Hi Madeline, I have not heard of that, but sounds interesting.

Wow…you must have had a grand time, and some really tasty foods. I know I did :-)

We also dined in Quyuan, and totally agree, everything is so refined from food to service to decor.

Thank you so much for your input, Mak, and I do share some of the points you stated :-)

Technically Fuschia Dunlop’s cookbook Land of Fish and Rice covers some of this territory. Having traveled, lived, and cooked in Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Yangzhou, plus Shanghai, I find the food very unreplicable in the US due to the uniqueness of the ingredients!

I really enjoyed this post and comparing notes with my previous trips to Yangzhou — as usual, meticulously documented and explained! My favorite restaurant in Yangzhou was Quyuan chashe — words cannot convey how delicate, elegant, and refined everything was.

They are both beautiful cities, and each to his own taste, but in my opinion Yangzhou is much nicer to visit. No real tourist hordes and a real working city focussed on the lives of ordinary people rather than tourists such that the food culture is still genuine and much more real and far less “Disney.” Walking through the gorgeous small canals on the back streets and enjoying not only the beauty of the city scenes, but also the peace and tranquility, was a very special experience for me that I won’t soon forget, and a marked contrast to the tourist fatigued chaos of Venice – and much of Europe – today. There is also of course the expense of food and lodging, which is a fraction in Yangzhou than in Venice.

By the way, I think that another key difference for Yangzhou Fried Rice is that in Yangzhou it seemes to often be simmered with rich stock after frying, almost like a risotto, so that the grains were both a bit softer and moister and more imbued with flavor than in other parts of China. Wang Gang has quite a good video on the topic with an interesting lesson on their egg condiment technique.

I do believe they each have their own beauties :-)