Every day breakfast is more Asian, less western. We left Hangzhou by van at 10:30, and stopped at a highway restaurant at about noon. At first we despaired as we could find no Chinese food that we cared to try and no western food at all, till Sarah discovered the more western restaurant farther down the parking lot. I had a snack of Lay’s potato chips in Texas BBQ flavor and iced coffee in a can. Bruce had ice cream, Oreos, and Sprite. Sitting next to me in the van was a fascinating woman, born in Hong Kong who currently lives in Cambridge England. We talked of lots of things including how children are taught to write Chinese characters. The first word they learn is ‘forever’ because it has all the brush strokes combined. Must to hard to explain what it means though.
Shanghai is enormously large (17 million I think) which means we were in the city for miles before we got to our hotel. A large river runs through the center of the city, and there’s a new, modern bridge that crosses it. One of those bridges with high concrete towers and stainless steel rods that fan down from it to support the bridge deck. The elevated highway is surrounded by skyscrapers and apartment buildings, all with plenty of laundry drying from window rods
Our hotel, the Intercontinental, is in the center of the new downtown on the south side of the river. It is very beautiful inside in an austere Asian style, sort of Japanese if I may say that. The 24 story atrium is filled with red lanterns. (The hotel in Hangzhou was in frankly bad taste opulence, this classy.) Dan and one other guy had a half an hour to shower and dash out the door to get to the Shanghai Sports University to give a lecture. As it was late on Friday afternoon, I hope the students felt it was worth their time. At 5:30 we gathered again in the van to go to another hotel near the University for a welcome banquet with the president of the university and a few other officials.
We were happy to be included in the welcome banquet even though our experiences with ceremonial eating in Europe were mostly negative. We always felt urged to overeat, and eat everything offered even if it had no appeal. Tonight’s event was delightfully different and very memorable in both the warmth of the people and the eating adventure. The banquet room was filled with 2 large round tables. Most of the table was actually a turntable. So a continuing assortment of platters was set onto the glass lazy susan. It was spun around and we each took whatever we wanted, in any quantity. And nobody cared or commented on what we ate, didn’t eat, tried and left behind on our plates. Some platters went untouched by everyone. At our table were Sarah, Janet from the U of A, a young man born in Viet Nam but raised in Canada, a Chinese student, and 3 Japanese students.
The following is all we can remember of the food choices that we tried. They were all good. There were about 10 more that we passed on because they looked too something……too unfamiliar, too gelatinous, too brown, you get the idea.
Green bean paste (tasted like sweet mashed potato), fish in sauce, bean sprout medley, won-tons, chicken slices, beef in sauce, shrimp, Peking duck…carved on site. One only eats the skin, the rest was wheeled away. Salad, scallops and thread noodles on a scallop shell, crab soup, peanuts with chopped herbs, green vegetable, stuffed dates, pork dumplings, asparagus with seafood bits, beer, orange juice, tea, and water melon served with cherry tomatoes. No rice. We have been told it is peasant food.
We are now in our room. I’ve consumed one of the three truffles next to our bed. Tomorrow, guided tour of the town.
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