Eric Lee biked all over central Shanghai while we were shopping at the Market; needless to say he worked up quite an appetite, so we took Eric north of our apartment to the string of street food shops we’d been using to get breakfast bao and tofu in hot sauce. One of the stands had an empty table, so we ducked in and ordered “jiaozi” — dumplings — and two “pijiu” — beers — for a quick and satisfying lunch. 21 Yuan = $3.
Patrick and Tina invited us to go shopping with them at their local “wet market” where we could stock up on supplies for a meal or two. We met in front of a park across the street from the US Consulate where a group of women were doing their tai chi exercises, and a group of men were selling local specialty roots and shoots from the back of a mini-scooter. On to the market where we ate a few of the local Shanghai bao dumplings fresh off the grill, then explored a two story market building, from preserved meats and eggs, through fresh fish, vegetables, noodles, dried fruits and spices, and more. So much more that it would be ridiculous to post all of my pictures here, therefore you’ll have to visit my Picasa album to see them all.
Patrick picked us up in a taxi at 6:30pm and we were off on a wild rodeo ride through the Friday night streets of Shanghai. We inched and bucked our way toward The Bund, Patrick explained that the word was not English or German, but from the Urdu term for “embankment.” It is, simply, a collection of architectural piles on the western bank of the Huanpu River, a famous symbol of the city as well as a trenchant reminder of it’s colonial past.
But we had come not to look at The Bund, but to look from The Bund, specifically from M On The Bund, at the symbols of the new Shanghai: skyscrapers featuring light shows, and haute western cuisine. The scenery from the balcony overlooking the Huangpu on this warm and breezy September night was amazing, and the food more than matched it.
Continue reading “M on the Bund”
We decided to explore the city’s transit network today, and to meet Eric’s plane at the airport in the process. This meant hopping on the Metro, changing lines, crossing under the river over to Pudong, then transferring to the Mag Lev train that rockets out to the Pudong International Airport.
Patrick had warned us that the signage in the subway system might be a challenge because the line colors are not consistent, but we followed the line numbers up escalators, down stairs, and around corners, and we successfully negotiated through the People’s Square station from Line 1 to Line 2. Line 2 took us seven stops east, just beond the Zhenliang Hi-Tech Park South to Longyiang Rd. South where we exited, crossed a small lane, then went up to the Maglev station to catch the train to the airport.
And by “Maglev” they mean “Magnetic Levitation” which means the trains do not roll on wheels, rather they float above magnetized tracks, and this allows them to reach very high speeds with little resistance. And high speeds we did reach — over 430 kph (almost 300 mph) — allowing us to reach the airport 20 miles away in just about five minutes. The speed was apparent but not palpable until a maglev train passed us going the opposite direction, which almost felt like a small explosion because suddenly the window was filled with a dark blur, our train jerked toward the blur, there was a loud “whomp”, and then it was gone and we continued on our way.
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.
This morning when our friend Patrick met us to give us a quick tour, the first thing he did was hand us an umbrella and said, “it is definitely going to rain today.” I asked if he had seen a forecast on the news or the Internet, and he said while wiping his brow with a handkerchief, “no, I just know it from the feel — it’s warm and very humid, which means it is getting ready to rain.” And he was right.
We had planned to walk to The Bund — the famous landmark of Shanghai, a strip of colonial era buildings along the Huangpu River that separates Puxi (the west bank where we are) from Pudong (the east bank) — but the wet weather discouraged us from going further than the People’s Park in the center of what would be considered downtown.
We started walking east on Fuxing Rd., a major avenue through the French Concession but still lined with plane trees (a legacy of the French, obviously) and less manic than Huaihai Rd., which is chock-a-block with fancy retail stores and honking traffic. Instead we enjoyed seeing stores focused a little more on the local population, as well as alleys leading into the building blocks that are where many of the residents live and spend much of their time (similar to Hutongs in Beijing) but are fast disappearing as they are replaced with huge apartment hi-rises and office buildings. Earlier in the morning Patrick took us into one of them to show us how they work: outdoor kitchen prep areas with a spigot, basin, and cutting board/counter; chamber pots that are set out in the morning to be emptied at the communal toilet at one end of the alley; clothes hanging everywhere above the alley on bamboo poles suspended about 15 feet above.
Patrick pointed out that for most of the day we would see only very young or very old people in the alleys because everyone else was out working. He also pointed to a bulletin board at the entrance of the alley common to almost all alleys that contained news important to the residents of the alley, but also contained a list of the “Seven No’s”, or the seven important rules for everyone to follow. One of the rules is “No Jaywalking” but it’s been clear that either everyone on the street must live somewhere without access to a list of the Seven No’s, or it’s pretty widely ignored.
Continue reading “Wet Afternoon”
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.
Eric has sent me two emails of he and Alison’s trip to China. Looks like there might be more coming, so I started a pictorial journal on rectorsite. I’ll add each new installment at the end of this post, so check back regularly.
JUMPING OFF
September 15, 2009 9:21:00 AM PDT
Here, beside the Richard Serra (withOUT the fuzzy red finish, though) slabs, we are about to leap over to Asia…at 3am EDT you can imagine that we are having our first impressions of China (perhaps getting detained for smuggling cheese?).
LANDING
September 16, 2009 7:33:34 AM PDT
Yes, in fact, we did fly over the arctic ocean, entering just north of Hudson Bay, and exiting well into Siberia (see photos). The Canadian tundra and Siberian tundra looked identical, and in between — despite global warming — there was an ice sheet, although there were cracks everywhere we flew (when the view was not obscured by clouds). And the sun never set on us.
But it was a LONG ASS flight. When I finally said to myself, “This is a *really* long flight…” we had three more hours to go. I must say, however, that Air Canada made it as comfy as possible in coach in a newish Boeing 777 — three full meals that were actually tasty (and all included a packet of hot sauce and a packet of soy sauce) including the Cup O’ Noodles for breakfast; reasonably spaced seats that reclined enough to keep your head back as you snoozed; and an on-demand entertainment system that allowed us to watch The Hangover, Star Trek, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, and the Pool (plus assorted award-winning Canadian short films, American TV shows, and endless promotions for the Air Canada Duty Free Shopping).
Our first impressions of Shanghai included a young woman who escorted us to a car service waiting for us who knew JUST enough English to pleasantly escort us from the arrivals area to the car pick-up, but when we tried to extend the conversation with, for example, “How is the weather in September?” She had no idea how to respond. But she delivered us to our waiting car, and the car delivered us to the doorstep of an awesome Craigs List apartment in the heart of the “West Village” of Shanghai (complete with Sephora and every other international “luxury brand” boutique).
Stay tuned…
Prologue
Son Brian is being reassigned by the USDA from the Montpellier, France Lab to their lab in Reno NV. Carol and I traveled to Reno as advance scouts, as it were.
Saturday, May 23
We were off at 9:30am and set the trip odometer to zero. We took 101 to 37 to I-80 to Reno.
The trip on California I-80 was one we had taken a few times – enroute to Lake Tahoe – including the stop for lunch at Ikeda in Auburn, the burger joint where everybody stops on their way to Tahoe.
Once we navigated Donner Pass and crossed into Nevada, we were on unfamiliar ground.
We arrived in Reno about 2:30 and got lost trying to find Peppermill, but broke off our search to show up at Brian’s approved broker, Coldwell Banker Select, about 3:15… a few minutes early.
That’s 5 hours to Reno and 45 minutes lost over 245 miles.
The return trip was an adventure of a different sort. Continue reading “Reno – Memorial Day Weekend 2009”
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