Back Streets of Shanghai

Aaron is pretty tied up with the computer during business hours. Sometimes he’ll go along for a day trip, but usually us girls fend for ourselves in the day time. This leads to more eventful trips than if Aaron were with us.

Our first day in Shanghai, Maeli and I decided to wander around the surrounding streets of The Astor Hotel. Of course we neglected to go to the main avenues. Why not see what the locals are doing on the back streets?

There is no end to small business on these alleyways. “Wanna take a looka?” are the shouts we get from the storefronts which basically consist of a miniature doorway. My rule of thumb is to sneak a peek at something when nobody knows I’m there. Once they spot me and begin to approach, I split. Otherwise, it’s easy to get stuck and hard to break away without being rude.

Maeli and I pass the shops: magazines, tobacco, fruit, shoes, keys, etc. Then we stumble upon a small food market. Butchers chop bones on the sidewalk with blood smeared everywhere. Dried fish stretches tight on bamboo sticks. Swarms of live fish grasp for dear life in big buckets. Chickens roast inside glass rotisseries. Piles of vegetables line the sidewalk while scooters zoom past. All of these vendors and more squeeze together in a small alley. We are spellbound…and consequently hungry.

So I spot a little shop that has some chairs and it looks like a huge pot is steaming. It smells good enough. We hesitantly walk in and motion to sit down. The owner points me to a glass encasement and inside are food looking things. What are these food looking things? I had never seen these types of food things in my life. There are about forty different bins and each has a different food type thing inside. I scan the selection and I get very worried.

In an attempt to get something in my stomach I say, “noodles”. The owner hands me a small plastic basket and points to the glass. Then I remember a Chinese food word. I say, “Dofu” which means tofu. He shows me the tofu on the counter next to the glass and puts some into my basket. I start to think that I’m going to bring home some uncooked tofu. So I motion that I want to sit down and eat. He seems to understand and keeps pointing to the glass. I look again and see some mushrooms so I put a couple of those in my basket. Maeli keeps pointing to the miniature eggs. I put four ofthose in the basket and by this point I am nervous. So I hand the guy my basket and he looks just as confused as me. He takes the basket and dumps it into a strainer bowl that sits inside the big steaming pot. Inside the pot there is thick brown broth. He then cooks my tofu, mushrooms, and eggs.

Maeli and I sit down and some other people stroll in. They fill their baskets to the top and end up having a full bowl of food rather than some broth with tofu floating on top. Oh, well. After we ate our soup, I picked up another basket, filled it full of goodies and took a hotpot home to Aaron. Even though I was fully embarrassed, he was very proud of me.