Mark. A lot of traveling is going on every day for a lot of people.

Mark
01:13 – 01:13
It

Anders
01:13 – 01:22
is. All right. Hi there, and welcome to Southern Summers and Northern Winters. How are you today, Mark?

Mark
01:24 – 01:47
Hey Anders, I’m doing fine. Another hot day here in Australia. I reckon every time we pick to do a podcast, it seems to be 35 degrees outside and today’s been no different. Tomorrow’s only going to be 18 apparently, so half the temperature of today. So one thing Victoria or Melbourne is, our area is certainly known for is dramatic swings in weather temperatures.

Anders
01:48 – 02:05
Oh, we can do the same here. But it’s not that dramatic, but we have days with ice and snow coming, and today it’s just like a balmy eight, nine degrees and rain. But that’s like 15 degrees difference maybe, not like yours.

Mark
02:08 – 02:14
So tonight we’ve got my daughter on board here, Willow. Willow, hang on, say hi.

Willow
02:15 – 02:16
Hi, everyone.

Mark
02:17 – 02:45
Hi, Willow. So as we’ve spoke about before on the podcast, Willow lives in China. She’s just home in Australia at the moment for a two week stint in order to get her student visa, which we found out was approved today after we went to Melbourne on Monday and put it in. So she’s got to go back to Melbourne tomorrow and pick up her student visa and then back to Qingdao, China next Friday. Next Friday. OK. And

Anders
02:46 – 02:54
how is What’s the difference between the visa she had and the visa she’s getting now?

Willow
02:56 – 03:24
Um, so I had a tourism visa for China, which was one year with multiple entries. Okay. Now the visa I’m getting is called an X1 visa. So it’s the long-term study option, which is over 180 days. That one, you can only enter the country once and you have to like go to the police station to register where you’re staying and all of that kind of stuff. So.

Anders
03:25 – 03:39
Yeah, so this time you will not need to go for the next 180 days, you won’t need to go back to Australia, but at the same time you cannot go back to Australia, is that correct?

Willow
03:41 – 03:50
Yeah. So I’ve got it for 355 days because I’ll be studying for 345 over there.

Anders
03:50 – 03:51
Okay.

Willow
03:51 – 04:05
Um, so I won’t be able to leave the country, but I can go to the police station in a couple months afterwards and, um, register with them to get multiple entries on my visa instead.

Anders
04:06 – 04:08
Okay, cool. And what are you, what are you going to study?

Willow
04:09 – 04:33
Uh, so right now I’m just doing a language course, like for Chinese, um, Mandarin, but then after that, um, Tia and Gary want me to do a, um, teaching an international business course. Oh, Tia and Gary are, um, my, the people I work for.

Anders
04:33 – 04:36
Okay. That’s good to know.

Anders
04:37 – 04:38
Yeah.

Mark
04:38 – 04:55
Okay. It’s sort of, uh, lives with Tia and Gary on a, like a cultural exchange in exchange for accommodation and food and board. She does a little bit of babysitting or, or pairing childbinding for their kid a few hours a day. So that’s the story of that.

Anders
04:57 – 05:47
That’s, I guess, that’s how you do it. I mean, international students, I mean, it’s one of the biggest costs is the cost of living. So anywhere you can reduce. Those costs, I mean, we see it all the time. Munich is a huge city with two or three universities. So we’ve got a lot of international students here, a lot of, you know, a huge international environment, a lot of expats and the cost of living is It’s just ridiculous. So I know a lot of people, you know, they come here, they study, they live with private families and they help out in order to, you know, be of use and to reduce the cost of living for them.

Anders
05:47 – 05:51
So it’s, you know, it works the same way everywhere, I guess.

Mark
05:53 – 05:58
Cost of living is definitely an issue for everyone, no matter, I guess, isn’t it, these days?

Anders
05:59 – 06:00
It is, unfortunately,

Mark
06:00 – 06:00
yeah.

Anders
06:01 – 06:22
So, Willow, tell me, in the West, we do not hear a lot about living in China, obviously, because it’s influenced by mass media and political agenda at the moment. But I guess, you know, everyday life in China, what’s that like?

Willow
06:25 – 07:03
It’s definitely not how it’s portrayed like over here. I do everything I do here. To be honest, there’s no difference. Like I get up in the morning, I have breakfast, I have lunch, I have dinner. I look after Gracie. Um, you know, I can still use my phone and like, it is a little bit more hard because you do have to use like VPNs and stuff. But otherwise, like everything’s pretty much the exact same. Arguably I would say a lot of things over there are much more convenient. So like I use WeChat for everything pretty much.

Willow
07:03 – 07:11
I can book medical services on there. I can book hotels and trains and I can top up my phone all in one app.

Anders
07:12 – 07:13
Okay.

Willow
07:13 – 07:21
And, and pay for things on there and chat to people. Like a lot of things over there are just combined services. Yeah. Um,

Anders
07:22 – 07:28
so that’s, that’s a lot different from, for instance, you can say you can, um, a doctor’s appointment, you can book that. You said?

Willow
07:28 – 07:29
Yeah, I can book everything.

Anders
07:30 – 08:17
Okay, because that’s something that, for instance, in Germany, we’re very much behind in terms of digital evolution. They are very reserved, the Germans in general. So everything is old fashioned. If you get a doctor’s appointment, maybe you will need medication, you will have to, you get a physical recipe to go to the pharmacy. they’re trying with an electronic sort of notice to the pharmacy, but it’s only for certain medications, not if you need something a little harder, then you will have to get like a piece of paper with a stamp on it. So that’s very old fashioned.

Anders
08:18 – 08:39
It’s good to hear. This sounds a bit more like my native Denmark where Everything has been electronic for the past 20 years. So that’s cool. So what’s, so your everyday life, what’s that like? Talk about a typical day. You get up in the morning.

Willow
08:41 – 09:23
Yeah. So, um, after I get up, usually we have breakfast. So the way that things work for me is that, um, I look after Gracie during the day and then I have like a, a very short like break at some point during the day. Um, so in the morning I wake up, Gracie’s grandparents are at the house always when I’m there. Um, and I wake up, we have breakfast together as like a little like family group. Then usually I’ll be looking after Gracie for the morning. We play, we read books. Um, she really, really loves my room cause she really likes like Australian snacks.

Willow
09:23 – 09:46
I love shapes right now. That’s her favorite. But then we’ll have like lunch. Usually for me and our family, soup is a big thing. We eat a lot of soup and then side dishes. What’s the one you guys like? The cucumber? Yeah. It’s like a cucumber salad in vinegar and soy sauce.

Anders
09:47 – 09:48
Oh, sounds delicious.

Willow
09:48 – 10:15
Yeah. Um, and then, you know, it’s more play in the afternoon. I have a break, uh, and Gracie’s grandparents look after her and then it’s dinner time. Gary and T get back from work and, but right now it’s changing a little bit. Gracie had her first couple of days at kinder recently. Um, so she’s, she’s a bit feral right now. Big long days.

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Anders
10:16 – 10:26
yeah so so how how are you are you continue you will you will stay with that family um for the next period where you you’re going to be there yeah

Willow
10:27 – 10:37
yeah um we’re all like really good friends guarantee Because I’m the eldest, so I don’t really know how

Anders
10:39 – 10:41
that feels.

Anders
10:42 – 10:56
But they’re great. Okay, cool. Talk about the food there. What’s the biggest surprise that you’ve had in terms of food that you actually like but thought you wouldn’t like if you’ve had an experience like that?

Willow
10:58 – 11:05
Yeah, I’ve actually talked to mom and dad about this a lot. Um, I actually really like beef tripe. So like beef stomach.

Anders
11:06 – 11:06
Okay.

Willow
11:07 – 11:16
Um, it’s not like very flavorful, but you have it in like hot pot a lot. And honestly, it’s just like, it’s just a texture thing. It’s so good. I

Anders
11:18 – 11:19
couldn’t, I

Willow
11:19 – 11:20
thought I’d hate it, but it’s

Anders
11:20 – 11:24
delicious. So what’s the texture like? It’s like

Willow
11:24 – 11:42
mixed beef. No, it’s like, it’s, it’s really hard to explain. It’s kind of chilly, but like, cause it’s got, it’s got like bumps and stuff all over it. It just like, it feels weird against your tongue, but it’s, it’s really good. Okay.

Anders
11:44 – 12:10
Cause that’s the thing. Um, my impression of, of Chinese kitchen is that, you know, they will eat anything from the animal and, and, um, I guess it’s a Western culture thing. I’m just not, you know, accustomed to eating anything from an animal. So yeah, that sounds, it sounds like something you should try. Have

Mark
12:10 – 12:43
you had that, Mark? I haven’t but it’s quite strange or at the Melbourne market the other day and we were walking around through the meat section and at the end of Like one of the stalls there was all these cutoffs of bones with meat and stuff on them and they were like Really cheap here in Australia and most Australians wouldn’t buy it, but that’s the sort of things that go into most Chinese dishes, you know like bones cut up still with bits of meat on them and things like that because they you know, chew the meat off it or suck the meat off it, had the marrow out of the bones and things like that.

Mark
12:43 – 12:58
Like that’s really popular sort of style to put in dishes in China that we sort of don’t really use, utilize a lot in the West where more, you know, fillets of meat, you know, cuts of meat instead of bits with bones in them, you know, and things like that. Yeah,

Anders
12:58 – 13:16
exactly. Exactly. That’s, that’s exactly it. And I’m, I’m just thinking, you know, if you, if you were to have it in the Western world, If we were to have a little bit more logic to the way we eat, we could actually, we could utilize food

Mark
13:18 – 14:15
ingredients much more than we do. I mean, it’s, it’s most definitely, I would say in China, they waste very little of anything, you know, they use all of what they can use of the animal and, and more, whereas, you know, we in the West probably don’t, like I said, we like the prime cuts. you know, you know, chicken’s probably the closest animal that we eat nearly most of, but, uh, but, you know, as for, for beef, you know, we like the fillets and, uh, I don’t know what they call it in Germany, but Australia call it, you know, porterhouse and rump and sirloin and, Yeah, that’s like that that the you know that we like as as prime cuts which in China they You know, they’re more likely to use the bits with the bone and things like that because I guess that’s what they have always used Yeah, but then you can you still get prime cuts of steak and stuff like there’s certainly plenty of steak restaurants around but they’re probably for the upper class more than more than anyone in China,

Anders
14:15 – 14:16
yeah

Willow
14:19 – 14:56
yeah so like usually what like we are like soup so you can buy lots of soup bones and stuff um i like i have ever eating like at home or like chow as we call it, my Chinese home. Um, I don’t really eat like steak or anything. Sometimes I cook for like my Chinese family, but it’s always a bit like different. Adventurous. Yeah. Yeah. They’re always like, Oh, what’s this? Um, they always try it though. They’re very, very good sports. I’m very happy.

Anders
14:56 – 14:57
yeah

Willow
14:57 – 15:17
um but yeah i don’t think in the entire time i’ve been there i’ve eaten like steak or anything um it’s always bone-in which is something like it’s still a little bit like i’m trying to get used to yeah um it’s just yeah but everything’s bone-in everything’s like fully flavored it’s great

Anders
15:18 – 15:34
okay and and would you say that the chinese kitchen is like healthier or Because in the West we tend to eat a lot of salt and fat, or sweet. We use a lot of sugar in our food.

Willow
15:37 – 15:58
if I would say healthier, like probably yeah, but I think, um, with the wider array of ingredients and the way things are prepared, less oil is used in a lot of things. There’s not as much bread or stuff like that eaten. So that like kind of contributes to it.

Anders
15:58 – 16:03
Yeah, yeah. I can imagine. Do you miss bread then? Because I would.

Willow
16:04 – 16:15
Sometimes, yeah. The bread over there is like kind of different to the bread here. It’s sweet, no matter how, like, how they make it, it’s always just a little bit sweet.

Anders
16:15 – 16:15
Okay.

Willow
16:16 – 16:18
And every time I bite into it, I’m just like,

Anders
16:19 – 16:20
yeah,

Willow
16:20 – 16:20
I want more bread.

Anders
16:21 – 16:28
Because Mark, you said that they don’t have an oven in a private house, or usually don’t have an oven. So baking bread, I guess, is something they don’t do.

Willow
16:29 – 16:49
Yeah, well, we do. I think the closest thing I eat on a regular basis to bread is like, they’re called meat pies, but they’re not like Australian pies or anything. They’re very like flat. They’re kind of like, more like pita breads. Like a pizza base. Yeah. Sort

Mark
16:49 – 16:52
of two pizza bases with something shoved in between them. Oh, sorry.

Willow
16:52 – 16:52
Yeah.

Mark
16:53 – 17:01
Sort of more like, you would say two, two pizza bases with a filling in between them. Yeah. So a bit like that.

Anders
17:01 – 17:07
Okay. But the bread is, is, is in that case, not as sweet or no.

Willow
17:07 – 17:23
Okay. So usually, um, my. Uh, Nana, which is like my Chinese grandma. Um, she like fresh makes it, so it’s not sweet, but if you’re just buying like store-bought bread, then it’s always just a little bit

Anders
17:23 – 17:28
sweet. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Because they, they use sugar as a, as a, a taste enhancer, you know, that’s

Mark
17:28 – 18:01
yeah. Well, you can often buy like a single slice of bread, like with chocolate swirl through it or. Oh, and am which is the green green Asian flavoring. So yeah, people can use by Yeah, a single slot single thick slice of I’d say dessert bread. I would call it but you know, they might just eat it as a snack but Yeah, you don’t often see like, you know, a bakery like you would see in Germany or in Australia with, you know, 10 or 15 different types of, you know, bread and loaves and seeds and breadsticks and, you know, stuff like that.

Mark
18:02 – 18:21
In China, well, I haven’t anyway. Like, if you go to the supermarket, there might be a couple of different types of bread on the shelf that you know that are mass produced obviously from some factory somewhere probably they’re shipped out each day but yeah as for just the traditional bakery I don’t know now you went to Paris Baguette a fair bit did they have a lot of different bread?

Willow
18:23 – 19:00
Um, not really. So like a lot of the bakery style restaurants or like places to go, they will always still, it’s mostly sweet. Like it’s, it’s somewhere people go usually to actually buy presents for people that they know. Um, My favorite, I like one called Downtown Bakery. It’s in one of the, like the food streets in Chindau and it’s delicious. They do a really good baguette. It’s not sweet at all, but like a lot of the time they do pretzels as well, like the bread ones.

Anders
19:01 – 19:01
Oh, wow.

Willow
19:01 – 19:02
Yeah.

Mark
19:03 – 19:04
Like the Bavarian ones.

Anders
19:04 – 19:08
Yeah. I was just going to say, they can’t do it like we can do it. I’m sure. No,

Mark
19:08 – 19:28
surely not. Need a bit of, you know, the big chunks of salt on it and have it with a litre stein of beer and away you go, don’t you? Yeah, exactly. That’s, that’s the way we like it here. It is. So will I tell us about the, uh, the prices in China? Is it fair to buy food and eat out? Yeah. Let’s talk about that.

Willow
19:28 – 19:37
It’s so cheap, actually. Um, if you’re going to like a Western restaurant, it’s like pretty expensive. Um, but what’s

Anders
19:37 – 19:43
that Villa? What’s pretty expensive? Is there a comparison like in, in, in Australian dollars or?

Willow
19:43 – 20:19
Yeah. So I’d say probably individually, if you’re eating at a Western restaurant, you’d be looking at spending maybe 60 RMB a person, which is like, no, it’s like, 15, 20 bucks. So it’s still cheap. That sounds cheap for me, but I mean, yeah. Yeah. But if you’re eating at actual Chinese restaurants, a lot of the time you’re only paying about 15 RMB for a bowl of noodles or something, which is like $3. Okay. If

Anders
20:19 – 20:19
you

Willow
20:20 – 20:22
look at it compared to that, it’s more

Anders
20:22 – 20:28
expensive. Okay. I can see. Okay. Anything in comparison, I mean, wow, that’s cheap. You

Willow
20:29 – 20:29
can actually get a

Anders
20:29 – 20:32
good meal for like $3.

Willow
20:33 – 20:35
They’re always really, really huge.

Anders
20:35 – 20:36
Yeah.

Willow
20:36 – 20:56
Like serving wise, everything here is really big. Um, even like beer is really cheap here as well. Or in Qingdao. Yeah. Um, because Qingdao has its own brewery. Cause it was a German like settlement for a little while. Yeah. Yeah. It’s so good. I’m not a beer girly, but Qingdao beer changed me.

Mark
20:58 – 21:27
Trying to think where we ate out in China and one of the really only places that I can think of was we were at a hotel in Beijing where we stayed in September with Willow as well and we had a buffet dinner so all you can eat and there was pork knuckle, lamb chops, you know steak and all this sort of stuff on the menu as much as you could eat. And I think it was around $25 Australian or about, you know, 13 euros for as

Willow
21:27 – 21:28
much as you could eat at

Mark
21:29 – 22:20
a tourist class hotel that was probably only a hundred meters away from the main shopping street in Beijing. So it was really centrally located. It wasn’t out in the sticks where they were just giving you a cheap meal to try and get you to come there. Like it was, uh, the hotel itself was probably around, I think it was around $180 Australian a night. So maybe 90, 90 euros, 90. yeah euros a night so it was still a dear fairly dear hotel to stay but the food in comparison was uh really good and and beer was free with this buffet they had a beer tap you could just go up and fill and fill your own beer as well so uh so yeah so food’s relatively cheap i think unless you’re going to buy you go by mcdonald’s okay so you’ll pay comparison onto what you would pay in australia and i assume what you would pay in Germany, so I think they probably have a centralized price everywhere and it’s just, you know, that’s what it is in most countries.

Mark
22:20 – 22:28
So McDonald’s in China was on the more expensive side compared to eating at a local restaurant for sure. So would McDonald’s

Anders
22:29 – 22:46
have only tourists visiting or because, I don’t know. I don’t know what because the price of food is that for a normal average income in China is do you spend a lot of your income on food or what’s your impression there?

Willow
22:48 – 23:20
Um, I think like it probably is not the largest amount. I think it’s pretty similar to here. Like your larger amounts are going to be like your housing costs, water, heating, electricity, stuff like that. Okay. Yeah. Um, but food would definitely be a second place. My family eats like a fair amount of variety. There’s lots of other stuff and then we have a cleaning lady as well that comes on the weekend and cooks for us. So yeah, we’re pretty spoiled actually. I

Anders
23:20 – 23:23
would love that. She

Willow
23:23 – 23:24
comes and

Anders
23:24 – 23:25
cleans and then she cooks as well.

Willow
23:26 – 23:33
And she’s, she’s from kind of middle to south. So the cuisine is like completely different to Northern food up

Anders
23:33 – 23:34
there.

Willow
23:34 – 23:36
It’s typically a bit spicier down south.

Anders
23:36 – 23:37
Yeah.

Willow
23:38 – 23:59
Oh, well, uh, Northern food from what I’ve experienced is typically less spicy. It’s more, um, carb based. So lots of noodles, rice, uh, kind of doughy things like buns. Uh, whereas Southern food is spicier. It’s usually kind of heavier on vegetables. and meat.

Anders
23:59 – 24:19
That probably has to do with climate, I guess what you can grow north, you need something that can last through the winter. And then in the south, you can always have fresh vegetables, I guess. Yeah, that sounds like the reason. Okay, interesting. Interesting. So what do you prefer?

Willow
24:21 – 24:53
Um, honestly, I, I’m like a big noodles fan. We eat noodles a lot. Cause Gracie really likes noodles too. Um, but I, I actually really love spicy food. That’s something I’ve found that I really like. We couldn’t really eat spicy food too much. Yeah. Cause mom has a bad stomach, but, um, I love it all the time. I’m always eating like Mapo tofu, which is spicy tofu. And all of these other really, really delicious spicy food. Oh, it’s so good.

Mark
24:54 – 25:40
I don’t know about you, but if you eat Chinese in In Munich, I assume you get things like, you know, sweet and sour pork and honey chicken Yeah, and that sort of thing will that sort of food is is a specialty in China from more from camp I think it’s Cantonese Really, which is this a small area in China? But if you go north or even where willow lives like you won’t see a lot of that anywhere, unless you, you might say the occasional dish on a menu that looks like a Western Chinese menu that we would, you know, me and you would say in places, but you don’t say that type of meal everywhere in China, for sure, because it’s just not, it’s just not eaten everywhere.

Mark
25:40 – 25:41
Yeah.

Anders
25:44 – 26:11
Okay, interesting. It sounds like… I have never been to China, but it sounds like the first time I ever go, I will have to be prepared for a little bit of everything, I guess, in terms of food. Yeah. So have you had that experience where you get a bowl of soup and there’s just something in there that you can’t really… Do you get a

Willow
26:11 – 26:11
bit

Anders
26:11 – 26:13
wary of trying things?

Willow
26:14 – 26:45
Yeah, I usually I’m pretty good. Like I always tell my host family, like, just don’t tell me what it is, and I’ll eat it and then tell me. Because like, if I know what it is, I’m gonna freak out. I’m gonna be like, no, I can’t eat it. It wasn’t in a bowl of soup. But recently, I tried sea cucumber for the first time. And, oh my God, I was really bad. I didn’t like it. Usually you eat it when you’re like sick or pregnant, apparently, like it’s really good for your health.

Anders
26:46 – 26:46
Okay.

Willow
26:46 – 26:51
Um, but the texture was just awful. It was like crunchy, but wet.

Anders
26:52 – 26:54
Yeah. Yeah. Like a cucumber.

Willow
26:55 – 26:59
Yeah, literally like a cucumber. It was so bad.

Anders
27:02 – 27:03
Yeah,

Willow
27:03 – 27:06
it was like it had like bumps and stuff on it as well. It was just

Anders
27:07 – 27:19
awful. And as you are talking about it, I’m just thinking, whoever thought of, you know, catching a sea cucumber and saying, you know, well, I’ll try to eat it.

Willow
27:24 – 27:41
And they’re so little as well. They’re only about this big, I think. Yeah. I don’t know. Yeah. So you can have centimeters. It’s like a pickle. Yeah, literally. And they, but like, I feel so bad when I eat it because it still has its little face on it.

Anders
27:43 – 27:44
Oh, but it is dead,

Willow
27:44 – 27:45
right? You just gotta bite into it. And

Anders
27:46 – 27:47
it is dead, you know, it’s spoiled.

Willow
27:47 – 27:57
Yeah, yeah, like all its guts are gone and everything, but like, you just, you can see where its eyes, like, I don’t even know if sea cucumbers have eyes, but it’s where I imagine their eyes are, and I’m just like, oh my honey!

Anders
28:00 – 28:13
Oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. But what about what about because Mark has been entertaining here at the podcast on on on insects and and stuff that that’s that’s not the local dish there where you are.

Willow
28:14 – 28:34
Um, actually there is a grilled bug restaurant in my city. Um, I’ve never been, um, but I have some, a friend in China that’s been, that wanted to take me. Uh, I’m a bit, I’m kind of scared of bugs. So, uh, it’s not for me.

Anders
28:35 – 28:39
Okay, no, obviously it wouldn’t be for me either. Willow

Mark
28:39 – 29:00
wimped out when we were there and we went to Beijing. Me and her had a deal that we were going to go and eat a spider or a bug or something like that. And we got to this shop in Beijing and she wouldn’t have a bar of it. So hence when I went to Thailand, I had a grasshopper, you know, just to show that, you know, I could do that. It was crunchy, the grasshopper.

Anders
29:00 – 29:15
Yeah, for people not knowing, The Wild Family has a very good Facebook page. And I think it was there, The Wild Family Travel, Mark, that you posted these reels of you

Mark
29:15 – 29:47
trying the grasshopper. Yeah, definitely. We had some footage of us eating the grasshoppers. Well, I was eating the grasshopper because my wife wouldn’t have a bar of it and my other daughter Marley who will get on the show one night to talk about travel as well. She wouldn’t have a bar of it either so it was sort of left up to me but in reality the grasshopper was the less of all evils compared to eating a scorpion or a spider or even a larvae sort of looking bug. So I went the grasshopper.

Anders
29:47 – 29:53
Of all the things you’re mentioning there the grasshopper would also be where I would start Yeah,

Mark
29:53 – 30:04
definitely There was less body on the grasshopper like, you know, he’s pretty thin in the middle. He’s mainly long legs. So, uh, yeah, the grasshopper was uh, Was where it was at? Yeah

Anders
30:06 – 30:26
so so if if my uh, willow if if there’s one dish that you would recommend like a newcomer, a new beginner into the Chinese kitchen once they arrive and have their first experience in a real Chinese restaurant. What would that dish be?

Willow
30:28 – 30:52
Um, for me, it’s probably Hong Shao Rou, which is, uh, red braised pork belly. It’s so delicious. My Lao Ye, which is, um, Tia’s dad. He makes it for me every time he comes and it’s literally my favorite dish. It’s so delicious. Or Shao Kao, which is Chinese barbecue.

Anders
30:53 – 30:53
Yeah.

Willow
30:54 – 31:20
So if like, if it’s a very social meal, usually you get like a lot of sticks and it’ll cost you only like 120 RMB, which is like 25 bucks. Um, and you get so much food and you drink beer with it and you have wonton soup with it. And it’s just like, it’s a very social, uh, eating.

Mark
31:20 – 31:55
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So if you’ve ever had like Korean barbecue, it’s similar to Korean barbecue. They bring you out a little burner or a little hot plate thing with some stones and coals in it maybe and you cook your meat there in front of you or your prawns or Yeah, potatoes or your bits of corn or you know, basically they cook anything on their mushrooms You name it They’ll cook it on a stick in China and eat it because as well I said it’s one of them convenience things They can just cook it on a stick.

Mark
31:55 – 32:01
You can buy food on a stick everywhere. Yeah, lots of things come on a stick in China It’s all about the convenience of it all

Anders
32:01 – 33:01
Well, that’s, you know, convenience food has had like a bad reputation here in Germany or in Europe, because usually in these convenience food stalls, they They use semi-prepared food or ingredients or things already partly prepared in a factory. And in order for it to be conserved and last until it’s eaten, they use a lot of preservatives. Or what do you call it? Food preservatives? Yeah. And so you never know what’s in it. So convenience food has had a bit of a bad reputation here. But I guess it’s different because it sounds like they’re literally, you know, chopping the heads off an animal or chopping the vegetables in the garden behind them.

Anders
33:01 – 33:11
And then they prepare it like 10 minutes later for you. So it’s very different. I can, it sounds like it’s very different.

Willow
33:13 – 33:16
Yeah. So most food here is like really, really fresh.

Anders
33:16 – 33:16
Yeah.

Willow
33:17 – 33:35
Um, uh, what did we have at the markets? We had like a lamb skewer and you can literally see like in there all the like racks of ribs and everything. Like they will, even if they’re not like cutting it up there, it is all cut up at a supermarket and then transported straight there.

Anders
33:35 – 33:36
Yeah.

Willow
33:36 – 34:02
Um, A lot of food is just, there is a lot of processed food involved in Chinese cooking, especially stuff like hot pot, you’ll get processed crab or processed fish balls, stuff like that. But it’s not processed in the same way that our food is. A lot of the time it’s just mashed up and then kind of combined with other stuff. It’s, yeah, it’s really kind of, it’s the same but different.

Anders
34:03 – 34:52
Yeah. You know, if you think of Chinese science, in terms of Chinese medicine, for instance, it’s been around for like 40,000 years. They really have a long tradition of knowing what’s good from nature, what has benefits. And so a lot of the time you will refer to Chinese medicine as things, you know, if you get seriously ill, you could try out Chinese medicine. I guess it’s the same way with food. They really have a long history of knowing exactly what’s good for your body and what will just do you good to eat. So I guess there’s a reason behind this.

Anders
34:52 – 35:11
It sounds like it’s just, you know, just use your common sense and then Yeah, but we have a very different tradition in the Western world, I guess. It’s just because a lot of what we eat is certainly not good for us. Yeah.

Willow
35:11 – 35:56
Chinese people really focus on how you can improve your health and what’s best for your body. I remember the first time I had ice water in front of Nana. Oh my gosh, I’m telling my story. Um, they don’t drink like ice water over there. It’s always hot or like room temperature because there’s a little bit of science to back it up, but it’s kind of like an old wives tale that it slows down your metabolism and you can’t digest food as well if you have cold food, I mean cold water. Cold water. Okay. Yeah, so they always have hot water.

Willow
35:56 – 36:07
And the shock on Nana’s face when I had a glass of ice water was… I put it down. I almost didn’t drink it. I was like, I can’t do it.

Anders
36:07 – 36:24
It’s so embarrassing. Okay. Wow. That’s an interesting story because I wouldn’t have thought… I love ice water. I love carbonated ice water. It’s sort of my favorite go-to drink during any day. So I should stop that.

Willow
36:27 – 36:53
I think there’s only what I’ve read because I wanted to kind of know about it and both of Gary’s mum and Tia’s mum are doctors or Tia’s mum is a doctor and Gary’s mum was a nurse. Um, so I wanted to kind of like look into it a little bit from what I know, it’s like, if it does do anything, it’s only like a little bit. So it’s not something you should really worry about that.

Anders
36:55 – 37:36
No, but it’s just those little things that they just seem to know in China. I’ve always said if I ever get seriously ill, God forbid, but if that should happen, certainly I would listen to my doctors and I would do whatever they say. But I can’t help but thinking sometimes, you know, they have these traditions going back thousands of years in terms of medicine and what’s good for your body. there must be some there must be something to it. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So so yeah, interesting, interesting. And and now let’s talk about the future a little bit.

Anders
37:36 – 37:48
You’re staying there for like a year. another year now. Okay. And what’s your plan long-term in terms of China and Mandarin?

Willow
37:48 – 38:18
Well, I’m not 100% sure, I’ve got to be honest. I’m kind of more of like a see-how-it-goes kind of person. I just, this is what Tia’s always like, even in restaurants, Tia’s like, I’ll just order for you and you’ll be happy with whatever I give you. I’m like, okay, that works for me. I like to kind of leave things up to fate, I guess. Like this language program, it kind of just like almost kind of just happened.

Anders
38:19 – 38:20
Like,

Willow
38:20 – 38:43
um, I just applied for it and I was like, if it happens, it happens. Uh, it’s the same with if I end up doing university at Tinder at uni. Um, but I think if I don’t do university there, I’ll come back and do a teaching degree here and then go on to teach internationally is kind of. I guess the hope right now, but things change.

Anders
38:43 – 39:20
But if it works out, you would be open to stay for longer in China and just university studies. Yeah, cool. No matter how we look at how things are progressing in the world, these days, I mean, China is going to be a major player. So I guess there’s a good chance of a job somewhere, if you can speak Chinese, Mandarin, I guess Mandarin is what you’re learning, right? Yes. How many, speaking of Chinese, how many different Chinese languages are there?

Willow
39:22 – 39:48
Um, there are two official Chinese languages, so there’s Mandarin and Cantonese, but there are dialects for each individual area. So you’ll hear some people say things like Shanghainese, that’s the dialect of Shanghai. Um, but there, yeah, there’s different ones for every area pretty much because of how big China is. Um, but yeah, it’s all really different.

Anders
39:48 – 39:53
Well, how big is China? I mean, compared to Australia, Australia is a continent, but

Willow
39:53 – 40:24
I think it’s actually, I think China is actually bigger by land mass. Yeah, we’re going to look it up. Oh, or it might be just a little bit smaller than Australia overall, but, um, it’s definitely, it’s really big. And a lot of the time they’re, um, they’re kind of separated the North and the South by the yellow river. So there’s a pretty big difference between the areas. So it’s like

Anders
40:24 – 40:25
two different countries almost.

Willow
40:26 – 40:34
Yeah. Well, um, recently on Xiaohongshu, if you know what that is, that’s kind of like Chinese Instagram.

Anders
40:34 – 40:34
Yeah.

Willow
40:35 – 41:10
Um, it’s, it’s a good app if anyone wants it. Um, but they, a lot of the Southerners have been coming to the North to Harbin to see the snow up there and the, um, they’re quite small Southerners compared to Northern Chinese people. So they’re called little potatoes by the Northern Chinese public. So in Harbin, there’s a little potato statue to say thank you to the Southerners for coming. It’s a big tourist thing.

Mark
41:12 – 42:08
So just looking this up, China is significantly larger than Australia, it’s 9.6 million square kilometres, or the third largest country in the world, while Australia is the sixth largest country in the world with only 7.7 million kilometres, so China’s about a quarter bigger. Wow. And Australia, I would say by the looks of that, which is, which is pretty big, pretty big size country, really. It is that way, isn’t it? Wow. I think it’s sort of be like Australia. It’s probably eight or 10 hours if you flew from, from one end to the other. Cause like, I know like even just flying when you land in Shanghai to where willow is, which is just the middle section of China, you know, there’s still a large amount above willow and there’s a large amount below shanghai and that still takes sort of like two or three hours to fly this that distance so yes i’d believe it’d be probably a good 10 hours from from one end eight to ten hours from one end of china to the other

Anders
42:09 – 42:17
Wow, I would have never thought. And how, Willow, are you adjusting to the snow? I mean, being Australian and all?

Willow
42:19 – 42:35
I’ve never seen snow in Australia, but actually in Chindya it snows. Yeah. Gracie and I like sit keeled up together with our little milos and we watch it out the window. It’s really like awesome because I’ve never lived anywhere where it actually snows. No.

Mark
42:37 – 42:46
Pretty sure we’ve seen snow in Munich when we met Anders. Yeah, the last time you were here it snowed. We had snow and ice. I mean, we met

Anders
42:46 – 43:01
in the city centre just behind the ice skating There’s a, there’s a square, uh, called,

Mark
43:01 – 43:28
um, I think that was the first time. I think that was the first time. That was the first time that was. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Right. And then we went, we went to dinner at that, uh, at that beer house near the, not the one, not the one near Miriam Platts. It was the one up past the train station. We went to, um, correct. Yeah. And there was a lot of snow up there that night too. So yeah. in Munich over our time.

Anders
43:29 – 43:58
Yeah, the one we went to was was Agustina Keller. Yeah, true. You’ve been here a couple of times. The last time though was we didn’t have snow, as I recall, because I remember we said goodbye and we went down to at Hauptbahnhof, you had a hotel right behind the Hauptbahnhof. And we went down to the underground and normally those staircases, they’re filled with snow and ice

Mark
43:59 – 44:00
when we have that type

Anders
44:00 – 44:02
of weather and it wasn’t. So yeah.

Mark
44:05 – 44:34
Cause it was early December. I think it was early December that time we were there and the time after the time before when we met you and it snowed, it was in January. So we were in Munich, like I think about the 1st of December or something. The second time we were there when we met you when there was no snow. So later on in the year it probably snowed I assume. Have you ever been here in the summer? I have been to Munich in the summer a few times. I think I’ve been to Munich maybe five times or six times.

Mark
44:34 – 44:46
I’ve been to Munich 2006 in the summer, I think 2013 in the summer. Yeah, I have been a few times in the summer. It’s nice in the summer, isn’t it? Yeah,

Anders
44:46 – 45:39
it is. You have to come. some time during the beer garden season, because just around the corner from where we live, one of the oldest beer gardens in Munich is reopening this April. After an extensive renovation, change of ownership, and it’s a protected site. So you can’t changed too much on the original house facades and all of that. So yeah, there’s been a lot of debate actually about the future of this beer garden. And now it’s reopening, so it’s great. And it’s literally next door to us. What’s it called? It’s called Menterschweige. Okay. Yeah. So, um, yeah, there’s a lot, a few historic figures, uh,

Mark
45:39 – 45:39
in

Anders
45:39 – 46:03
German, German history, um, German Kaisers, uh, Kings, uh, Bavarian Kings, uh, that, that has relation to this place. Uh, so, so it has historic significance. Um, so yeah, it’s, uh, it’s going to be good. It’s, it’s, it’s probably before the renovation, it was one of the more pricey beer gardens, probably not. becoming cheaper,

Mark
46:04 – 46:27
I guess not. Nothing’s becoming cheaper, is it? It’s good that they’re reopening and preserving because it’s good to preserve, you know, places like that. And I guess especially for beer gardens in the suburbs, more caters for, you know, locals who live there, such as yourself, than tourists who seem to flock to the ones at the centre of the city, you know, like Hofbrau.

Anders
46:27 – 46:31
Yeah, yeah. Our area is not touristic. This is local.

Mark
46:31 – 46:54
We went to one in the suburbs called, I think we went to one called the Texas Beer Garden. I don’t know whether it’s still there or not. I can’t remember. I can’t exactly remember where it was. It was in Sloss Nymphenburg, somewhere in that area. It was a nice traditional beer garden as well. One of the things I remember, I don’t know whether they still do this, that was really interesting as a foreigner was that you’re allowed to just take your own food there.

Anders
46:55 – 46:56
That’s the

Mark
46:56 – 47:14
stage and eat it and just buy a beer like in australia. There’s no way you’d be able to take You know bought food from somewhere else now that you brought it home into a into a pub or a beer garden anywhere like that Actually, there would be a sign up saying no outside food or drinks, you know allowed, you know, yeah everywhere so that was one of the

Anders
47:16 – 48:03
That’s the concept. The concept of the traditional German beer garden is that you are allowed to take your own. You can take a picnic basket or whatever, sandwich, whatever. You can bring whatever food you have. and you are actually it’s not it’s not forbidden to bring your own drinks it’s just not it’s it’s frowned upon you don’t do that it’s bad it’s not classy you you buy your your beverages um at the beer garden um but you the food you you can bring and and this is actually um in in the area where we live this is what we do you know we we just you know on any weekday or whatever we just um We will walk there with our food with our evening meal and just sit down and have a drink.

Anders
48:03 – 48:27
We don’t, you know, get drunk or, you know, it’s not excessive drinking. It’s just, you know, one beer and then we go back home. That’s all. So it’s just a place to meet. And when the weather is nice, you know, a beer garden is typically full of old trees and you sit in the shade and there are tables and benches.

Mark
48:30 – 48:32
Kids playgrounds. I was saying kids playgrounds.

Anders
48:32 – 48:57
Yeah, that that that’s something that my my sister and brother-in-law they live in London and And the first time my brother-in-law he came to Munich and saw that a place where you where you can buy and drink alcohol They also had a children’s playground That was a bit of it was a bit hard for him to comprehend. It was just you know, what? I’ll

Mark
48:57 – 49:30
tell you what he then he should go to You should go to Bali because there’s one called the Sanua Beer Garden and they actually have a swimming pool in the beer garden. So you can actually, you can put your kids in the pool while you sit around and drink beer or you can get in the pool yourself while you drink beer. Quite unique I always remember it because we’ve been there a few times maybe Rebecca like it It’s um the nice place to have a drink we’ve taken willow there But I always think when I say things like in Australia that wouldn’t fly because someone had drowned and then you know But the thing is the thing about

Anders
49:35 – 50:16
In general, Germans are very pragmatic. It’s not a thing. You could have a glass of beer and that not be a thing. I mean, whereas in other places of the world, it’s always you either do not drink at all or you drink excessively. There’s no in between. And that’s just not a thing in Germany. You absolutely can have one beer and go home and it’s not a thing. So, yeah, so it’s, but yeah, playgrounds at the beer garden, obviously, it’s a super concept because, you know, the parents can have a chat with friends.

Mark
50:17 – 50:18
We’ve got to keep the kids happy.

Anders
50:18 – 50:23
And the kids are happy and, you know, what’s not to like? What’s

Mark
50:23 – 50:30
not to like? Well, that’s it. So, Willow, what’s the drinking culture like in Canada? Yeah, talk about that, Willow.

Willow
50:31 – 50:46
Um, so drinking is a very social thing in China. It’s not quite like Germany where you can just have one beer and go. Um, usually it’s kind of like the oldest person kind of controls when you drink and how much you

Anders
50:47 – 50:47
drink.

Willow
50:48 – 51:35
Um, so when I drink with Gracie’s grandparents, I drink a lot. because he drinks a lot. So like, yeah, it’s very social, but usually like if you’re having dinner, you’ll have one like quite large uh, maybe 750 mils and you’ll share it between a couple of people. So usually me and Tia will share one, or if we get the smaller 500 mil bottles, we’ll, I’ll have one and then Tia will make me drink half of hers. Um, but there’s a different alcohol that’s really, really popular in China that dad hates called multi. It’s literally, it’s like they mixed vodka and paint stripper together.

Willow
51:36 – 52:07
um it’s really bad um i usually will have and you have it in these tiny glasses there may be five mil glasses five ten mil um and that’s enough honestly um I usually will have a couple glasses. Yeah. Yeah. His favorite, which is our Gary’s dad. Um, his favorite is multi whereas his parents really preferred BR. So you typically just drink whatever the eldest person at the table likes the most.

Anders
52:08 – 52:09
Oh, okay.

Willow
52:09 – 52:39
Yeah. And then work, it’s kind of also really big on like work. If you go out with like your coworkers, you drink a lot from what I’ve heard with Gary and Tia, Gary and Tia will come home absolutely smashed. Like at the end of the night, just like dying. Um, but another kind of, I guess, interesting part about Chinese drinking culture is you’re not actually, or especially in Qingdao, I’m not sure if it’s the same in the rest of China, but you cheers every time you take a sip.

Anders
52:40 – 52:40
Oh,

Willow
52:41 – 52:42
so

Anders
52:42 – 52:43
everybody takes a sip.

Willow
52:43 – 53:03
Yeah. So you’re not supposed to drink separately. Everyone’s supposed to drink together as a social thing. It’s not like a, you take a sip. Usually you’ll have a small glass of beer and a small glass of water with you and you drink the water. Um, whenever you want, but the beer you drink as a group. Out

Mark
53:03 – 53:03
of respect for

Anders
53:03 – 53:03
the

Mark
53:03 – 53:07
beer. We should always respect the beer. So

Willow
53:08 – 53:08
I’m

Mark
53:08 – 53:45
thinking about when we go back next time, finding the horriblest bottle of Australian alcohol I can possibly find and taking it back for, uh, for yeah, because he made me drink this absolutely terrible Chinese liquor that I just, I can’t describe. How bad it is. Literally, it’s like, it’s what I can imagine drinking methylated spirits or something like that would be like, like, there’s no taste that this burns. It’s this horrible, it’s, it’s got no taste. And then when we went over there at Christmas time, I got a bottle of it for a present. So it’s, you know, it’ll be sitting in my cupboard for a lot of years or until they come out here to visit.

Mark
53:45 – 53:55
And then I’ll crack it open when they’re, uh, when, when, when our Chinese family or Willow’s Chinese family come from there and come out to visit, then I’ll crack it open then I think.

Anders
53:55 – 54:06
But I think Willow’s description of a paint stripper mixed with vodka, that’s spot on. Yeah, I can only imagine what that will taste like.

Mark
54:06 – 54:32
It’s sort of worse than straight tequila. Like, you know, straight tequila is not flash when you drink it. So it’s definitely on the worse Side of that but you know, it’s highly regarded in china as a as an alcohol and it’s one of the most most popular spirit in china I would I think maybe I’ll just take some jack daniels or something back next time and Or some bundy rum and make them do shots of that or something.

Anders
54:32 – 54:48
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, what what so so General drinking culture, Chinese versus the Western world, do they drink more or less or is it the same?

Willow
54:49 – 55:05
Um, I’d say they probably drink more to be honest, but I think as a group they drink more, but individually they drink less. Um, because bottles of beer are shared between like everyone.

Anders
55:05 – 55:05
Yeah.

Willow
55:06 – 55:14
They, it always looks like you’ve drank a lot. Like when Tia and I really get into it, uh, we can share five or six bottles between the two of us.

Mark
55:15 – 55:15
Wow.

Willow
55:15 – 55:18
But you know, that equals out to only maybe three bottles each.

Mark
55:19 – 55:20
What about bottles of red wine, Willow?

Willow
55:22 – 55:45
Oh my God, I can’t drink red wine. I vomited the first time I had it for my birthday. Um, no, because we got like this really nice bottle. It was Australian wine and we had it for my birthday. And then Tia told me, she put it all in like a can, is that what they’re called? decanter yeah yeah yeah

Anders
55:45 – 55:45
yeah

Willow
55:45 – 56:06
yeah um and then like by the end of it she wasn’t drinking anymore and she was like well willow you’ve got to finish it all i was like what the hell i’m gonna finish the rest of this so i ended up like chugging half a bottle of wine and it was not good the next morning really wasn’t my favorite morning i’ve ever had

Anders
56:06 – 56:19
I actually, I actually like red wine if it’s a good red wine, but I can’t have more than one, one and a half glass, then I have a hangover the next day. It’s just, yeah, yeah.

Willow
56:20 – 56:38
Multi, right? The one that dad doesn’t like, it’s 56%. alcohol um yeah so it’s really strong um and it typically you’ll actually give multi as like a present um because of how like highly regarded it is it’s number one alcohol in china

Anders
56:39 – 56:39
okay

Willow
56:40 – 56:47
so stuff like that gets given as presents for um people that you hold in a really high regard okay so like dad

Anders
56:48 – 56:52
wow so moto m-o-t-a-y is that how

Willow
56:52 – 56:53
you write m-o-u-t-a-i

Anders
56:55 – 57:00
M-O-U-T-A-I. Yeah. Okay.

Willow
57:00 – 57:00
I

Anders
57:01 – 57:08
have to look it up. And is that just one particular flavor or do they have more flavors?

Willow
57:09 – 57:12
They literally, they just sell the exact same one over and over and over again.

Mark
57:14 – 57:27
Is it the same company or do many companies make this much like, I don’t know, like bourbon, you know, how like there’s Jim Beam and, you know, and a dozen different countries. Is there a, do you know, is there a dozen different companies that make multi?

Willow
57:28 – 57:42
Um, yeah, so multi itself is a brand. Um, of, I can’t remember what the, the name of the actual alcohol is right now. Uh, yeah, yeah. It told me, but multi is the most popular, highly regarded brand in China.

Anders
57:43 – 57:43
Okay.

Willow
57:43 – 58:04
And then, um, that’s the one that pretty much everyone will drink. Um, it’s stocked in restaurants, but you usually you just buy a big bottle and share it. Okay. Um, but then. there are a couple different brands that do different types. Like you didn’t get multi gifted to you, you got a different brand.

Anders
58:06 – 58:21
But 56% that’s more than German schnapps and we will have one or two small glasses of schnapps after dinner and that’s it because otherwise we get hammered.

Willow
58:22 – 58:56
Yeah. No, like it gets you drunk so fast. It’s like, I guarantee actually for Chinese New Year, we went over to YeYe and Nana’s place. And, um, I, like, I hate Malta. I can’t have more than two glasses. So they actually had to run like with my glass away from YeYe so he’d stop pouring it for me so I could move on to beer instead. Um, cause I get absolutely destroyed. Well, it’s high. Oh, it’s, it’s actually so bad. I really dislike it.

Anders
58:57 – 58:57
And

Mark
58:58 – 58:58
especially

Willow
58:58 – 58:58
if

Mark
58:58 – 59:31
you’ve. Sorry, quite funnily, it says it’s made out of sorghum, which is a, a corn or, or a grain that’s fermented, but. In Australia, it says they use that same grain as livestock feed. So in China, yeah, it says There’s Mutai is a Chinese liquor made from fermented sorghum. It’s a type of Chinese liquor and is considered one of the world’s three major distilled spirits. So

Willow
59:31 – 59:31
it’s

Mark
59:31 – 59:41
obviously, whether that’s because it’s mainly drunk in China and China’s got one sixth of the world’s population, I don’t know. But it’s right up there with whiskey. Right

Anders
59:41 – 59:41
up

Mark
59:42 – 59:44
there with whiskey. So obviously it’s fairly significant, isn’t it?

Anders
59:44 – 59:51
Yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. We learned something today. This is, this is the whole purpose of the podcast that we learned

Mark
59:51 – 1:00:30
something about. Yeah. So speaking of, uh, of Tsingtao and beer, we just booked a ticket to go back to Tsingtao, uh, in the last week or so. And we’re going in. August, July, August, which is when the Tsingtao International Beer Festival is on, which is often referred to as the Oktoberfest of Asia. So we will be going back to the beer fest in Willow’s hometown in July to, to drink a, drink a lot of beer, not just Chinese beer, all the big brands go like Heineken and Superbok. And you know, so it’s a major, major festival.

Mark
1:00:30 – 1:00:59
We went to the grounds when we were there in September and all they, It’s actually, unlike Munich where they pull it down in the middle of the city, in Tsingtao they actually have a designated area and these big tents stay up all year round for this two week period of the year. So it’s a whole set aside. And much like Oktoberfest, you know, they have rides and shows and different things, carnival going on. So yeah, it’ll be quite interesting to see. So yeah.

Anders
1:00:59 – 1:01:04
How many people can they host on a typical day in that space? Do you know that?

Mark
1:01:06 – 1:01:21
Well, they actually spread it around the city and they have two or three different areas where they hold it. They have one major area on Kindau West Coast, it’s called. Kindau Beer Festival. I assume it’s not as big as Munich.

Willow
1:01:22 – 1:01:22
OK.

Mark
1:01:24 – 1:01:24
Hang on, Willow’s got the info.

Willow
1:01:25 – 1:01:38
So it says on Google that in 2019, 7.2 million people attended the festival. Wow. Yeah. Um, and 2023 was expected to, oh, well that was last year, but I think it was about the same amount.

Anders
1:01:38 – 1:01:38
Yeah.

Willow
1:01:39 – 1:01:55
Uh, they have over 2000 beer varieties from 40 different countries, uh, music performances, art shows, sport events, beer drinking competitions. Um, they do fashion shows relating to beer as well. Um. Yeah, it’s a really, really big thing.

Anders
1:01:56 – 1:02:06
Okay, because the Oktoberfest in Munich is around 7 million people as well. So it sounds like the attendance is similar. So it

Mark
1:02:08 – 1:02:38
should be exciting. I’m looking forward to going and having a look for sure. So we uh, so yeah, so in since we’ve spoke. Yeah, we’ve planned another trip to actually we’re going to cambodia for four days Going to non-pen for four days on the way then we’re going to chindao for I think 10 days and then we’re going to manila in the philippines on the way home for Four days, so never been to the Philippines. So it’s a little bit of a little bit of a taster I’ll have a look I’d prefer to go to one of the islands like Boracay.

Mark
1:02:38 – 1:02:53
Oh, yeah or somewhere like that. But uh, but in within four days We’re just gonna fly into Manila and have a look and say what that’s like and and head back to Australia. So awesome So a bit of travel planned why? and then Willow’s home and you know, so there’s been a bit going on on this side of the world.

Anders
1:02:53 – 1:03:11
Yeah, we’re not planning, as we’ve often talked about, we still have Anton in school, so we can’t really plan travels at the moment. But yeah, it’s great. And this is just another reason to continue talking about travels.

Mark
1:03:12 – 1:03:12
I love it

Anders
1:03:13 – 1:03:15
when you book new destinations.

Mark
1:03:16 – 1:03:46
It’s great. And three three new airlines that we’ve never flown with before so that’ll be good and three new airports I’ve never been to before because I really like a you know having a good sticky beak around an airport. So yeah I’ve never been to Phnom Penh Airport before even I’ve been to Phnom Penh before but we bused Oh, yeah out of Phnom Penh last time. Yeah, and we’ve got to stop in Shanghai on the way to Hindu from Phnom Penh. So I’ve never been to Shanghai Pudong Airport either. So that’ll be a That’ll be interesting.

Mark
1:03:46 – 1:04:19
Actually, there’s more. And then we’re going to go to Hong Kong airport as well as on transit from Qingdao to Manila and then Manila. So actually four airports I’ve never been to, which will give me some good YouTube content to make, I guess. And we’re flying with Eastern China. So Eastern China Airlines for one leg. I’ve never flown with them. I’ve flown with Southern China before. uh flying with cafe pacific i’ve never flown with them before either so and flying with seaboo pacific and their uh philippines airline home so

Anders
1:04:19 – 1:04:19
wow

Mark
1:04:20 – 1:04:25
great and all this is going on in what do you say july july august yeah

Anders
1:04:25 – 1:04:27
yeah yeah wow

Mark
1:04:27 – 1:04:41
i had to wait i had to build up a couple of holidays with me uh with me work so yeah I need to put off traveling for about six months in order to uh to rack a few weeks worth of holiday up and then

Willow
1:04:41 – 1:04:41
I don’t

Mark
1:04:41 – 1:05:08
know maybe in December December January we’ll probably be somewhere else as well so we’ll see what happens there just looking at a few different Different places and different options. One of them was Greece. We were looking at the other day. So, uh, who knows if I go to Greece, I’ll end up going to, um, I’ll probably go to Istanbul for a couple of days and maybe a Sofia in Bulgaria for a couple of days as well. And since we’re all in the same area, so we’ll, uh, we’ll see what happens there. Istanbul is

Anders
1:05:08 – 1:05:17
interesting because it’s right between that’s usually where they Europeans say, you know, this is where Asia starts. Yeah.

Mark
1:05:17 – 1:05:48
Yeah. It’s quite expensive at the moment because inflation is like out of control. It is. Yeah. In Turkey, like I had some friends who were there maybe a month ago and they said like two kebabs and you know two cans of coke was the equivalent of about 38 Australian or about 20 euros like you know so uh they said prices were a bit out of control at this stage but yeah who knows if you’re only going there for a couple of days I guess you can bat it away and deal with it but yeah you wouldn’t want to stay in there long term at them sort of prices I guess so no no no we’ll see what happens

Speaker 5
1:05:48 – 1:05:49
yeah

Anders
1:05:49 – 1:05:53
Well, it has been really good talking to you both. No

Mark
1:05:53 – 1:05:54
worries.

Anders
1:05:54 – 1:06:00
And Willow, I hope to see you again on the podcast. It will be nice. Thank

Willow
1:06:00 – 1:06:02
you for having me. Yeah,

Anders
1:06:02 – 1:06:11
always. You will always have a place here. And yeah, who knows when we can talk the next time. But

Willow
1:06:11 – 1:06:11
it

Anders
1:06:11 – 1:06:19
certainly was interesting to get your inside perspective of life in China. Absolutely. I

Willow
1:06:20 – 1:06:25
hope I offered some, uh, good insight. Absolutely.

Anders
1:06:26 – 1:06:31
Absolutely. You know, at least the things that interest me. So, yeah.

Mark
1:06:31 – 1:07:01
Well, Willow’s, uh, Gary Willow’s who they live with, Gary and Tia. Gary wants to start a podcast with Willow. So, so who knows, like, you know, we might have some competition. Yeah. Maybe we can get Gary, Gary and Willow on one night from China. We can do like a four way zoom call and we can all have a chat. So anyway, Anders was great to talk to you again as we do. And, uh, we shall talk again next Monday.

Anders
1:07:01 – 1:07:10
Yeah, no, Monday is not good for me. But let’s let’s let’s let’s coordinate that because Monday, I won’t be available. But we can do it maybe Tuesday or Wednesday.

Mark
1:07:10 – 1:07:13
Yeah, no worries. We’ll talk some stuff next week and do another episode anyway.

Anders
1:07:13 – 1:07:18
Exactly. You have a good evening in Europe. It’s evening, right? Yeah. Yeah,

Mark
1:07:18 – 1:07:18
it’s

Anders
1:07:18 – 1:07:25
evening, 8.30 here. Okay. Well, have a good one and talk to you soon. No worries. Bye. Bye.