Coventry University students visited the famous West Lake on day three of their visit to Hangzhou in eastern China, though the beauty of the vast lake was largely obscured thanks to unseasonal English-style drizzle.

While the rain lashed down I and some of my colleagues sheltered in a seafood restaurant which served us some magnificent dishes, one of which had a sauce flavoured with a tiny berry with a powerful flavour of ginger, vanilla and aniseed. Nobody in the restaurant could tell us in English what this mysterious ingredient was, but they did give us the Mandarin name (right). Can anyone translate?