Dinner anyone?

Sunday was a busy day. After knock-off shopping, we went to the unfeasibly busy cloth market to pick up our new stuff from Ken's tailoring shop. Ken's stuff was first class so we decided to go for a beer in Xintiandi to celebrate and then on for dinner.

Xintiandi is very nice - a couple of renovated blocks of old Shanghai. It's cool, upscale and expensive too. Because it is full of expats, I want to dislike it because I am a snob and very dull and predictable in that way. However, I secretly think it's really cool and has a really nice vibe to it. Maybe it was the beer.

We went for early dinner at a great fish restaurant that I keep meaning to pick up the name card from - I have been there 3 times and I still don't know what it is called... It is well worth the effort to visit. You chose your seafood and fresh water fish from the many tanks on the ground floor. I have no idea what most of them are. You specify in what way you want your fish cooked and what combination of flavours you would like. My firm favourites are the scallops, cooked with lots of garlic, some finely chopped spring onion and very fine vermicelli noodles. Oh God they taste good. On the other hand, I recommend that you avoid the tank of water beetles and the one filled with what looks like a writhing mass of... well... basically they look like flaccid penises.

Lilli and Max loved the fish tank full of big exotic stuff (including sharks). I assume that visiting high-rollers pick a big fish for a banquet to impress their mates. Lilli also nearly ran a mile when a crab decided to try and make a break for it from his tank (in order to avoid his certain destiny) and ended up running sideways in her direction.

We decided to leave the frogs in peace on this occasion.

Looking up - Yuyuan Gardens

I particularly like the one on the left. It's an unintentionally witty juxtaposition of an old roof, the top of some godawful new skyscraper that is being thrown up Pudong side of the river (the name of which escapes me) and someone's pointy hat.

Pictures!

The view from the 30th floor of "La Residence". I forgot to mention, we got upgraded from the 18th floor apartment(literally) when the hot water stopped being hot and the toilet blocked for the 3rd time...

a fake?

a) Today I ate nothing but pizza and chips in Shanghai
b) Actually, I think I prefer Milton Keynes to Shanghai
c) Today I had too much to eat

Can you tell which of the above are fake blog entries by fatmaninshanghai?

a) and b) are easily spotted as fakes - these are the equivalent of the really rubbish Wolex and Kalvin Kleens that can be purchased for not very many RMB all over Shanghai. Most of the ones you get offered in the street are absolute tat and not even worth the few quid they cost.

However, there are some pretty decent fakes out there. fatman and Mrs. f were escorted into the back of a gallery that they just happened to be passing by, past a table of smoking card players (no really, there was a table of 5 men playing cards at the back of the gallery showroom - not suspicious looking at all then...) and ushered up the stairs to a treasure trove of knock-off goods.

All the major fashion brands were represented - LV, Gucci, Dior, Prada, Boss, Armani, Lacoste (Mrs. f picked up a couple of rather nice "Prada" handbags) - along with some not so expected ones. Puma trainers anyone? How about a "goretex" North Face fleece and mountain jacket?

But the bit of this Aladin's cave that I really liked was the watch department. I have always been a sucker for certain watches (but I am too poor, too clumsy and too fickle to risk investing in one in case I can't feed the children / or I break it / or I get bored of it and decide I don't like it after 2 weeks).

I picked up a pretty-convincing-from-a-distance Officine Panerai Luminor and Mrs. f now has a not-that-bad-looking-from-a-few-feet Cartier Tank Francaise. These plus the two handbags (about which I have no idea if they are even vaguely authentic looking copies) cost me 1700 RMB / £120 ish. I did not negotiate well. I am sure I could have done better but it's a bit intimidating being in the back rooms of someone's gallery, behind a table full of smoking men, in a windowless emporium of counterfeit stuff.

Is it wrong to buy knock-off stuff? Yes of course it is. It doesn't help China's effort to integrate into the global economy and therefore it doesn't (in the long-term) help any of the many people whose livelihoods depend on the counterfeit trade - I don't mean the big organised crime dudes that have the stuff made and distribute it (my heart really bleeds for them), I mean the guys peddling it in back streets (and the smoking men guarding the premises).

Do I feel sorry for LV, Gucci, Cartier, blah blah blah? No of course not - mostly I suspect that they are peddling tat in just the same way as the blokes on the corner of the street selling the worst kind of fakes - they just charge a lot more for it. In the very best case they are selling you some quality workmanship and a large helping of expensive branding on the side. In the worst case, your arse will fall out of your shiny trousers just as quickly as if the fancy label had never been sewn in by some poor bastard in Vietnam (or China).

Perversely, being a real dullard and a bit of a train spotter, I keep noticing all the little details that are wrong with my new "Panerai" and this actually makes me want a real one even more than before.

By the way, did you also spot that c) above was also a fake blog entry? On the surface of it, it looks convincing but the true fatman officianado would know that the word "too" should not be there.

Speaking in tongues.

Time is flying by. We have been here almost 2 weeks and there are so many things we still want to do. Fortunately, I have managed to achieve another culinary goal, you will be pleased to hear!

Although I have eaten many types of food in China, I was yet to try hotpot until today and being from Lancashire, it's important to try hotpot wherever you go and see if it matches up to the original and best recipe. Chinese hotpot is kind of like shabu shabu style cooking - a bubbling pan of a vegetable-infused stock that you quickly dunk the meat into, to cook yourself.

Except here in China, you don't just have beef but all manner of interesting things to dunk; tofu, spinach, fishballs, balls of rolled beef, ham, mushrooms, corn-on-the-cob and of course, a plate of ducks' tongues. You will be surprised to learn that this was another culinary first for me. You may be squeamish about these things but to be honest, they just tasted like the other (pretty small) bits of ducks that you may have eaten wrapped up in pancakes with hoisin sauce. Quack quack.

Quack quack, quack. Quack quack quack. Sorry, I don't know what came over me there.

AT LAST, SOME REALLY DISGUSTING FOOD!

I went out to a little restaurant round the corner from the office to get a takeaway for lunch today. Tony was busy so I was on my own. I chose some soup that appeared to be chicken with some kind of coconut. I imagined a steaming pot of thai-style loveliness wrapped in the carrier bag.

When I got back to the office and unwrapped my treasure, the first thing that I fished out of the container was what appeared to be a splintered chicken shin which was oozing hot red matter from the middle. Far from being the rich fragrant broth of my imagination, thick and smooth with coconut milk, the watery slop contained a few scrapings of hairy coconut husk. The other bits of poultry that emerged from the murky water gave the impression that this particular chicken had died a violent death due to an unlucky meeting with a jet engine.

Embarassed (and hungry) I sloped off to the bins to deposit this affront to my China food experience.

I'm kicking myself now - I just knew I should have opted for the fried bulls penis with garlic.

fatman? - an update in a roundabout sort of way

Following my last subjectively successful visit to the cloth market at Dongmen Lu, I decided to get more things made. Abigail and the children came with me to supervise and Abigail is having some stuff made herself.

Armed with pictures torn out of Heat magazine (optimistically I was toting a picture of a tasty two-piece that Matt Damon wore at the premiere of one of his tedious films) and the equivalent of Women's Wear Daily, London W8 Edition (the Boden catalogue) we hit Ken's Tailor. Bit by bit, we added to the very long list of things for Ken and his hopefully happy army of backstreet tailors to make. We chose Ken partly because of the quality of his workmanhip and partly because he spoke pretty good English and we didn't have Tony or Isabella to help us with translation duties. You should try finding the putonghua equivalent of "Double cuffs please my good man, and make those collars good and pointy" in Lonely Planet before you mock...

We drove a hard bargain and kept threatening to take our enormous order elsewhere. Ken protested that the quality of his work was far superior to anything else available and he couldn't possibly make up our order for that price. This was a big fib on both counts.

Blessed with a meticulous eye for pointless detail and frippery (and a sensitive disposition if you believe school reports about me weeping at the death of the class hamster) I had already checked out Ken's samples on his mannequins. Everything from the buttons on the shirts to the waistband linings in the suit trousers was identical to the suit and shirts I had previously had made 7 or 8 stalls down the road. The ultimate test was to ask him to make some alterations to Number 1 China suit (fatman has lost nearly 8kg since the start of this adventure) and sure enough he asked me if he himself had "made" it! Had Mr. Liu, of Number 32, Shanghai Shiliu Pu, staged an audacious corporate buyout of Ken's tailors at Number 17? Or is it simply the case that everything at the cloth market is knocked up at the same factory on the outskirts of Shanghai?

I don't know and I'm not likely to be able to find out. The second fib was that he couldn't do it for the same price. Of course he relented in the end and for a princely RMB 1900 (£126) Ken and his probably-not-so-merry-men will make me a suit with 2 pairs of trousers, 3 shirts, a winter jacket and some wool trousers for Abigail and copy a couple of tops for my colleague Patricia.

Next Sunday, we will pick up Ken's handiwork, all being well. I'll keep you posted and for Ken's sake I will try not to lose any more weight in the meantime.

Wet weekend

Me and Tony went out clubbing last night and got really drunk whilst Abigail stayed at home with the children and had to wait up for me until 3am because I forgot my key. Nah, only joking.

Tony left the office at 7pm or so on Friday, heading directly out for dinner followed by an evening at Muse 2, the new, new hottest place in town to see and be seen.

I went home, kissed the children good night and cooked my little dumplings. That's not a euphemism - you can get lovely bags of dumplings from the store and cook them in the wok in 3 minutes. Delicious with a dash of soy sauce and some vinegar.

Thus the difference between Shanghai visit number 1 and number 2. I'm not grumbling, it's just different.

The weather has been beautiful today - fabulous blue skies and baking hot. we have had 3 proper China experiences today for very different reasons:

Number 1 - the supermarket on Saturday morning. A cross between a bunfight and a rugby scrum is how best to describe the scene at the meat counter type-thing. The cuts of meat are sluiced into a big open tray for throngs of shoppers to delve into. Happily, most people were using the plastic bags provided for picking up the bits of meat to inspect them before tossing them back and picking up another one to scrutinise. At the bakery bit, there was a big queue as people waited for hot buns of some description to arrive on the shelves. Freshness is much valued here and I think the noisy scrum bit is a throwback to real market days.

Number 2 - a trip to Yuyuan market. A "real experience" not because you can buy all the tourist tat and Chairman Mao watches that your heart desires, but because you get to observe "real" (not Shanghai sophisticates with Ferrari's) Chinese people from all over China at leisure. You can clearly see different ethnic groups and spot country cousins visiting the big 'ole city a mile off. Generally the men are wearing poor dentures , baggy shorts, a polo shirt with an improbable colour scheme (tucked in) and a pair of formal slip on shoes made out of plastic (think Idi Amin / Robert Mugabe style). At leisure means eating, chatting, drinking, smoking and taking photographs of each other (often at the same time) with the volume control set to 11. It's a riot.

Number 3 - Shanghai Aquarium (a wet weekend, geddit???) Brilliant fun, big fish, small fish, sharks and again an opportunity to savour life Shanghai style. Don't even think about lingering to look at a tank for more than a minute or you will be swept away in a tidal wave of noisy flash-happy fish spotters. Most of the fish have cataracts and are deaf now. I made that bit up as well.

The children were understandably hot, tired and irritable after all this excitement. What better time to make them go to a restaurant and force-feed them stuff they have never tried before? Things got off to a rocky start with some chopstick throwing incidents and a broken spoon but I am proud to say that my two children tucked into sizzling beef in black bean sauce, chilli prawns (Max loved these), assorted dim sum and the now obligatory noodles (Lilli thinks it's spaghetti).

A Chinese lesson.

Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted that the pathetic contents of the kitchen do not include a corkscrew / bottle opener.

Fed up of opening bottles of my beloved Tsing Tao beer with a fork, I nipped down to the 24 hour convenience store which is just over the road from the apartment. I was back upstairs on the 18th floor with my brand new Chinese made corkscrew having parted with only 22RMB (£1.50) before the crisp cold dew drops on the side of the bottle could evaporate.

Flipping the cap off, the bottle-opener bit instantly broke, thus perfectly illustrating 2 things -

1) living in a city that is on-the-go 24 hours a day is very convenient
2) not everything that is cheap in China is good value (unlike my excellent shirts and suit).

The world's worst tour guide...

My kind hosts at Publicitas China allowed me a day-off on Monday to help Abigail and the children to find their way around Shanghai. My sense of direction is generally so poor that this could have been acutely embarrassing and a very good example of the blind leading the blind. Thank God for the world's cheapest and most plentiful (when it's not raining) taxi fleet in the world.

We arranged a months membership to the swimming pool / gym across the road for Abigail so there will always be somewhere for her to take the little monsters if they are driving her mad.

Next stop, Nanjing Road to show her some of the glitzy shops where she can (window) shop and some of the less pricey ones where you can actually afford to buy stuff. Then a few more strategic stops around town for orientation.

I am pleased to say that we managed to find time for An Excellent Lunch (TM) at one of the restaurants I really enjoyed during my last visit.

Of course when I was last here, I had Tony's assistance to navigate the menu. Since I was allegedly the expert guide for my family for the day, I bluffed my way through a conversation with the waiter and more by luck than anything else, ended up with some fantastic dishes. It could have been very different - years ago during a trip to Salamanca, I ordered by mistake and then forced myself to eat pigs ears when a pathetic combination of bravado/pride/stupidity caused me to reject the English menu and go off-piste with my choice of dishes.

Lilli thought it was fantastic to meet the fish which we were shortly to eat, brought to our table for inspection flapping around in a big red bucket. Max tucked into the tofu with crab meat, both of them slurped the noodles and equally enjoyed the fish. By telling them that the sweet Shanghai style sauce in which it was served was Heinz tomato ketchup, they were easily convinced to try it. Max managed to stab both himself and some food with a chopstick.

Again, they were little celebrities and fellow diners and all the staff made a massive fuss over them.

Monday night. Max woke up throughout the night at alarmingly regular intervals, presumably sufering from jet lag. After about 1 am I was oblivious to this because Abigail slept on the floor next to him all night to keep him quiet and allow me to sleep a bit. She is a saint.

It's still big

Back to Shanghai and guess what? It's still big. Probably a bit bigger than the last time actually. Which is pretty big.

I had thought I would be able to open Chapter 2 with hair-curling stories of how awful it is travelling for 19 hours to Shanghai with 2 children under 3 years old, but truthfully, they were really well behaved on the whole. I had visions of irate passengers complaining to the Captain about Max's nappies and Lilli's Vesuvian temper, trying to re-route the flight via Siberia to drop us off.

Nothing of the sort happened. Probably the most petulant and annoying passenger on-board was some French bloke sat adjacent to us who tutted every time anyone coughed or farted during the flight. I can think of many more relaxing and comfortable ways to spend a day and by the time we got to the apartment we were all a bit tetchy, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. By saying these words, I have surely just damned myself to a nightmarish journey home.



The apartment is a faded beauty. In a city where generally speaking new=good, this 10 year old block is unloved and uncared for (which is why my budget can just about cover it...) We quickly discovered that the apartment is not a place for stay-at-home, Ken Hom style entertainers. Here is a complete kitchen inventory:



A pan.

A plate.

2 bowls (one chipped)

3 chopsticks.

2 table knives.

2 cups with non-matching saucers.

Some mould.



If you read my earlier guff, you may remember that there are some not-too-shabby restaurants in Shanghai so the lack of anything at all useful in the kitchen is not as much of a problem as if I had decided to spend 2 months in suburban Bratislava this Summer.



We went to the local supermarket (Tesco's since you didn't ask) to get something to eat. Here we quickly discovered something else; the children get loads of attention. They are both curly haired and almost as cute as their father. Max is blond and blue-eyed. We got stopped 15 times or more. People were taking pictures of themselves with Lilli, on their mobile phones. I can now imagine what it feels like hanging around with a minor celebrity.

Dog-tired. Bed.