A Real Date

Dave and I enjoyed an evening without children for the first time since we came to Shanghai. The babysitters arrived just after L—and S—finished their dinner, and enjoyed a fun few hours of playtime and movie watching while Dave and I hit the town.

Still newcomers, we headed toward the tourist haunts. We first jumped a cab to the old city. Across the river, but otherwise quite near to our home, the cab ride only took 10 minutes. On a misty November evening, this tourist attraction was rather quiet. The old city itself is a large area where the buildings look traditionally Chinese and markets and corner food stalls abound. But at the center of the old town, encircling a traditional Chinese garden (Yu Garden) is the Temple of the City God. During the cultural revolution, this temple became a market and has remained a beautiful tourist attraction. The eaves of this classical architecture were strung with white lights, making the entire place resemble the Kansas City Plaza at Christmas and lending a festive air to the dreary evening. Streets surround this portion of town, but within the temple you walk along alleys and through open-air buildings and markets. The shops cater to tourists, selling uniquely Chinese items at above-market prices and were lovely for window shopping. The undisputed home of Shanghai’s best steamed buns lies smack in the center of the bazaar, and we indulged. We agree – these are by far the best buns we’ve had anywhere. Our promise - all visitors will be taken at least once!

On to dinner, we headed toward a restaurant to dine on the ubiquitous hairy crab. Grown in the rivers surrounding Shanghai, these fresh water crabs are the local food in Shanghai, and raved about on most food websites. Most hotels host “hairy crab extravaganzas,” featuring unlimited seafood and crab. Restaurants tout having the best, the freshest, the largest hairy crabs in the city. So I find it amazing that we were unable to get any for dinner. Upon a recommendation, we went to a restaurant where we were the only Westerners. We felt quite proud of ourselves, until we were unable to understand our waitress and why she told us we could not have the crab we pointed to. And we never received the crab she pointed to. So we ate a lovely meal of crab fried rice and crab wrapped shrimp, and since we were both a bit afraid of tearing apart these little crustaceans for our meal, we’re going to count that as our hairy crab experience and be done with it.

The rest of the evening we spent walking in the damp autumn air, snuggled in our coats, watching the lights and the streams people. We explored a bookstore, toured a small museum, and ended up on the sidewalk outside a coffee house where we finished our evening with steaming mugs of vanilla flavored steamed milk.