Category: Alison

Our friend Eric will join us today, and he asked that we arrange to brew our own coffee in the mornings (one of the perks of being in an apartment as opposed to a hotel room). So this morning I walked out to the local coffee spot, “The Coffee Bean”, which by no coincidence is in a group of restaurants that includes a Mexican restaurant and an Italian restaurant. At a table outside sat three VERY American looking dudes chatting in English: “…good to see Dave at xxxxx last night…” Inside I was greeted with a “Good morning!” from the Chinese staff. I ordered a large coffee and a small latte: 49 yuan. Then I picked up an 8 oz package of coffee beans, which they ground for me: 98 yuan. At about $15 for 100 yuan, that’s $30/pound.

So in the space three minutes I spent more on coffee than we spent on food all day yesterday, which included buying a bunch of fruit for breakfasts this week. To put it in another context, in the book “Oracle Bones” we learn about several of the Chinese students that Peter Hessler taught English to, who graduated to become English teachers themselves. At one student’s first job they were paid 100 yuan a month.

Coffee, it turns out, is a luxury item in China.

Tonight we ventured “outside our comfort zone” as Alison said when we returned from dinner. What that means is that we visited a restaurant with no English on the menu at all. It was a little (seven table) restaurant specializing in Sichuan food that the apartment owner pointed out to us as she walked us around the neighborhood as we arrived.

Although there we could not read the menu, each dish in the thick menu-book had a large color photo so we would know a little more about the dish then ordering blind. Even so, we resorted to the oldest trick known to tourists: point to dishes on other people’s tables. That way we knew that the dishes must be good, and the live dishes were a little easier to interpret then the photos.

What we ended up ordering was a tank of fish soup, and a plate of spicy fried green beans. The tank was a ridiculous size — bigger than most soup tureens meant to serve six or eight in America. And it was chock full of chunks of fish that had a similar texture to cat fish, together with a bok choi like green, plus tons of garlic and ginger creating a nice full flavored broth. It was so good that Alison asked if I thought there was MSG in it, and it could have been, but I didn’t get that chemical waft in the back of my sinuses that usually is the red flag for me.

There were an equal amount of hot red pepper pieces as there were green beans in our side dish, along with a post-fry sprinkling of course salt. Both dishes were hot, but we were prepared, and there were other flavors to meld with the hot flavors, and it was all good. Plus the young people we met outside the Shanghai Museum assured us that hot peppers were good for your skin, so we were looking forward to not needing moisturizer for the next month…

The hot food demanded cold beer, and there was plenty of that in the form of liter sized bottles of Tsingdao Draft. Soup, a bite of fish, beer, a couple green beans, beer, some more soup, some green beans, more beer. Pretty soon my nose was full running, but we were both enjoying the experience

As we paid our bill (77 yuan, or about $12), the skies opened up, so we got soaked sprinting back to our apartment and that almost, ALMOST cooled us off.

Our local contact Patrick (a college friend of Alison’s) gave us a quick tour of the neighborhood this morning before he headed to work. He explained many things about how the neighborhood (the French Concession in central Shanghai) is put together socially and architecturally, but most importantly he found us breakfast at some of the little stalls here and there along the street.

First he showed us the bao (pronounced “bow” as in the front of a ship) vendor who had four kinds of bao (sesame paste, meat, bitter greens, and radish) plus sticky rice shumei (a kind of dumpling). We got one of each of those, although they were out of the radish bao for 4.50 yuan. Next door they were selling one of Patrick’s favorite morning dishes: tofu in hot sauce. We got a bowl of that for 1.50 yuan.

We ate the dumplings as we continued our walking tour, then we took the tofu (less street friendly) back to the apartment. It was *fantastic*! And at 6 yuan total for both our breakfasts, we had not yet spent $1 for food today…!

The apartment is very nice, in a modern apartment building just off the “Fifth Ave.” of Shanghai (Huaihai Middle Rd.), but set back so it’s not too noisy.

It’s raining lightly today, but we planned to walk as much of the city as possible, and then learn how to use the subway.