November 8th, 2023
Day 1
Our plane leaves by 8 AM in the morning, which means that I have to wake up at 5:30 AM. My parents didn’t travel with me; instead, I was traveling with our General Manager, who is very knowledgeable in the world of marble selling. We are on a restocking run, and attending the marble show is just a side quest.
We were invited to attend the Shuitou Marble Show that is hosted annually. We were given VIP passes by a business friend named Wang Jinsha, who is the business tycoon of the area and is extremely well known in the marble world.
Me and my GM arrived by the airport, got a bowl of noodle there. The plane we flew on that day belongs to one of the cheaper airlines which forbid any bluetooth devices. I’ve flown through my fair share of international flight lines and domestic ones, never have I encountered an airline that forbid the use of AirPods after taxi and takeoff.
Nevertheless, our plane arrived by Quanzhou airport. The city we’re going to technically isn’t even a city, but rather a village, so it doesn’t have an airport of its own. We arrived by almost 1 PM in the afternoon, and since we are an hour away from town, we ordered KFC from the airport and hobbled them down while sitting in a car.
Hotel Name: 南安东方五洲大酒店 (nán ān dōng fāng wǔ zhōu dà jǐu diàn) [Nanan Eastern Wuzhou Hotel]
Address: 南安水头镇滨海大道1号 (Nanan Shuitou Village Binhai Road #1)
Our hotel is owned by Jinsha, like I said, he is the business tycoon in town. He gave us 2 rooms to stay in. After we dropped off our stuff, we headed towards the marble markets here to restock.
In order to let you fully understand Shuitou, please allow me to elaborate. This entire town is dedicated to everything marble related. If a store here doesn’t sell marble, then it must sell something like marble glue or marble saw. So every store we see along the way is a marble store. They also have giant marble markets as well. Unlike individual stores along the street, marble markets take up a whole block and is made up of many tiny individual vendors. Suffice to say that I am completely in shock by what I have seen.
We went to a couple of individual vendors inside the markets and ordered some slabs.
Me and the GM planned on getting something local for dinner, but we were very enthusiastically invited to dinner by Jinsha to dine at his hotel. I thought that we were going to dine with him alone, but I was wrong.
After we got back to our hotel room, I cleaned up, and went downstairs to the restaurant part of his hotel. We were guided to a large banquet hall full of strangers. Turns out, he didn’t just invite us; he invited a lot of people that night. It wasn’t just a one-on-one dinner with us, it was a banquet hosted for all of his guests. I mean, I wasn’t expecting it and in all honesty wasn’t too happy about the fact that I have to sit at the same table with strangers; but at least the food is free though.
I only took pictures of the food that I think is special. I have no idea what the name of the soup is, but it tasted like nothing I’ve tasted before. It’s not bitter, but it’s not completely not bitter, if you know what I am saying. Its main ingredients are cow stomach and cow tongue. It is new, it is special, that’s why I took the picture.
This one is called “面线”, it is something the locals eat. It roughly translates to “Noodle Lines”. It is sour, and it is very delicious. Too bad I can’t have too much carbs at night.
After some eating and drinking, we went upstairs and slept.