Friday

Ate: best damn xiao long baos (soup dumplings) I've had so far in Shanghai...and I've sampled a LOT.

Sighted: wanna-be gangsta sporting a spray-paint Princess Di graphic T, thug jeans, and hairstyle reminiscent of early K-pop bands. Also, this morning--a man going for an early morning run in his poly-blend paisley-print boxers.

Met: new Italian friends who were fluent in my native tongue--Chinglish.

Ending the night: a stroll from Xujiahui back to my apartment, perfect breeze, ice-cold honey kumquat tea, musing.

Epic Fail!

One of the hardships (relatively speaking) of this SH experience is ordering food in a restaurant. A lot of places now have menus with pictures and descriptions in English, albeit sometimes incorrect. But most hole-in-the-wall places just have a large words-only menu on the wall. Usually at these sorts of places I just order from the first 2 things listed on the menu, which normally is what the place is known for i.e. beef hand-pulled noodle soup. This requires very little of my Chinese-deciphering skills, but it also means a limit on the variety of things I try. This method usually works but the other day, I was meeting a friend who was going back to Taiwan, and she suggested we try a cafe-type place near my apartment for their desserts.

I recognized the words for "red bean shaved ice" on one of these word-only menus and I asked the waiter how big the serving would be. He was very vague and said, "If you order it, you'll find out" to which my friend responded, "Well I want to know if I should order a serving for myself." After much back and forth, he measures with his fingers a circular shape of about 3 inches in diameter. We both thought this was really weird, and figured the waiter was just being lazy about it. So we decide to just order one first to try it.He brought this out and both of us were like "WTF mate?" I volunteered to venture a taste first to spare Friend since she had paid. It wasn't even that it tasted gross...it tasted like nothing. It was literally a cup of water with ice and two spoonfuls of red bean tossed in. Literally. I couldn't even muster a polite "Oh, it's not that bad" expression, so Friend asked the waiter to add something to flavor it more. He brings it back and we stare at it trying to figure out what's different. More ice. At this point, Friend is in such disbelief, she can't do anything but sputter fragments of, "I've never--this is just---what the heck---I--what is--." The freakin red bean ice water cost 20 rmb so she asks the waiter to put it in a to-go container, although frankly I don't know what she was going to do with it--it's just hard to spend 20 rmb on something and waste it. For reference I can get a perfectly acceptable pearl milk tea for 6rmb somewhere else. The waiter says, "We don't do to-go orders, you can't take it with you, you have to finish it here," which was met with another round of sputtering, from both of us this time. We got up and left and Friend said, "I'll take you to somewhere that serves real red bean shaved ice. I was a little afraid. We weren't disappointed. It even had pudding (think flan-like, not Jello pudding-like) in the middle. Yum! We both sighed in relief when the waitress rounded the corner of our booth with this familiar sight.

Sad Face

.....for several reasons.

I know it' been a very long time since my last update. This I mainly blame on the spotty and difficult access to Blogger. Every time I tried to update, once I pressed that "publish" button, the connection would be disrupted and the blog post lost. After I tried this several times, sometimes even taking the time to upload pictures, I got really fed up and quit. Apologies. I've found a new way to access blogger and hopefully it won't disappoint.

Also, my mom and brother were in town for a few weeks and between the internship and entertaining them, I was quite exhausted upon arriving at home. But this also means I have tons of pictures and thoughts to share--this depends on how cooperative the internet will be.

I'm also experiencing some type of allergic reaction on my face and neck (ONLY, nowhere else, weird) in the last 2 days. This makes me not want to go outside since I look like I have something contagious, but c'est la vie.

My momma left this morning. Even though she was often quite content to sit at home and wasn't the food buddy I thought she would be, I do miss her being here. Two examples:

M: Oh I thought these were light-sensored.
J: LIGHT-sensored? How can lights be light-sensored?
(Referring to the hallway lights that are actually sound-activated)

J: Mom, you're calling me again. Hands her my cell phone.
M: Oh, hello? Hellooo?
(My mom sometimes forgets to lock her phone and it'll call the last person she talked to while it gets jostled around in her large purse.)

Beers & Bears

One day when it was unbearably hot, I took shelter at Carrefour and wandered around the beer aisles. Beer here is almost cheaper than water, and sometimes it actually is. Just a reminder that the conversion is approximately 6.8 rmb = 1 USD. There's really cheap brands like "Snow" and "Reeb" (my favorite only bc I can't stop laughing at the name) and also of course Tsingtao.

Here we get a little fancier with the foreign imports: Heineken, Corona, Newcastle. Jack and Coke pre-bottled. Also a new one I tried on a whim: this Suntory (Japanese brand) Mix of peach and beer. Not a cider! There's a fairly decent number of options for the thirsty...even Lindeman's Framboise if you wanted to drizzle some on your ice cream. Try it!

Of course beer is often accompanied by snacks of some sort, usually salty ones. I don't know if people actually pair spiced duck tongues with their Reeb, but I just wanted to show some of the more interesting fare available. Out of all of these things, I don't think I've ever had 'cowhells'.

This one's for John Du. I know I'll get a lot of flack for saying this...but couldn't they just let him have one tiny shred of dignity left? I hope the royalties from this are paying for all his open-to-the chest collared-shirts.

I wandered over to the produce, meat, and bakery section for more fun photos. Right after this picture, I got in trouble for snapping a shot of these adorable--but I'd never eat them--teddy bear breads.

I asked the dude why I couldn't take pictures and his reply was "You just can't. It's that simple lady." I just walked away because I didn't want to offend the secret police a second time. Remind me to tell the story about the first time.