Sichuan North Road

Sichuan North Road is a street that extends from Suzhou River to Hongkou. That's a longer stretch of road than the other streets I've spotlighted on this blog, it takes at least half an hour to walk the distance. It's also generally not a street to stroll on its own merits. However, I find that the street manages to pass by some of the most interesting spots to Shanghai – there's a number of nearby places that I've either blogged about before, or plan to blog about in the near future.

Sichuan North Road's Southern end starts at the Suzhou River and the North of the Bund area. There's also Zhapu Lu nearby, and a number of interesting neighborhoods in the area to the East, some of which haven't even been torn down quite yet! I've been to the international post office building a number of times, usually to post mail, and I only recently discovered that on weekends and some weekdays it has a huge, very well-put-together museum dedicated to the history of China's and Shanghai's postal service. In some ways it puts Shanghai's vastly over-rated Museum of History to shame, in other ways you can't help but wonder why there's such a large museum dedicated to a subject that's so boring. Anyway, it's free, and there's also a very nice rooftop garden that can be accessed once you make it through.

Just a few blocks to the north of this is Wuchang Lu, a top food street. Walking to the west, almost immediately there's popular food stalls and smaller street-food restaurants. After a short block, the road is completely given over to these small snack stalls. It's almost, but not quite, the second coming of Wujiang Lu, which really is getting shuttered very soon, to make way for a mini-mall. A little past the food is a series of clothing stalls that have the reputation as one of the best places to buy cheap clothes in Shanghai, with a minimum of bargaining needed. Fair warning: if there's one place in Shanghai where you want to hold on to your wallet, this would probably be it.

Going along Sichuan North Road, there's a number of side streets that are given to interesting older buildings, they're worth making a small detour for. One of them is at Kunshan Huayuan Lu, slightly North of Wuchang Lu, with a labyrinthine, brick apartment complex. I'm sorry for the cheesy old v. new photo here, but it's hard to avoid when the building is surrounded by skyscrapers:



Continuing on, there's a nice little park alongside Sichuan Lu. It's mainly interesting for the large artificial pond, with irregular barriers that are obviously meant to bring to mind the irregular terracing of Chinese hillside farms.



Around this area is a lot of larger shopping malls, generally they're modern but none of them are particularly elite looking.



Additionally, there's a lot of older apartment buildings, two or three stories tall, where the first building is used for small shops – generally it's clothing stores, either discount stores or Chinese chains. This is an attractive old building, it doesn't deserve to be covered in billboards for a mediocre shuijiao chain.



Continuing North can be seen the Southern gate to the Duolun Lu Area, which is a very interesting preserved area of older buildings and shops. This area of Sichuan Bei Lu, and the immediate surroundings, was a top spot in pre-Communist Shanghai. It forms the setting for much of the literature of the time.



It would be tempting to just cut through Duolun Lu and skip out on Beijing Lu, but don't! Just a little farther is Tian'ai Lu, translating to “Sweet Love Street.” It's right near the large, terrible Japanese noodle chain, Thousand Taste Noodles – Sichuan Lu darts left and right wildly around here, so it's easy to get a little lost. Anyway, keep an eye open for “Sweet Love Street,” because right around the corner is Wanshou Zhai, a great hole-in-the-wall place to grab some xiaolongbao and noodles, and then it's worth continuing along Shanyin Lu to have a look at the older houses.



Slightly past this is the Northern Gate to the Duolun Lu Area, which is itself adjacent to a branch of toy-camera store Snaps Shop, and an insane public sculpture to soccer:



And then there's Lu Xun Park, which is probably the most interesting park in Shanghai, alongside the more central, smaller Fuxing Park. Like a number of other parks, it has fairground-type rides for the kiddies. I'll have an update about Lu Xun Park in the near future.




And the adventure ends just a little past this, at a corner on Zhongshan Yi Lu with a decent beergarden-type pub, it can't be missed because it has about fifty signs for Tsingtao Beer, in both English and Chinese. When the weather's good, it's a fun place to get a huge mug of Tsingtao.



It's right across Sichuan Lu from the line 8 subway station, with line 3 right nearby, and the top restaurants Guo Yuan, Delongguan, and Xinjiang Style are all within a short walk.

Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant

I have love for the gentle readers of this blog, and I'm strangely proud of my xiaolongbao review section. With an afternoon free, instead of doing something really interesting like studying, I went to Shanghai's cheesy old town shopping complex, and got in line for some Nanxiang Steamed Bun xiaolongbao! Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant is the most famous xiaolongbao in the city, at least with tourists. Due to the location and a long line, it's also a place that is apparently exclusively frequented by tourists – or in my case, when my friends or family visit the city. It's easy to find, right next to the 9-turn bridge and the entrance to Yuyuan Gardens.



Somehow it's on the checklist as a must-do for visitors to this fair city, alongside that viewing platform on the Bund. On a nice day around lunchtime, the line can be expected to last somewhere around an hour. The line tends to move in bursts, as a fresh batch of xiaolongbao gets ready – so frustratingly enough, there's no moving at all, for maybe ten minutes at a time. You do a lot of looking at the xiaolongbao getting steamed:



So how do the xiaolongbao rate? I don't think they're worth a trip to Yuyuan Gardens, nor do I think they're worth waiting in line a long time for, but they're pretty good, certainly better than average. The skin is soft, if a little spongy. The meat is tasty, but dense and too chewy, it's a little like a sausage with wet bread around it. There's no soup inside – that's one of the basic components that makes xiaolongbao be xiaolongbao! Compensate for the dryness by pouring on extra vinegar, there's a big pitcher of vinegar by the counter.



There's not any specific dining area, so people try to get a seat at the nearby benches or steps. The xiaolongbao are sold by a basket of 15 or so, for 12 kuai/basket, that's about $1.80. It's quite a lot of xiaolongbao, more like a small meal than a snack. Currently, after 5:30 they switch to crab xiaolongbao, for 20 kuai/basket. I understand there's also a crowded upstairs dining area with tables and a shorter wait, where the xiaolongbao costs more, but I've never been.



Really the best bet is to visit one of the other xiaolongbao restaurants I've rated – with the exception of the mediocre Din Tai Fung, which has a branch and a whole lot of advertisements nearby. Oh, and there's no business relation to Shangweiguan Nanxiang Xiaolongbao - Nanxiang is the suburb of Shanghai where Shanghai-style xiaolongbao was supposedly invented, it's sometimes used as an adjective to describe local-style xiaolongbao.

Holiday in Cambodia: Sleepwalking the Mekong

After visiting Siam Reap and the Angkor Wat, I rode a small wooden boat to the city of Battambang. I was taken by surprise: I basically didn't know anything about the Mekong or the people who live on it, and found the journey completely fascinating. The Mekong is a river that also flows through Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. In Cambodia, the water level varies immensely depending on the time of the year, routinely flooding vast areas in shallow water. So small villages and houses are built on stilts, or more commonly floats, to accommodate the change in water level.



While the river was pretty continuously populated, there were parts that, as far as I could tell, had absolutely no land anywhere in site. There was a fair amount of green from brush and trees and water-plants, but no solid land at all, the only place to set foot would be the small groups of floating houses.



In fact, there were small boats just for the livestock to live on. Usually this was chicken, although I saw pigs as well, with special floating pigpens.



As could be imagined, there were boats everywhere, usually just small hand-paddled canoes. While it may not look it from the small picture up top, the boat to Battambang was about half tourists, half river people. Our boat didn't dock for these river people, or even come to a full stop. Instead, their family would pull up a canoe alongside the boat, and they then hopped overboard. It all happened surprisingly quickly.



It's impossible for me to fully imagine living like this. For one thing, there's not going to be much to eat besides fish, and maybe water-vegetables? Actually there were a number of trader-boats going up the river, selling oil, bananas, and basic staples – it can be seen a little in the following picture:



Also, life there must be so immensely boring. Basically every single kid waved at our boat as it passed by, there was a lot of mutual gawking going on. I imagine that larger boats passing by is about as eventful as things get:



The river changed character as it got closer to Battambang, narrowing substantially. Much of this area was the center of village life, with small shacks on both sides of the river.



There were still constant small boats going from one side to the other, and a lot of people in boats were net-fishing or going about other business:



So, that's an amazing journey that everybody should do sometime in their life. Battambang itself isn't a highlight of Cambodia, and basically the whole town is lights out by 8:30 pm, but there's things to enjoy. For one, a few nice temples:



And there's a very interesting wet market, in the center of town, they also sell snack foods and the blended fruit drinks I love. After a positive experience in Chiang Mai with a one-day cooking school, I tried one again, from a restaurant called The Smoking Pot – it wasn't nearly as good a school, but it gave a fun chance to explore the market, and I'd recommend it. Here's some vegetables, very colorful:



And here's a lady skinning frogs, for our class! The secret is to cut the head off first, then just peel the skin back.




That's all I'll have to say about Cambodia for now, but visiting was a great experience. I really hope to go back and explore the country more thoroughly.

Red Town

Red Town is the name of an art-park/museum/shopping area immediately off Hongqiao Subway Station, at 568 Huaihai Xi Lu. Hongqiao is a district in the Western part of town, it's a popular area for expats to live, particularly expats from Japan or Korea – many Japanese like to live in gated, Japanese-only communities! I haven't been to the area very often, mostly because there's nothing much exciting to the area except the airport and some expat-oriented restaurants, and Shanghai's expat restaurants are a total joke. Furthermore, the subway doesn't go to the most interesting food streets of Hongqiao, and I'm not motivated enough to take a taxi.



Red Town, by contrast, is located just a couple minute's walk west of the Subway station. As I mentioned, there's an art-park, one of several art-parks located around Shanghai, mostly in expat areas. Basically, they're parks with outdoor sculptures set up. I'm not a great judge of sculpture, but I find these to be lightweight fun:







These sculptures continue on in a free sculpture museum adjoining the park. The sculptures there are in much the same whimsical vein, maybe they're a little more fragile and couldn't be kept outside:





There's a couple of cafes in the complex, as well as small shops selling things like art supplies or art books. There's also a club called Sugar, I've never been a visitor, but I went inside and had a look while they were shooting cheesecake promotional pictures:



Red Town can't be called a highlight of Shanghai, but it's convenient to get to and it's worth dropping by the sculpture museum, which is open 10-5 every day but Monday.

Fude Xiaolong

I'm on a spiritual quest to find the best xiaolongbao in Shanghai, and like all spiritual quests, it never really ends. I started out thinking Fu Chun was the best xiaolongbao to be found in Shanghai, but ever since first visiting Delongguan, I sort of waver between which of the two has the best xiaolongbao. Well, for now I have a new favorite, and that would be Fude Xiaolong, in the east side of the Hongkou District.

That wouldn't be the most central of locations. But really, it's just a ten minute walk from line #4's Dalian Station to get there – walk three blocks northwest of the Station, to Dongyuhang Lu, then walk four blocks southwest, a little past Gongping Lu, to 862 Dongyuhang Lu – it's maybe a little quicker, walking south from #4's Linping Lu Station. But that would require skipping Dongyuhang Lu - east of Fude Xiaolong, the road is totally crazy, a packed super-local market street that I love. Also nearby are the old Jewish ghetto, a bunch of old houses, and Xia Hai Temple, they're OK and I'll probably have a later update about them, but they just can't compare to this:



The restaurant is definitely on the hole-in-the-wall side of things, in a hole-in-the-wall sort of area. But given that, it's actually pretty spacious, large, and clean. In addition to the xiaolongbao, at six for four kuai (about sixty cents), it serves noodles and won-tons and the like. There's no drinks, so get them at the convenience store on the nearby corner.



The xiaolongbao are my current favorite, and I've had more than my fair share of xiaolongbao! The skin, if not delicate, isn't spongy, and dissolves in the mouth. The meat inside, while more substantial than I usually prefer, is still so very smoothly ground and so very tasty. And best of all, the insides are totally swimming in soup! There's no sweetness to any of it, and the vinegar is of a good strength.

Holiday in Cambodia: Angkor Wat

While I wasn't in Cambodia for as long as I'd have liked, of course I had to visit Angkor – with the famous stone temples that are the only remnant of the sprawling capital city of the powerful Khmer Empire, from a thousand years ago. It was a bizarre but interesting bus ride from the capital city of Phnom Penh. Two lanes the whole way through, the road seemed to be some kind of center to Cambodian village life – it passed through village centers, frequently punctuated by wedding ceremonies held directly against the road. Also noteable were all the water buffaloes, even directly across the river from Phnom Penh's city center. There were occasional rest-stops, which were just big dirt fields with local bazaars set up, for all the busses.



I won't have much to say about the actual temple complexes. They were stone and beautiful. The scale of it all was crazy - in particular, the central Angkor Wat is amazingly large, and furthermore is surrounded by a quarter-mile-wide moat. They're located somewhat apart from each other, maybe a five minute to half-hour drive from one to the next. The thing to do is to rent a tuk-tuk driver for the day. Anyway, here's a few favorite pictures – it was really dark and grey for most of my time there, which certainly didn't help for photographing old stone temples that tended to be dark and grey.







Siam Reap is a city nearby to all these temples, it's evolved as the jumping-off point. It's obviously a total tourist spot, and usually I hate that sort of thing, but maybe having been in Shanghai for so long I appreciated the conveniences – there were great import groceries, foreign bookstores, foreigner bars, and a selection of both foreign and Cambodian restaurants, aimed at clueless foreigners. One I went to had a free dance show. I'm sure it was totally cheesy if you knew anything about Cambodian dance, but as a casual tourist I enjoyed it.