Liverpool has the oldest China Town in Europe, and the largest Chinese Arch outside of China. No real surprise if you consider Liverpool’s role as an outward looking port for the last couple of hundred years. As such, this was an adventure I was really excited by.
Breakfast
We started the day with porridge as a google search told me that this was authentic (although I suspect my golden syrup microwave version was less so). Penny is really into Mulan so we watched the movie as we got ready for our adventure. This song – I am a little obsessed with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSS5dEeMX64
Finding Old Treasures
I have never been to China, but I have been to Hong Kong and when there I had bought a tea set and some children’s chopsticks and it was brilliant to get them out and to use them. Penny can actually use her children’s chopsticks pretty well, and I’d picked some up for Freddie when we were in the Chinese pavilion in Epcot last year so we were all set.
The Adventure
The China Town in Liverpool is really fantastic in terms of the architecture. I loved all the little details – the street signs are in Chinese and the bins are Chinese. The streets in this area have a big Chinese population and it felt like we were completely immersed in Chinese culture. The arch is amazing and there were red lanterns everywhere left over from Chinese New Year.
But – it was the morning and everything was closed! Even the bakery I had researched (which had amazing sounding pork buns) was closed for a holiday and so we decided to go to the big Chinese Supermarket in Liverpool to buy some lunch and to buy Penny some Chinese sweets – which she had been promised.
The Supermarket
I had been here before and its completely brilliant. Its a huge supermarket which sells everything you can imagine. Here we found Penny’s sweets, fortune cookies, little dumpling cakes, pork buns to steam and all manner of other things. I even bought Penny and Freddie their own Chinese plates and bowls which I know they will use all the time.
We fell in love with a huge, gold, lucky cat. The man who worked at the Supermarket was incredibly friendly and helpful and had children the same age as ours. He explained about the lucky cat being related to Chinese New Year. Penny had just been studying Chinese New Year at school and so she knew all about it – she had ever tried doing some Chinese writing.
Lunch
For lunch I steamed with little pork buns and we had them with lychees and the Chinese New Year Sweets for dessert. The sweets were sugared vegetable – a google search told me that they were picked because the names of the veg sound lucky in Cantonese. They definitely weren’t chosen for their taste! I think it might be the first time Penny has refused sweets in her life. Perhaps they are an acquired taste…
Tea with Granny and Grandad
Penny had gone to her friends house and so Granny and Grandad came round to eat fortune cookies and little red bean and green tea dumpling cakes and to use my little Chinese tea set. I think of all the countries we have visited this was the most exciting in terms of food. We tried to steer away from obvious takeaways and to be more authentic, although the tea was from Fortnum and Mason’s…
Dinner
Penny was taken to Tai Pan, which is a huge and popular Chinese restaurant in Liverpool, with her best friend. She went armed with her chopsticks and ate prawn crackers, prawn toast and fried rice with curry sauce.
I know they are not healthy but I actually firmly believe that occasionally eating things you enjoy (and things that are different and exciting) is just as important as eating well. We had a takeaway with Freddie, who certainly can’t yet use his own chopsticks but ate his body weight in special fried rice.
China was brilliant fun. It was culturally exciting and made me want to visit the real country soon. It encouraged me to try different food with the kids and on the whole they loved what they tried. My appreciation for Liverpool grows by the second and I am proud that, despite the walls being built all around us, that I am bringing my children up to appreciate the multi-cultural world we live in.
If you liked this, have a look at our China themed day revisited
