Back to the blogs again

I have not been able to access Internet for last one week. Today I travelled from Hong Kong to Taipei, Taiwan so I am trying to update everyone with as many pictures and posts as I can. I plan to finish whole week's updates by end of tomorrow which is June 1st 2007. On May 24th I travelled from Beijing to Xian. Xian is a very traditional city and had older history than Beijing. We got to Xian at about 12 noon and took some rest. We were all tired because even if the plane ride was 2 hours we had little bit of shaky landing and then almost 1.5 hours bus route to get to the hotel from the Xian airport. That night we saw similar Bell and Drum tower like any other cities. There was a restaurant which is specialized in dumplings. Dumplings has softer shell steamed flour (many times rice flour) with multiple types of stuffing in them. In china, mainly stuffing are made out of meat but the restaurant was kind enough to make a vegetarian dumpling for me. It is interesting that they bring baskets of different dumpling one by one in less than 15-20 minutes and expect us to eat them by chopsticks. Dumplings look very small to eat but trust me when you are expected to eat 10 of them in 15 minutes, you feel completely full after 4 or 5 of them. Please check the pictures, may be some day you will get to enjoy dumplings that are cooked by Chef Sachin. Enjoy these pictures from May 24th 2007, I will make more postings tomorrow. So many dumplings to serve, are you hungry? Don't they look cool? (They were served in many colors, shapes and sizes) Dipping sauce, made out of chili papers.....they look very hot and spicy but they aren't! A soup with very small dumplings in it, is served in this special heater/container. You never know how many dumplings you have in your bowl until you finish the soup. The no. of dumplings decide how your future (next year) is going to be. The Bell Tower in Xian, the bell and drum towers in Xian are oldest and most preserved.