Are two things that Jason and I love! Well, for Jason, more eating and not so much art... Who would have thought that the remote region of Yangshuo, China would be the place we’d be able to explore these passions! We heard from several people that taking a cooking class in Yangshuo was a must, so we signed up for the Cloud 9 cooking school, located right around the corner from our Paradise Hotel.

This was the full fledged cultural experience of Chinese cooking, beginning with our somewhat traumatic trip to the local farmer’s market to buy the fresh ingredients for our dishes. Let’s just say this farmer’s market wasn’t exactly what we were used to at the trendy and shi-shi farmer’s market at the ferry plaza in SF Embarcadero.

The experience started off just fine, typical fruits and vegetables lined up everywhere (not the cleanest of environments, but okay). Then we got to the live animal section – chickens, rabbits and pigeons – this I could handle. Slowly things were getting a little stranger – frogs, snakes, snails, turtles, all alive of course. It was weird, but manageable.

Okay, next thing I know our cooking teacher is asking us if we want to continue to the next section of the market, since things were about to get a little more gruesome. Sure, why not – when in China, do as the Chinese do, right?! I’d heard about dogs being eaten in several Asian countries, but to actually walk into the section and see dogs strung up was a little hard. Worst part is, there were caged live dogs awaiting their fate of being someone’s dinner that night – it was a disturbing picture. The pig bladder, heart, brains, lamb penis, and rats were also a lot to handle. Let’s just say we’ve been eating vegetarian in this country since that experience (minus the very clean chicken we prepared ourselves in the class)!!

All these gruesome images aside, the cooking class was fabulous. Our open air kitchen looking out onto the Yangshuo mountains was breathtaking. We chose three dishes to cook – braised eggplant, meat dumplings (chicken and beef!!) and Gung Bao (Kung Pao as we call it) chicken. Of all things, I never thought I’d be grateful to China for getting Jason in the kitchen and cooking for the first time EVER. I think we may have the up and coming JaSAN Can Cook!!! Check out his moves on the video clip.

So, from cooking in the morning to arriving at the Hotel of Modern Art (HOMA) in the afternoon, we felt like things were shaping up in our China experience. This remote hotel located between Guilin and Yangshuo that just opened in 2006 was certainly a unique place to spend some time. The ultra sheik and contemporary retreat is located on 1300 acres of land. In their words this place is “an open air art museum intercommunicating with natural environment".

There are around 200 very interesting art installations and sculptures scattered throughout the landscape designed by over 140 artists from around the world – they all interact with the environment in quite a special way. The only way to describe the surreal experience of being there is like imagining being Alice in Wonderland. Jason and I had so much fun frolicking around this compound on our “hogs”, as Jason referred to our dinky little bikes. From playing in the park, to pondering the meaning of the pieces and installations (more Joy than Jason, who was more interested in the slide and playground), we certainly enjoyed our time at HOMA. We even got upgraded to this really cool room (b/c there was absolutely no one staying at the hotel), which was fun. I guess all it took for China to grow on us is a little bit of cooking and a cool, contemporary art hotel!!