French Laundry

Chinese toe jam
I was surrounded by Beijing-ers, men, on the flight to and from Shanghai. The memory of stinky Chinese 'toe jam' floated back and floaded my nostrils. Actually it's not toe jam or anything related to a dirty foot, it's typical Chinese BO because they, like the French, do not shower every day or even regularly. Unless you are wealthy and have your own bathroom, most locals go to public showers where you pay to take communal showers.

Huuaaaaack!
A flying loogie lands, barely missing me, on the sidewalk. GROSS DUDE. Regardless the pace of 'modernization', some things never change. Or at least, they haven't changed yet.

Fat kids eating something-on-a-stick.
Mala (hot and spicy)-on-a-stick. Squid-on-a-stick. Candied crab-apples-on-a-stick. DUDE. Not only are they fat, they lack manners and are spoiled - a truly unfortunate consequence of the one-child policy and overly indulgent grandparents (because both sets now only have one grandchild to fawn over). These kids, particularly boys, will grow up to be the crass, fat, arrogant, loogie-hocking, chauvinist 'pigs' that typify Chinese business men - and who personify the modern China that I detest.

"Li Hai"
You can't be nice and polite to Shanghainese otherwise they'll walk all over you, seriously. The more "li hai" you are - bitchy and mean - the less likely taxi drivers and shop keepers will yell at you for no reason. No wonder Shanghainese women are so aggressive.

"You get used to it and learn to ignore it"
Passport incident. Immigration officer yells at me because he could't find space in my passport for him to stamp. Oh please, the stamp was tiny and there was space. "Ni jiao wo zeng me an zhang?? Mei you kong de di fang, ni jiao wo zeng me zhang??" I was furious, as in I wanted to curse him out in English, but bit my tongue because, of course, I needed to enter the country. I just stared back and begrudgingly he found a space to put his blasted stamp.

"Ben bang cai"
Shanghainese love their crab - nan yang xie fen xiao long bao (crab eggs in soup dumplings), da za xie ("big crab"), drunken crab, xie fen dofu (stringy tofu with crab meat). Other popular dishes include hong shao ro (cubes of meat that's mostly layers of fat), crispy sea cucumber, kao fu (spongy, slightly sweet glutinous cubes), he xia (river shrimp), luo bo si bing (white turnip pastries), pickled cucumbers.

"Aiya ni tai ke qi" (overly generous relatives)
After three consecutive meals of eating the same crab dishes, we were Shanghaines-ed out. But overly ke qi (polite) relatives and family friends continued to insist on treating us to Shanghainese dinners. We managed to basically lie our way out of all but one. The thing is - they really don't want to have to host another holiday dinner and neither do we want to go out to yet *another* crab dinner, but both parties force themselves to "because that's what Chinese do" - says my mother. It's just all so EXHAUSTING - the back and forth - but you can't fight the Chinese way.

Old Shanghai - Puxi
Westerners love Dong Tai Lu, or fake antique street. Lots of dusty Chinese ceramics, wooden jewelry boxes, communist-era wares, stone and wood buddha statues - all fake of course.

Lao Jie ("old street"), Yu Yuan
Site of a Qing dynasty temple, tea house and garden. In typical communist Chinese fashion, a perfectly nice archiectural and cultural site is turned into tacky, tourist shopping center.

What the hell?? In the newer areas of Shanghai (XinTianDi and the business areas), people are actually civilized - they form queus and follow traffic lights. But in other neighborhoods it's mad chaos, like the roads to Lao Jie ("old street"). Everyone runs red lights and there's a constant knot of people, bikes and cars at the intersections. Old women shove you out of their way, even though there's an entire sidewalk of room for them to walk. Petrol fumes make you nauseous and incessant honking complete the sensory overload.

The hat incident happened here. My parents and I were trying to navigate between big buses and bicyclists on one side and street vendors on the other. Mom's coat accidentally knocked over a street vendor's hats, he shoved the hat in her face and tried to make her pay for it - "ten kuai ten kuai". Luckily mom just walked away, and the incident blew over. Our family friend said that in those situations, just be aggressive, say something about "bao an" (police) and they will back down. SHEESH.

New Shanghai - Pudong
"It's better to have a bed in Puxi than an apartment in Pudong," say the Shanghainese. It's basically the beginnings of a sprawling suburb (think L.A. & 45 minute drives for everything) to develop near Shanghai proper. Five years ago Pudong didn't even exist. The Jing Mao building, currently the highest building in Shanghai, looks down 88 stories at the Pu Jiang ("Pu" river), as it snakes its way through skyscrapers and lights. By nightfall, the inevitable fog and smog settle over the city. Instead of going up to the top floor, my parents and I opted for a more comfortable alternative - beer and nuts at the Piano Bar. A few nights later I was back for New Years Eve dinner.

Pampering
I got the best foot massage and mani/pedi EVER in Shanghai. The spa was awesome - quiet, clean, decorated with Buddhist and Thai art, sounds of trickling water everywhere, all-you-can eat and drink plus a 90 minute foot massage for only $15! You can drink wine while you get a foot massage. The nail salon was on a beautiful street in the French concession area, tree-lined and quiet. You can drink wine or tea and get your mani and pedi done AT THE SAME TIME. And so far it's proved to be longest-lasting mani I've ever gotten.

Nanjing Dong Lu to the Bund
Garish lights and peasant tourists from the countryside flock this street to the Bund. There are more peasants hawking kitchy tourist wares, flicking boat tickets at you, selling 'digital photos for one kuai', roaming up and down. Ever since the government opened the country up to travel, peasants have taken to the main Chinese tourist spots. No wonder wealthy Shanghainese and ex-pats sequester themselves in posh restaurants and lounges lining the Bund - like Bar Rouge - that has plush couches and a huge deck where you can look out onto the bund, far away from the masses.

What is this a sing-along circus?
At the Shanghai Music Center, the conductor of an orchestra from Poland encouraged (and even conducted) the crowd to clap-a-long to 'pop' classics - like those you associate with commericals or cartoons rather than classical music. During the intermission, the riffraff moved down from the nose bleed seats, chatting on cell phones and burping through the performance. The dancers were four pale, polish tweens with scary hawkish noses and plastic, placid, pasted on smiles. They were really more distracting than anything else, but the crowd seemed to love them. I must be a jaded New Yorker now but I think my parents enjoyed it!

Liu An
We visited his working studio in Taikang Lu - one of Shanghai's art streets that houses an artist co-op. Originally from Harbin up north, he was a professor of Chinese philosophy and art history before turning to painting. My mother chatted him up and he gave us a discount on my first art purchase - an impressionist-esque oil painting of one of the three famous 'beauties' in Chinese history, and her love triangle with a palace guard and scholar.

Muganshan (near Suzhou He)
It's the Chelsea of Shanghai - old warehouses converted to live/work/exhibit studios for young, up-and-coming artists. I was impressed with the art - creative, polished, more sophisticated than you'd expect for a country just breaking out of the stifling

Grand Hyatt Shanghai
Alice hooked us up with a scrumptuous six course dinner in a private banquet room, on the 53rd floor, overlooking the Bund and the Pu river that winds through Shanghai.

French Laundry
Faded clothing, undergarments, shoe liners hang from crossed telephone wires, against a backdrop of 19th century French colonial architecture. Skyscrapers and fancy 5-star hotels rivaling that of london or new york city frame old French architecture from the concession days. Neon blue tubes line the overhead highways, but people still bicycle everywhere. Shanghai is a heady mix of tradition and modernity, a lack of etiquette and sophistication, traditional Chinese and cosmopolitan internationals.