Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 3:50 PM
Subject: China - Day 12
Today we are driving to a Chinese customer about an hour outside of Shanghai. The air quality here has been pretty good until today. We drove past the China pavilion at the Expo, passing within a half mile or so from it, but you could barely make it out. It is quite humid and still early so there may be a bit of fog too, but it is clearly more than just fog. It was around noon when we reached the customer so we decided to have lunch first. We drove to a nearby restaurant and went inside. There were 8 of us in all; it was the round table lazy susan arrangement. It was also rather warm and extremely humid inside. Sam and I are both in suits and we are beginning to perspire a lot. I am wearing a white dress shirt under my jacket and after a few minutes I realized I cannot take my jacket because the shirt is now so wet it is becoming transparent in places. Sam is the same shape and we are both laughing about this. Even the places that have them do not use their air conditioners much. I have felt damp for the better part of a week now and it is getting old.
Food began to arrive. Two different kinds of tofu (in the US it is filler, in China it is a main dish and very flavorful), goose liver, peas in the pod, some sort of seafood soup, more jellyfish heads, some duck breast, and near the end, a beautiful platter of lobster. This platter requires a bit of description: it was large and oval, covered in crushed ice onto which had been placed at one side the front end of a very large lobster – basically everything forward of the tail – the whole thing angled slightly upward so it appeared the lobster was climbing out of the ice. Behind that was the shell of the tail, and in the center were small chunks of tail meat, raw and in a pile. I have eaten all manner of raw seafood; oysters, Salmon sashimi, sushi, etc… so I really did not think much of the raw lobster tail. I took a small portion with my chopsticks and dipped it in a small bowl of soy sauce with wasabi, and the others around the table did the same. It was around the time I was eating my second bite that something unusual caught my eye, some peripheral movement on the table. I looked around and saw nothing unusual. I shrugged, continued eating the lobster and I saw some movement again – I looked up and, I swear I am not making this up, the lobster was moving! Holy $#!t – this thing was still alive. I was eating its tail and it was watching me do it! Everyone around the table has now noticed this and one of the Chinese commented in a nonchalant voice “Very fresh lobster”. No shit its fresh, it’s still breathing! I took another piece and imagined the lobster saying “Hey, put that back that’s mine. That’s my…Hey, where is my tail?”
I kept my game face on and continued with lunch. By the way, some seafood is better raw, tuna and Salmon for example, but not lobster – it is much better cooked, and perhaps, it is also better dead!
We returned to Shanghai. Sam and I had to begin packing for our trip home the following morning so we declined Larry’s dinner invitation. It was our last night in China and I still had not found “deep fried Cantonese style fish lips”, although I knew a restaurant adjacent to the hotel where I saw them on the menu last trip. We walked to the restaurant around 7:00 PM and sat down. I scanned the entire menu which thankfully had descriptions in English as well as Chinese, but no lips of any kind. Darn – I guess I will have to find them next time. We ordered some familiar dishes which were not too strange, Shanghai style pork, beef with pea pods, greens with pine nuts (really good), and dates stuffed with sweet sticky rice, and some beer. Towards the end of the meal, the waiter asked if he could have his picture taken with us – that seemed a bit strange but we agreed. Afterwards, we tried to figure out why on earth he would want a picture with us. We came up with three theories: one, he had mistaken one of us for someone famous, two, he finds fat, middle aged Americans somehow interesting, or three, he is just really strange. We could not agree on which was the most likely.
As always, this trip has been interesting and quite exhausting. I begin the trip home in the morning and I am really ready to come home. Thanks again for reading – hope you enjoyed it and if you ever come to China, avoid the lobster!
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