Dinner that Stings

Here's an awesome pic taken by my colleague, Jori, of the (in)famous scorpion dish available at е…ЁиЃљеѕ· (Quan Ju De), a very famous Beijing duck restaurant with a branch in Shanghai.

The dish consists of approximately 10 deep-fried scorpions, disposed in a circle on shrimp crackers, around pieces of duck meat. The dish costs around $6 CAN, if I remember correctly. We went back last night, since Jori is going back to Montreal this weekend. Interestingly enough, the scorpions had people talking, but what really shocked them were the pickled duck tongues!

The Deafening Sound of Silence

Something strange is happening these last few weeks. It dawned on me this morning, as I was getting ready to go to work.

Helene had given me a bottle of B6 vitamins, so I could pass it on to a new colleague who suffers from carpal tunnel syndrome. I was telling her that the bottle was probably a bit too much, that I only needed to tell him to find himself B6 vitamins himself at a drugstore. That's when Helene told me:

"Going out to buy something like vitamins is hard! You don't remember because you've been here two years, but for your colleague, it's a difficult task! Give him the bottle so he can show it to the pharmacist and get another one!"

The truth is, I had forgotten how hard buying simple things can be when you first arrive in China. The memory of China as a difficult, alien place is becoming more and more distant, and I'm getting used to this weird, new image my colleagues have of me, that of a grizzled Shanghai veteran who knows every good restaurant, and who, if you ever get lost, will tell the taxi driver where to go over the phone.

I keep asking myself, Has it been that long? And then I remember that next Sunday, July 31st, will be Helene and my second anniversary of living in Shanghai. Wow, time flies.

This morning, as I get off the bus and walk the rest of the way to work, I'm lost in tought as I'm pondering the stuff I need to get done when I get in. I'm totally in my bubble, and Shanghai is not getting in. That's when I pass an old Western lady, walking on the sidewalk. And she's freaking out. She's holding her hand in front of her mouth to prevent inhaling car exhaust fumes, and she seems jumpy every time she hears bus brakes shrieking, bicycles creaking, or taxis honking their horn. And right there, I notice just how busy the streets are in the morning, how polluted and noisy they can be.

Whether it's the constant difficulty of living in a Mandarin-speaking country, or the aggression of sounds and smells of the streets, it seems there is no limit to how much you can get used to. It's like using a fan in your room at night: you don't notice it until you turn it off, and the ensuing silence can seem deafening.

It's been so long that China has been 'on' for me, that not only do I not 'hear' the constant buzz... I'm not sure I could anymore endure the sound and smell of silence.

SF Review: Singularity Sky

Here's a new review on Future Shock, this time of Charles Stross' first novel, Singularity Sky.

Thanks to HГ©lГЁne, I too am now deep into Pottermania: she was nice enough to bring me back a copy from Montreal. Yaaaay!

Formaldehyde Beer, Anyone?

Helene and I just quit drinking Chinese beer.

A recent study shows that 95% of beers brewed in China has an usually high level of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. In response, Japan and South Korea have pulled all Chinese beers of the shelf, with the intention of testing them for formaldehyde. Normally, silica gel is used in the brewing process to remove impurities and thus stabilize the process; however, Chinese brewers are said to use formaldehyde to cut costs.

My reaction thus far: "Well, coming to live in China means leaving the safety net behind, anyway." Until I read the following denial from the Chinese government. Some excerpts:

The State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (SAQSIQ) spot-checked 157 products from 136 domestic beer enterprises and 64 beer products imported from more than 10 countries -- in response to recent media reports alleging that Chinese beer contains too much formaldehyde. The SAQSIQ found all the domestic beer products under sample investigation contained formaldehyde of less than 0.9 milligrams a liter, the danger line set by the WHO, while one liter of the imported beer contained 0.10 to 0.61 milligrams of formaldehyde on average.

[...]

The association, however, will continue to encourage domestic breweries to gradually reduce or even stop the use of formaldehyde and help them adopt state-of-the-art technology, he said.

Ooookay...

So... Of all the beers on the Chinese markets, NONE of them exceed the accepted level of formaldehyde, according to the Chinese government. As a matter of fact, some of them have lower levels of formaldehyde than imported beer. Nonetheless, China will henceforth "continue" to encourage brewers to reduce the use of formaldehyde...

I think I would have been more trusting had the denial been, you know, a bit more realistically formulated...

Until Japan and South Korea test Chinese beer, I'm sticking to martinis. And Helene? She's already switched to Heineken. Too bad, I really like a Suntory...

What did you eat last night?

Me, I ate Beijing duck. Oh, and a helping of scorpions.

These little buggers are a little-known Chinese delicacy, and they sure make an impression! Naturally, as the "veteran" in Shanghai, I had to lead the way and eat the first, but once the other people around the table tasted one, they usually went for seconds. I've tasted grasshoppers before, so for me scorpions taste of "insect" (which is good, by the way; nothing like you'd expect.) The others around the table reached a concensus, and agree it tastes like... chicken wings.

To quote my friend Mathieu, in Hong Kong, about the prospect of going back to Montreal: "When I leave here, I'm gonna miss being challenged by my food."

VIP Cinema

I went to see Batman Begins yesterday, and it was a damn good movie. It takes a lot to make me forget Batman Forever... But making me forget Batman's 1989 Batman? Now that's incredible. Nolan has done the impossible of restarting a franchise everybody thought was doomed after 3 crappy sequels, and the Batman franchise seems headed towards Spider-Man serialized goodness. Swell!

If you ever want to check out a movie in Shanghai, I recommend strongly Paradise Warner Cinema City, in Xujiahui, for one reason alone: the VIP room! VIP rooms are a huge trend right now in Shanghai, with almost every bar having a VIP area which you can only access by 'knowing people'. The trend is big enough that Wang Faye herself has opened a bar near Jing An Temple, named simply... VIP Room.

Imagine my pleasure when I realized, yesterday, that this trend now extends to movie theaters! At Paradise Warner, when you pay 30 RMB more (approx. $5 CAN), you get to watch the movie in a smaller room, with only 30 seats. You get to sit in a luxurious leather couch, complete with reclining back and footrest. Finally, the ticket includes one popcorn, one soft drink and a small sample of ice cream. Sweet!

It's a testament to Batman Begin's quality that nobody spoke about the kick-ass La-Z-Boys after the picture. But truly, it felt like a real VIP treatment. Imagine: I only heard two cellphones ring during the movie!

Sundaycadence

When we talk about China to people back home in Canada, and when they can be bothered to ask questions about the subject, they usually want to know about all the Chinese things we get to do, see or eat in Shanghai, that we can't get back home.

Thing is, there's a lot of Chinese things we can do here that we can't do back home; but there's also a certain number of things that are decidedly Western, but we simply can't afford to do back home. We tend not to talk about it too much because they make us fit into the "decadent Western bastard" category; moreso that they tend to be extremely expensive when compared to local Chinese delicacies.

But you know what? There's nothing like going decadent once in a while!

Last Sunday, for a friend's birthday, said friend decided to have a Sunday brunch at the Westin Hotel in downtown Shanghai. It's pretty damn expensive as far as brunches go (about $50 USD - yeowtch!!) but damn if it wasn't worth it!

"For $50 USD, the buffet better be worth it!" I thought to myself. And boy, was it ever! Here's a short list of all the things I got to enjoy throughout this extra-long brunch :

• Free-flowing Veuve Clicquot champagne
• Fresh salmon & tuna sashimi
• Swiss, blue & Brie cheese
• Fresh bread
  
• foie gras "frais poГЄlГ©"
• Caviar
• Vodka martinis
• 1 hand-rolled Cuban cigar
• Italian prosciutto

As if that wasn't enough, around 3 PM, I headed out for a 2-hour massage extravaganza, at my favorite massage place in town.

Expensive? Yeah. But then again, I couldn't afford all of this back in Canada. It would simply be impossibly expensive there.

Worth it? Hell yes. I just have to eat Chinese noodles for a week or two now, to take away the "Western decadent bastard" guilt!

My New Gamer Friend

Friday night, after a tough week of hard work and being sick, I took the taxi home, wondering what I was gonna do. Inspiration struck, and I stopped the taxi two blocks from my home. My destination: Game Life, a little game shop where I went once with HГ©lГЁne.

Last time we came by, as I was sifting through the XBOX games and came across Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, HГ©lГЁne couldn't resist telling the guy I had made this game. The guy just sort of 'goshed' loudly, and he was obviously shy to pursue the subject. I hadn't thought about it much, thining he probably thought it was BS or, more likely, that we meant to say 'I finished this game', but misspoke in Mandarin.

Turns out he had believed HГ©lГЁne, because when I started going through his XBOX games again, he was right over me, checking every game I passed. When he saw his favorite games, he would ask me if I liked it. When I responded in the positive to games like GTA: San Andreas, SoulCalibur II and Burnout III: Takedown, he was ecstatic.

He seemed to say he never played Burnout III in multiplayer, so I told him how great that was. He ended up plugging up his XBOX, and there we went, racing and crashing, for the good part of an hour.

I left the shop after a few rounds (one of which I kindly let him win by one point... No sense in being a sore winner!) and he warned me how he would play much better next time I came around.

It's a great clichГ©: videogames are a universal language. It sure is a fun language.