Shanghai Expat: March 2010

This month some restaurants started enforcing--at least when customers complained--the newly enacted ban on smoking in restaurants. Yay! I can notice the change in some places. (The Shanghai government put the ban in place in preparation for the expo.)

Anyway, as for the month, some food outings are described in the pictures I took this month.

A friend of mine, B, got engaged over Chinese New Year. Di Yin and I went with him and K to a Japanese restaurant, Koyama, in Xintiandi to celebrate. I planned on paying. The meal was respectable: a selection of sashimi and sushi and a few unusual items such as marinated sea cucumber and grilled chicken cartilage. I liked the sashimi substantially more than I usually like sashimi. The salmon was my favorite. The meal ended with a pot of beef with onions, then ice cream. The decor was nice, but not as cute as the other sushi place we've been in Shanghai. It was surprisingly expensive, substantially exceeding my intended budget. (I normally don't think twice about paying for someone when it's less than US$30 or maybe even $40 per person. This substantially exceeded that range, which was especially surprising given China's normal prices.) Nevertheless, I paid for dinner (before I thought too much of it). Sorry, I didn't take pictures of this meal.

After I returned from Chinese New Year at the end of February, it rained nearly every day. The culmination of this series was on March 9th when it snowed briefly as I walked home from dinner! They were light wisps of snowflakes, but snow nonetheless. I wanted to take a picture of the flakes stuck to my coat to prove it was indeed snowing, but the snow melted before I got home and could locate and ready my camera (and it stopped snowing outside around that time too, so I couldn't take a picture from home looking out). Ah well, you'll have to believe me. :)

The following days quickly warmed up and the sun came out. It felt like spring had arrived. But I didn't get to enjoy spring in Shanghai right then; I flew to Hong Kong on March 12th.

When I returned from Hong Kong on the 21st, the weather was pleasant: good for a graduate student friend of Di Yin's, P, who came to stay with us for a couple of days, and for J a friend of Di Yin's and long-lost friend of mine, who came to stay with us for the week. They must've brought the spring. Aside from two days of rain in the middle of J's visit, the weather was warmer (13-ish C / mid-/upper- 50s F) and the skies were clear.

While both these house-guests were in town, we went out to dinner with them and two of Di Yin's academic compatriots, I and M, also doing research in Shanghai. We chose to bring the crowd to How Way, a restaurant we've visited many times before (1,2,3). As usual, it was very good. After, we went to Charmant for our regular ice tower dessert.

Another evening, we brought J to our Hunanese restaurant of choice, Di Shui Dong, which we've also visited before (1,2).

Near the end of the month, I headed to Boonna Cafe on a tip. Of the three in the city, one is surprisingly close to me, a mere 200 meters detour from the standard path I walk to the metro station. The cafe, which serves sandwiches, salads, coffees, smoothies, and a few pastas, reminded me of California. It's secluded from the road, with a cute courtyard and a welcoming interior with a long bench seat with pads and also many small tables. I planned to return with my camera to take pictures, and also to relax in the atmosphere. (The next month I did.) My sandwich, incidentally, was good. Plus, they have free internet.

A day or two later, when Di Yin and I headed out for breakfast only to find our destination closed, we ended up at a nearby Starbucks. The Starbucks was even more welcoming than those in the states. The large armchairs were particularly comfortable, and our pastries (an oatmeal pudding scone and a blueberry bar) were good. Funny how I found two places in a row that I want to return to simply to sit and relax.

Oddities
At one point this month, I found myself looking through the pictures from my trip the previous June to Shanghai. Gosh, the parks were green! Sure, they were generally small and scattered, but boy were they lush. It's too bad everything looks so bleak during the winter.

I also noticed how funky some of Shanghai's skyscrapers are, providing a more distinctive skyline than most cities. This didn't sink into my consciousness during my June visit.

Also, only now did I realize nearly all ATMs in Shanghai are in individual, lockable booths. In comparison, in the states, ATMs are either open on the street, open in the bank, or in a room with a few ATMs that is only accessible with an ATM card. In Shanghai, practically all ATMs are in tiny rooms (one ATM per room) that lock from the inside.