Sparrows in Qibao

I must admit that I am now back in New York with my parents and Chris. I will continue to post occasionally, as I still have many places, foods, and cultural oddities to share. Above are impaled sparrows being sold in the Qibao marketplace in Shanghai. It was disturbing to watch children ravenously gnaw these popular snacks off the wooden skewers.

Pork Rib Bridge

Lobster

This imported lobster was the most expensive dish we tried. The meat was slightly cooked, spread on a bed of ice, and served with soy sauce and extremely concentrated wasabe. The rest of the lobster was used to make a soup with the only rice served the whole night. For special occasions, it is considered cheap for the host to fill his guests’ stomachs with rice. The whole meal was delicious and I’ll admit it was a little amusing to watch my coworkers gasping for air after ingesting the wasabe that is not used in Chinese traditional cuisine. After wine entered the scene, there were also many red faces in the room.

Erhu Necks

My Erhu Seller

By chance, we found the dealer above, whom I trusted more than anyone else I met on Jinling Lu. At his shop, I chose an erhu produced by Shanghai No.1 Musical Instruments Factory with a good sound for its price and bought it only after hearing the dealer play a beautiful melody on it. I made sure it came with a registration card as well as the necessary government export certificate. The case also came with bow rosin, extra bridges and padding, 2 sets of strings, a tuner keychain, and a VCD that lectures on how the traditional Chinese erhu is the best instrument ever made. There was a little nick on the body, though. If I would have pointed this out to dealers at other shops, they’d state that such things don’t matter and just talk the instrument up or desperately drop the price another 5 Yuan. Instead, this guy polished the nick with a repair kit at the shop and it looked fine.

Sichuan Meal

Lastly, as with all adventures, the search for an erhu ended with a feast. Above are three spicy Sichuan dishes: cold chicken, minced lamb, and some rice derivative. As I ate, I was choking on both the spice in the food and in the air of the restaurant.

Sneak Peak of Tea Jars

I met two tourists in People’s Square, Shanghai who were attending a “tea performance.” Curious about this cultural event, I joined them and was led into a tiny room in a mall just big enough for a table and a few stools tightly gathered around it. Thankfully, one of the tourists was an English teacher from Beijing and translated this whole experience thoroughly. I was impressed that she even understood the word “suburbs” when I described where I was from in New York.

The performance started when a young girl with dyed light brown hair entered the room – brown hair is currently popular in Shanghai and people sometimes don’t believe that mine is real. She wore a traditional silk jacket that barely covered her American name-brand t-shirt, though the tea table hid her jeans well for most of the tea performance. I thought it hypocritical that she declared the event too traditional for photos, so I snapped the one above while she was briefly absent from the room.

Before the tea performance started, the girl explained the history of her teas while pointing to an illustrated one-line diagram in the menu that I think was supposed to be a map of tea country, perhaps so ancient that it predated the discovery of 2-D space. Next, some hot water was poured over a three-legged frog statue that represented the “tea god.” Once we all touched the statue for good luck, the six tastings commenced, brewed from the six glass jars pictured above. Our first tea was Ginseng, which is naturally sweet and considered good for the heart and lungs. I learned that it is polite to drink Chinese tea in three sips and hold the cup with three fingers. The thumb and index finger straddle the delicate hemisphere of a tea cup and the middle finger supports the bottom. As I woman, I was supposed to extend my pinky outward to express my supposed elegance while the man at the end of the table knew to hold his pinky in to display masculine power.

The second tea, jasmine, was delicious but had a second purpose, reducing “panda eyes,” or dark shadows around the eyes. Pink Lady, our third tea, was also sweet, comprised of 12 fruits with no sugar added. It is recommended for the elderly, children, and pregnant women, since it has many vitamins and is good for the stomach. The fourth, Guan Yin, is an oolong tea also known as “Iron Buddha’s Tea.” It is popular for lowering blood pressure and treating hangovers. As we appreciated this famous tea from the Fujian province, the girl identified the traits of good green tea: a slightly bitter taste, light green color, and fresh smell.

The fifth tea used lychee juice and was poured using dragon and phoenix cups with painted decorations that actually changed color when the hot tea was poured into them. According to the girl, such cups were used to detect water temperature in ancient times. She then served us by grasping cylindrical vessels that funneled outward with tongs and pouring the tea into our cups from about a half meter above the tabletop. After we drank the tea in three sips, we placed the cups over our eyes for good eyesight and rolled the still-warm porcelain cylinders on the sides of our faces beside our eyes. This motion supposedly prevented wrinkles.

The sixth and final tea resembled an authentic owl pellet on first glance. It was lowered into a wine glass of hot water. After a few seconds, the outer leaves unraveled and I learned that the infusion consisted of six different types of flowers wrapped in tea leaves, including a chrysanthemum and jasmine. It took at least a minute of the girl poking the pellet and stirring the glass until you see could flowers blossoming from the drab leaves. This tea is considered to be good for the throat, especially for smokers. It may also be placed in cold water for a week as a decoration.

Shanghai Milk

Shanghainese milk is so creamy that expats have questioned whether it’s from a cow or something closer to a yak. I find the taste deliciously addicting. As one expat wrote, “I actually prefer the “milk” taste of Shanghai milk to the supposed real milk I’ve been living off of for the past 15 years in LA.” Unfortunately, the packaging for milk and yogurt look similar enough that I’ve confused them, thinking at first sip that the milk got even creamier since I last tried it. Milk powder is said to be mixed in with the real cow’s milk, but hopefully not the same powder that has been reported toxic. Just last month, high concentrations of melamine were found in Shanghai milk, reminiscent of the 2008 milk scandal here.

Shanghai Restaurant

This little restaurant at 456 Jinling Dong Lu, East of People’s Square, opened on January 1st and has been packed almost every night since.  I happened to stop by on January 2nd, was treated very well, and have gone back a number of times. Shanghai restaurants have extraordinarily high turnover rates, so I was especially excited to find a new business to track the progress of. The place’s name translates to Steamed Treasure From Eight Sides, which advertises the diversity of foods served, including Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, and traditional Chinese cuisine. The menu is considered to be an experimental blend of both modern and ancient tastes. To the managers, chefs, and waiters, though, the name has more than just a culinary meaning. Each individual, whether customer or employee,  is an asset to the business and adds to its wealth of diversity.

Jackie Lin

The restaurant has two managers, Jackie Lin and his Taiwanese business partner, a former professor of business at Fudan University, Shanghai. Jackie speaks pretty good English and teaches me a little Chinese every time I visit. Above, he is kindly writing some survival phrases for me (though I can’t read the Chinese alphabet…). Foreigners automatically feel more comfortable with Jackie around to translate for them, but what most of them probably don’t realize is that the restaurant, Jackie’s passion, is not his only occupation. As a day job, he is a security guard at a steel shop and his schedule is lengthy. He leaves his home at 0630, takes a bus to the steel shop, works from 0800 to 1600, takes another bus to the restaurant, and manages from 1830 to around 2200 or 2300. He always looks tired when I stop by. From what I can tell, this is a typical Shanghainese lifestyle. Jackie’s partner, the professor, can always be found reclining against one of the back seats with his legs crossed and a cigarette casually held in his left hand. Friends drop by to chat. This also seems to be a typical Shanghainese lifestyle. According to Jackie, the professor has helped found over 2000 stores, not all his own businesses, ranging from Tibetan restaurants to coffee shops and bars. When he was in his 20′s, he studied small business development in Japan.

Japanese Chicken Soup

Pictured above is a Japanese dish, salty chicken soup served in a teapot, that I tried on the house. Below, is a Korean dish of meat, egg, and vegetables over rice. This is one of the restaurant’s most expensive dishes priced at about 28 RMB or 4 USD. Rice at the bottom is always burned by the hot ceramic, but the burnt rice actually tastes good. About half of the menu – no English, just pictures – is Taiwanese and there’s a special bun that Jackie plans to launch soon and has great hopes for. Last time I visited, I interviewed Jackie about the ordeals of starting a restaurant business in Shanghai.  In January ’09, he conceived of the idea of the restaurant and started looking for a location in June ’10. It wasn’t until November ’09 that he found his current location on Jinling Lu. Unfortunately, another buyer was vying for the same place and had more money upfront. Jackie kept trying, though he had no written objectives, and after many discussions with the landlord he sold his idea. He attributes this success to his “special and new” styles of blending common foods. Each chef at his restaurants can prepare about 100 dishes, though they typically stick to their specialties. Most of them responded to online postings and only after an interview did the managers judge if the cook was a good fit for their restaurant. In the first 12 days of operation, about 8 staff left and 10 joined. His core staff includes two others who speak English and one who speaks Japanese.

Korean Dish

Construction on the 1920′s French-style building started on December 3. To give you an idea of Shanghai progress, the restaurant started with no furniture or kitchen, but was complete by January 1st, opening day. Furniture and kitchen devices were chosen from a local Shanghai factory within this one-month window of construction. Only the floor remains the same. Moreover, since then, authorities’ remarks have resulted in small modifications to the restaurant design, including a more prominent barrier between the kitchen and dining area. Now that the Shanghai Expo is approaching, authorities are inspecting restaurants about twice a month.

Jackie and His Restaurant

The restaurant  serves almost 150 a day. Not bad for a small start-up. “Someday I’ll write a book ,” Jackie suggested with a shrug and proceeded to explain how every aspect of his business venture happened by chance. When he was a little boy, he had wanted his own business and the thought of running a restaurant crossed his mind. Now, he considers his dream to have come true. Though he still toils through his steel job, he has something to live for.

Sichuan Fish Dish

The metropolis is famous for several distinct cuisines, some purely from their respective provinces, others fashionably blended by the city’s demand for extravagance. When you say “spicy” in Shanghai, the automatic response word is “Szechuan,” or “Sichuan,” a province reputed for its spice. Ken and Aili took me out to a Sichuan restaurant after hearing that I liked spicy food. The bowl pictured above contains a spicy fish dish. It’s the first fish I truly enjoyed in Shanghai. Little red peppers crowd the bowl to add flavor. They are not meant for consumption, as I understood only after letting them burn a lasting hole in my mouth. Little numbing peppers also float in the oily Szechuan dishes to sophiscate the gustatory experience. I thought I was smart to first eat the sharp-tasting numbing pepper (like a strong clove) and then chew a red pepper, but the fire just hit farther down my throat and more unexpectedly. In some Szechuan restaurants, you can hardly breathe, the air is so infused with spice and oil wafted in from the open kitchen.

Suntory

We each started out with a tall bottle of Suntory, Japanese beer bottled in Shanghai. I was wondering if I was going to be able to finish the  two to three 600 ml bottles they had purchased for me when I read the finely-printed alcohol level to be only about 4.64%. Many of the Shanghai beers taste like watered-down Corona. The legal drinking age here, by the way, is 18 as it should still be in the States too.

Ginger Chicken and Lotus Root

Ginger infuses the skin of the chicken and sweet rice stuffs the lotus root. Both were delicious. Chinese enjoy eating meat directly off the bone, which can be challenging with chopsticks. Some restaurants serve plastic gloves to diners in case they have the inclination to eat with their hands.

Lamb on a Stick

Though I love lamb, I cringe a little every time I eat it in Shanghai after hearing a rumor that cat sometime substitutes lamb. After all, stray cats come free. That’s probably only the case for some street kebab vendors,  but all the meat here, with the exception of chicken, tastes a little different and I wonder how easy it would be to swap the animal type in the kitchen if there’s little cultural objection to eating it in the first place.

Mei, Me, & Mei Yi Ling

Like every adventure, this musical weekend started with a feast. I met up at Baby Doll with Mei, my coworker, and her cousin, Mei Yi Ling.

Baby Doll

Studded leather booths with red lanterns broadcast the restaurant’s peculiar fusion of Chinese food with Western presentation. Pictured above are papaya and chicken soup (lovely combination), goose liver, and the house specialty, Baby Doll (not sure what went into this one).

Baby Doll

When this red splattering arrived, I was afraid that I may have to sit through the meal facing a fetus, but it was fish. Both the look and taste didn’t appeal to me.

Fruit Tea

After the green tea was brewed, the waiter poured it into a glass teapot filled with apple, kiwi, and orange slices. Hot fruit tea was the delicious result.

Baby Doll

Iced kumquat juice at the far end supplemented the hot beverage. Mei’s hand rests on a dish with the consistency of lasagna but made of tofu with a little bit of cheese. The large plate in the foreground holds a giant sushi roll with fake crab and fruit at the center.

Fresh Sugar Cane Juice

Mei’s cousin and I then set off to find erhu lessons. I learned that his firm consults for electrical power companies. As a result, he gets to travel to different provinces to give training presentations on risk. On our way to the music shops, we had some sugarcane juice from a street vendor. The machine attached to the back of a bicycle grinds the cane stalks on spot.

Hanging Meat

Hanging raw meat is becoming a common sight. The larger food stores tend to be broken up into specialized sections for each food product, each with their own counter like the butcher’s stall above.

Chicken Soup

The Chinese have a reputation for using every part of the animal. Pictured above is their version of chicken soup, a deliciously spicy coriander-heavy broth with everything but the head thrown in. You can see chicken feet, a major export from the United States to China, lying on top. The dish continues to cook after it is served in a ceramic pot above a burner. The longer you take to eat, the spicier the soup gets as the flavor of the red peppers leaks into the broth. Occasionally, the waitresses come by with a kettle to douse the chicken. Ours still managed to get burnt, though.

Quail Eggs

These small quail eggs went perfectly with the chicken, especially when placed in the pot to heat and soak up the spices. A refrigerator lined the far wall of the restaurant from which you could choose plates of eggs, lettuce, or random Chinese vegetables to add to your soup.