For the first time since 1978, Calvin College has a snow day tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That felt good. And now to our regular programming...
Welcome back to the tales of Interim 2011: Chinese Medicine Edition. Last I checked, you had all booked tickets to Milan for Expo 2015. Good for you!
Now here's the deal with our time in Shanghai. We were there for two weekends, with an entire week stuck there in the middle. The weekends were used for fun excursion-type shenanigans, but that Monday through Friday in the middle there (Jan. 10 to 14) -- that was used for our Traditional Chinese Medicine class (hereafter referred to as TCM). All of our learning about yin and yang, all that acupuncture, and all of that exposure to the smelly practice of moxibustion -- it all deserves its very own special post, which will be written soon. But tonight I wanted to write about this first -- a few of the ways I found to pass the time for dinner and beyond. I think a numbered list is in order!
Top Three Things To Do in Shanghai When You Are Not In TCM Class
1) Hot Pot
Hot Pot is awesome.
Since that explains how I feel, but it really tells you nothing about hot pot, I will turn to my dear friend Wikipedia, which can explain it better than I ever could.
"Hot pot (Chinese: 火鍋; pinyin: huǒ guō), less commonly Chinese fondue or steamboat, refers to several East Asian varieties of stew, consisting of a simmering metal pot of stock at the center of the dining table. While the hot pot is kept simmering, ingredients are placed into the pot and are cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, and seafood. The cooked food is usually eaten with a dipping sauce. In many areas, hot pot meals are often eaten in the winter."
That pretty much sums it up. I went to a hot pot restaurant once in Shanghai (pictured above) and -- break in the chronology! break in the chronology! -- once in Beijing. Like fondue, hot pot is a wonderfully interactive experience that involves a pot sitting on your table. Unlike fondue, hot pot does not use strange little forks, nor does it have anything to do with cheese. Mostly there are a lot of meats and vegetables.
An action shot of hot pot:
The thing to watch out for with hot pot -- the food is, what a surprise, VERY HOT when you pull it out of the boiling broth to eat it. Also, you can order it to be pretty spicy. So I guess it can be hot in that way as well. Hmm.
When we went to this hot pot restaurant in Shanghai, Prof. Shen came with us and ordered our food before leaving (She said she didn't like hot pot -- how not??). This was probably a great thing, because a few other people in our group later went to a hot pot restaurant on their own and ordered randomly...and then were brought chicken feet. But we did have our share of language barriers during our time at the restaurant. Dan tried to use his trusty phrasebook to order something to drink after Shen left, and the waitstaff did not understand or chose to ignore him. The teenagers (or older? I am bad at judging ages) sitting across from us found the exchange (or us) quite hilarious. They kept talking about us, and Robbie (who knows a decent amount of Chinese) said "They are making fun of our big noses."
So, yeah. There's that.
I still heartily recommend hot pot with all my heart.
2) Nanjing Road
Let's take a moment to admire some pictures of Nanjing Road, shall we?
By night, Nanjing Road has it all: bright lights, great shopping, and delicious restaurants and food stands. Plus the road is a pedestrian road only, which means the dangers usually associated with walking across the street in Shanghai traffic are greatly reduced. Nanjing Road is where it's at, guys. I went there at night three times. I could have gone there even more.
What, you are still not convinced that Nanjing Road is the coolest of cool, the greatest of great, even more amazing than a Calvin College snow day? Well, consider this -- Nanjing Road has groups spontaneously ballroom dancing on the street, and members of these groups have been known to spontaneously pull unsuspecting Americans into their circle to dance.
Did this happen? Yes, of course. It happened to Julie:
After she danced with the cute old man, she was asked to dance by ANOTHER member of the dancing gang. And after that when we went into a store, the store clerks recognized her and one made dancing motions with his arms. Fame.
3) The Bund
What can be more amazing than Nanjing Road by night?
You know, I am surprised that you ask so many questions. Luckily, I always have an answer.
Answer: The Bund!
But although The Bund is pretty, historic, and European-looking, we don't go to The Bund to look at The Bund, do we? No, we don't.
We go there for this:
The Pudong District, the Place-across-the-river, the Shanghai Skyline, the Wow-that-was-all-built-in-the-past-twenty-years? area, the Land of Lights and Wonder. And those are just my names for it.
Side note: would you like to see some crazy skyline pictures? It will make the picture above even more extreme.
The top picture is Shanghai in 1990; the bottom, Shanghai in 2010.
Oh, and a new building called the Shanghai Tower is going to be built next. It will dwarf the World Financial Center, which I can say from experience is pretty stinkin' tall on its own.
What I am trying to say with all of this:
The Shanghai skyline doesn't mess around. Especially not at night.
Are you convinced yet that you need to go to Shanghai and never sleep, just enjoy the city all night long?
Good.
