Tag: vendors
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Leicester is For Food Nerds: A Tangentially Culinary Introduction to an Unlikely Place
Leicester (lɛstər/ les-tər) isn’t exactly on the global culinary map. It’s barely on any map at all, except perhaps one detailing manufacturers of, say, sturdy meat pies or Indian sweets. Rumour has it that people have traveled vast distances to get a big box of Burfi from one of the sweet shops in…
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Big Dumplings in Little China
It’s hard to write about your homeland. I’ve spent decades honing my skills at describing places from the perspective of an outsider looking in. It helps to not fully understand what’s going on, or if I actually do know what’s going on, to be just observing from the sidelines and playing dumb. It allows…
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I’ll Be Lucky to Escape With My Waistline Intact: My Last Month of Eating Everything in Shanghai
This is going to be a major food porn post. I just realized that after over four years in this city, I’ve really never delved into all things foodie on this blog. Mops, cats, pollution, water monsters, bad maps– sure. Food, not so much. Or if I did write about it, it was…
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A Totally Impractical Guide to 6 Underachieving Nights in Hong Kong and Macau
This is one of those times when I have, in theory, at least 4 blog posts worth of things to write about but haven’t the wherewithal to even try to shove it all into one, much less 4. Bear with me then, as I attempt to guide you through a fabulously exciting week in Hong…
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On Ramadan, Tummy Bugs and Food Porn: Notes from Chefchaouen
I’m not even going to bother writing an impractical guide to Chefchaouen. It would consist wholly of stifling hot bedrooms, baking hot terraces, rumbling tummies, fevered brows, the same stretches of empty and well-trodden lane, closed doors, silence. You’d have to be floored with a ferocious tummy bug and exhaustion to truly retrace my footsteps.…
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Making You Jealous in Fes, Morocco
Perhaps after my last Fes post you might think I’d be skipping the jealousy series for that city. But no, that would be absurd. Fes is gorgeous. It’s just hard sometimes to see the forest for the touts. There is plenty for me to torment you with when it comes to Fes. In my previous…
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A Totally Impractical Expat Interview #6: Fiona Reilly of Life on Nanchang Lu
Welcome to the sixth interview in my infinite series of one sided conversations with expats (and ex-expats) all over the world. I started this series partly out of curiosity and partly out of a need for me to know I wasn’t alone in having mixed feelings about the path I had chosen. Now, with half…
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Meat and Mops- My Parents’ Journey to Qibao
So we went to Qibao yesterday, our first grand excursion in a week or so, as I’d been busy with stupid school stuff and having my jaw sledge-hammered, and my mother was battling her semi-inevitable post-flight cold. Doug and I had gone there about two years ago when we first moved to Shanghai, back when…
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Short film: Shanghai Museum and the Former French Concession
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Christmas Day Odyssey in Shanghai: A Quest for Doug’s Destiny
So remember how I said my next post was going to be all about the Christmas Party at the tea house, and how it would contain all my much-better camera photos rather than my crappy, grainy phone photos? Yeah. I lied. My bad. Unfortunately, we went out today. And when I go out, I tend…
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Another Series of Unrelated Photos (Part Trois)
Remember how cold and sick and coughy I was at this time last week? How dim and grey and grim the city was? How my toes would not warm and my bark continued to bite? Yeah, well, this weekend is much better, thank you. Look! Sunshine! Blue skies! Invisible pollutants! I’m not working this weekend,…
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I’m a foreign woman and I bought shoes in Shanghai
Just so you know, I’m a tall girl with size 9 feet. That’s about a 7 in the Uk, 39 in Europe and apparently 40 in China. Most shoes for women stop at size 38 here. Just so you know. From a tiny boutique in Tianzifang, the artsy alleyway complex off Taikang Lu, I present…