  Local time 9.35pm saturday - 3 days left today's main plan was simply to go shopping to get a few last things before we have to go back to the uk. So, after a quick breakfast, yuqi, me, and her parents set off in a taxi. It was quite a long drive to the shopping mall, it was the other side of the city. The first mall we went to had a series of small stalls. Yuqi bought some jewelry and i bought a replacement accessory for my phone. I'd previously bought a flashing monkey, but somewhere between shanghai and here, the flashing bit fell off. I have to say that i thought the uk cities were busy on saturdays, but i hadn't seen anything until china! Each mall was absolutely swarming with people, if you stopped for a minute, there'd be a build up of people behind you trying to push you along. Next, we went into a second, newer mall. Here i bought a music cd, and looked around a few other stalls.
After all this, it was lunchtime already, so we headed back home in a taxi. After i tried donkey meat, i felt brave enough to try something new, something unusual, something i couldn't eat in the uk. So what was to be the next meat to taste... Attention animal lovers... It's dog! Yes our friendly furry friend served up on a plate! Actually, contrary to popular belief in the uk, dog is not that common here. It's a particular delicacy from the north of china, and is difficult to find and expensive elsewhere. It's also not any old dog, it's a particular breed bred just for eating (as with beef for example). Yuqi's parents knew of a restaurant that served dog, but when we arrived the restaurant was empty (never a good sign here) and the menu expensive, so we left. On our travels to another restaurant, yuqi's dad spotted a tiny restaurant on a side street. After a quick inspection of the menu, we sat down to eat.
The restaurant specialised in korean style cooking, and served us dog, spicy dried fish, aubergine and cabbage all with spicy dips. The dog was a dark meat similar in colour and texture to duck meat. It tasted very nice, it was very tender and went very well with the spicy dip. We also ate an enormous bowl of korean style cold noodles which are served in a slightly sweet tasting soup with egg and corriander.
Marvellous! Once we were all stuffed, we went back home to relax for a while. It turned out that the flashing monkey i bought for my phone earlier was missing a clip, so needed to be taken back. Yuqi and her mum wanted to buy a few more things, so we went together. On the way back, the traffic was terrible. In a crucial road under a railway bridge, a large drain cover had broken, causing chaos. Still, we got there eventually and got me a new monkey. Then, we travelled to another mall, and got caught in traffic due to an accident in the same place as earlier! But once there, we browsed around for a couple of hours getting yuqi and her mum some new clothes. As we exited the mall, it had just started to rain, so we took a taxi home for dinner. We got home quite late (8.30ish) but yuqi's dad had cooked dinner ready. It was very nice, and my belly is very happy as i sit here writing this. 
