Kansas city BBQ

At home in Kansas enjoying good things!

Gates bbq

One of the best in kansas city !


-- Post From My iPhone

FRIDAY IN THE CITY: Kansas

Friday in the city this week is coming from more of a town – my home town that is. I am taking my annual trip to Kansas to visit family and friends. I will be spending the next week driving up and down I-70 highway – that connects the Von Feldt Family in the towns of Kansas City, Lawrence and Topeka.

As a way to celebrate Father’s Day and have the chance to spend time with my six nieces and nephews, we decided to make dessert. I chose the activity of making rustic French fruit tarts as a great way for all of us to work together and at the same time, have some originality.

We all worked on the French butter dough. But then each kid had the chance to work on create fruit fillings for their series of tarts. Jake went out and picked fresh mulberries. Haley made fresh blueberry while her sister Megan chose traditional French apple with Mexican caramel sauce. Sophia made bananas. We ended up with a few great mixes as well, including banana chocolate, strawberry banana and apple caramel.

It was a great opportunity to make dessert. But for me, it gives me a real snapshot on social skills of each kid and the changes from the last time I saw them. It was a wonderful afternoon of cooking. We finally sat down to our great barbeque ribs meal which was followed by a family drooling over delicious tarts.

Shanghai Transrapid Train Ride

Shanghai Transrapid Train Ride
Originally uploaded by rickvonfeldt

My month long trip in China continues. There are so many experiences and things to write about. Where to start? I have created a travel log with much more information about my experiences over the last several weeks. If you are interested in more reading material, drop me a line at rvonfeldt@yahoo.com and I will send you more to read.

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you a trip I have been wanting to take for over five years now – a trip on the world’s fastest train.

On Monday of this week, I traveled from Shanghai to Guangzhou in the south of China. The culmination of my project here in China is in this southern industrial city with 1,000 people for my client.

The Shanghai Pudong airport can take 45 – 90 minutes to get to – depending upon where you live in Shanghai. I have been living in Pudong, so my trip would be about 45 minutes. But why spend 45 minutes in a taxi on the highway, when you can get there in 7 minutes and 40 seconds?

I asked my colleague if we could take Shanghai’s maglev – a train that traveled magnetically “above” rails. Well – there aren’t rails. It floats on air. The train can reach up to 250 mph – although, they have slowed it down these days and my trip only reach 186 mph (300 km per hour).

I have always loved trains – and so the journey was exciting, easy to do – and another “first” in my set of life experiences.

I filmed the event, and tried to put together a video. Since uploads still only allow me 90 seconds, it is hard to put together a real picture of the ride in only 90 seconds, but I tried.

Mine's Faster Than Yours
Riding Shanghai's maglev, the world's fastest train.
By Henry Blodget
http://www.slate.com/id/2115114/

A taxi or the world's fastest train? For me, that's an easy choice.

In a drive to reclaim its historical place in the cosmos—biggest and best—China is notching one superlative after another (biggest dam, highest hotel, etc.). In an effort to climb the industrial food chain, meanwhile, it is also acquiring technology from anyone willing to share it. So, in 2001, with Germany's Transrapid International seeking a place to demonstrate its magnetic levitation train—and apparently willing to give the technology away in the process—China killed two birds with one stone. Shanghai's maglev began full operation in March, 2004, covering the 20 miles from Pudong to the outskirts of the city in a blistering 7 minutes and 20 seconds.

The train floated in. And "float" is the word. Thanks to its electromagnetic levitation system, the train hovers a half-inch above the track. It floats like a cigarette boat gliding into a slip, the surprisingly blunt nose emitting a marvelous, rumbling growl. With maglevs, the propulsion system resides in the guideway instead of the train, allowing for less weight and faster acceleration.

Inside the car, you expect to see seat belts and shoulder harnesses (for all the good they would do in a derailment or collision at one-third the speed of sound), but, instead, find only normal seats. The doors shut, and the train accelerates like a skyscraper elevator, silently, smoothly, and rapidly, and by the time the last car leaves the station you already seem to be going 50 miles per hour.

Four minutes of gravity-simulator-style acceleration later, in which the taxis on the parallel highway lose ground slowly, then quickly, then disappear as fast as if they were parked and you were whipping by at 220 miles per hour, you reach the peak speed of 270 miles per hour for the tiny 20-mile run.

Transrapid claims that the maglev is quiet and glassy smooth, but, on the contrary, when the speedometer at the end of the cabin reaches its apex, you are distinctly aware that you are speeding. The car jerks from side-to-side like a jet in turbulence, the air outside whistles in protest, and the growl beneath the floor becomes a full-bodied roar. Just after the speedometer tops out, there is a pop and blur as the maglev headed in the other direction blasts past at an aggregate speed of 534 miles per hour, approaching that of a 747 at 35,000 feet. Then, with about seven miles to go, it's time to hit the brakes, and a few miles later, when you've slowed to a mere 150 miles an hour, you feel as though you are strolling.

For gawkers and other one-time users, the maglev is the equivalent of an adult theme-park ride: cheap, thrilling, and fodder for cocktail parties. For those who just want to get to or from the airport, however, it leaves much to be desired.

First, there's the problem that the maglev doesn't really run from Pudong to Shanghai, but from Pudong to the end of one of Shanghai's subway lines, aka the burbs. So, to get to Shanghai proper, you have to schlep your bags again, either into the subway or into a taxi like the one you could have grabbed at the airport.

Then, there's cost. Thanks to China's polarized pricing system—one price for goods and services sold to foreigners and other rich folks, and another for everything else—the $6 one-way ticket is not a deal. When you throw in the added schlepping at both ends, the maglev loses in cost, convenience, and possibly even time.

Losing money at the speed of sound.

These are two of the reasons the train is running at less than half of capacity, and, probably, hemorrhaging money. The maglev cost $1.2 billion or more to build, which means the system chews through north of $60 million a year in capital costs alone. Assuming 12,000 passengers per day (my estimate), the maglev generates about $27 million of revenue per year, or less than half its capital costs, much less its total costs. It is not clear who is absorbing these losses, China or Transrapid, but, either way, someone's taking a bath.

If it's China, of course, the investment may prove worth it. There is much to be said for the branding impact of cool technology: I, for one, was eager to board the maglev the moment I heard about it, and the ride helped jolt me out of my preconception of China as a land of sock-and-toy factories. Also, China is now the proud parent of a "National Research and Development Center for Maglev Transportation Technology," which presumably builds on know-how that was once the property of Transrapid.

If it's Transrapid, the company now has a live demonstration model with which to try to sell real intercity systems. But one reason Transrapid handed China the keys to its technology kingdom, presumably, was to earn the pole position in the bidding for a planned Shanghai-Beijing maglev. But alas, China dropped that plan—the Beijing-Shanghai maglev would have cost almost $50 billion, three times as much as a traditional fast train—while keeping the snazzy technology. So, it's not clear how much Transrapid really got out of the deal.

The Pudong line may eventually turn out to be a decent deal for airport users. If Shanghai keeps expanding at its present rate, traffic will soon clog the airport highway and choke off the taxi option, and the maglev terminal will soon be in the heart of the city.

Thanks to Slate readers Bharad Ramesh and Heinz Klostermann for sharing their maglev thoughts. For numerous maglev pictures, click here.

FRIDAY IN THE CITY: Taiakang Lu in SHANGHAI CHINA

Taiakang Lu
Originally uploaded by rickvonfeldt

FRIDAY IN THE CITY: Shanghai, China at Taikang Lu

It is the weekend here in Shanghai. With work mostly put to rest, I am taking time to enjoy the city. Shanghai continues to surprise and amaze. In all of the cities I have visited in my life, I have never witness the change of a city as fast – as bold – as exciting as Shanghai. You will see a great description of Shanghai below by a writer from National Geographic Traveler.

Part of my weekend jaunt took me today to a place called Taikang Lu. This is a fascinating place where the modernization of Shanghai was challenged by artists and nostalgia. In one of the thousands of neighborhoods of Shanghai, this few square blocks of lane house has transformed itself into a wonderful twisted place of shops and restaurants.

Imagine two streets – that – well – are not streets. They are lanes. Only large enough for the local bicycle pulling a block of ice or for walking people, the lanes served as entrances to hundreds of small two room apartments. Most of the kitchens were outside the front door where running water could wash away whatever items were cut up for that nights dinner.

Somehow, a group of artists started to convert these small one or two room apartments into artists shops, cafes and shops. What has emerged is a compact of twisting small alley’s of hundreds of shops, cafes and restaurants.

This afternoon, I spent hours walking through the tiny alley’s, stopping for coffee or having a bite of Vietnamese food or stopping to watch an old couple chop garlic chives and some vegetables for their evening dinner.

It is a marvelous place. But as the article below suggests – I see it today. And it might be gone tomorrow. Therefore, I just walked around and enjoyed the moments!

Take a look at a stream of videos I took of the place. This 90 second clips was compiled from 37 small video clips I shot today. The music comes from the recording of five minutes of the stringed instrument player you see in the last scene. I hope you enjoy!

VIDEO LINK: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29563531@N04/3579564186/


ABOUT SHANGHAI

This is no place for the weary. Shanghai—ever frenetic, always evolving, perpetually on the make—calls for energy and agility. Nothing here ever stands still. Buildings rise and fall as abruptly as the stock market. Yesterday’s quaint traditional neighborhood is today’s throbbing-neon skyscraper district. Don’t even try to find that odd little tea shop you discovered in a secluded alleyway last year. It’s gone, replaced by a stylish Internet café where you can get 34 types of noodles while you listen to chest-thumping Asian trance music. Tomorrow the café might be replaced by a tattoo parlor or a little boutique selling next-generation iPhone knockoffs. You either adapt or get left behind.

Attitudes change just as quickly as the skyline does. Shanghai’s entire recent history, in fact, has been a saga of ideological U-turns. Nowhere is this clearer than in People’s Square, the city’s central park. Back in the 1930s, when Shanghai was a licentious international enclave, this was the site of a racetrack, a center for gambling and other demimonde diversions. But once the prudish Communists took over, Shanghai morals made a quick about-face. The racetrack was replaced by a bleak, concrete parade ground, where Red Army troops could march, and where dissidents and intellectuals could be ridiculed for their decadent Western views. Nowadays, with wealth and worldliness no longer anathema, People’s Square has been reborn as a cultural/shopping center, an urban showplace of ultramodern museum buildings, the flamboyant Shanghai Grand Theater, and a tangled underground mall.

Of course, such swift changes in ethos are typically engineered by the powers that be, and the Shanghainese are not always so willing to go along. Take for example, the glittering new magnetic-levitation train from the airport: The government wants this technological wonder to be a symbol of the brave new Shanghai, the state-of-the-art city that will soon play host to the 2010 World Expo. But locals won’t cooperate. Despite the maglev’s breathtaking speed (trains travel at up to 430 kph), it’s regarded as too inconvenient and expensive; few besides tourists can be persuaded to use it. These days the city government can’t even get its obstinate citizens to cross streets at the corner—despite the constant pleas of numerous uniformed crossing guards tasked with maintaining order.

Such rebelliousness is actually Shanghai’s most endearing trait. Party bosses may try to play the stern father here, but their unruly charges defy parental controls. Limits are being tested everywhere—in business, in politics, on the Internet. Even the physical city seems to be undergoing a kind of defiant adolescence. Shanghai today has the gangliness of a teenager growing too fast and too recklessly. Its infrastructure groans; its streets reek of sweat, prawns, and chalk dust. The city’s new aesthetic, meanwhile, seems absolutely pubescent: The futuristic style of those wild, overdone skyscrapers sprouting up everywhere might appeal most to 13-year-old boys weaned on sci-fi computer games.

Still, behind the brash exhibitionism and the pretense of Western sophistication—away from the boho galleries of Moganshan Road and the high-end boutiques and restaurants of Xintiandi—an older Shanghai still lurks, a world of quiet gardens, laundry-draped hutongs, fortune-tellers, and backstreet vegetable markets. Despite the constant renovation, tradition somehow persists here. Those elders practicing tai chi on the Bund, after all, seem blissfully indifferent to the nearby offerings of Giorgio Armani, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and their ilk. They apparently realize that the opulent internationalism that now holds sway in Shanghai will also prove to be a passing phenomenon—just another fleeting stage in the city’s never ending metamorphosis.

Saturday dinner in Wujiaochang

Saturday dinner in Wujiaochang
Originally uploaded by rickvonfeldt

IT WAS AN ADVENTUROUS NIGHT here in Shanghai, trying spicy duck meat while avoiding feet and heads floating to the top!

See the video at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29563531@N04/3556504775/

See the blog at:
www.fridayinthecity.blogspot.com

Saturday night, May 23.

A friend is coming to visit me from Hong Kong in a week. In preparation for the visit, he is planning out his morning, afternoon and night.

But as most of my friends who have traveled with me know – I approach new places a little differently.

I usually attack a new city by first picking out a restaurant – and the centering everything else around that adventure.

Tonight, I went to an area of Shanghai called Wujiaochang. The chaps at the front desk recommended it because of the food and massive shopping malls. Locals may know it for this reason – but it is also famous because the main intersection of this area is a convergence of 15 different roads. To mitigate the sight, they created four levels of roads in a massive intersection, and then covered the whole thing with a colorful sound blocking shell that is like a nightly light show.

At night, it becomes an intersection for thousands of people to come for shopping, food and even dancing. (But that will be another blog entry!).

In typical Rick fashion, I arrived at about 8:30 at night. I knew it was a pretty local place, as I was the only Caucasians among the thousands of people around. I use a strategy of walking around until my stomach is finally growling. I search for the restaurant that has the most people – and looks like it is the happening place.

Tonight – that restaurant was a Hong Kong style restaurant called Bi Feng Tang. Fortunately, they had one English menu. I am not sure that anyone there spoke English – but pointing at pictures seemed to work pretty good.

The menu was a mix of some things that I have eaten before. But there were also a few things that even if I had heard of them – even I would not readily order them. Are you interested in trying items like:

Marinated Goose Head
Spicy Bull Frog
Spicy Pigs Intestine
Spicy Jews ear (not sure what that is!)
Poached Pigs stomach
Steamed Chicken feat with black bean sauce
Double boiled Snakehead fish with watercress, sweet and bitter apricot kernels

In the end, I tried a few dishes, including the restaurant signature dish of Cage Free Duck with Chili oil. It was basically a half of a duck chopped up and simmered in chili oil and a few vegetables. It amounts to a bunch of chunks of bones with some meat attached. By now, I am getting used to popping a bone with meat in my mouth, eating around the bone and spitting it out like the locals.

I ate around the duck feet that was simmering on top. But by the time I got to the bottom, and half of the ducks head and face floated to the top, I was pretty much ready to move on. A few fried dumplings revived my appetite.

It was an adventurous and tasty meal! 

Late night Shanghai - SMALLER BANDWITH version

Late night Shanghai - SMALLER BANDWITH version
Originally uploaded by rickvonfeldt

Here is a smaller BANDWITH VERSION of the video from last night. You might find it easier to watch. Read below for more information on the video.

FRIDAY IN THE CITY: Puxi - Shanghai China

Late night in Shanghai
Originally uploaded by rickvonfeldt

It has been a busy week. I am fortunate to get to travel to China and spend three quality weeks. The company I am working for has office located in the “technology park” area of Shanghai – a place 30-40 minutes away from “downtown” Shanghai. Pudong was once the country side across the river of Shanghai. In 1993, the government decided to make it a “free trade zone” and “technology park” – incubators for global business relocation. In the small amount of 15 years since this decision, it is now home to countless skyscrapers, millions of people and a transformed world.

Since most of my work started early each day and did not end until 7:00 or 8:00 at night – I most traveled the 20 minutes back and forth from work to my “service apartment” (short term living.)

The work early in the week culminated with the first of large 2-day facilitation/training sessions on Thursday and Friday.

But the end of the week, I was mentally and physically exhausted – something I have not felt for many months since leaving HP. Like running a race, it is a good feeling to give it your all for an extended amount of time and then finally cross the finish line. But this is a triathalon – with several more races to complete before I depart this beautiful and exciting country in several weeks.

At the end of yesterday’s race, my hosts took me to dinner to celebrate our first finish line. I had the chance to go in to the central part of Shanghai, and eat dinner in an area called Puxi. This area is known as Shanghai's cultural, residential and commercial centre. It is home to about 35% of the people.

We were all in the mood for something with full flavor and spice. My hosts decided on Korean – which is one of my favorite foods. It is a combinations of picked vegetables, spicy pickled cabbages and meat that is grilled at your table. Standard for all Korean restaurants are complimentary small dishes (banchan) like various forms of kimchee and soy-sauce beans.

After the dinner, my hosts went in varying directions home. Most of them live in the Puxi area. They trade living in the centre of action in exchange for what can be a 1-2 hour commute each day. I said goodbye to them, as I had to travel back to Pudong for my commute back home. At that time of night, it might be a 30-40 minute taxi ride or a combination of subway and taxi. I decided to take the subway for part of the distance, and a taxi for the remaining 15 minutes. But before I did, I wanted to walk around for a bit to see late night life. Despite lugging a briefcase, backpack, and clad in dress shoes and tie, I walked around back streets breathing in late night life and food.

I put together a few video clips for you to look at. And this time, I skilled up and incorporated some audio to my video. Come along with me!

(You can either look at the small embedded video here – or go to see a better sized video here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29563531@N04/3556158190/)