Last night was my first “interesting” Chinese food experience. And by “interesting” I mean NASTY. Take a look:

Jellyfish. Ewwwwww. It tasted OK but the texture was awful — crunchy and slimy.

Frog. The frog was actually good, like chicken, but there wasn’t much meat. The good news is that the meat was riddled with bones and other nasty things that I don’t even want to think about.

Rabbit. The rabbit was hands down the best. Its texture was that of chicken, but the taste was slightly more interesting. It reminded me of “Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” where Samwise and Frodo are cooking a rabbit with Smigel. I thought I was Frodo, bearer of the Ring, before realizing I was eating frog and jellyfish, at which point I escaped my fantasy and nearly sprinted to the bathroom.

Crazy Szechwan pepper. Little suckers were good and manageable. Apparently these aren’t allowed in the US.

In addition to trying some wild food, I was also able to finally see a squatter. Though I’ve still yet to experience one, just the mere sight of it was shocking, sparking all sorts of amazement and curiosity.

Bonus story: Christophe and I bought four DVDs for less than $3. The DVDs say “Bluray” on them, despite them being burnt, non-Bluray DVDs. Silly street vendors.

I managed to carry the DVDs around all night, including in this high-class club, where I strode in with shorts and sandals and Bluray DVDs in my pocket. Unfortunately the DVDs fell out of my pocket in the cab. Dangit!

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Alex in Shanghai.  I nearly got sick writing this post.

I thought it was time to post the first set of photos that I’ve taken in Shanghai.  Take a look:

Hazy Shanghai.  This was taken from my Dad’s hotel room.  It’s one of the poorer areas of the city.

The famous tower in PuDong.

A raging club that was way too much fun.  We danced the night away and tried our best to avoid the women employed by the club to steal your money.

Taken from a revolving restaurant (hence the blurriness); showing how crowded the streets are with people at night.

Some random buildings.

My office from which I am writing.

Bamboo scaffolding.  Pretty rad, huh?

The tallest building in Shanghai.  We call it the Great Bottle Opener.

Home for four months.

I tried to capture the mayhem of the streets with this photo.  Bikes, pedestrians, scooters, and cars battle for space.  People run red lights.  Green crosswalk symbols don’t mean anything.  Taxi drivers drive on the opposite side of the road.  It’s wild and totally exciting :).

A huge mass of bikers waiting for the light.  Strange that they’re actually waiting.

More photos coming soon!

I talked about the deliciousness of dumplings a few days ago.  I have discovered something new and even better … HOT POT.

Ordering hot pot is pretty simple: you choose a broth and a bunch of food that you want cooked in the broth.  You can choose between seafood, meat, poultry, vegetables, noodles, tofu, etc.  Once you’ve ordered, you bring your sauce cup to the sauce buffet line and create a mixture of sauces.  I choose a random assortment of sesame oil, sesame paste, special sauce, peanut sauce, chives, and some other random stuff.  The sauce was unbelievable.

Once your food is brought to you, you simply wait for your broth to boil and start throwing food in.  I cooked things in batches: I started with a meat batch, then went to a tofu + vegetable batch, then just a vegetable batch, then back to meat, etc.  After being cooked, each of these batches were thrown into my wonder sauce for some extra added flavor.  It was wonderful.  Take a look:

All of the food you see, plus a huge pitcher of watermelon juice, plus Tsing-Tao (beer) was about $11 per person.  Oh my god I love hot pot.

After a long day of exploring the French Concession in Shanghai, my dad and I decided to go to the restaurant known for its duck.  Even though Beijing is the place in China to have duck, the duck we had was astonishingly good, much better than any duck I’ve had in the US.  It was pretty different than the duck you get in the US, though: a chef comes to your table with an entire roasted duck on his platter; he then proceeds to cut the duck into various categories of duck meat.  One category is skin: he gives you a plate of the most rich skin I’ve ever had in my life.  A different category is lean meat, and the final category is fatty meat + skin.  The skin and fatty meat were so rich that we had to accompany them with little rice tortillas and plumb sauce, otherwise they were almost too rich.  The combination of plumb sauce, skin, and meat, though, was fantastic.

We were so excited to have our duck that we didn’t notice the chef leave with meat to spare.  After allowing us to eat for a few minutes, the waitress returned with a huge bowl of duck soup, which was also insanely good.  The duck, soup, sauce, tortillas, etc cost $20, easily feeding two hugry people.  Mmmmmm.

I didn’t have my camera at the time, so I suppose I’ll have to go back to take some pictures ;).

I arrived in Shanghai today at around 2:00pm, and now it’s about 10:30pm.  I can barely stay awake I’m so jetlagged, but I got a chance to check out the town.  Christophe played tour guide, and here’s my first impression:

• Shanghai drivers are the craziest I’ve ever seen.  Crossing the street is like signing your life away.  It’s awesome!
• Food is BOMB.  We had dumplings that were each around $.50.  Mmmmmm.
• The pollution is awful.  You can feel the air in your mouth and throat, and it feels nasty.
• Language barrier is pretty bad, but pointing and counting always works out.
• All around, Shanghai is going to be a RAD place to live for a while :).

More updates about China soon!

I just found this.  Mmmmmm.