Shanghai Expat: January 2010

This post is a bit less coherent than usual. The majority of this post is brief snippets (in chronological order) of various outings we did this month. These should be read simultaneously with the pictures I took, which provide more detail, mostly on the food. (Note: there are minor outings the pictures cover that aren't mentioned in this entry.) Some snippets in this blog post also describe things that couldn't be photographed: e.g., aspects of the conversation, or a summary of a dinner party where photography would've been awkward. The only topic this post has aside from the outing reports is a few brief reports on some unusual behaviors we observed in Shanghai. These oddities are listed at the end of the post.

Outings
Returning from Singapore on January 2nd, we stopped for dinner at the previously visited ramen place in the basement of the Japanese mall by Jing'an Temple. In spite of my past delicious experience with a fried noodle dish there, I stuck with the ramen this time and was pleased.

The next day, a Sunday (January 3), we had failed to restock our fridge by lunchtime and thus were forced to eat out. We tried an (okay) soup and dumpling shop nearby. For dinner, both Di Yin and I cooked good dishes. Details about the day are as usual in the pictures. Often I don't take pictures or record what we cook at home. This meal wasn't unusual -- rather, I simply was in a photo-taking mood.

On Monday (January 4), one of Di Yin's friends D (who I met at dinner on Christmas Day) came to stay with us while en route from Hunan back to the U.S. Di Yin cooked some more, plus we had leftovers from Singapore that we brought to Shanghai. To top it off, this friend brought us some Beard Papa desserts, so we could try a few of the flavors they have here in China. Notes (though not photos) are in the pictures page.

Tuesday (January 5) was another day to meet one of Di Yin's friends who happened to be in town. In this case, that meant meeting A, an art history graduate student, his parents and brother, and two of his friends. Over dinner in a small private room in a upscale Shanghainese restaurant, Xin Jishi (New Jesse), we heard tales of what it's like to be a judge in Hong Kong and of attitudes toward judges in China (versus Hong Kong), and stories about amazing negotiating skills (21,000 RMB down to 500) and about how some museums sell fakes.

It was a good meal. Sorry, no pictures; they would have been impolitic. Because of our party's size (8), we ordered a lot of food (16? dishes). I'm not going to attempt to describe them all (otherwise I'll be writing a ton), but I'll mention the menu included the twice-cooked pork belly that we really enjoyed at Jishi (Jesse) (which is, I believe, the original restaurant in this chain), dates stuffed with glutinous rice, and crystal shrimp. We also had a Shanghainese dish I hadn't seen before but quite liked. It was a dish of gingko nuts, rice cakes, chicken, and perhaps other nuts and maybe bamboo shoots in a thick, spicy-sweet sauce. (The "and maybe" is because the items were hard to recognize under the sauce.) Di Yin says this is the only traditional Shanghainese dish that's spicy. Its spicy-sweet sauce reminded me American-Chinese food; it tasted like home. We also had yet another Shanghainese dish that I hadn't seen before. Imagine a bowl of pot sticker dumplings. Replace the dough wrapping with egg, making an egg dumpling with meat inside. Neat!

Leaving the restaurant, we were confronted with beggars ... persistent buggers too (they followed us around and got in our way so we'd have to repeatedly walk around them). I suppose it's because this part of town has many pricey restaurants. I saw more beggars that night than I've seen in total before in Shanghai during this trip.

On Wednesday (January 6), Di Yin spent much of the day with the friend A. I joined them in the evening to hang out for a while and then head to dinner. We returned again to How Way restaurant near Jing'an Temple where I, as on our previous visits, was impressed by our meal. Details are in the pictures.

On Friday (January 8), Di Yin and I cooked enough novel dishes that I thought the evening was worth documenting photographically. We tried three new items, all of which turned out well! :)

On a rainy (but warmer :> ) Sunday morning, I went out to explore a market I'd never previously visited and to buy breakfast. I had a pleasant walk in the rain and also discovered a large park, Huashan Park, not far from our apartment. Even though it was too cold to sit in the park, it looked large enough that it might be worth strolling in on a drier day. (Indeed, I returned some weeks later on an unseasonably warm day. It is a nice park: trees, fields, a pond, streams, plazas.)

That evening (January 10), we walked in a slight rain to a large mall for dinner (Grand Gateway Plaza / Ganghui Guangchang, in the shopping district of Xujiahui). (This mall isn't the Japanese one near Jing'an Temple which we frequent; rather it was one that we ate Korean bbq at before.) After walking by the mall's restaurants--malls in China often have many respectable restaurants--, we selected a Macau restaurant named Lisboa Restaurant. Though our meal was tasty, if Macau food is this greasy, I'll have trouble eating much there. As usual, see the pictures for details.

One evening (not photographed), we went to a large gathering of some of Di Yin's family's friends and their relatives at a restaurant Xiao Shaoxin. It was a relatively ordinary evening; the only surprising event was one dish: sweet and sour chicken (complete with pineapple). This was definitely the most American-Chinese dish I'd seen in quite a while.

Another evening (January 14), we tried a small restaurant not far from our apartment (near our nearest green market) that specializes in noodles and fake meats: Godly Vegetarian Restaurant. It's a small outpost of / spinoff of a restaurant with the same name I visited last summer. It's a warm, welcoming place with, oddly, a flat-screen TV playing dramatic Chinese soap operas (probably for the waitress's enjoyment). Di Yin and I liked this neighborhood joint and plan to go back. The food was light and healthy, yet we left comfortably filled. As usual, details of the food are in the pictures.

For lunch on Saturday (January 16), I returned to Godly. Though only half the customers were white, the only language I heard was English. I wonder if this is the usual clientele for vegetarian restaurants in Shanghai. Anyway, the restaurant was similarly good as my last trip. I again left satisfied and not stuffed. See the pictures.

One Saturday night (January 16), with Di Yin's prodding, we returned to the smoky all-you-can-eat-and-drink grilled meat place and proceeded to eat ourselves into a stupor. See the pictures.

One evening (January 21), to celebrate Di Yin being short-listed for a fellowship, we went to "Sapar" Uygur Restaurant. The Uyghurs are the ethnic group in northwest China, near the borders with Kazakhstan and Mongolia. They're mostly Muslims. The food was decent. Also, we enjoyed the way the waiter and the food runners/cleaners played with language. (Being Uyghurs, they're not native Mandarin speakers.) The details are in the pictures.

One evening I went out drinking with some co-workers. The bar we picked was abandoned at 9pm but, by 10pm, it was filled with people, most of whom were white except for the (generally younger) Chinese women. The crowd danced, or attempted to talk (as I did). The crowd also smoked quite a bit.

Another evening, Di Yin and I returned to Charmant, the Taiwanese place we first visited in December. Details are in the pictures.

Near the end of the month, on January 27, 2010, Di Yin and I had dinner at a friend of mine B, with his girlfriend K and an assortment of his other friends. Seeing his place was enlightening. I knew he lived in a nice place near Xintiandi, the super-fancy shopping strip with old-style buildings, but I didn't know how nice. His place is actually named Richgate, and it's expansive and furnished with numerous high-end (and sometimes high tech) decorations. The building's like a four star hotel, with marble floors and everything.

Hairy crabs were the excuse for the dinner; he bought some that came from a lake substantially north of Shanghai. These crabs had furry claws and thin golden hair scattered around the rest of their body. The hairy crab species with golden hair is said to be the best quality; previously all I had were gray-haired crabs. These were pretty good though too much work to pry open. I'm slower than everyone else at dismantling and eating crabs.

As for the rest of the dinner, B's ayi (household helper) knows how to cook meat well; the other stuff, not so well. We had lightly fried non-breaded chicken, a silky beef and tofu dish that Di Yin loved, a dish of celery with pork, a plate of a stir-fried green Chinese vegetable, bowls of congee, and a delicious chicken soup. The meal ended with two types of eggs--one a salted hard-boiled duck egg, the other a thousand-year (preserved) eggs--as well as nasty cheese, and donuts a friend brought (a sad reflection of donuts found in the states). The thousand-year egg, which is made using lime, was a dark, semi-translucent, forest green (see pictures online).

Mid-afternoon the following day I was to fly to Beijing (see other posts this month). Hence, I needed a big mid-morning lunch to carry me over for dinner. Di Yin and I got lunch at a diner, Long Kee Restaurant, in the Japanese mall by Jing'an Temple; I had to be in that vicinity anyway to catch the bus to the airport. Details are in the one picture I took at the meal.

My first full day back from Beijing, we tried a Hong Kong restaurant, Hengshan Cafe, near our apartment for lunch. Again, see the pictures for more information.

Oddities
We often see clothes hung outside to dry. We usually do the same when we run out of space within the apartment to dry our clothes. One day, we saw meat hanging on the clothing lines in the courtyard in front of the apartment. It looked much like the ham hocks I've seeing hanging, being cured, at the markets in Barcelona (and elsewhere). Nevertheless, this was a surprising addition to our apartment's courtyard.

After returning to Shanghai from Singapore, in the first two taxis I took this month, the taxi drivers were listening to radio dramas (one light-hearted comedy, one capitalist drama). How come I never run across taxi drivers in other countries listening to stories or books?

One day I walked by a shop that, instead of a carpet outside the entrance, had a large sheet of bubble wrap! (Sorry, it was too dark to take a picture.)