Hello Steemit friends, it has been a couple of days since my last post and I wanted to share a few things about living here in Shanghai. It is nothing fancy but just some things that I enjoy here as I witnessed the changes that have occurred from when I first arrived in 2007.
I have really grown accustomed to Shanghainese food and you can see from this pic below some of the following items. This picture was taken at my friends house, I have been teaching their two sons for over 2 years now and we have a more friendly relationship than most people. I come over once a week to help give them some lessons and then afterwards we eat together and share some wine. We talk about some of the latest news happening around the world and sometimes dwelve into topics such as stocks and investments and I like to share about my recent exploits and experiments.
Chinese people really love eating “Hong Shao Rou” which is slow-cooked pork usually in some Chinese spices along with some dark soy sauce over a low heat. There are some stir-fried vegetable dishes. There is a plate of slightly fried “tofu meat” called “su ji” which has a nice texture and “rou bao” which is like a type of stretchy breadlike covering over meatballs in also another soy sauce “sauce”. These of course would be accompanied by a bowl of rice and a huge pot of soup (Isn’t show in the picture because it was in the kitchen) which tastes awesome! A must have at a Shanghainese dinner. Usually the soup is made in a clay pot and contains 1 or more meats along with some veggies and slow-cooked for many hours. I liked cooking my soups with added Chinese herbal medicines which made it much more nutrition than normal.
This was then accompanied by this bottle of wine which I brought over from the local wine shop on my street about two stores from where I live in Jingan. I really liked this wine because
- The owner of the wineshop is this really nice guy.
- The wine tastes amazing, and of course it might be a bit overpriced from it being in China at 200rmb but I haven’t had anything like it.
- Its bubbly sparkling wine at 6% alcohol with a rose flavored touch and no bitterness.
Maybe it might make me seem like an alcoholic but the next picture is related to alcohol also!
I remember when I visited Korea to see my friends in Seoul there were these really cool rice wine bars that had 10+ types of what they call Makgeolli! Really thick rice drink with only 6% alcohol and also carbonated which gave it this really smooth taste. I really liked that they had like chestnut flavors and many others and in Shanghai they usually just come in the original flavoring shown below. I know that a lot of people also drink soju at 16%-20% but I rarely drank that with guys and if I did so with friends I would make soju bombs which the ratio came out to be 1 bottle of soju 4 bottles of tsingdao beer and 2 bottles of sprite mixed in a large container. Once we finished drinking this, then for the second round I would use 2 bottles of soju with 2 bottles beer and 2 bottles of sprite, of which you can not taste the difference! Haha I also call it the “duan pian jiu” Blackout drink.
Anyways getting back on topic. My friend from Jilin brought be these two bottles the other day and I was thinking to myself oh cool! I’m so grateful for more alcohol hahahaha! But never had the yellow drink before. She told me that it was homemade from Jilin and a similar version to the Makgeolli except that they usually used corn. This was something completely new to me and after tasting it I could really tell the difference. Since it was made of corn it gave a much creamier texture and what surprised me the most was how it tasted like yoghurt! Can you imagine? Carbonated Yoghurt Rice Wine! I had a bottle in the morning for breakfast, it was quite funny because I didn’t actually plan that. I was going to have a glass and then get out of my house to eat something but it tasted so good that I finished the huge bottle of it, became drunk, and then walked around aimlessly on the streets of shanghai for 2 hours.
Another tip I learned while being in Shanghai is that:
- Your metabolism drops 70% until you are able to process all the alcohol in your body.
- Drinking causes your body to dehydrate meaning that usually hangovers are caused by lack of water in your body so to help prevent it, you can drink a lot of water after a night out.
- Drinking milk, yoghurt, or eating other dairy can help limit the alcohol you absorb by giving yourself a thin layer of protection in your stomach
The last picture is just to help conclude my story.
After walking aimlessly around town for 2 hours I found the track field in Shanghai and started walking in circles rather than zigzagged lines of the Shanghai streets. It was nice overall but made me think about how there’s still such a big difference between the air quality here in Shanghai and other areas of China versus abroad. I remember running through a park in the crisp clean air of New Jersey last year versus being able to see little reminders of the smog here in Shanghai. That and the noticeably large number of out of shape 40 year old Chinese dudes with balding heads without a shirt flubbing their muscular fat abs while doing pull-ups, dips, and sitting on small groups on the sides of the track.
Everywhere has their ups and downs. I hope I can hear about some of the “REAL” experiences you have living in your neighborhoods. Care to share?