1.3 billion people need to be fed!  So the Chinese people make use of every available, edible thing — even if “foreigners” don’t think it’s edible.  People here eat out even more than Americans do.  It’s very inexpensive. And it’s less time consuming.

They love to eat, and they love choices.  They never order just one thing.  The group chooses a meat, a fish, a vegetable, and another item plus a personal bowl of rice, and small desserts (not sweet like American desserts).

The waiter brings the items from the kitchen as they are ready.  Your dessert may come first…whatever comes, you eat it then.  Each diner has a small plate (the size of a teacup saucer).  You put food from the serving bowl on your plate — just a few bites at a time.  If several things arrive simultaneously, you serve yourself a few bites of each, and then keep adding to  your plate throughout the meal.

But restaurant dining is probably not how people eat out  most often.  They buy “snacks” from the street vendors and the small kiosks set up everywhere.  These snacks, hot or cold, are consumed day and night.

No part of an animal is wasted.  We have eaten some interesting dishes, including a big bowl of pork fat, pig hooves, and duck neck — favorite dishes over here.  The fish is often served whole –head and tail included — so you can pick the bones and not miss anything.  My favorite is mandarin fish — its speckled flesh and fins make a beautiful presentation.

We’ve also eaten eel, octopus, crab. shrimp, and quite a few other fish whose names are unpronounceable to me.  Sometimes they are minced and eaten with pine nuts or a vegetable or put into a soup.

There are many vegetable choices but the serving sizes are small (we’re eating our multi-vitamin every day).   My favorite veggie so far is lily bulb.  We’ve had some interesting fruit, also.  Fiery dragon is wild-looking on the outside and pretty on the inside (pure white with black speckles).

Chopsticks are the norm, but spoons are also on the table, never knives or forks.  If something needs to be cut (like the whole fish), you use your chopsticks.

Etiquette is quite different.  If you have a bone or other undesirable in your mouth, you spit it out on the table or a small plate.  Your rice bowl comes up to your mouth and the rice is shoveled in with the chopsticks.  Don’t forget to bring your own napkins!  If the restaurant has any, you will be charged if you order one.

The Bund (Zhongshan Lu) is a famous area of Shanghai where there are many, old foreign banks and financial buildings, symbols of the western commercial power that thrived  in the heart of colonial Shanghai.  The view, as seen from our night cruise on the Huangpu River, was spectacular.

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The Shanghai Museum, with over 120,000 cultural relics from 5,000 years of China’s history, was an interesting 3 hour stop on a very rainy afternoon.

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Old Shanghai is where Rui taught me the fine art of haggling.  She helped get me a gorgeous black pearl necklace and matching earrings for about $15.

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Nanjing Lu is Shanghai’s foremost shopping street — six miles of shopper’s paradise.  Note how the scooters and bikes are parked on the sidewalks.  There are thousands of them everywhere.

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Wujiang Lu (Snack Street) – the people in Shanghai snack constantly all times of the day.  Everyone walks and eats.  There are fast food kiosks with tantalizing smells and store fronts with  bags of preserved treats: sweet, sour, salty, and savory.  Rui and I stopped at a very popular stall and watched them make “xio long bao”, broth and meat-filled steam dumplings (also called baozi or in English “buns”).   We ate two each and then stood back in line and each got two more!  To wash them down we bought large cups of Pearl Tea, or bubble tea as it is sometimes called. Large, black chewy ,translucent balls of pearl tapioca sit at the bottom of the cup and you sip the fruity, milk tea with a wide straw.

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View of our hotel, The Shanghai Oriental Riverside Hotel, as seen from our night Huangpu River cruise.

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Donghtai Lu – the antique market, where I soloed in negotiating for a souvenir.

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The Oriental Pearl TV Tower is a Shanghai icon and it was a homing beacon for us to find our hotel.

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Hutongs – are back alleyways within the city where residents have lived for hundreds of years.  Much revitalization is taking place in the city and these areas are fast disappearing.  Because I love history, I was absolutely fascinated by these areas although many just see them as slums and avoid them altogether.

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Before we left on our trip, I read a blog written by a couple who had traveled to China recently.  They told about some of the cultural differences they had observed and one in particular they named “besmirchment”.  I filed it away in my mind but forgot to tell John about it.  Well, wouldn’t you know he learned about it personally at the conference yesterday but didn’t understand what it was until I told him the blog story.

John had been standing in a crowded area next to a low table with a wine glass full of napkins stuffed into it.  Someone bumped into him and the the glass was knocked to the floor where it smashed into smithereens.  Not wanting anyone to get hurt, John kept signaling for the waitress to come over.  When she finally arrived, he could see she was peeved, and asked John if he would pay for it.  He tried  to explain to her that it was an accident but he thought she just wasn’t understanding him.  She walked away extremely irritated.

When he relayed the story to me I explained to him that over here if you “besmirch” something in a restaurant, hotel, or business, it is up to you to pay compensation for the item.  We verified that fact with our local friends; it is definitely the custom.  Doesn’t  do much to build future customer relations!

Rui and I arrived at the entrance to the underground metro station about 8:30 AM and saw a steady stream of people exiting and entering the doors. Rush hour, we realized, but we forged ahead steered by the crowd already pressing behind us. Tickets are purchased via machine, and even though there is an English option, it is quite confusing. You must first successfully read the map and figure out which metro line you will be taking, and if you need to transfer to more than one line. Only specific stops are “interchanges”. Once you determine your exact route and destination, you calculate the price of your fare and feed the machine the necessary coins. In our case, this was three yuan because we would need to transfer to line 2 at People’s Square. Carefully choosing the correct coins, I got my ticket. With card in hand, I headed toward the turnstile for (metro) line 2. You place your card onto a round “reader” and rub it back and forth until a light appears which indicates you may proceed. One at a time, each traveler passes through the turnstile and emerges into a surging crowd coming from all directions.

There are signs everywhere directing people where to go but few are in English. There are several both up and down escalators to choose, and you must work your way through the streaming crowds to the correct one. We had to walk several minutes through the station blending in with the thousands of people moving like widgets down a factory assembly line: first going down a level, then across a vast hall, and finally up another escalator before we arrived at the spot where the metro line 2 train stops. Many walk along reading the morning newspaper — somehow sensing which way to go without actually looking up — not missing a step. On the platform we had to determine which direction we needed to head — there were two tracks running in opposite ways. Overhead there is a subway map which must be carefully studied. Reading the Chinese characters and asking several people, Rui got us to the right side, and we joined the growing throng queueing up on the platform.

Within a few minutes a train arrived and the pulsing crowd behind us began to push and jockey their way closer, some inching ahead of us. When the train doors opened, so many people poured out. I could hardly believe that many had been inside that one car! We weren’t that far back in the crowd (it was not a line but a mass) but we didn’t make it onto the train before it was full. Eventually we made our way onto the third train that stopped although I didn’t think I’d be able to squeeze in far enough to avoid being caught in the closing door. Then to my absolute shock, I counted as TEN more people squeezed in behind us. I was wedged in so tightly I could hardly raise my arm enough to hold onto the pole nearby as the train lurched forward. Some people weren’t able to hold on to anything at all, but we were pressed so tightly against each other than no one actually fell over. (Picture Crayolas lined up in a box). We were jostled continually as the train bumped along; I kept being thrown into the man in the 3-piece suit next to me but he didn’t seem to be surprised about it. When we arrived at our stop, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to squeeze by the people in front of me to get out the door and onto the platform. But like a mouse squeezing through a tiny hole, somehow I managed and emerged just in time to avoid my backpack from being closed in the door. Now we had to change to metro line 1. We averted a wrong decision in the nick of time, and hopped onto the down escalator instead of the up one. We made our way to the platform and confidently now surged onto the arriving train. We only had to ride to the next stop, and we expertly alighted through a hole in the throng and made our way across the huge area to the exit turnstile. I put my card/ticket into the machine but the turnstile wouldn’t budge. The card had popped back out. It was rejected repeatedly and a line of people was quickly bunching up behind me. Rui turned to see me stuck on the wrong side and pointed to the information kiosk. We both made our way there, she on one side of the fence and I on the other. (I thought of the old song about “Charlie” who rode forever on the streets of Boston because he couldn’t get off the MTA). No one in the station speaks English so I handed Rui my card so she could try to find out why it wouldn’t let me exit. As she waited in line, she looked at the card and realized I had been using my hotel room card which was exactly the same size and color. So then using the correct one, I was able to exit and we found our way out to the street and emerged into the sunlight.

We were now on the other side of the Huangpu River in the Puxi district of the city. Armed with Rui’s GPS loaded phone, my guide book, and a city map written totally in Chinese characters, we were ready for our day’s adventure. Although it felt at that moment like we had already had it, we had seven or eight hours ahead of us before we’d be meeting John and Tongan after their day’s conference activities.

Dodging masses of pedestrians along crowded sidewalks on one of Shanghai’s busy shopping streets, my friend, Rui, and I followed a 30-something Chinese man.  He glanced backwards surreptitiously every so often to be sure we were still following him. Finally he turned into a narrow alley and signaled for us to follow him down a dark, dirty, cramped passageway — an old neighborhood of sorts hidden inside the modern city.  Walking past opened and closed doors, we continued zigzagging our way deeper into the bowels of a seldom visited (by outsiders) section of the city.  Stopping at a plain black wooden door, he ran a bell.  Some one answered but said we had to wait.  We glanced up and down the alley — laundry hung above our heads on bamboo scaffolding that doubled as storage and perhaps balconies.  One woman brushed her teeth spitting into a big metal bowl.  Another woman stood washing her face in an outdoor sink.  People stopped and stared at us.  Finally we were allowed inside.  A small, clean room was filled with shelf-fulls of faux designer purses, wallets, luggage, and watches — all black market merchandise.  They spoke no English so I busied myself looking at “knock-off” Channel, Louis Vuiton, Guccci, and Prada purses while Rui and the shopkeeper haggled.  We did not buy anything; we had not planned to.  (The real bags cost $500 – 1000.  Who wants to walk around with fake ones that make people think you are decadent enough to spend that kind of money on a purse?)  We were just there for the adventure.  When Rui said they did not have what she was looking for, they led us through a tiny door we had not noticed, into a larger room with more shelves and purses with even more expensive price tags.  Eventually we were taken to two other secret locations in the area, one even more crowded and dirty which was hard to believe possible.  The conditions in these slums are squalid.  It appears that they have electricity but maybe not running water.  It is so crowded in the alleys — the two sides of the “street” so close together – that it feels like you are indoors.  And because their rooms are so small, the residents must spend much of their time outside — washing clothes, bathing, working.  This was a real third world experience, and one that will stay in my mind forever!

Shangahi KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN

All the way to Shanghai to get served a Kentucky Fried Chicken sandwich!  John and Tongan were certainly disappointed with their conference lunch the first day.  Tongan’s mouth watered every time he thought about the bauzi that Rui and I had eaten at Yang’s, the famous snack street vendor.  Although in China, KFC, McDonald’s, and Pizza Hut are very popular restaurants.  HaagenDas and Star Bucks are big business, too. KFC’s are very nicely decorated, dine-in restaurants with real plates, silverware, and cloth napkins.  One night we enjoyed an appetizer of escargot there.  The menu is extensive…and expensive compared to local food.  Go figure!

John's picture from lunch

Restaurant where John and Tongan ate

Crowds of people are everywhere we go.  We very much stand out as the foreigners people think we are.  Hawking vendors and beggars literally chase us down the street. Taking a taxi ride through the city was more terrifying than the wildest ride at Disney. You take your life in your hands just trying to walk across the street.  Now every time I walk in front of a taxi I run for my life; I know how they drive.

Across the river from our hotel

Marketplace

Dragon