Shanghai

We arrived in Shanghai (again) on October 1st. We had been travelling for just over 2 months, been through 10 countries and about 15 cities, but I have never seen so many people in one place as we saw when we arrived in Shanghai!

You see, in China almost the entire population (1.3 billion people) are given their holidays at the same time. One of these holidays is some time in May, but unfortunately for us, the other time is on National Day which is actually a week long holiday, beginning on Oct 1st. It's bascially the Chinese equivalent of St. Patricks Day except without the drunk school children :-) After 3 days, we decided we'd had enough of the crowds so booked a train to Xi'an (home of the terra cotta warriors).

Unfortunately for me, my strongest memory of Shanghai will not be the crowds...

I had really grown to like the Chinese food and given that it's so cheap there's no reason at all not to eat out all the time. On one particular evening, I decided to head out to a resturant I spotted nearby to our hostel (luckily for her, Kate wasn't hungry). When I walked in to the very well decorated resturant, I was quite surprised to see that the whole place was empty - in fact, even the staff even seemed shocked that they had a customer and not only that, but a western customer!

Immediately, I was ushered in and seated at their best table. It seemed that the staff couldn't do enough for me. I had no less than 4 people fussing over me, all smiling and delighted to have a 'celebrity' in their resturant. One was removing the extra place settings, another was straightning out my own place setting. Somebody put a napkin on my lap and someone else poured me a cup of chinese tea. A few of the kitchen staff even ran out to have a look and giggled at the spectacle of a non-empty resturant.

Then I was presented with the menu - no english, no pictures.

I didn't want to offend them by just getting up and walking out (they had genuinely done their best to make me comfortable) so I just asked for 'chicken?'. One of the staff - the only one with English - pointed at something and told me in his best pigeon-english that this was chicken. I said ok and also asked for rice.

One person took the order off to the kitchen and the rest of the staff bascially just stood next to me, staring at me in their big empty fancy resturant, smiling at me and to each other. I didn't know what else to do but smile back and laugh to myself, wondering what I'd gotten myself into.

I was surprised when the food arrived so quickly (less than 2 minutes) and even more surprised when I saw what was presented to me. It was literally half a chicken, cut right down the middle - barely cooked - including half a head, half a beak, half of all the guts inside and one eye! The outside was a pale yellow colour. I didn't know what to do except laugh to myself and start eating the rice. One of the smiling staff had a brainwave and realised that I must not be eating the chicken because I didn't have a knife and fork (only chopsticks). He then brought over a knife and fork, and pointed again at the chicken... I looked around again and saw all the smiling staff standing right behind me. There was nothing else to do except find the leanest bit of chicken and eat. This is when I found out the chicken was cold! No wonder it took 2 minutes to prepare!

This pic (taken elsewhere, afterwards) shows something similar to what I was served.

I poked away at my chicken and ate my rice for about 20 minutes. At this point many of my fans had given me some space and went back to whatever there is to do in an empty resturant. I used the lack of attntion as my escape route and ran out of the resturant, saying "thank you" and "I wasn't very hungry anyway" to whoever I met.

That was the worst EUR 2.60 I ever spent!