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I think there’s an old saying, “Eat a duck tongue first thing in the morning, and nothing worse will happen to you all day.” Or something like that. I found that to be inaccurate; actually the meat was pretty good – better than the day that followed. Wish they’d warned me about the bone inside…
My coworkers here in China seem to be having a good time seeing what they can get me to eat. Stuart’s figured out if the camera’s rolling, I’ll eat just about anything. So far there’s film of me eating the duck tongue and film of me eating a brained baby squid – and then another. That one may show up on “China’s Funniest Videos”. No film of me eating the cow tendon snack, or the ‘hen leg’ (oh wait, that was just a drumstick). There are always a few interesting things on the hotel’s breakfast buffet, and they often show up on my plate. One coworker noted, “if I don’t know what it is, it doesn’t go on my plate” and that’s the difference between he and I.
My first two weeks here have been a lot of fun. I’ve enjoyed giving the training class and, as I write this, the first three days of ‘live action’ have been relatively uneventful. Switching to grave shift (9pm to 5am) this past weekend has been a bit of a challenge but I’m surviving on a wing and a yawn. I’m sure that over the next two weeks I’ll be acclimated, just in time to fly home. Which will be OK, because we’re essentially working west-coast hours. So no jet lag for Thanksgiving…
When I last left you I was preparing for another ‘team meal’. This was at a special place in Shanghai and my hosts ordered seemingly everything on the menu. The food was excellent and I had a good time trying each thing and then asking what it was. It was much more enjoyable than our first team meal and we were having some good laughs as a team. I don’t remember anything too off-the-wall except for the ‘century eggs’. So called because some versions have allegedly been cured for 100 years. I don’t think these were like that; I was told that they were buried in mud and cooked somehow – they look like a hard-boiled egg except that these were black. The taste was a bit different but I had three slices (cleaning up the plate) so it wasn’t too bad. (I recall eating similar eggs in Beijing and Singapore, and the ‘white’ of the egg was actually translucent, so I don’t think they were cooked. Presented a bit more of a challenge than these.) Overall a fine time was had by all.
Last Saturday I attempted to walk out to the Yellow Sea. I could see that it was probably about 10-15 miles as the crow flies, but couldn’t find a map other than ones showing the city center. (As noted in the previous blog, the government apparently sets restrictions on website accessibility, and it often makes no sense. So most of the websites I’d bookmarked before I left, showing various maps of Shanghai, couldn’t be accessed. Why? Who knows…) My local coworkers were little help; they termed it a ‘crazy walk’. I managed to get the hotel concierge to show me a map of the greater area and identify a couple of street names, so off I charged. Because I’d had to work until noon, I didn’t set off until 1:40, knowing that it would get dark by 5pm and my chances of success were low. Sure enough, around 4:30 I got to a place where I would need to make one more turn – which was going to be one too many to remember, with no taxi in sight. (I was in a sort of rural-residential area of Shanghai – and just like in India, the children were fascinated by a westerner walking through their neighborhood. I got lots of ‘hello’, which seems to be the one English word everyone knows.) So I reluctantly turned around and admitted defeat. I think I was actually within a mile or so of the ocean but couldn’t take a chance. I may yet attempt this walk again before I leave. Anyway, because I was mad at myself for failing, I refused to grab a taxi once I got back to the busy roads and made myself walk back. I had turned around at about the 17km mark and then compounded my frustration by missing the turn going north (as I was returning on the other side of the road, and the northbound road changed names at that intersection). So I walked about 3km past my turn before I decided I’d missed it and had to backtrack. All told I walked 40km that day – about 25 miles – and got back about 8:30pm. I was one tired puppy…but did get to see a lot of the Shanghai area.
On Sunday our hosts offered to take the four of us foreigners out shopping. China is the land of the fake brand-name merchandise so our first stop was the fake-name mall. Talk about hard-sells: they were literally grabbing our arms and physically dragging us into their stores. Even my mild-mannered local hosts had to get a little snappy with the vendors. I only bought a couple of knickknacks, but some of my coworkers bought attire (example: two North face ski jackets for $27) and other stuff. We went to lunch at an exclusive restaurant and they let me do most of the ordering. Nothing too off-the-wall: shark fin soup, tofu with crab meat, spicy chicken and pork, braised lily with asparagus (odd but pretty good) and many shrimp with eye stalks – which is one thing I won’t touch.
More shopping and a visit to an old section of the city and even more shopping, topped off by dinner on the 10th floor of a mall by the riverside, with a beautiful view of the skyline lit up across the river. A few vignettes of the day: Stuart missing seeing a red light and knocking over a cyclist and getting cursed out in Mandarin. Joe trying to find and bargain for the right Mao-imprinted articles. Karen waiting in line to use the ladies room, only to find a hole in the floor rather than a western-style toilet – and having to get the attendant to open up the ‘staff-only’ bathroom for her. And me embarrassing one of our innocent young guides by accidentally wandering into an adult store – unaware that she was following me thinking I might get lost. (Lots of giggles as she ran back to her friend.) And then there was the squid. Stuart had ordered what he thought was just some fried rice – missing the baby squid portion of the description. He was OK with eating one or two but of course laid down the challenge (by starting the video camera) so I had to respond. For me, any kind of fishy thing already has two strikes against it, and when it has tentacles…but at least the brains had been removed so the head was just an empty bulb. I thought I’d done my duty but later in the meal it was “hey, there’s a few more, and you hate to waste food”. So I had to choke down a second one before they’d let me be. But we were having a good time…
Yesterday I engaged in another long walk – about 16 miles. It was such a beautiful day that I only slept from 9am – 2pm and then made myself get up and walk down to pick up some more gifts to take home. I paid for it as the shift ended this morning, though – a few days of 5 hours of sleep, working nights, catches up with me eventually. But it was worth it to get some exercise, and you never know about the taxis around here – we had one get lost one night – he knew the general street area near the hotel but I had to guide him the rest of the way, having walked around quite a bit.
A couple of observations about Shanghai and I’ll call it quits; getting tired and need to get to sleep. (It’s another beautiful day out there, though…) One observation: no animal noises. Don’t see any squirrels or rats or any other mammal (or reptile), and very few birds. Very weird, but I guess that’s what a big concrete city is like. But I don’t even detect animals in the green areas (cultivated or not). One of my coworkers joked that, given the menus around here, more restaurants = less local animals. Second observation is that being a pedestrian is quite an exciting experience. Nothing like india, mind you, but cars turning right and left and just plain blowing off the red lights (which I’m told are “mere suggestions”) keep me on my toes. Apparently they WILL run you over, although I haven’t seen that yet. But I’m getting used to having my head on a swivel while near any intersection.

Anyway that’s it for now; I hope everyone’s safe and well. To my family, enjoy the reunion this weekend; I’ll be sorry to miss it.