just to avoid any confusion, Salvador's and Mandarin Books (the English language bookstore mentioned) are on Wenhua Xiang, not Wenlin Jie. time to buy a map perhaps?

google maps are generally useful for the streets, but some annotation is wrong or out of date. no need for the iPhone, any smartphone will do - and GRPS comes as standard on many cell phone plans.

errr, directly across Renmin Lu from the Human Resources building everything got mad chai'd. i remember buying some stuff from a place on the west side of Wuyi Lu that roughly fits debaser's directions, but now it's gone... @debaser - have you seen your place open since the chai bomb hit?

i think putonghua73 is onto something with "I'm a vegetarian, but I don't go to exclusively vegetarian places, but rather places that are vegetarian friendly"... vegetarianism and Buddhism are all too often conflated in China (e.g. you sometimes see phrasebooks with something like "i don't eat meat, please cook my food as if i were a monk")

here's where the blandness may come in, as a strict Buddhist (correct me if i'm wrong, as i'm no Buddhist, and no vegetarian) will not eat garlic, chilli, ginger etc. so if you're using the 'monk gambit' to get your veggie eats, it's possible you're doing away with flavour at the same time.

i personally find yunnan cai very edible and very tasty, and i've found my meat consumption has reached all-time lows here due (in part) to the various and flavoursome veggie options.

i ran past there the other morning, and i'm pretty sure that the block that the market used to be in has been demolished. if i find myself in the area again i'll give it a closer look, but don't hold out much hope that it's still there.

i heard that pets can ride in the restaurant car, but that there's only a 50% chance that you get them back at the end of the trip. retreat to the hedgerows and sharpen your spines, my fellow pi-guh-men!