Last night Devon, Josh, Brian L. and myself ventured to find food. We were on a bit of a tight time schedule since we had to stop eating and drinking by 8:30 for our health exams this morning. We walked up Baise road, the road on which the front gate of the school is located, until we reached the open-air market a few blocks down. It was already dark outside, as it never really gets that bright here in Shanghai, mostly because of the haze that constantly covers the city. Nonetheless, the sun sets are early as it rises, it seems. People lined the street. Some were out walking dogs. Some were doing some last minute shopping. Some looking to get dinner, just like us. The neighborhood around the school never seems to quite down, and the market is open from the break of dawn until well after the sun has set.
Other than the “English Menu Place” where I ate with Peter the night before, we didn’t see much. There are dozens of places to eat in a single block, but it is really hard to find a place where it seems that ordering won’t be too much of an ordeal. Places with pictures on the menu are good, places with English menus are even better, and street food is the best. Places that have no pictures and no English are nearly impossible. And, of course, those are the most common places in our neighborhood.
I saw a really amazing dive noodle place; an establishment the size of a closet with tables pouring out into the sidewalk. I would have felt comfortable just pointing to something on the menu, which was all in Chinese characters, and working with whatever I got, but the group was a little more concerned with finding something edible that would hold them over for the next twelve hours. My goal for the next month is to get good enough at ordering food that I can eat alone at the dive noodle place.
We crossed the street, and began walking back to school. We were running out of time, and realized we were just going to have to make a quick decision. There was this one little place with bright orange tables and lots of people eating dumplings. “How hard could it be to order dumplings?” I thought to myself. I consulted the group, and we decided to go in.
Devon has been a savior in situations like these. She has been to China before, studying abroad in college, so she is nowhere near as shy or timid as the rest of us. She doesn’t mind making mistakes, making a fool of herself, and getting laughed at by the workers. We had my “Rough Guide” mandarin phrasebook (highly recommended) which, luckily, had a dumpling section. We showed the section to the woman, who showed us from that selection what they had, and then we made our decision. Quantities were a little difficult to communicate, but my calculator helped with that. We even managed to order three cold beers. To our knowledge, we had only ordered three orders of dumplings and three beers. We sat down, and waited for the food, which came out almost instantaneously.
They brought out four steam tins of dumplings, each tin containing eight. We could not contain our laughter. How absurd! Devon, Josh, and I timidly picked up our dumplings and attempted to eat them. Unexpectedly, the dumplings were super juicy, and we sent dumpling juice flying in all directions. I reverted to my Saltena eating days from Bike Club, and remember to drink the juice before eating the dumpling. This worked out pretty well for me.
The meal did not stop here, however. Somewhere in our attempt to order dumplings, we also ordered three bowls of chicken wanton soup (well, at least I hope it was chicken . . . too late to think about that now, right?). The soup was really delicious, and could have been a meal in itself. In between raging fits of laughter, we did our best to demolish the dumplings we ordered, but in the end we left an entire tray untouched.
The whole meal (dumplings, soup, beer, and a soda) cost 55 kuai, or about eight dollars. What a hilarious adventure.
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