What's with all the waffles?

The Great Nanluoguxiang Bar Crawl on Saturday happened to coincide with the Nanluoguxiang street fair (and also with Anzac Day - hence the lively crowd at Ned's, a few of whom joined us for the middle section of the crawl).

This would have been, I think, the fourth annual appearance of the fair - except that last year's event was abruptly cancelled because of Olympic "security concerns" (they may have held it in the autumn instead; I can't remember now). This year's, apparently, was thrown together at very short notice - the authorities decreeing that spring jollity should occur less than a week beforehand. The lack of advance publicity meant that it was rather less thronged than in previous years (when I learned of the event, I was concerned that fighting our way through the crowds would throw us off schedule). However, it did mean that all the bars (or almost all of them) were open during the day; ordinarily, quite a few of them remain dormant until 5pm or 6pm.

A number of bars along the street had set up waffle stalls for the day. A bizarre coincidence?! No I suspect it must have been part of the state-mandated festivities: "You must provide snack foods. And oh, by the way, my brother-in-law can rent you a waffle iron for the day...."

That is rather how things get done in China.

There were some more 'traditional' Chinese snacks on offer too - well, more traditionally popular in China today, but in fact thoroughly Western in origin: popcorn and candyfloss! But most of the regular snackfood stalls seemed to be shut down for the day. At the restaurant where we gathered for our preliminary lunch we were given the shocking news: "Meiyou chuanr." No kebabs??!! How can you be without the most ubiquitous of all Chinese street food (especially when this is something the restaurant usually specialises in)???? Animator Ben will bear a grudge against me over this for a long time.

I suspect the dead hand of government interference here. The cheap'n'cheerful snacks that people eat on that street every other day of the year are not impressive enough for this special event. Only more tourist-friendly foods will be allowed.

[I have little interest in eating waffles in the middle of the afternoon, myself. Particularly when pissed. And I felt that these stalls rather detracted from the bar-ness of some of the places we visited. Indeed, in some cases it disguised the fact that they were bars, and/or almost completely obstructed the entrance. Our second port of call (the one with the enticingly cheap Jim Beam and the amusing random word pairs spray-painted on the ceiling) was a particularly egregious offender on this score: since it had no name on display above the door (or no name in English or pinyin, anyway), it was recorded in my 'diary' of the day as "Nameless Waffle Place". Only later did I discover that - on this particular day - it was not the only "Waffle Place", nor even, I think, the only "Nameless Waffle Place" on the street.]