Chun - A Shanghainese Restaurant

This will be the first post in a series about favorite Shanghai-style restaurants. That's in addition to my series about the best places to get xiaolongbao, a local-style snack.

Shanghai's cuisine is not my favorite. I prefer the stronger flavors of South East Asian cuisine, or maybe the hot, oily Sichuan and Hunan styles of Chinese food. Shanghai style food relies on subtle flavors, where quality comes from the fresh ingredients. There's less oil than other Chinese cuisines, with foods often being steamed, rather than fried in a wok. Local seafood is prevalent, as is local produce – farms still line the outskirts of Shanghai. Sauces are mild, often depending on interplay of light soy sauce and sugar – really a lot of Shanghai's food is mildly sweet, and that's probably the biggest hurdle for someone new to the cuisine.

That being said, probably my favorite place in Shanghai for local-style cuisine is Chun, on 124 Jinxian Lu, right next to the Lomography store and nearish to the Shaanxi Nan Lu Subway Station. The restaurant has only four tables, between that and a NY Times write up it all sounded very mysterious. But really the insides are nothing special – it looks like a normal hole in the wall, only maybe just a little fancier and a little smaller. Also, with such a small restaurant, it's a good idea either show up really early, or better yet to book a table, the number is 21-6256-0301.



There's no menu. Instead, the chef prepares what's fresh that day – customers tell the waiter how many dishes they want. Of course there's some leeway to order favorite dishes, or to request certain foods not be served. The waiter only speaks Chinese, but the restaurant is well-known enough with foreigners that I'm sure it's possible to order without the local lingo.

All the pictures above have been taken at the restaurant, and they were all incredibly delicious, to the point that it was hard to choose a favorite or least favorite dish. If there are any caveats to be made, it's that the food is served local style, and personally I'm so lazy at eating, I hate spitting out bones, or digging the meat out of shrimps.



What was shown? The pictures were taken at a meal for two, where we got a cold braised pork, a plate of seasoned shrimp, a steamed whitefish with a hong shao sauce, and pork soup with bamboo shoots and those crazy tofu sheets that are tied into knots. A lot of food, although I should have added a vegetable. It came in to slightly under 200 kuai, or about $14 per person. About double the price from some of my other favorite Shanghai-style restaurants, but you pay the big bucks to get the best!

More Old Chinese Movies

I've posted before about old movies of Shanghai, it's become something of a hobby and I'm contemplating rolling out a separate blog about the subject. A couple months ago, I posted a list of thirteen pre-Communist Shanghai movies that were freely available, with the promise of more. Never one to disappoint...

Silent movies, with original English and Chinese intertitles:
Poor Daddy - 儿子英雄 (1929)
An Orphan - 雪中孤雏 (1929)

Silent movies, with only Chinese intertitles:
Daybreak - 天明 (1933)
Greedy Neighbours - 恶邻 (1933)
Cosmetics of Market - 脂粉市场 (1933)
National Customs - 国风 (1935)

Movies with Mandarin Chinese audio, but no English subtitles:
Plunder of Peach and Plum - 桃李劫 (1934)
Twin Sisters - 再生花 (1934)
Bible for Girls - 女儿经 (1934)
Children of Troubled Times - 风云儿女 (1935)
The Boatman's Daughter - 船家女 (1935)
Song at Midnight - 夜半歌声 (1937)
Youth on the March - 青年進行曲 (1937)
Dream of the Red Mansions - 红楼梦 (1944)
Diary of the Homecoming - 还乡日记 (1947)

I'll still post more movies, but I think I've already uploaded many of the best, so I don't expect to be updating frequently. However, all these movies are posted to the excellent archive.org, so if you're hungry for more, try browsing their archives. Also, a number of these movies are available off Amazon.com, yesasia.com, or rented from netflix.com - the ones from Netflix and Amazon will have subtitles.

Wuyuan and Surroundings

Feeling adventurous after a small trip to Fujian Province, I decided to take the bus back, rather than a plane. That allowed me a chance to look over the countryside, and to make a small detour to Jiangxi Province, on the way back to Shanghai.

Don't do this.

Here's the bus I took, it was a bunch of lay-down cots rather than seats. The cots were a foot and a half shorter than me, meaning I had to sort of fold myself into the cot. Everybody around me was chain smoking. To top it off, it was an 18 hour bus ride. And, the driver dropped me off by the side of the dark highway at 2:30 in the morning, and told me (and a fellow traveler) that it was about a mile to Jingdezhen, a medium-sized no-horse town a few hours away from from my final destination of Wuyuan.



But that's an overly long introduction to Wuyuan. Basically, Wuyuan is an ugly city that acts as a transportation hub to the beautiful villages nearby. So the first order of business is getting out of Dodge and making it to somewhere else. With me, I went to Small Likeng:



As a small village, it made for an interesting contrast with the Hakka villages I had been to several days before. It felt more typically Chinese, not being a Hakka area and all. The countryside, with plenty of rivers and streams, was beautiful, if not quite up to the standards of Yongding. And the buildings were beautiful, well-preserved, and built right against the water. I did have a complaint about all the tourists:



It's not an elitist "I'm too cool to be in a touristed spot" attitude, although of course I do have that attitude. It's more that, Small Likeng is a small village with small sidewalks. With the large tour groups and busy crowds going by, I found myself waiting in line just to walk down the street!

But I don't want to exaggerate; even in Small Likeng, it was easy to get away from the crowds. Here's a couple quick pictures:







There were a number of other villages that weren't quite as impressive, but weren't as busy. They didn't all feel cut from the same mold, though, there were marked contrasts between them. It doesn't photograph well, but Sixi Yancun had a labyrinthine feeling of large featureless buildings, connected by thin irregular pathways:



Whereas Qinghua had a more country feel to it. Here's looking under Rainbow Bridge:



And nearby to central Qinghua City was a beautiful valley filled with older homes:



Similiarly to Yongding, there was an odd relation to the locals, and it felt like their normal lives had turned into a tourist attraction. I was also on the receiving end of this, as random morons would go up to me and yell "Hello!" constantly. Anyway, whether it's cultural imperialism or not, I thought it was interesting to see the villagers doing their thing, here's a few quick pictures:









From Wuyuan, it was a seven hour bus ride back to Shanghai - the proper kind of bus, with seats and rules against smoking.

Pictures of Duolun Lu

Duolun Lu is one of my favorite streets to wander. I'll have a few updates about the surrounding area, just because that's how much I enjoy it. This is a generalized take on the central street.

Duolun Lu's obvious comparison point is Taikang Lu, where an old shikumen was partially converted into a bunch of snazzy, chic boutique shops, the kind that foreigners just go wild for. Only, Duolun Lu isn't quite as snazzy, and is located near Hongkou Stadium and North Sichuan Road, a decidedly less chic part of town. The street has some really beautiful landmarks, though, and furthermore was the home of many of China's left-leaning literati, in the first half of the 20th century - including Lu Xun, perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese author. The area is dotted with statues dedicated towards these artists, or in some cases, to famous personalities from the era.

The main street has some interesting sites, like an Early Shanghai church, done in a Chinese/Western style. It was re-purposed after the Liberation, but is now again serving as an active church:



There's also this mansion that's still in use, I believe by the city government:



And then some buildings that aren't in a great state of repair, but still have a cool 30's Shanghai look to them:



Interspersed are some fancy newer buildings. They're generally such things as art dealers and cafes:



And a bunch of other older buildings, either old apartment buildings, or just older buildings that have been converted into curio shops. They're more interesting than one would expect - I bought an old-school Ruan Lingyu poster for a dollar.



Behind the main tourist street is normal shikumen living, with lots of narrow brick corridoors. This isn't a very exciting photograph, but it's a typical scene:



Bouquets of flowers decorate this door:



And there's the normal cheap street food available:



Really, this is one of the best areas of Shanghai to wander, not only because of Duolun Lu but also for the immediate surroundings. In addition to Wanshou Zhai Xiaolongbao, which I've mentioned before, there's Sichuan Lu and some cool shopping (Including Snaps Shop 2 and a branch of Lillian Cake Shop), Lu Xun park, areas of beautiful old brick buildings alongside Yishan Lu, and Hongkou Stadium. Oh, and there's also occasional decorative-rock markets on the street, but I'm not sure on which days.

It's a very photogenic area, and on a nice day there's a whole lot of people wandering around with cameras. While I'm on the subject, a number
of photos here were taken on the Seagull-branded toy camera I mentioned earlier.

Danta

Here's a short update about a favorite subject: danta! Danta is an egg custard tart. It's a dessert that's associated with Macau, although I've read that it originated as a slight riff on some Portuguese or English desert.

To my mind, Lillian Cake Shop, a chain that's located throughout Shanghai, creates pretty much the perfect danta. The reason it's better than the competitors is mostly that it's cooked at a higher temperature. Like a creme brulee, the sugar at the top of the danta hardens and forms a thin caramelized layer at the very top - most places don't do this. In addition, the crust is light and flaky, but salty, a very nice contrast with the intense sweetness of the cream. It all goes for just 3 kuai, and out of the oven it's impossible to beat.



These cakes are located all around Shanghai, including inside a large number of subway stations. If none of these other danta are quite as good, a number of them bear mention. The first is from Lisboa Macau Restaurant, a favorite restaurant which I've written about before on this blog. They make a standard danta, as well as an egg-white danta. The egg white danta is lighter, bordering on a meringue, and definitely worth trying:



The other I plan to talk about is a little embarassing: KFC! It's the most popular fast food in China, but KFC makes some efforts to localize the menu, and one of these localizations is danta. KFC's dantas are actually pretty decent. It's in the same vein as Lillian Cake Shop, and they even caramelize the top layer, just overall it's not quite as good. They offer standard danta, and then a danta with candied fruit on top. The candied fruit is disgustingly sweet and throws off the whole balance of the flavors! Anyway, the worst thing that can be said about KFC's danta is that the 5 kuai/danta price, about equivalent to seventy five cents US, is much more than charged elsewhere.

Quanzhou

Quanzhou is a medium-sized city in Fujian Province, a historic port city that Marco Polo once raved about as the largest port city in the world. I like all the temples and religious buildings and whatnot, and actually visiting this city was my impetus for the larger trip. While it was a nice enough city, I'll admit it was perhaps the low point of my trip to Fujian.

But I'll start by saying: yes, there really are a lot of old temples and shrines scattered here and about. Many of them still seem in use, not just a tourist draw the way temples can feel in Beijing or Shanghai. Here's the largest and most famous, Kaiyuan Temple:



But really just walking down the street, it was possible to come across active shrines and temples. I didn't go on a big day for Buddhism, but the Guandi Temple was quite active, and even on the sidewalk people stopped to burn incense. There were prayer pillows just sitting around on the sidewalk, for people to kneel in prayer. I wish I had gotten a better picture of it:



And a little out of the way was Chongfu Temple, an interesting modern neighborhood temple with a beautiful grounds, and a lot of Buddhist monks busily going about their business:



Additionally, there were a few other religions represented: the world's sole remaining (crypto) Manichean Temple is located in a village nearby, UNESCO sponsored a very interesting paper about it. There's also the remains of the Qingjing Mosque from a thousand years ago:



It wasn't all old churches, of course, and Quanzhou has several long streets, filled with shops and restaurants. It's not nearly as vertical as with larger cities, though: most of the shops were kept to a single floor. It all had a lot more character than one might expect: here's a shop that sells only red dresses:



And here's a side-street full of restaurants, this one's sign offers lamb, goose, and dog meat. But all I saw was roast chicken:



While there wasn't much in terms of nightlife, I did see a really cool take on DDR, the rhythm-based video game. It was hooked up to a real drum set! This girl was good, from a distance I thought I was hearing some rock band, playing in a club:



Anyway, these shopping streets are very, very long. I walked them back and forth a few times, and got so tired! In addition to taxis, there were also a large number of pedi-cabs. It seems Chinese-y, I guess, but it's the first time I've seen them in a way that wasn't entirely directed at tourists.



And continuing on with my earlier discussions on xiaolongbao, I ordered the local variety, and it was one of the strangest versions I've ever had. The dough on the outside was thick and mealy, tasting more like wheat bread. The meat filling was hearty and rich, and the dipping sauce was a hot-sauce, rather than vinegar. I like it, but it was really stretching to call it xiaolongbao! Most people ordered it with a broth that had some peanuts added.