We wanted to try something really local in Tongli so I got my trishaw driver to bring me to a local joint instead of one of those extremely touristy looking ones on the main street. He brought us to his little restaurant by a tiny canal along some alleyway to try.
There was no menu and we just told them to bring us some of their more popular dishes. I felt like I was ordering in some typical Chinese Kungfu movie – ” Xiao Er, Tai Yi Xie Xiao Cai Lai.”
The end result was a dish of local river fish with lots of bones, egg fried with silver fish, some local river plant and a plate of chicken with some unknown vegetables. It wasn’t too bad and we tipped a local to sing Chinese opera tunes for us while we ate by the canal so it was a rather surreal feeling of being caught in a time warp of old China.