‘unhygienic’ never tasted so good
I ate lunch for 12.5 cents today. And it filled me up good. Mom, you don’t have to worry about me going hungry in Shanghai.
I could easily write a book and call it “How to Eat Reasonably Well in the Pearl of the Orient for a Dollar a Day … and Still Get Back Some Change!” Well, actually right now it would likely be more of a pamphlet, consisting primarily of the vendors occupying the alleys and streets surrounding the Yan Chang Campus of Shanghai University. (Certainly, the text would not be of a length that would merit such an awkward and absurdly wordy title.)
It’s true, though: When hunger strikes in Shanghai, I often hit the streets. More like the backstreets, really, where everything is dark, dank, seedy … and delicious. It was during a rather lavish lunch — I think sometime after the sixth course and sometime before the ninth — that I admitted this to the vice dean of my department.
“I think it’s unhygienic,” he proclaimed while spitting a piece of crab carcass onto his plate. He wondered aloud why I hadn’t given the school cafeterias a try. (I had, and I thought what I ate there tasted like stir-fried crap.)
I haven’t gotten sick once from eating on the street, and food poisoning is considered a rite of passage of sorts for visitors to these parts. True, most street-corner kitchens aren’t going to get high marks from the health inspectors (the open flame on its own is likely some sort of code violation … the cook has to light his cigarette somehow), but these guys cook your food in enough hot oil to kill a small horse, let alone some measly bacteria. So it’s a slow death, not an immediate one.
There’s an alley full of street stir-fry artists about 50 yards from campus. We call it, well, we call it “the alley.” Early in my stay, I became a regular at one of these stands — basically, a table, a gas flame and a fry pan — and then one night, the stand wasn’t there anymore. So I turned around and became a regular somewhere else. My new guy now smiles when I enter the alley. I smile back — he hasn’t disappeared yet.
Back in the alley, I generally order dan chao fan (egg fried rice), which my guy tosses in a fry pan with assorted vegetables, leafy green things and, of course, oil. Some days — I haven’t been able to figure out what determines which ones — he offers to add yellow curry powder into the mix, and I let him. Curry or no, a heaping portion of dan chao fan costs a whole 3 yuan, or less than 40 cents. (The exchange rate is roughly 8 yuan to the dollar.)
Of course, the alley offers more than just fried rice. I’ve seen the menus. They are long. They are also in Chinese. So unless you’re in the mood for a little restaurant roulette, it’s best to go with what you know — in my case, very little — or whatever’s easy to point to. Be careful, though. Lighting can be misleading back in the alley.
Things are equally shady closer to campus, where I regularly purchase two of my other staples. As of press time, I have no idea what either one is officially called. The first is basically meat-on-a-stick, shish kebabs cooked over a bin of hot coals attached to the side of a bicycle. The owner of the bike-slash-barbecue is a pleasant young man who I always greet with a “Ni hao” — he always says “Hey” in return.
How much per stick? One yuan. I’ve been told that the meat I’ve been eating is lamb.
Across the sidewalk, sits the “Chinese burrito” stand, another place at which I always get a nod of recognition. (The vendors don’t have to keep too many white people in their mental Rolodexes. In fact, while standing in line recently for a burrito, I startled the pig-tailed 9-year-old girl standing in front of me. She got her burrito, turned around and saw my waist. She looked up, saw my wide eyes and opened hers just as wide. “Ooh. Waiguoren,” she said, sounding a bit shocked. In America, this would be the equivalent of seeing a Chinese guy on the street and exclaiming, “Ooh. Chinese guy.”)
The burritos — which you won’t find on any menu and, if you do, they surely won’t be called burritos — are cooked by a couple who roll in every day at dinnertime. The batter, which becomes the burrito’s thin shell, hits the circular cooking surface first. Then, it’s an egg, some green stuff, some brown stuff, some yellow stuff and some more green stuff. (She always pauses before adding the hot peppers, waiting for my nod. She doesn’t do this with her Chinese customers.) One big crunchy thing, a few quick folds and 1.8 yuan later, I’ve got myself a tasty meal.
Don’t pay until you get your food, though. These temporary canteens have wheels for a reason. How else can they expect to outrun the police? On the street, word of a sneak attack by the fuzz spreads faster than a Hong Kong whore. While waiting for dinner to cook, you turn around for a moment to peruse the day’s selection of black market DVDs. Turn back around and no burrito couple, no meat man, no nothing. Police lights flash and plastic bags toss about like tumbleweeds. It’s a disappearing act straight out of “The Spanish Prisoner.”
Believe it or not, some places I eat in the neighborhood actually do have walls, seats and, one would assume, permits. The first Chinese phrase I learned was, “Carrot dumplings. Eighteen of them.” I still use it often at the jiaozi, or dumpling, restaurant across the road from campus. (At that time, I could only order items in increments of one, two, three … or 18. My knowledge of numbers has improved since then. By the way, 18 dumplings cost 4.8 yuan.)
I call the dumpling restaurant “the green one” because, well, because it has a green sign, and the color is the only thing on it that I understand. I had a Chinese colleague of mine decode the restaurant’s name for me: “North Eastern Dumplings Cooked in Water Restaurant.” I still call it the green one.
Walk into the place and it sounds like you’ve stumbled upon a French kissing contest for sufferers of sialorrhea. Slurp. Slurp. Slurp. If spitting is the Chinese national pastime, then slurping runs a close second.
For more than a month, all I ate at the restaurant was carrot and pork dumplings, because that’s the thing I knew how to order. But one day, much to my dismay, they were out of carrot dumplings. I thought about leaving, but they brought me a different version instead. Cabbage, I think. It wasn’t bad. Now I know where on the menu wall to point if I don’t feel like carrots.
The green one serves more than just dumplings. Every day, I’d see students enjoying a variety of noodle dishes, and I thought maybe I would enjoy them, too. But I didn’t know how to order noodles. I didn’t know how to ask what the dishes were called. I didn’t know where to point on the menu, either. Thanks to my students, though, I can now order oodles of noodles if I want. They wrote the words down for me and helped me with my pronunciation.
There is one other local restaurant worth mentioning. I call it “the red one,” but several others have taken to calling it “The Doctor on the Corner,” and not because of the healing powers of its food. The doctor is one of the only nearby eateries to have an English menu. Actually, it’s a photocopy of the Chinese menu with some English words scribbled in pen beside some, not all, of the dishes. On the menu’s cover are the following words written in felt tip pen: “Menu for the Doctor on the Corner.” Now, this restaurant is technically not on a corner and reliable sources have told me that none of the Chinese characters on its red sign mean “doctor” or “corner.”
Here’s my hypothesis: Once, not long ago, there was an English-speaking doctor in the neighborhood. And yes, he lived on the corner. Being a doctor, he was popular with the locals and, as a sign of gratitude, they had the menu of his favorite restaurant translated into English for him. The doctor may be long gone now, but his legacy — a single menu — will live on forever … or until it gets soaked in soy sauce.
(Updated 11.10.2002: Um yeah, looks like I was wrong. Turns out the sign does say something like “The Doctor’s Corner” — thanks for the translation, Johnson — but it’s not a medical doctor, it’s a doctor of academia, which is why there was some confusion originally. But, it kind of makes sense since the place is right down the road from an institute of higher learning. Still, I like my version of the story better. And anyway, the place isn’t on the corner.)
English menu and all, confusion can still set in there. Like trying to order eggplant and getting scrambled eggs and tomatoes instead. That happened once. But at least we found out a place we could go for a semi-Western-style breakfast.
A short walk from the doctor is one of several shops in the area serving baozi, a bready dumpling steamed in bamboo baskets and served with a variety of fillings, including pork, vegetables and a sweet bean paste popular for breakfast. You get five of them for a whopping 1 yuan.
(Lots of carbs in my neighborhood, I know. Call this the anti-Atkins diet.)
There are other stories to tell here. Stories of eating duck tongues and jellyfish; of Brazilian barbecues and fancy Western meals that cost the same as 5,500 baozi; of trying to avoid eating American fast food and waitresses who snigger when you fumble with chopsticks. But I just checked my word count and it’s already beyond 1,500.
Besides, I’m hungry. It’s time to head down to the alley. Not sure what I’m going to get, but whatever it is, I know it won’t come with a fortune cookie. That’s one thing I have yet to see in China.
Pass the beer, mom: After reading my Hong Kong diary entry, my mother e-mailed me: “Loved your photos … but it sounds like you drink too much beer!” Well, that may be true, but at least I no longer have to drink too much bad beer. After many long nights of taste testing, I have finally found a Chinese beer that I like! It’s called Xinjiang Black Beer — that’s right, a dark Chinese beer — and I can get it for 4 yuan a bottle, which is a bit better than the 60 yuan I paid for a Kilkenny’s draft recently (OK, it was at the Ritz Carlton). I bought a 20-bottle case of Xinjiang last week. Mom, you’ll be happy to know that I still have 18 bottles left. They’re all full, too.
11.06.2002, 7:28 AM · Observations