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Keeping a Chinese Tradition Alive
| 19 July 2010
These past few weeks have been full of long work hours, settling in, and of course eating local!
Discovering Shanghai’s true food scene is not as easy as one would think, but finding the true blooded street vendors is no question where the urban culture thrives! I am currently living in what is known as Expo Village, which is a brand new complex much like an Olympic village. We have restaurants, bars, shops, etc. Filled with western style eateries, for example Tony Roma’s and Bubba’s BBQ, thanks but no thanks!
The common topic of conversation around the village is “I found this new place…”, not many speak the local lingo so everything is based on general landmarks, ordering at the local joints is always an adventure in itself
Truth be told, how can you blame them… who wants to spend 15 dollars on a dozen “Smoked Chinese Chicken Wings”… no thanks, I will stick with the people who have been perfecting their craft for generations. So in the event any of these people from photos below ever read this xhi-xhi! (thank you)!
Where does your food come from?
| 15 July 2010
I have recently been able to pry away from the Pavilion for a few hours to pick up some custom tailored clothing and explore the neighborhood next to what is called the “Old City”. This was my true first trip to a complete and total Shanghai urban market. This small pocket neighborhood boasts tons of vendors, most with 125 sq. ft. store fronts with their small one bedroom apartments just above. The streets are covered with food vendors, men engaged in serious card games, counterfeit tobacco shops, antique dealers, motorbike part suppliers and random local markets. Yes, China, this rising country has sent out media messages to their people not to walk around in pajamas all day, clean up, and change their ways of hundreds of years. Shanghai is the New York of China- they have pushed the locals to embrace western ways, which to me is quite a shame. Of course I happen to seek out the real culture of Shanghai behind all the smoke and mirrors that Shanghai officials try to hide.
Grabbed a few photos at a local market- this market made any US Asian market smell like a bed of roses, pass health inspection with an A, and make you feel like you are in a 5 star resort! Unlike most Westerners I don’t look down on these practices, it’s just different…
Makes someone think twice about “where does your food come from”?
Old Shanghai (Part II)- "the restaurant experience"
| 06 July 2010
China has been great to me so far… We went to this restaurant in old Shanghai (post street snacking.. poor Lassie). It was beautiful… nobody in the joint spoke a lick of English-so we pretty much had the luck of faith! One of the chefs that was with me had on some Australian board shorts and sure enough a familiar dialect was heard. Someone jumped in after we had ordered about half the food- it was the voice of a Chinese guy saying that he studied in Kangaroo nation for 10 years- and how could he help us order….
Now we were really in business! We went from pointing at a few pictures, drawing a pigs face on the back of the servers guest check book (to let her know we wanted some pork), to just plain rolling the dice. Not even remembering what we had ordered up to this point we just let this new found friend finish out our order.
In the matter of 3 minutes the table starting filling up dumplings, pancakes, hot pots, noodles, soups, and stir fried goodness
I would mention the name of this delectable establishment but 95% of this area is only written in Chinese characters… so we’ll just go with “one block down from the fabric buildings”.
