Wan Jia Xiao Guan Zi - Roùjiámó @ Blk 443 Clementi Ave 3

Update: Wan Jia Xiao Guan Zi has permanently closed.

Roùjiāmó (肉夹馍) is a meat sandwich that has been around for the last 2,000 years.

From my understanding, it is a specialty of Shaanxi, Xi'An - one of the oldest city in China.

The name, roùjiāmó literally means "meat giap bun" but if you had not already noticed, the reality is quite the opposite whereby its "bun giap meat" (mójiāroù/馍夹肉) instead.

So, how did that come about? One explanation is, its original name was actually 肉夹于馍, which means "meat giap within bun" however for some reason, the "于" was omitted hence, it became 肉夹馍. 

Another reasoning was 馍夹肉 sounds a lot like 么夹肉, meaning there is "no meat". Nobody would want to buy a bun with no meat so they rearranged the sequence of the words by putting the roù (肉) in front to emphasize on the presence of meat.

It is my first time trying this and I am going to visit a stall named Xiao Guan Zi (小馆子) located inside Food Loft coffee shop at Blk 443 Clementi Ave 3. It is the coffee shop behind the bus interchange where Sheng Yi Fa Lor Mee and Ann Chin Popiah are.

This stall does not have any media presence but that is exactly the aim of this blog which is to seek out the lesser known stalls and give them some exposure. Even though I do not have a big following or the influence to do so, I just do what I can to the best of my ability.

The guy taking my order seems like a Malaysian but the lady who prepared my order is a bona fide Chinese National. All it took her was just about a minute or so to assemble my roùjiāmó ($4), put it into a paper sleeve and handed over the counter to me in a basket.

Terracotta Warriors: The First Emperor and His Legacy

In the Spring of 1974, several farmers from the Yang Village near Xi'an were digging a well when they stumbled across the most priceless archaeological discovery of modern times!

Excavations have un-earthed thousands of terracotta warriors, each with a unique facial expression and positioned according to their ranks.

They are a replica of the Qin army from more than 2,200 years ago and it was believed that each terracotta warriors were replicas of real Chinese soldiers.

The army of statues, numbering in the thousands, is testament of the forces the first Emperor of China had at his command. 

Qin Shi Huang (259 - 210BC) was the first Emperor of the Qin Dynasty and he was the founder of China's first empire after unifying the Seven Warring States. If this name sounded all too familiar, that was because he is the one who ordered the building and restoration of the Great Wall of China!

Upon ascending the throne at the age of 13, Qin Shi Huang ordered the construction of his tomb which took 38 years to build and utilizing the labor of over 700,000 conscripts many of whom were killed to protect the privacy of the Emperor once it was done.