little trouble in big china

I'm always slow getting the food posts up, have you noticed? The latest is from a Sichuan restaurant in Shanghai. Singapore food is coming eventually... probably when I get back to Shanghai  ;-).

There's a Japanese fast-food chain that's very popular here in Singapore. It's called Mos Burger, so you can guess what they traffic in. You can get a regular hamburger or cheeseburger there, and I think even a version of Fillet-O-Fish, but there are some differences.

For one, the burgers are a little smaller in circumference, but the patties are thicker (I don't know whether the beef is better, since I had a different sandwich). The traditional ones are also topped with a thick slice of beefsteak tomato, which I think is a nice touch. You can have ketchup or chili sauce with your burger.

Also, they have a large line of non-Western burger-ish items. I chose a burger that was essentially Korean bulgogi in handheld form -- strips of slightly sweet (barbecued? not sure) beef, with compressed rice patties forming the bun, and a leaf of lettuce to top things off. It was pretty tasty, especially for fast food, but it turns out that bulgogi-style beef is a little hard to handle without utensils of some kind, so I had a bit of trouble keeping the whole thing contained without the rice patties falling apart.  All in all, though, I'd try it again, maybe with a different choice of filling.

There's this funny-shaped pond outside my apartment building. For part of the winter it was dry, so I was wondering whether they were even going to fill it. They did, so for a while it was just a pool of dead water. Then last week as I returned home, I saw a couple of people standing around the pool, one of them holding a big orange bucket. Oooh, potential life forms! Indeed, he was adding goldfish to the pool.

Leeeettle tiny goldfish. About twenty or thirty, by my count, in that big pond. They're probably the only beings in Shanghai not worried about overcrowding.

Information screen on a Shanghai metro platform. It displays the time until your train arrives, the time until the train after that, the time at the moment, and the all-important Champions League (season-long pan-European pro-soccer tournament) highlights. Usually when I get there, it's only showing ads.

A few days before I left Shanghai, China celebrated Tomb Sweeping Day. As you might guess, it's a day where everyone visits their ancestors' gravesites and does some cleaning, weeding, yes, sweeping, and other general upkeep. They also offer up gifts -- usually food, or objects made of paper, which they then set on fire (there's more symbolism to it than I can properly explain).

There are also special snacks.  These here green things are qingtuan (CHING-twan), little green glutinous rice balls stuffed with red bean paste. They only come out for Tomb Sweeping Day, although I'm sure that once the US has wormed enough multinationals into China, they'll be sold four weeks in advance and shaped into little chicks or brooms or something.  Anyway, the green balls start out looking somewhat paler, and end up looking nice and shiny. These are also covered in plastic wrap, I guess to keep their shape for later eating (they were given to me, whereas I think most are bought to be eaten on the spot). I'm not entirely clear on how they get the green color -- I've heard alternately that it's from an herb or a vegetable crushed into the rice flour. It's not artificial food coloring, anyway.

They're very sticky, at least the one I ate was. (Unfortunately, that and the not-holding-shape thing also lead to not photographing well.) Tastewise, they were decent -- red bean paste has started to grow on me since I've been here, but I still prefer it in smaller doses.  But they were just too sticky. (I'd have liked to try one warm, to see if it still had that problem.)  You know how when you eat -- what are they, Jujubees? -- and the remnants are stuck in your teeth for ages afterwards? These are kind of like that, except that Jujubees don't also stick to your fingers.

 I've left town again, this time to hang with family for a couple weeks in Singapore (there may be some short side trips involved, but if so, more on those after they happen). It's been almost five years since I was last here, which is probably the longest in my entire life that I've been away. It's nice to be back.

More on that later, too. Right now, before I crash from what has been a long day, I just want to mention two things about the day's travels. The first is that U.S. airlines are pathetic. Over the years I've accumulated a lot of frequent flyer miles, and as such have been able to upgrade my seats on one particular (domestic) airline's international flights. International business class rocks my socks (from what I witness of domestic business class, though, I wouldn't waste my miles on it).

However, since my preferred US airline doesn't fly a Shanghai-Singapore route, I ended up purchasing an economy seat on Singapore Airlines. I hadn't been on SIA for a long time (decades), and my last impression of them had been that the upper classes were great, but economy was no great shakes, and in fact, somewhat cattle-callish. If that was true then, it certainly isn't now. It was fantastic. I didn't check the measurements, but I'm pretty sure the seats I was in today are wider than the average US economy seat (even on a comparably-sized plane -- this one sat 9 across (3 sets of three), whereas most jumbos that I've been on seat 10). There's definitely more room between you and the seat in front of you (seat pitch?)... quite a bit more room, in fact. The seat actually reclines a noticeable amount (and without smacking the person behind you in the face). There are footrests. You get full meals at no charge. You also get your own TV screen with choice of roughly 100 movies (in several different languages), probably about the same number of TV programmes, video games (including brainteasers, board games that you can play with other passengers, etc.), and  a number of other 'entertainment' features that I didn't peruse. Did I mention that you can pause, rewind and fast forward the movie at will?  And that when they get on the PA system to make an announcement, you don't suddenly lose a bit of whatever was playing? I watched Juno and Michael Clayton, incidentally. That's right, these are not schlubby free movies like the ones on Virgin America (which was a fine airline when I took it this fall, but for as much as they touted their entertainment system, I expected to see at least one movie that I had heard of among the (non-premium) selection). On the way back, I'm thinking about watching There Will Be Blood. All I'm saying is: if airline competition is remotely Darwinian, no wonder all of our airlines go bankrupt.

Enough of the rant, though. I also wanted to share how much I love the Singapore airport (Changi). Because it's so important to the country's economy, it's always been pretty far up there as airports go; back in the '80s they put in a pool, gym, and sleeping rooms that you could rent for a couple hours at a time, for people on long layovers (aside: back in the 80s, there was also usually a minimum of 2-hr layover on international connections. I once spent 7 hours in the Prague airport. Starting at 6am. When Czechoslovakia was still communist. Probably the only time I ever had a good reason to be a bored teenager). Later on they started offering free city sightseeing buses to people in similar situations. Beats spending 4 hours in an airport, even if it is a really nice airport. I've never had cause to try out any of those things, but today, upon arrival, I noticed two things that made me smile: (1) the travellators wide enough to accommodate one large suitcase passing another, with a yellow line down the middle to remind standers to stand on their side, and walkers to walk on theirs (in my book this is a little piece of Type-A heaven), and (2) a duty-free store that sells only chocolate. All kinds of chocolate, all makers, all brands. From everywhere. Cheap! Guess who'll be saving room in her carry-on.

My cousin, who lives near me, recently took a five-day vacation to Japan to check out the cherry blossoms. Before he left, he offered me some dairy products that wouldn't keep until he got back, prime among them fresh yogurt (or here, yoghurt).

As you have probably figured out by now, I am usually up for trying out new snacks, so I said sure. I'd heard about this yogurt before, but  hadn't yet noticed it at any of the supermarkets I've been in, so my cousin's offer was particularly convenient.

This isn't your ordinary supermarket yogurt. It's made by some couple who started out producing it just for themselves, in their kitchen, and you can have little glass jars of it delivered to your door once a week if you order the requisite minimum amount. In addition to being "fresh"and "natural," it's also sour, having no added sugar, sweetener, preservatives, or chemicals.

Which isn't a bad thing. It was, however, too sour for me to eat a whole jar without adding a little something, so I decided to fiddle with it a bit. First I tried diced kumquat, and that went pretty well. The kumquat was especially good because since you eat the rind, I didn't have to throw in the citrus flesh, which is juicier and might have made the yogurt runnier than I like.

Then I froze a jar... after all, frozen yogurt is a dessert, right?  Um, yeah, that idea wasn't completely thought out, and as you can guess, didn't go quite as planned. The yogurt froze solid, so that it was impossible to get out of the jar. I sort of knew at that point what was going to happen, but was unable to halt the urge to watch anyway. I let it thaw, at which point it turned into yogurt with ice chips -- little cottage-cheese like bits of yogurt suspended in a slush of melting ice. It actually tasted somewhat OK, if watered-down, but the curdled look was too aesthetically unappealing to keep going. I had another jar to get through, after all.

My next attempt was to mix in some honey, which didn't have as much effect as I expected, but maybe I just didn't use enough honey. On the other hand, I don't really like the honey I bought here that much (there are oodles of honeys available at the supermarket, none involving a bear with a cone hat, and I chose something that evidently wasn't clover honey, and it has an aftertaste that I still haven't gotten used to), so I didn't want to overdo it. It was OK.

My plan for the last serving was to mix in raisins and diced apple, but I had some leftover kumquat that was in more dire straits than the apple, so I abandoned the experiment and used my fruit responsibly instead. It's a winning combination. I bet the apple and raisins would be good too, maybe with a dash of cinnamon, even...mmm. Anyway, the yogurt was tasty, but I don't think I'll be signing up for delivery anytime soon -- I like it, but wouldn't want to eat it every day on end. Maybe I'll look more closely at the supermarket....or encourage my cousin to take another vacation.

One day last week my language class was moved up earlier in the day, so I took advantage of the free afternoon to run some errands and get me some culture.  Mmm, culture, tasty!

I went to check out the newly-free Shanghai Museum. I'd heard good things about it, and was not disappointed. It was large enough that I didn't make it through the whole place on this go-round, but I might go back when they have a new exhibit in. The standing collection includes pieces of Chinese sculpture, paintings, calligraphy, pottery, porcelain, currencies, furniture, and minority arts from roughly the last 3000 years. There's a lot to see.

My favorite section was the minority traditional arts collection, particularly the native dress exhibit.  This getup (left) was cool.

This one (right) was not. 

C'mon now, what's up with that? This little pin was affixed next to the first two plaques of the exhibit, but nowhere else. As far as I could tell, there was no correlation with the represented minority (i.e., other pieces of that same ethnicity's clothing weren't similarly marked). I can only guess that it's not an official designation, but then how did someone get inside the sealed case to put it there?  Hmph.  All I could think of was the little naked kids on my washing machine.

I also checked out the Ming & Qing-dynasty furniture rooms, and skipped pottery, but made it through most of porcelain (I hit my fill around the mid-Qing era; one can only take so much of bowls and glaze without there being a donut involved). I only breezed through coins and currency, but I did take in a bit about these pieces (left). They're not weapons, but really old currency.  They're called sword coins, and were popular along the Silk Route (i.e., from Central China west to Turkey). I'm just sayin', talk about putting a hole in your pocket; that's some vicious change.

I've written this post twice now only to have it mysteriously disappear before I could get it up on the site, so this time I'm cutting to the chase.

I was woken up at 2:30 last night by loud music coming from a neighbor's apartment. I sucked it up and decided that despite it not being the best way to meet the neighbors, I really needed more than an hour's sleep if I was going to get through class the next day without losing consciousness. I went to find the responsible party and rang the appropriate doorbell. I got about three words into "Hi, I'm sorry to be meeting like this, but ..." before I was cut off by,
"Is it too loud?"
No, you nitwit, I generally make social calls on people I've never met at 2:30am while wearing a bathrobe and flipflops.
"Uh, yeah."
"OK."
"Thanks. Sorry." Wait a second, why am I the one apologizing??

In case you're curious, the guy in question appeared to be of the mid-to-late-20s American species. Nice to know that we're now exporting frat/party boys so that the rest of the world can experience that joyous product as well.  (And I did make it through class without falling asleep, but only barely.)

A couple weeks ago I noticed that someone had set up a makeshift shelter on an office building ledge at the corner of a relatively busy intersection. There were a couple of doves (white pigeons?) hanging out... and this odd bird. I like to think of him/her as Elizabeth, what with the ruffled collar. S/he looked even funnier (haughtier) when standing up. I'm guessing this is probably the male of the species, though. Perhaps someone out there with actual ecological-biological-ornithological expertise might know more?