All Hail to the Dumpling

Shanghai is a city known for its dumplings and really, what's there not to love about a dumpling?  Steamed, fried, gooey on the inside, some filled with vegetables, some with soup.  They're a treat.

Xiaolongbao

Xiaolongbao are a particular Shanghai speciality.  They're small dumplings filled with a gooey vegetable/pork/prawn concoction, depending on your preferences, and then filled with a soupy broth.  To eat, bite a little hole at the top, dump the soup into your Chinese spoon and slurp.  Delight.  

The ones above are buns filled with soup, not dumplings, but follow a similar pattern.  Gimmicky, but in the middle of Yuyuan Garden and Shanghai's most famous dumpling institution, Nan Xiang Xiaolong Mantou, we didn't expect any less.  The outside takeaway window was crammed with Chinese tourists but the restaurant had an abundance of tables.  Prices were Shanghai middle class--we ate a lot and paid in the 300 yuan range.  Having since been to Yang's Dumplings, a fast food institution dotted across the city, I can attest to the expensiveness of our little tourist haven.  

But it was the festive thing to do.  With one week to go until the ushering in of the Year of the Sheep/Goat (the character is the same for both in Mandarin), the lanterns are out and the mood is festive.   This is the Chinese equivalent to Christmas, with all its requisite sales, shopping and frenetic movements.  As an international school teacher, I get both holidays--Christmas and CNY, five weeks apart, win!  

Take My Breath Away

Everyone warned me that the pollution would be a constant fug of disappointment in the Shanghai landscape.  Up until January, that was a pretty big overstatement.

But with the upcoming Chinese New Year holidays and factories working overtime to produce gifts, biscuits, tat in all shades of red, all that swiftly changed.  Pollution levels are measured all across the city on the hour and flashed through satellites to smart phoned denizens of this great metropolis.

Based on these readings, days are RAGged (for my non-teacher friends that means Red, Amber and Greened) to suggest how likely it is that the air might kill you.  As you would expect, the Chinese government takes a relatively liberal stance on what 'good' air means.  As you would expect, the American government likes to throw environmental health tantrums and so much as a burplet from a factory sets the whole scale on meltdown.

The big number is called the 'AQI' or 'Air Quality Index'.  According to the US scale: 0-50=good; 51-100=moderate; 101-150=unhealthy for sensitive groups; 151-200=unhealthy for everyone.  Beyond this=wait for the apocalypse.

And that's not even the scary part.  Because the real number to watch here is the PM2.5 particulate.  This reading refers to particles in the air smaller than 2.5 micrometers which are particularly dangerous because they like to hang out in the gas exchange part of the human lung.  Sometimes these particles find homes in other organs or arteries and you've got some serious trouble to the tune of pulmonary disease or cancer (with long-term exposure).  The Chinese government suggests that a reading anywhere between 0-35 is 'good' and green.  The American government's green reading hovers between 0-12.  A US red reading hovers between 55-150.  Today, we're actually on something beyond red, called 'hazardous', something to which both the US and China agree with.  

Last Sunday, the reading toppled 418.

I've taken to doing as the Chinese do.  This is my PM2.5 mask:

It comes with a changeable filter that i've been assured 'most likely doesn't work.'  I've just managed to shake a pollution-started cold that's lasted nearly two weeks; thus, i'm desperate. Plus, a little placebo never did any harm.  

Masked up to his eyeballs, Paul has taken to screaming 'I KILLED THE BATMAN!' at the top of his lungs across the flat.  I guess we've all got our ways of coping. 

All of a Sudden

It became February.  Home, the Christmas holidays, the month of January are things of the past.  January's generally a fickle mistress but I somehow looked up, blinked and it was gone. With two weeks to go until Chinese New Year and a subsequent two-week holiday, I reckon February is going to follow suit.

In minor news, Paul arrived! In one piece and only minimally shell shocked.  His luggage on the other hand, did not.  Stuck in Helsinki, of all places.  Would you believe it?

His adjustment to this crazy Chinese life has been remarkably underwhelming.  Despite puppy dog eyes when I stuck him in a cab on his first day, he's taking it all in stride.  And by 'it' I mean: armpits in the face on the rush hour metro; finding ayi Sunny (our cleaner!) wearing my slippers whilst doing the dusting; navigating the unsavory Carrefour crowd with his urbane London attitude: 'basically Jen, you've got to put your head down, look for the gap that doesn't exist and then hit anyone in your way who doesn't move.'  Ironically, he hates cab drivers who employ the exact same principles.

With the arrival of my directionally challenged half, we've taken to wandering the streets of Shanghai.  From Xintiandi to Dongtai Road Antiques Market to our local wet market,  I think i've seen more of Shanghai in January than I did in my first five months:

 The bright lights of Nanjing Road East

 

Dongtai Road Market is a glorified street of other peoples' junk.  In London, the merchandise would cost four times the price and be full of pretentious antique hunters donning posh accents.  Here, sadly, the city has the Market on the demolition chopping block.  The price of urban progress is almost always gentrification and Shanghai has a quick, fierce way of employing these tactics--one week a street, homes, markets are there.  The next, you return, and they're gone.  

Word on the street (literally) is that the market's time has come, that it's going to be relocated to an indoor venue.  Somehow it's not quite the same.  

 

 Because buying a tuba off the side of the road has its charms:

 It's also been a cultural month here in Shangers.  The beauty of working at a school where people want to do things is that people want to plan things.  On these coattails I've snagged tickets to Riverdance, an eat-way-too-much Sunday brunch and a VIP experience to see Michael Buble, the man, the myth, the Canadian legend.  Paul swooned.  I am grateful for lovely students and their lovely parents who manage arenas and give free tickets:

This place is growing on me.