Category: Nebulous Items
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(101 things about Shanghai) Food
When I lived in Istanbul, I ate a lot of very good Turkish food. In Shanghai, I eat a lot of very good Mexican, Italian, Moroccan, Lebanese, Punjabi and American food, as well as the forty bazillion shades of Chinese food on every corner. Chinese food in China is awesome and surprising and nothing like…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Blind Massage Parlors
I’ve got a fucked up clicky neck, leftover from a fun and debilitating 5-car pile-up I was in back in Istanbul in 2007 with an insane company driver. Even though I couldn’t walk without crying/screaming for a month, the Istanbul medical community declared me unhurt and I was released from hospital the same day. No…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Brutally honest meat
I love Chinese supermarkets. A lot of foreigners I know simply refuse to shop in Chinese supermarkets because some sections can be viscerally overwhelming. Like the meat and fish section. Our local supermarket reeks of fish and flesh, most of which is not neatly packaged in little styrofoam containers. There are tubs of live frogs…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Mops
In the Former French Concession (AKA bits of Luwan and Xuhui), there is a parallel universe operating, much like the ones full of street cats and their armies doing their own thing with their own agendas. This parallel universe is made up entirely of mops. They live rich and varied lives in this area, propped…
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(101 Things About Shanghai) Taxis
Taxis in Shanghai aren’t actually particularly nifty but they are remarkably cheap and easy to get around in. A half hour trip from deepest, darkest Pudong to Puxi, with bags and bags of illicit espresso in tow and no desire to take the Metro? 30 yuan max! A half hour trip out to the…
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(101 Things about Shanghai) Lanzhou Hand-Pulled Noodles
I suppose that Lanzhou Noodles here would be a more appropriate addition to a list of 101 Nifty Details About Gansu Province but I don’t care. There are Lanzhou noodle joints everywhere in Shanghai and I am pulled to the Arabic script of their cookie-cutter identical signage and the Technicolor wall menus and identikit posters…
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Harbingers of Dumplings
“Привет!” Our presence in the tiny Russian cafe was heartily acknowledged by the old Chinese man in the fedora who had just entered, elbows linked with his small, silent wife. “Er, nihao? Hello? Hi?” “Я думал, ты русский” I thought you were Russian, he explained (in Russian). We don’t speak Russian. Our Mandarin is pitifully limited…
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Rose Petals and Orange Peel
Sometimes a girl just needs a jam jam jar filled with steeping, fragrant blossoms