Hometown
Hometown
I was born and raised in Xuzhou ("Hsü-Chow"), a mid-sized city in Jiangsu province, China, with around 9 million people. You can find a detailed introduction to my hometown on Wikipedia.
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Location
Location
My hometown is close to “Qinling-Huaihe Line", a reference line used by geographers to distinguish between northern and southern China. Similar to Maryland on the east coast of the United States where I lived for a few years, the culture is like a blend of the north and the south. To give you some descriptions that might be easier to understand, Xuzhou is located at the midpoint between Beijing and Shanghai, two of the largest cities in China.
Xuzhou is a very important railway hub. It is at the intersection of Jinghu railway, the most important railway connecting northern and southern China, and Longhai railway, the most important railway connecting western and eastern China.
Nowadays, high-speed train has made traveling much faster in China, reducing the time to Beijing or Shanghai from over 10 hours to less than 2.5 hours. One fun fact is that it all takes about 1 hour from Xuzhou to Nanjing (captial of Jiangsu provience), Jinan (capital of Shandong provience), Hefei (capital of Anhui provience), and Zhengzhou (capital of Henan provience).
Attractions
Attractions
My hometown has many great places to visit! Here are some that I highly recommend:
Yunlong Lake and Yunlong Mountain (AAAAA Scenic Area)
Guishan Han Tomb (an embodiment of the culture of Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD))
Hubushan Ancient Architectural Complex (mostly from Qing Dynasty (1636 AD-1912 AD))
Yunlong Lake (By travel.china.com.cn)
Guishan Han Tomb (By Cangminzho, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Hubushan (By www.jiangsutravel.us)
Cuisine
Cuisine
Due to the influence of many historical and geographical factors, the eating habits of Chinese people vary greatly from region to region. The diet of people from northern China (e.g. Northeast China) have very few or almost no overlap with the diet of people from southern China (e.g. Catonese). For travelers this is great, since you can always find some unique dishes that are rarely seen in other places no matter which city you visit.
Below are some representitive dishes from my hometown. You can probably find some of them in Flushing, NY, though I haven't tried them yet. Some of these dishes are really hard to make at home due to the lack of tools. For example, to make luò mó (bottom-left panel) you will need a tool called "Ào zi (鏊子)", a round flat iron pan with a slightly convex center. The taste of luò mó is surprisingly similar to the laffa bread I tried during my visit to Israel.
Luò mó (烙馍) (a super thin baked bun)
Dì guō jī (地锅鸡) (stewed chicken in a ground pot)
Bǎ zi ròu (把子肉) (stewed pork)
Luò mó and Sǎn zi (烙馍卷馓子) (By liuchaosong)
Dì guō jī (地锅鸡) (By modenggu)
Bǎ zi ròu (把子肉) (By ruoyumamazaichufang)
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