Shanghai Expat: April 2010

April was a new month, and with it came both spring weather (intermittently) and two friends from the states. One moved to Shanghai; the other came for three weeks to see how it felt and to decide if he wanted to move to China.

For me, April was an introspective month that I spent figuring out where I wanted to be during the rest of the year and mulling over my feelings about leaving Shanghai. (I was scheduled to be in the bay area for the month of May). I looked forward to returning to California. I won't list here the things I don't like about Shanghai because that would be depressing. However, there is one thing I'll miss upon leaving Shanghai: the food (aside from the food my company serves at lunch, which I don't like much). There are many great, reasonably priced restaurants in Shanghai; I don't eat as well as consistently when I go out in other cities.

Outings
In April, I did day and overnight trips to places near Shanghai. I'll report these in other posts. The rest of this post will be mostly little reports of smaller outings. I also took pictures this month. Some of my outings are only reported in the pictures; others are only reported in this entry. Refer to them both.

On April 1, I went to B and K's engagement party. It was large and fancy; many of B's relatives came to town. They rented out four tables in one of the best-known Shanghainese restaurants, Fu1039. Thus, it felt much like a wedding reception (complete with gifts), not an engagement dinner, but quite a dinner it was: a tasty full-scale Chinese banquet with numerous famous Shanghainese dishes and followed by a Tiffany wedding cake. I've never seen one of these before: it really looks like a present box (complete with a bow) but is actually a cake with layers of cool cream.

The night before Di Yin's dad's flight back to the states, the four of us ate dinner together at home. We ordered take-out from Jishi (Jesse), which we ate at once before and really liked. For details on the food, see the pictures.

Di Yin's birthday was on April 8th. Her mom was still in town (scheduled to fly out the next day) and made Di Yin a birthday dinner. One of Di Yin's mom's friends and Di Yin's mom arranged to get her a cake as well. Fancy! Details are in the pictures.

One Saturday, Di Yin and I took the train farther north in Shanghai than I'd ever previously gone in order to have lunch with one of my co-workers/friends, D, and his wife. They live in a quiet neighborhood (strikingly quiet compared with elsewhere in Shanghai). I liked the look of their main street: bustling with many small shops and, above, hanging clothes. As for lunch, although we'd agreed that each couple would cook/provide two dishes, they went overboard and we ended up with quite a spread: fish in hot oil (take-out), duck (take-out), dumplings (frozen), chicken soup (take-out), sliced tofu (take-out), sliced ham (take-out), sauteed mushrooms (us-made), cucumber salad (us-made), and much, much more. We planned to make a noodle dish but were convinced otherwise upon seeing the spread. We had two plates of tasty northern-style dumplings (from the wife's region). When I innocently inquired whether the two plates were the same (I could reach only one), they said yes and then made two more plates of other types of dumplings, just so I could try them all. (They could not be persuaded otherwise.) Goodness. And they bought three different types of thousand-layer cake, just because they wanted me to try those too. (I don't understand how they could've thought I lived in Shanghai for four months and yet not had some thousand-layer cakes.) Then post-lunch was crazy too. They had bananas, longan, oranges, pork floss sandwiches, plum cakes, potato chips, nuts, and more, just because they were worried about having something I'd like. How's that for overwhelming Chinese hospitality?

After Di Yin's dad returned to the states, Di Yin's mom came to stay with us for a week until she too returned to the states. One night, Di Yin decided we should take her mom to a fancy Japanese restaurant because she likes Japanese food but does not get the opportunity to eat it. (Di Yin's dad does not like it.) We took her to Koyama, one of the fanciest sushi joints you could imagine. We've been there before. Details on this trip are in the pictures.

Passover occurred at the end of March this year and, though Shanghai's Jewish Community Center was holding a seder, I didn't manage to attend. However, a friend from work decided to host his own seder a week later, and I got to attend that! Although I don't have pictures, I have stories. I was one of half a dozen jews in a crowd of about thirty people, nearly all expats (mostly ethnically Chinese). With this assortment of people, we did the bulk of a passover service. I was surprised how respectful everyone was. They seemed interested and actually listened as, through the seder, we told the story of the jews' exodus from Egypt, which took more than an hour. We did all the usual seder activities: asking the four questions (appropriate for such a new audience), counting out the plagues using drops of wine, hiding the afikoman, etc. Before the seder, some people made yamakas by cutting paper into a circle, removing a wedge, then taping it together so it stuck up a little. It worked; I wore mine all night.

We also had traditional passover fare. My friend acquired passover wine and matzah and even, with a friend of his, made matzah ball soup from scratch -- more authentic than any seder I've attended in the states! (All my friends and relatives use a mix.) Another friend made charoset, in ample amounts to prevent running out. (I and he always hate when that happens. He swore it wouldn't happen that night, and it didn't.) Beside the charoset, people brought less traditional toppings for matzah: hummus, baba ghanoush, cream cheese, guacamole. I was assigned the simple task of bringing wasabi. Why wasabi? Because we couldn't acquire any horseradish, the traditional bitter herb (maror) used in the seder, we used wasabi, which is roughly Japanese horseradish. As for the main course, we cheated: my friend ordered food from a Hunanese joint: tasty cumin lamb popsicles and eggplant.

Some other cute tidbits about the evening: because there were so many of us, we sat on the floor, reclining, which is said to be the traditional way seders were held in the distant past. We also gave up on the service (aside from finding the afikoman) after dinner, which usually happens in my relatives' households as well. Finally, the host called his dad using skype to have him participate in the service and answer some questions. It was a nice gesture.

On Saturday, April 17, 2010, Di Yin and I met a bunch of friends of mine (B, K, A, S, and K's dog coco) in honor of their comings and goings in Shanghai. We ate at Duofuyuan, a restaurant owned by one K's relatives (that's why she could bring the dog). It was a good meal; I didn't take pictures so I'll omit the details other than the list of things we ate: jellyfish, deep-fried little fish (that you could eat bones and all), steamed chicken, marinated rare meat, fatty red-cooked pork, noodles, drunken crab, sauteed pea shoots, watermelon.

Other Remarks
The big building being constructed on my block must be behind schedule -- they wake me up with their construction every day at around 6:30am. After about three weeks, I started getting more used to it. However, that's around the time my allergies began kicking it. (I don't have them in California but I have them in China.) I imagine I have allergies indoors because, as I mentioned before, the apartment was poorly insulated. My somewhat stuffed nose interfered with my breathing just enough to disrupt my sleep so the construction noise continued to wake me up. Incidentally, the construction must've fallen more behind schedule: by the last week of April, they were starting before 6am.

Recall the sweetened steamed rice cakes that I found often last summer? Ever since moving to China, I had trouble finding them. I finally learned why: they're seasonal! Maybe it has something to do with rice production, maybe not, but, regardless, it seems they only show up during the warmer months of the year. Huh.

Often, when taking subways during rush hour, I'm amazed I get on and off at my stop. It involves a lot of wiggling and pushing, yet nevertheless I manage to pop out of the subway cars every time.

Also, I think the way people push and cut in lines is Darwinian. There are just so many people in China that if you don't do that, you wouldn't get anywhere quickly.

I think Bashi Fen may be the card game I often saw people playing in parks.