Becoming Chinese with the Umbrella cooperation [Day 2 in Changde]

Friday - A day filled with adventurous paperwork and the sweet success of a personal accomplishment.

But first let's get a proper breakfast!

Bauze breakfast time

Not knowing how to spell words right yet I am writing the name of the dish according to how it sounds like thinking out loud in my mind.

That doesn't always help though...

Yesterday evening I was asking one of my Chinese coworkers if they like Bauze. She didn't understand what I was talking about at all. So either she's not Chinese at all as it's a pretty common breakfast or I need to improve my Chinese pronounciation.

Probably last one ...

The high yards of coffee - Changde's HKM

Anyways, I enjoyed a cabbage filled Bauze, a spicy one and one with sweet red bean paste.

The cabbage filled one reminded me of Russian piraschki which are basically made the same but instead of steamed either deep fried or baked and mostly stuffed with potato or for non vegs with onion enriched meat.

Manou - Steamed bread. Period

Manou is a steamed bread and this one basically tasted like bread. Steamed. I kinda expected a more interesting flavor having the taste of taro or cinnamon infused manou from Chiang Rai, Thailand in mind.

Getting connected

After the breakfast and digesting part was down it's time for some bureaucracy! Yay!

Our today's task leads us to the realms of 'China Mobile' to get Björn, a great man and new arrival from Hanover and myself a Chinese Sim Card.

On the way to the shop we bought some lotus nuts which we joyfully ate at the counter

waiting for our 2 designated guides through the paperwork rollercoaster to make a couple of phone calls themselves to make sure we German foreigners are allowed to make phone calls on our own.

"Why you no Chinese?!"

The big problem apparently was the lack of us having a Chinese nickname hence making entries into the system complicated.

Just look at Björn's name! Where on earth people think it's ok to put dots on vocals? Germany!

In the end after telling us getting a Sim Card is impossible for foreigners they called us back and it kinda worked nevertheless.

Turns out having a Chinese mobile number is a quite nice but doesn't help to make WeChat-Wallet the universal Chinese payment system working. That would have been too easy!

In addition to a Chinese mobile number a Chinese bank account is needed too. Ok sure. Why not? Let's just become Chinese instantly. May result in less papers to fill out.

I heard a 'No' coming from my left side. Seems like getting a Chinese citizenship is a hell lot of catalogs to fill out plus you're even getting less rights as you would have as a tourist. Plans abandoned.

Let's stay with the bank account. But first:

Let's have lunch!

Rocking Changde's umbrella style

Inspired by Isabel's pioneering umbrella sun combination and the microwaving temperature of 29 humid °C I tried out my own colour-fitting umbrella.

Although it blocks the direct sun from above, the umbrella doesn't really help against the heat as the heat is all around you like a warm cozy blanket infront of a fire site on a late December night ... Just in midsummer!

International neighborhood

The walk to our lunch reliving good old gatherer and hunter times lead us along the pretty clean emerald shining river.

Around 7 minutes away from Chinese German town, they built up a Chinese Chinese town - in traditional flair.

Changde is also setting up an Italian town

Enough talking where is food?!?!!

Aaron one amazing photographer, filmmaker, Barista marketer and human Being will be leaving back to Germany on Sunday so we decided to go somewhere fancy instead of ordering ordinary take aways.

A restaurant with a movable roundtable in the middle!

Perfect for sharing

At feasts like these and maybe ordering food in China in general is done by only one person choosing the food

"Two Cheeseburger please"

and the rest of the party eating along.

My precious!

Every time I'm eating Chinese food my tastebuds get introduced into a new layer of food heaven. Mostly a positive one.

I'm especially turned on by the flavours and diverse tasty tastes of the sauces which are adding the cherry on the cake. Taro was dope!

The aftermath

Our café opens at 3pm due to mentioned enormous heat residing here in Changde during the day and closes at 10pm when outside temperatures finally reach a pleasant level.

On the way home

Not being 3pm yet we still had time to finish another big task of the day and one more step of becoming more Chinese.

Setting up a bank account

As mentioned before a Chinese bank account is strongly needed to set up WeChat Pay and thus being able to use your mobile phone to pay for almost everything. From coffee to transportation to underwear. I'm feeling like going back to the future!

Being prepared by the latest bureaucracy act of getting a Sim Card getting a Bank account opened up yet time-consuming.

The staff of the bank one time even lost Björn's passport. Turns out they left it at the copying machine!

Coffee Art Time!

What a paper fight! Having survived that part of the day it's time for some hand's work.

I continued with my soap water infused training method and also added training-cacao today.

After several dry liquid soap art training attempts I switched to a combination of real milk and cacao and managed to get this kinda heart on top of my not yet dissolved cacao mix.

Love is in the air!

While my attempts are still quite cute here you can see a proper Barista (Aaron) doing some latte art captured by camera.

Besides using latte art you can also just pour an espresso over tonic water to get one marvellous piece of beverage art.

Most German coffee

Once the sun has set and the outside temperature gets suitable for the human race, Changde's German town's streets are getting filled being visited by local Changde residents.

Every good day has to come to an end. Saturday evening will be karaoke night! I love it! Up until then!

Thanks for stopping by, you're SuperAwesome!

Be sure to follow my blog @rootingrobert to get real life inside information out of Changde.

If you're using WeChat feel free to give @hanover-coffee a follow to stay up to date with Changde's latest coffee news!