It was Easter Sunday, yesterday, but of course that means nothing here. We had managed to get hold of some hot cross buns from Marks and Spencer’s (flown in from the UK and still frozen in parts when we bought them) from their branch on People’s Square and I’d got hold of two small easter chocolates from the same shop when I had been in Hong Kong, so we did have a little bit of Easter in the morning. However here in China it was the Qingming Festival, when practically everyone has a day off work for what is Tomb Sweeping Day. This is the time to visit ones ancestors’ graves, leave them offerings of food and burn ghost or fake money in memory of those family members who have died. The concept of family is very strong in China; parents, grandparents and earlier ancestors are honoured in Chinese culture: it is a crucial element of the 6 Confucian values and Xiao(filial piety) considers the family rather than the individual as the basic unit of society. The difference being best summed up, I think, as: I am an American, whereas We are Chinese.
Anyway other than finding out that the CY Tung Maritime Museum that we went to visit in the afternoon was closed and that Richard was being given Easter Monday off for the festival as well, it didn’t really affect us.
Xinjishi Restaurant
We started out with lunch in the old French Concession, near the closed museum, at a restaurant called Xinjisji (also known as the Jesse Restaurant for some reason) and although waiter no. 1 told us that as we hadn’t booked there was no table available, no.2 decided that there was. It’s a small restaurant over two floors and serves local Shanghai food (local dishes indicated by a thumbs up sign in the menu) as well as other dishes from 
around China. We ordered local dishes and ended up with aubergine hotpot, braised lotus root, bean curd with some bitter green stems and pork stewed in soy sauce all washed down with tea. We didn’t know what the green stems were, but yesterday Richard found some for sale in a Chinese supermarket. I’ve just translated the label (Pleco is wonderful!) and it turns out it’s Artemisia absinthium, or absinthe wormwood, the essential ingredient in absinthe! Wikipedia tells me it contains thujone, a GABAA receptor antagonist that can cause epileptic-like convulsions and kidney failure when ingested in large amounts. I wonder if the portion we ate on Sunday and the amount I now have in the fridge count as large amounts………at least we shared Sunday’s portion. I have read that Shanghai local food is sweet and oily and dishes such as the aubergine do come cooked in a lot of oil, but taste wise that is not a problem. I have been noticing that most Chinese meals come with little or no rice – it is essentially a low or no carb diet, with plenty of protein and plenty of vegetables. If you are poor, or eating quickly at home, you do eat rice, or noodles, but only a small portion, about 1/3 of a UK portion of carbohydrate. Overweight people in the West have always been urged to eat less fat. But I see more and more evidence, and especially here in China, that the problem with the western diet is with sugar and with starches that are then converted by the body into sugar, not with fat. Your average Chinese eats very well and very heartily, but most of them are stick thin. The fattest Chinese person I have seen was in a branch of McDonalds with all its sugary drinks, corn starch, sweetened breads and chipped starch made from potatoes. My daughter was stick then when she came back from a year in Beijing. Now I don’t think there is much danger of that happening to me (sadly), but both Richard and I have already lost some weight, without even trying. (He needs some new trousers, mine just fit better….)
around China. We ordered local dishes and ended up with aubergine hotpot, braised lotus root, bean curd with some bitter green stems and pork stewed in soy sauce all washed down with tea. We didn’t know what the green stems were, but yesterday Richard found some for sale in a Chinese supermarket. I’ve just translated the label (Pleco is wonderful!) and it turns out it’s Artemisia absinthium, or absinthe wormwood, the essential ingredient in absinthe! Wikipedia tells me it contains thujone, a GABAA receptor antagonist that can cause epileptic-like convulsions and kidney failure when ingested in large amounts. I wonder if the portion we ate on Sunday and the amount I now have in the fridge count as large amounts………at least we shared Sunday’s portion. I have read that Shanghai local food is sweet and oily and dishes such as the aubergine do come cooked in a lot of oil, but taste wise that is not a problem. I have been noticing that most Chinese meals come with little or no rice – it is essentially a low or no carb diet, with plenty of protein and plenty of vegetables. If you are poor, or eating quickly at home, you do eat rice, or noodles, but only a small portion, about 1/3 of a UK portion of carbohydrate. Overweight people in the West have always been urged to eat less fat. But I see more and more evidence, and especially here in China, that the problem with the western diet is with sugar and with starches that are then converted by the body into sugar, not with fat. Your average Chinese eats very well and very heartily, but most of them are stick thin. The fattest Chinese person I have seen was in a branch of McDonalds with all its sugary drinks, corn starch, sweetened breads and chipped starch made from potatoes. My daughter was stick then when she came back from a year in Beijing. Now I don’t think there is much danger of that happening to me (sadly), but both Richard and I have already lost some weight, without even trying. (He needs some new trousers, mine just fit better….)
After finding out that the shipping museum was closed, we decided to follow one of the walks in a guide book that took us further into the middle of the Old French Concession up the Wukang Lu (formerly the route Ferguson) – once one the most desirable addresses in Shanghai, and now home to over 20 notable heritage buildings. Few of them are easy to photograph, sitting as the houses of the wealthy have always done, behind high walls and hedges, but half way along the road is the Wukang Road Tourist Centre which has photographs and scale models of all the notable buildings in the area. The Centre is itself the former home of Huang Xing co-founder of the Republic of China with Dr. Sun.
This walk was essentially looking at the Art Deco European architecture of the area, the houses and apartments being built within a 15 year period from the late 1920s onwards, with a huge mish-mash of styles:
1931 Art Deco Apartments
1912 neoclassical building with 1933 Art Deco extension Wukang Road Tourist Centre
1926 Baroque-style Garden House
All mashed together with some fantastic design details and sprouting London Plane trees
After our architectural walk we ended up at a shop with a café, Urban Tribe, which sells my sort of clothing made from wonderful textured fabrics in unusual designs, along with jewellery and ceramics. Tea can be served in the garden or as we did, on Japanese tatami mats.
Urban Tribe
Textured fabrics
Cape with front drape
Garden cafe
Urban Tribe store
Tea on the tatami mats
Our tea came with some unusual dried plums and and some beans, neither of which we had come across before and served in the type of ceramics that they sell in the shop.
Then it was only a short hop across the road to the Boxing Cat Brewery, which turned out to be american. We’d gone into sample the beer – well Richard did and we ended up having our evening meal there as well (all in the name of work you understand). I had pulled pork in mini rolls, but the pork was smothered in some barbecue sauce that it would have been much better off without and then a large very fresh salad smothered in a mustard dressing that was just as unsubtle as the sauce for the pork. It’s a long time since I’ve been to America, but if this was anything to go by, if I ever go again, I’m going to be avoiding the sauces and dressings.
As I write this the temperature is now back down to 10°C, so I’m back to wearing a woolly cardigan. Four days ago, when I went to the zoo, it was 30º.
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