One of the American comfort foods I miss quite a bit are hotdogs, but it’s not just any variety. Given the Jewish demographics in New Jersey and New York City, it’s all-beef kosher Frankfurters I miss the most. Typically, all I need on one of those is a single stripe of mustard.
I am not completely opposed to messy hotdogs, though. Give me a good chili dog any day of the week. In West Virginia, coleslaw is a frequent topping, and that’s not something I am against, either. So, I was intrigued when a friend returned from Wuxi recently and was positively gushing about a tiny hotdog shop. A different friend and I decided to jump into a car, drive over to Wuxi, and make a thorough investigation.
Rambo’s Hotdog & Grill is located on an off street between the Sanyang Plaza and Nanchan Temple subway stops. The “grill” part of the name is important, as they do not boil their sausages. New York City, for example, is infamous for dirty water street carts. There, the hot dog is boiled as opposed to being turned over a hot metal surface. The slur of “dirty water” refers to how some these street carts never actually change their water — which would not exactly pass the scrutiny of a health inspector’s surprise visit. Some say not changing the water improves the flavor of tubed meat. Others — typically some people from Chicago who want to argue with New Yorkers on everything food related — might refer to this as salmonella served on the street!
That’s well and nice. But, it doesn’t answer the question of “What are these Wuxi hotdogs actually like?” The answer: very messy.
My travel partner and and I each ordered two dogs a piece. She got one of standards.
This had a few drizzles of ketchup, mustard, crunchy chips, and something pickled. My co-adventurer also ordered this.
I had a hard time wrapping my head around this at first. It’s smoked salmon draped over a sausage and then drizzled with a mixture of mayo and sour cream. Normally, smoked salmon is something I would enjoy by itself or as part of sushi or sashimi. Never would I put it on a hotdog. Yet, this won me over. Now, onto what I ordered.
This is Rambo’s Buffalo chicken dog. There was no chicken meat here; it refers more to the orange sauce splashed onto the very drippy, melty mozzarella. It’s the same sauce used to coat Buffalo-styled chicken wings. My second selection …
This is, allegedly, is a “Philly cheese steak dog.” For reference purpose, a Philadelphia cheesesteak actually looks like this.
It’s basically bread, cheese, steak, and sometimes fried bell peppers and onions. Depending on where you are eating a Philly, the cheese choices are either processed cheese whiz, cheddar, or provolone. What was on Rambo’s Philly dog definitely was not any of those. The texture of the beef, however, was legit — the steak needs to be thinly shredded, not chunked or cubed.
My biggest criticism of all Rambo’s “hotdog” is the sausage itself. They are not using Frankfurters. Rather, they are using German Nurembergers. That’s just not the taste I am thinking of when somebody says “hotdog.” I am highly prejudiced, given the part of America I am from. For me, this was a profound disappointment, but I forced myself to get over that. After all, kosher all-beef hotdogs just don’t exist in this end of China. A lot of what is labeled and sold as “American hotdogs” is just flavorless mystery meat. Chinese hotdogs? Um, no. Just no. German sausages are also likely easier and cheaper to source. So, grumble, grumble — but, okay, I understand.
The other thing is what is actually piled on top of the sausage. There is actually so much there; it may leave somebody absolutely stuffed if they are eating more than one. It happened to me. It also happened to my dining partner. Either way, Rambo’s may be a return visit for me, despite my being underwhelmed a little. There are other things on the menu I am curious about.
Extremely large and highly specialized markets are nothing new in China. There are some, however, that are just surreal, and 江苏省华东石材市场jiāngsū shěng huádōng shícái shìchǎng, aka the Jiangsu East China Stone Market certainly fits the “surreal” description.
This is located in Yixing (Wuxi prefecture), but it’s essentially just over the city line with southern Changzhou. I first found this place years ago when I first took a bus to Yixing. However, since I was on an intercity express coach, there was never any chance to get off and walk around. Over the years, every time I bussed it to Yixing, I passed this place and my desire to explore grew more and more. Once I got my Chinese driver’s license, this stone market was in the top three of places I wanted to go. So, the question here is: why?
If you call this Godzilla, passionate kaiju nerds might actually try to shank you.
Nearly 80% of the area sells stuff like industrial marble slabs, but the more interesting stuff is along the road. That’s where the statues for sale are located. As somebody who loves art, I knew this area would be a fundamentally fun experience.
Museum and gallery exhibits are curated. Somebody has had a hand in selecting what goes where and next to what. That is not the same as a purely retail experience where there is absolutely no thought in how stuff is displayed. This can lead to purely chaotic, haphazard, and unintended juxtapositions.
For those who who may not know the term, a juxtaposition is a type of metaphorical comparison. Two things of unlike nature are placed together for contrasting effect. Think of editorial decisions involving newspaper layouts. One headline screams “Evangelical Pastor Pubically Cries While Admitting Hooker Addiction.” The story next to it is titled “Hurricane Floods Sends Hog Waste into Drinking Water.” One could accuse me of being sarcastic, but I actually saw this once when I lived in North Carolina. Trust me, the decision to put the stories next to each other is not an accident.
How many unintended juxtapositions can be found in this image? I have not stopped to count.
The wonder of wandering around a place like this, with a camera or a mobile phone, are the dramatic pairings that one can find.
Like Mao Zedong and Guanyin, the goddess of mercy.
Here, a crucified Jesus is hanging out with Buddha. Is one blessing the other?
Here there is Charles Darwin, who postulated the theory of evolution and survival of the fittest. His neighbor is CPC model worker and folk hero Lei Feng — who died in 1962 when a telephone pole accidentally fell on him.
RIP Lei Feng
As wild as a juxtaposition that would be, it wasn’t the silliest. That would be Guanyin flanked by demonic versions of Mickey and Minney Mouse.
The likeness of the two mice is probably unlicensed by Disney.
This is one that I just can’t unpack. I prefer the mystery of it.
Double-O-Sexy? Seriously, ask yourself if the James Bond franchise could even exist without “Bond girls,”
Honey Trap(noun): A spy using seduction and sexual acts to compromise a target for purposes of blackmail. Example: A Russian hyper male FSB officer falls for a twink CIA dude while dancing at an illicit gay bar in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Strobe lights and mirrored disco ball spinning from the ceiling are certainly involved as they make eye contact. Afterwards, the two relocate to a hotel room so they can be very naughty with each other. The Russian becomes a double agent as a result to keep his real sexual orientation secret from his FSB coworkers.
Honey traps are frequent plot points in James Bond movies and TV shows like The Americans — or just about any entertainment product involving espionage. However, there are more to them than just John Le Carré novels and stories like them,
Sure, a bit of sexy intrigue does spice up a fictional plot and narrative, but honey traps are actually a part of world history. During the Cold War, Warsaw Pact nations did this on a routine basis, where handsome young men were often dispatched to seduce secretaries within the Pentagon and within other American governmental agencies.
In a time of rampant and institutionalized homophobia, it was particularly effective if you could ensnare a closeted lesbian or gay man, because that person would be even more existentially compromised. The illicit secret might become very public. This is why, by the way, the previous joke above regarding gay discos in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, actually is quite real and not a total joke as it originally sounds. If the game is hard intelligence in a pre-Internet world, a spy doesn’t have to bring down a high ranking official. A spy just needs to seduce somebody who has access to a higher ranking official’s filing cabinet and documents.
If you go back farther into ancient history, a honey trap may not even involve access to papers. It might involv sending a beautiful woman into somebody else’s kingdom — just to create chaos. That actually was purported to have happened thousands of years ago in what is now Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. This was during the Spring and Autumn era (770-476 BCE), and the specific kingdoms were Wu 吴 and Yue 越. This should not be misconstrued to having anything to do with Wuyue shopping plazas; those characters are 吾悦. Anyhow, Wu was predominately modern Jiangsu, and Yue, Zhejiang. The border between the two sometimes shifted due to ongoing war.
King Guo of Yue
Gou Jian sat on the Yue throne from roughly 495 to 465 BCE in what would become present day Shaoxing (a city between Hangzhou and Ningbo). At the beginning of his reign, King Helu of Wu had his army march south and attack. Gou Jian defeated that advance and pushed the invaders back. Helu never forgot this, and on his deathbed, he commanded his son and heir, Fu Chai, to avenge the loss.
Eventually, he did, and he took both Gou Jian and his top advisor, Fan Li, prisoner. Both were forced to work as slaves performing manual labor. Guo kept his misery to himself, and after a few years, the Wu king granted the Guo and his advisor freedom and the ability to return to south to Yue. That was a colossally bad idea. Once returning to their own country, the two dedicated themselves to plotting the tragic downfall of Wu and Fu Chai. Of course, that involved troops, but Fan Li had spicy idea to plop on top of that.
Xi Shi strikes a pose.
As tribute from Yue, Fu Chai was gifted a beautiful woman, Xi Shi. She was so gorgeous, according to legend, birds would drop out of the sky if they caught a glimpse of her. Also, if fish saw her peering into their waters, they fell to the bottom of the river; they would become so mesmerized that they would forget how to swim. She is credited as the origin of the Chinese idiom 沉鱼落雁 chén yú luò yàn — literally “Fish sink and wild geese drop.” It’s often used to describe woman who are so beautiful, men literally go insane while looking at them.
The idea, basically, entailed that Fu Chai was a fundamentally horny man who couldn’t control himself. If he had the stunning Xi Shi all to himself, his constant arousal would distract him from matters of state and the Wu kingdom would fall into disorganization. That’s exactly what happened. In the end, Guo Jian prevailed. While Yue forces sieged the Wu capital of Gusu (part of present day Suzhou) for the final time, Fu Chai committed suicide. Yue absorbed the Wu kingdom thereafter in 473 BCE.
One could easily argue that Fu Chai fell into one of the oldest honey traps in history. This is one of the epic Chinese stories that a person can easily find English YouTube videos on. That’s nice, but one can easily look at my clickbait-ish title and ask what Changzhou has to do with this. It’s where, allegedly, the story goes after the fall of Wu.
Fan Li and Xi Shi share a tender moment on a boat.
People who misunderstand this story might accuse Xi Shi of a sluttery; they might also accuse Fan Li and Gou Jian as being her pimps. This leaves out the fact that she was possibly a willing third accomplice, knew what she was getting into, and did it because of a sense of duty to her country. How different is this story from the one of KGB women spreading their legs to get kompromat on Americans or western Europeans? Every spy has a handler. And those managers have managers,
To that end, Xi Shi and Fan Li were also lovers, and she likely gave herself willingly to Fu Chai at Fan’s direction. The Yue King may have merely signed off on the plot. After Fu Chai killed himself and the Wu Kingdom became ripe for annexation, King Guo Jian of Yue deemed it necessary to purge (assassinate) many of his advisors and reboot his court with fresh faces. Fan Li anticipated this, and he and his eventual wife fled together.
At the time, Changzhou was not known by that name. It was Piling 毗陵. Fan Li, during his time in town as a Yue governmental minister, also over saw the dredging of canals. One of which involved a waterway connecting Lake Ge (which everybody in Changzhou now calls Xitaihu) and Tai Lake — the third largest freshwater body of water in China. Canals in ancient China were a network of liquid roads. Something a lot quicker than riding horse or donkey out of town. A getaway car in this period of Chinese history is a canal boat, and Fan Li likely knew how to navigate that system.
Changzhou claims to be the departure point of Fan Li and Xi Shi. It is here they got away and evaded detection. At some point, Piling was under Yue control, and Fan was in the area overseeing the dredging of canals. There was a need to connect Lake Ge (what everybody know calls Xitaihu) with Tai Lake, which is the third largest freshwater body in China. It is argued that, with government agents in hot pursuit, Xi and Fan boarded a canal boat in Piling, navigated the system of artificial waterways to the vast safety of Tai Lake. Of course, with a story this old, there are other variations and it’s hard to confirm 100% accuracy.
There is a marker in present day Changzhou commemorating this story. It bares the name 西蠡古渡xili gu du, or Xi Li Ancient Ferry. Of course, “Xili” is a name combination technique. These days, it’s used to name celebrity couples. For example, Ben Affleck + Jennifer Lopez = Bennifer. It would be silly to claim that this marker and the accompanying stone pavilion actually dates to antiquity. It was open to the public back in 2010.
It is a narrow strip of green space next to a canal. There are multiple boarding points and loading and unloading ramps for cargo.
Besides this, there are views of the canal itself.
This small bit of canal area is not that far the Wuyue 吾悦 Plaza downtown. Truth be told, the area can be seen in about five minutes, and what is there is not as epic as the story that inspired them. How could it be?
