I keep telling myself I’ll never go back to China, but family matters always come up and I inevitably revisit. I’d consider my expectations of the place to be so low that I really shouldn’t be disappointed, but alas, but I’ve actually increased the amount of spoiledness (I know that isn’t a word) from polite, Western society that I continue to be surprised.

Obligatory lobster shot from one of the first days in Shanghai when we celebrated my grandfather’s birthday. I’d forgotten that important events were held in private rooms, with massive tables with massive lazy susans, and way too shiny. I even surprised myself when I realised the first thought I had was, “how come we can’t see the kitchen and the chefs” and realised that for the last few years, I’ve been used to too much fine dining. The next thought I still recall is when the food came out, and I asked, partly to myself and partly to my brother, “oh, we don’t get our plates cleared or new cutlery?” Welcome to real life! I felt so out of place and awkward!

There was also a lot of cemetery visiting, so what do I do on the first visit but run off at the sound of a cat meowing – and managed to get this picture! At which point I figured I’d start a small project to take pictures of all the cats in Shanghai – mainly inspired from my brother’s time overseas where he also took pictures of cats. He’d unintentionally started a trend!

With the amount of restaurants we were visiting, I found that my happiest food moments were from cheap street food. 1 yuan pork and vegetable buns were tastier than most restaurant food – which remained too oily and poorly prepared. It was stuff like the 6 yuan bowl of beef noodles that I wanted to have every night. This place was cheap and tasty, and they even had a variation using spatzle! Well, that’s what I called it because of an episode of Masterchef where Gary cheated by scraping the dough off a board, which is exactly how my mum described the version of noodles here.

My mum had actually chided me for wanting to visit expensive restaurants and Western restaurants, and though I kept reinforcing the fact that I simply like tasty food and don’t actually have a need for particularly high end places, I don’t think she actually believed me until I kept talking about the buns and noodles – which my parent’s weren’t particularly fond of. That being said, I did get the opportunity to try out Commune Social which was an interesting experience.

Obligatory lost in translation picture :)

 One thing that I do find pretty is the nightlights, which make for some great shots from the various observation decks – we visited both the World Financial Centre and the Oriental Pearl Tower. I get most of my interest from tall buildings (and trains, and metro lines, and planes) from my brother so I do have an appreciation for these things. A funny thing I noticed was that a lot of people who visit the pearl tower are terrified of the glass floor on half the deck – it was hilarious seeing them shy away from it and sometimes you could even hear screams of terror if they stepped on the glass. All I could thing of was my prior experiences in Sydney aquarium and the glass floor seal enclosure that pretty much meant I’m no longer daunted by such things.

Due to our length of stay, we managed to visit Hangzhou and all its natural beauty. It was a nice break from Shanghai and the taxi drivers here were really helpful with telling us of places worth visiting. The fares are also a lot cheaper!

Again, the food from stalls was tasty, though we had some Hangzhou cuisine too, including a water-plant vegetable soup that was too gooey even for me, and some great chicken and fish.

Finally we had some free time, so I started going to a few cafes that I’d spotted in the first week. It was actually a bit of a challenge – while there are plenty of chains, a Starbucks and Costa’s around every corner, the specialty ones were still tucked away. Luckily, hipster places give off a specific hipster vibe so it became easier to look for cafes the more we looked. This one was my favourite, a place called Essence Cafe in Xintiandi. They had a great selection of single origins that had great flavour, very clean and refreshing. I’d spotted it for their giant “SCAA” sign and figured that gives me the right to hold some sort of expectation about their coffee, and I wasn’t disappointed! For 50 yuan, a single origin was provided both hot and cold. There were other cafes we visited – but their filter coffees came out too dark and one that the almighty Google gave as “the best” was actually one of my least favourite coffee experiences. The language barrier didn’t help as I was unable to then ask and clarify any details and find out more about how they roast their coffee.

We also found a cafe called Woody Baker that makes some pretty awesome cronuts! They bake them fresh regularly throughout the day, as we were advised of a 20 minute wait, but when you get them, they are warm and oozing custard and oh so delicious! I’ve only had cro-pastries from a handful of places in Sydney/Adelaide, and wow these ones are way up there!

 

Cat spam! Because cats belong on the internet. Plus, Boss Cat is actually Demon Cat, as he revealed to us on our final day.

Overall, China is a lot less messy, dirty and noisy than it was before, to the point where I’d possibly consider a return visit, but I have plenty of other places to see in the meantime!