Subway Restaurant

I was out walking and I just thought this may be on interest to some, I do like going to Subway at home but have yet to try it here.

Fish for lunch

Friday Jason drove me to class due to a change in my normal schedule. Since I only had one class and the campus is an hour drive away Jason was going to wait for me and then drive me home. I suggested to him that if he wanted, he could come and sit in the class and listen. He is learning English(self taught) and he was intrigued with this idea, he decided he would sit in. After class I took Jason to lunch in at the school cafeteria. This is a really inexpensive place, you can eat a big lunch for about one dollar.

As we sat down I told Jason that I wanted to have some fish. Fried and spicy, there is no word for spicy in my phone dictionary, so I come up with hot, but that could be confused with a hot meal vs a cold meal. (Later on the drive home I decided that I should use the word sichun - this is a famous place in china known for it's hot and spicy food, we shall see how that works next time.)
Here is what I got for lunch. Looks good right? Nice hot peppers, white fish and some veg in a nice broth.......or is that broth? Goodness it was a big bowl of oil! Wow! I used the ladle to fish out the fish...hee hee... and vegetables, drained off the oil on top of my rice and then ate it. It was very good once the oil was drained off. I didn't eat the rice as it was just soaked in oil and completely unappetizing.

This bowl of oil fish was enough for 3 or 4 people, the meal included endless cups of tea and 4 small slices of watermelon, cost for this feast? 25 yuan or $ 3.66.

Purple Yams

Yesterday on my way home from the university I made a quick stop at the grocery store, it's on my metro line that I take home.

I as I was walking to the metro there was a guy with a metal stove baking up some sweet potatoes, they smelt yummy. I decided to grab a couple of those while I was shopping. Seems I bought something else. It was quite interesting.

Purple yams or Ube yams - normally from Japan, but these I am sure were from China, I can tell by the cost. 3 yuan for 2 yams - 30 cents, US.

I ended up making mashed yams, like sweet potato or regular mashed potato.

The yam was very starchy so the texture was a bit dry. But boy was it purple!!

The washed yam.
The peeled yam.
The steamed yam.
Now in the baking dish for a quick bake with some pesto and parm cheese on top.
The final product.

First Day

Well it was good, not great, but that is a reflection on the teacher. It will be great! There were 2 classes today the first at 8a- 9:40a and the second 9:55a - 11:35a, both comprised of Post Graduates. Their English was not great, but it was good to passable to barely there.

They would like to learn about American Culture and hear about Obama and the American Economy. One gal asked me about the CNN / China fiasco. Huh? Turns out (I guess you probably know this) one of the newscasters... Anderson Cooper???.... insulted China and then the CEO of CNN made an apology but according to the student is wasn't a good apology because....well Ididn't understand her and quite frankly she had so much trouble getting this part of the story out that I didn't pursue the whys. I'll look it up later on the internet.

They are shy but when asked they are happy to stand up and speak, so it's a matter of me just making sure I ask everyone to speak. Not to much hand raising.

They would like to have some debates and also learn about some classical literature. I think I will stick to poems and perhaps short stories. Anyone have some recommendations?

Orientation Day at Donghua University

Holy Cow! Here's what I have learned so far:

1. Every teacher I have spoken to have said that the students are not motivated and are very lazy.
2. There is no text or syllabus for the Post Graduate and the General English conversation course.
3. There is a text book for the Sophomore English majors. I was told they don't like the text and need to be motivated to use it and even buy it.
4. I will be teaching Post graduate, General English, and Sophomores
5. There are no support services. i.e. photocopying......well what else might I need?
6. You do not get the list of students that will be in your class until week 3 as the students have the opportunity to drop the class without penalty. Attendance is mandatory.
7. I have 8 classes with a total of (approx) 280 students. General English has 50 students each and there are two of those classes that I will teach, I am told, the rest of the classes are comprised of about 30 students each.
8. If you wish to use handouts you ask your class (this will have to be done by me 8x) for a volunteer to help me. Then you give them the handouts you want copied, he/she collects the money from the students and then the volunteer goes to the photocopy shop,which is off campus , like a Staples I guess, makes the copies and hands them out the next class. I still am unclear as to the cost. I am told 1 penny per page then I was told 7 pennies then I was told 10 pennies.....10 pennies = 1 yuan (.15 cents US).
9. There are 15 minutes between classes and I have to sprint to get to the other side of the campus to get to my other class as they are not near each other, figures.
10. The bathrooms do not have toilets but are porcelain holes in the floor (have we discussed bathroom facilities here in China?), the handicap stall has the equipment I am familiar with - toilet bowl. Therefore, as I do not speak Chinese, I will consider myself handicapped and utilize this stall. However, there will be a ban on drinking water, tea, and the occasional shot of whiskey during teaching hours - non negotiable. (Kidding about the whiskey, just wanted to see if you were paying attention.)

Here is the English Departments' office - we share.
Here is one of the other teachers in the English department, by the name of Ondi. He was born in Hong Kong and lived in Canada for about 10 years, he is quite gay, and I don't mean happy. Although I hope he is happy.
Here is a picture from the 5th floor of the English Departments offices, I am standing on an out door balcony where I plan on taking my lunches and enjoy this view. The spider like building is the library and do you see the pretty lake next to it. This is going to be my favorite spot.
I will spending the rest of the weekend working on lesson plans.

Valentines Day

Tony and I went out to a wonderful restaurant called 100 Century Avenue at the top (ok the 91st floor, the top is 103 floors, I think) of the Shanghai World Financial Building for Vday with our friends Kathi and Todd Walton. Dinner was fabulous and the restaurant beautiful.

Kung Fu Noodles

Jason our driver wanted to take us out to dinner and we agreed. I am uncomfortable with this because I don't want him to pay for our dinner, his monthly salary is 2,500 RMB = $367.64, so you can see why I don't want him to pay. Since it would be insulting to say no we agreed and in return we will invite him to dinner next month(?) down the road and pay. He does not like western food so we will take him to a fancy Chinese restaurant near our apartment building.

Dinner was at Seabed ScoopUp Restaurant, yes that's the name! It is the newest hot pot restaurant in Shanghai, so said Jason. Our date was made for Friday night (Feb 13), Jason would pick me up at 5:00p and then we would get Tony at work, from there off to the restaurant.

This is a very big restaurant, looks like it could seat over 200 people. Hotpot is a great concept, it's soup fondue, much healthier then the cheese variety. You sit at a table that is designed to hold a pot in the center of the table, the center has an electric hot plate to keep the soup hot, or boiling as you will see. Then you order items to put in the soup to cook and then fish out and eat, at the end you can drink the nicely flavored soup....if you're still hungry. When we sat down we were give black bean sour milk, all you can drink we were told, included in the price. Yes sour milk, the color was grey and it was pretty awful, Jason said that maybe I would like it sweet? So he offered me some sugar, nope didn't like it sweet either - it was sour milk for heavens sake, and no it was not a yogurt drink. Tony immediately ordered 2 cold beers, thank goodness he knows how to say that in Chinese.The process is as follows, first you select your broth, spicy, plain or both, then chicken, beef, seafood, or tofu. The hot soup pot is brought to the table and set on the hot plate. You then order the items you would like to eat/cook in the soup. Tony and I are big fans of the mushrooms, any variety and vegetable, any kind. We can skip the meats and seafood.



Jason did the ordering (with some consultation with Tony) and he ordered beef, shrimp, mushrooms, and green lettuce - they eat that like cabbage, it tastes very nice cooked in the soup.

And then the Kong Fu noodles, Jason was so tickled to order these. The reason, it's a real show. The noodle boy comes to your table, takes a small ball of noodle dough and proceeds to put on a show, stretching and flinging the dough in a kung fu fashion, more like a dance then actual kung fu moves.The restaurant provides you with aprons and arm covering so that you don't dirty yourself. Also provided - free - manicure and shoe shine. Apparently there is usually a wait to get a table so they want to make sure you are happy and will stay around.
And as we left the restaurant there was this guy with a Monkey!

A street food cooking lesson.

Walking around today on one of the five streets that are dedicated to Chinese Fast food a.k.a. street food, I was allowed to watch and take pictures of this gentlemen making a type of fried bun. Cost of bun 2 RMB = . 30 cents. He works rather quickly and sells them just as fast.

He starts with smooshing the dough out into long strips, and then rolling them out a bit.He then smears some sort of lard or fat onto the dough.A press of what either could be ground pork, beef or lamb and a handful of scallions are put on top.He rolls them up and then they are fried. You can see the finished product in the back of the picture.Here is his wife or girlfriend or daughter - hard to tell. She was so interested in the fact that I was so interested in the process that she came over to look over my shoulder to see what kind of pictures I was taking.So I waved my arms around a bit to indicated that I wanted to take her picture too. She was so pleased that she jumped into doing HER job so I could take of picture of her working. This is her smiling, really! And she is just pretending to serve up some soup.I did buy one, you know to pay for my photo frolic. I broke it open and then took a wee bite.
No flavor really, hard crisp dough, not flaky, and then I threw it out, I did not bite into the meat....and I was worried about the fat, it all could have been rancid or loaded with a bacteria that would have killed my tummy. Anyway I was taking pictures of the process, which I thought was interesting. I thought the actual bun was unappetizing looking to begin with.

I have just learned that in a few months or sooner this street is being torn down as well as a number of other blocks in the neighborhood, this street I was told will not reappear anywhere else, which I do not believe, I mean what is this family going to do? I think: What are all these business going to do? Where will they go? Here are a few pictures of the street food market. It's pretty gross and dirty and I would never eat here but it is really a part of the Chinese life - oh and then smell sometimes is horrendous. I can only imagine in the summer how rancid it gets.

Tallest building in Shanghai from 1934 - 1983

And built by a Hungarian architect by the name of László Hudec, is how the story is told here. He was born in 1893 in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied architecture at Budapest University from 1911 to 1914. When the first world war began he enlisted, but was captured by the Russian Army in 1916 and was sent to a prison camp in Siberia. While being transferred, he jumped from a train near the Chinese border and made his way to Shanghai, where he joined the American architectural office R.A. Curry. In 1925 he left to start his own firm, and was responsible for at least 37 buildings up to 1941.

The Chinese don't know from Hungary to Slovaki then or now, Hungary is close enough for them.

The Park Hotel, finally we get to the building, was build in 1934 and remained the tallest building in Shanghai until 1983. Something which is hard to fathom as there are so many new tall building here now.

Here's a little Wikipedia: Shanghai's first building boom occurred in the 1920s and 30s, during the city's heyday as an multinational center of business and finance.^[4] After the Communist takeover in 1949 the city's development was stifled, punished for its earlier capitalist excesses.^[6] After economic reforms in 1991, the city is undergoing its second construction boom to fulfill its desire to regain its status as an important global financial center.<sup>[7]

1991 - can you believe it? It's why this country is so behind and not just in the development and construction of it's city. Until 1979 the Chinese had never been able to travel outside their country and it was difficult for a tourist to come and visit. So weird for me to be experiencing a culture that has been so suppressed, hard to wrap my head around sometimes.</sup>

My Visit to Donghua University - Songjiang campus

Today my pal Kate Hayes and I had the driver take us to Donghua University, Songjiang campus. WOW, what a large campus. It is closed until Feb. 20, not a soul was around but it was still neat to explore. My boss, Mr. Pang misunderstood and thought we were to meet at the Shanghai Campus and then go together to Songjinag, oh well these things are bound to happen - language barrier and all. We managed quite well with the driver. Here are some pictures, it was very cold and dreary today so the pictures aren't great but at least you'll have a taste.

Front entrance.Neat semi circular building located in the middle of the campus.Student Dorms














Stadium

Sports Complex
Different academic buildings

















































Strange buildings shaped as pyramids, not located on campus, is nearby, will explore at later date.