Shanghai

Fat baby and friendly dad in antique town Shanghai. That area is bad, but the streets nearby it are really cool. If you just walk east -- or probably in any direction (actually west was good, too) -- there are tons of "real" streets, with real neighborhoods. We ended up walking down into this bird/animal and plant market, where they sold fighting crickets, and birds in 19th century wooden cages like an old Garcia Marquez setting, and men and women both played poker, and it seemed like probably nobody ever left. Then we hit a street with lots of interesting but not quite appetizing food - except for the man who ran the shop selling fruits and fruit juices. Good business model. Fruits out front - fresh - and in the back, get the fruits blended up on the cheap. Then we saw a huge park, Shanghai street basketball, then the tourist area, then an amazing cheap eating area near that. Then we went home.




The second picture is a gross dish. A Shanghai specialty, I have been led to believe. I don't know. A thick orange goo of oil with fried tofu skins containing soft delicious (well, not gross) tofu. But we couldn't eat it. We could drink the 3 yuan Suntory beers (big bottles), which came to like 50 cents or less. But the place was gross. And the longer we stayed the more it seemed like a bad idea to be there. Some young gangsters, like our age, sat in the back. The waitress hated us. One of them.