I am now in Chengdu after more than 3 glorious and amazing weeks among giant pandas in Bifengxia and Emeishan. There will be more giant pandas for the next two days at the Chengdu Panda Base.

I am staying at the same hotel I stayed in after my first giant panda volunteer trip back in September 2007 to Wolong. Memories of this hotel are mostly about the shops nearby. KFC, Starbucks, Zippo, Victorinox, Carrefour … they are still here!

Among the familiar shops, there is a new shop that is really a collection of food stalls and something we Malaysians are all familiar with – a food court, but one not located in a shopping mall but in a shop along the street around the corner from the hotel.

I’d gone walking after lunch (at KFC, if you must know) and saw what I thought was a dessert place. Once inside, I found the setting familiar and no wonder – there were food stalls along both sides and seating in the middle. Near the front were a few dessert stalls; no wonder I thought this was a dessert shop.

The menus on the walls behind the stalls were mainly in Chinese, but a familiar English phrase caught my eye – Tofu Dessert. I had the “flower bean tofu” (flower bean is the bigger version of red bean).

Unfortunately, the tofu was more like a custard than the tofu I am familiar with from my childhood.

As I enjoyed the flower beans and peanuts, I looked around at some of the stalls near where I was sitting.

The stall to my left offered a familiar window display.

The name of the food court? Here, read it for yourself.

I will probably go back there for dinner in a while, and maybe have some of that familiar window display stuff.