EFFLORESCERE V4

Finding Shanghai within me

Invariably, I find it hard to write about Shanghai. Most know my fervent, undying love for this city. Actually very few expats in Asia understand it or share the view of Shanghai. In the past, I have discredited such critics simply as having missed out on authentic Shanghai experiences, but since I have chosen the life of an expat, it has dawned on me that very few will share my feelings of Shanghai because Shanghai to me is the connection of who I am, where I came from and where it all seems to be heading.

After nine hours of connections and delays on Tuesday, X and I finally landed in Shanghai. It immediately is a far cry from the previous two weeks of small cities and smaller villages. X's expectations rose upon seeing toilets in the bathrooms. My ever enthusiastic itinerary drags us to the best viewing point of Shanghai before the evening lights are shut on the Bund, the sight of Shanghai that never cease to amaze me. The bund is a collection of buildings, architecture gemstones built by primarily British banks and trading firms back around the turn of 1900s. Luckily they have survived world wars, civil wars and the culture revolution. Today they glitz at night much the same way, in my imagination, as they did in the 1920s.

I have sometimes said that I like buildings more than I like people. Love for Architecture (and the slew of other interests) was born in me because of Shanghai. Although these days they are primarily commercialized institutes, the British Bund, the Villas in the French Concession, the Japanese Mansion that I tore through every weekend - my grandfather's residence, and the old stone arch alleyways, I love these buildings because if they could tell stories, it would be some of the most fascinating tales I would ever hear. There was one peak to the Shanghai's story but now the second peak is just beginning. Sitting on the rooftop bar, champagne in hand, we watched an ex opera singer, the first Shanghainese to study at London's Royal Academy of Music, getting thrown head first into the Jacuzzi. This is only a Tuesday night.

Of all the wisdoms I remember and followed from my mom, "play with older kids...because they know more" and "one can always scrape by in all aspects of life but never mistreat your stomach" probably tie me closest to Shanghai. Stories and histories, collectively of a culture and singularly of a person, make me absorbent. Standing in this city, I can see a civilization's decline and turmoil and the process, slow culturally yet at lightening speed economically, to rebuild. The scale is an entrepreneur's dream; the details are a project manager's absolute nightmare.

As for my never ending culinary pursuits (from farming vs organic to restaurant service), the constant chatter in this city defines how an entire generation of people disseminates food. Long before eating local and green was popular, I remember why my grandmother had to pick the right old hens from a specific village to make chicken soup. Having never set a foot in the first KFC in Shanghai despite it being across the street from the Japanese mansion made me always pursue higher quality, real cuisine. And of course watching our celebration meals turn from my grandmothers handmade 饺子 to ten course private dining at the newest restaurant in the city prepared me for the obsessive, blog-following, restaurant-jaunting trips in Manhattan nearly a decade later.

For this trip, X and I see a bit of old and a bit of new. 100th floor of Shanghai's current tallest building was built by Mori group of Japan, famous for the Roppongi hills development. That stands over 城隍庙 where we devour trays of the original soup dumplings in preserved Chinese Ming dynasty buildings. Soup dumplings was preceded by a fabulous dinner at Table 1, the new Jason Atherton (of London's Maze fame) restaurant at the new boutique hotel Waterhouse at South Bund run by a Singaporean hotelier. The Waterhouse is close to the private dining club in a stone alleyway owned by the afore mentioned wet opera singer. Old overlaps the new and I learn more from the stories and appreciate even better food because of Shanghai

Vastness of solitude

Language translation between Roman/Germanic languages to Chinese and the reverse is extremely difficult. Chinese, as I proceed to see more of this motherland, is a nuanced language to use. I always admire one of my best friends who despite not really having lived in china since grammar school somehow succeeds in a corporate PR job that requires daily English Chinese translation. Explaining just why Chinese has a different adjective for the word "Beautiful" when applied to a person, an object or a landscape is difficult enough this week. If I had to translate "breathtakingly beautiful," I'm sure the emotions one is trying to evoke in that phrase would be lost in my crude skill set.

Our mission today, despite 36 hours of continuous pouring rain was to make it up to one of the summits of Jade Dragon Snow mountain in Yunnan Province, the southwest most province in China before Tibet. The old town of Lijiang is in the foothills of this mountain, a town with 800 years of history but unfortunately these days has been turned into a commercial machine by the communist party. I think that should be a verse in the song called Ironic. Escaping commercialism calls for going up, 3900meters above sea level up to be precise. Through the dense fog and pouring rain, we wanted a glimpse of Yak Meadow, where the Naxi people let their Yaks graze in this high altitude.

I was born a city girl and probably can only be categorized now as a city woman. The first time I FELT nature was only 6 years ago, standing or more accurately stranded on the Big Sur in California, waiting for a toll truck to rescue me and a car full of C's belongings. There was just me, the cliff, and the Pacific Ocean. I wavered between amazement of the ocean pounding the cliff and fear of an axe murderer showing up in a pick up truck. Luckily the toll truck driver, who did look like a scream flick antagonist, spared my life. I was also hooked on seeing the edge of the world.

Nature can take many forms but how it's expressed in Chinese is what I absorbed today standing on Yak Meadow. 大自然 is the word for Nature in Chinese. 自然 itself does mean natural and nature but when describing a landscape, 大 or large always prefaces the noun. And to translate into large nature is undoubtedly silly. Rather vast nature is really what the Chinese wording infers. Vast and endless spreads through my body as it hungrily gathers oxygen into the bloodstream. I only connect to my own senses and thoughts while surrounded by the ringing of small brass bells tied to the the herds of yaks. There may have been a dozen other people there but they seem to disappear into the edge of mountain, perhaps falling into the valleys between this summit and the next. I was standing there in solitude and silence.

Genuinely pulled noodle

拉面－La Mian or pulled noodles. It's undeniably one of my favorite raw simple carbohydrate dish in China especially when hand made to fresh perfection then filled with the best tasting broth possible. I'm not so finicky about the broth itself. Old hen chicken soup, roasted beef soup or slow stewed pork soup all serve as background, the support using low aperture to bring sharpness and focus to the noodle themselves. As for the noodles, it's a magician's hands at work to turn a tubular piece of dough roughly slimmer than a soda can to long strings of noodles/spaghetti dangling free. Granted this is about the ratio of flour to egg to water to starch. But it's also about the skills of the cook (perhaps chef is an exaggeration of technical skill set) to perform the task at hand precisely and consistently bowl to bowl.  

Growing up I was never a rice person. Grains and grains of minuscule white rice really isn't for a tall girl who loves food, variety but also quantity. Rice was always for the younger cousins, forever patiently picking at the grains in their bowls. Noodles allowed for faster sustenance and not to be the last person sitting @ the dining table. On the sunday evenings in Shanghai, after a 2 hour bus muggy bus ride out of the center of the city to the darkness of Sinopec community, my mom would give up cooking the last meal of the week. We would have curry beef noodles, by twilight or under a kerosene street lamp, in the food market, right next to cages of rooster and doves. The cook would fashion the noodles as I continuously watched and wondered why the noodles didn't tangle. No one had explained that starch increases elasticity.

We had a 5 hour layover in KunMing today on the way to LiJiang. Stumbling our way through one of the 20+ second tier cities in China, I felt sad to see another city's culture, distinct from the north, eradicated and replaced by modern shopping malls full of western brands. Elegant thousand year old terracotta roofs with their own courtyards and passage systems was replaced by faux concrete bricks meant to simulate the old and cultured. I took a picture of the concrete and glass encroaching on one of the last old neighborhoods, shrinking its membrane's perimeter like an invading virus. All of this we see only by standing on the roof of the shiny new shopping center next door.

And then my heart warms up to the food, the food and art that does survive, although evolving to modern kitchens. On the next corner of the roof garden we find a noodle shop. It's a small space of 400 square feet, much of it lined by a big bar surrounding the open kitchen. One chef and 2 servers man the 40 seat space. The blackboard indicates all 5 menu choices, beef noodle soup, beef/tendon noodle soup, beef clear noodle soup, peanut soup, or three treasure noodle soup. The chef works the soda can, fat or skinny noodles. The broth gets topped by scallion and/or chili. At 28 Yuan (4 usd) per bowl, it's almost robbery for China. It's too simple of a food but this cook and his skill is not a show for us, just genuine business. I'm simply grateful that a cart in the passage way of time and food moved up into this new shiny mall.

Mission accomplished?

I'm ahead of schedule. Actually more accurately, I'm simultaneously as afraid of being now ahead as I am behind. There is three months to go until the next birthday but i have finished my 30 by 30 goal. It's not the exact shape and order i thought it would take. Then again so rarely in life does the image we build ourselves ever come to life in the exact way we had originally seen through the camera lens. This was one part of my five year planning at 25. I'm done...shockingly 15 months ahead of schedule. Probably any project manager would agree that something must have fallen behind, perhaps even abandoned, for one part to achieve success so quickly.

Looking back on the last 30 countries, I feel compelled to summarize the highlights. There are some places where I have truly felt the life in the earth while others that I have barely scratched the polish off the wood. I didn't set a criteria to visit on either end of the spectrum. The experience itself, however deep or shallow is perhaps the best testament to my own mindset and curiosity at the time of that visit. In many ways, timing directs the experience.

As for the top highlights themselves:

- Hitchhiking at 3am outside of Rome
- Stumbling into a random dance party in an alley of old town of Barcelona at 2am
- Seeing earth for the first time while stranded on the Big Sur
- Feeling the urge to walk away in the moonlight of Punta del Este
- Simplest pleasures in Sangat Island by discovering how to just BE
- Africa and only the beginning of my desire to see more of Africa
- Idyllic recovery in Lombok and deep life convos with a complete stranger
- Perpetually feeling lost yet fascinated in Tokyo with the best guide
- Boundless history of human achievement and self destruction from the Bankan of Angkor Wat
- and these two will always continue... Culinary highs in NYC and decadence in Shanghai

As for the people that have shared with me these extraordinary experiences, they span nearly 10 years of my life acquaintances. I have lived with you, studied with you and traveled with you. I have spent only a few unforgettable nights with you or shared years of amazing stories with you. I have spoken to you in my worst sober Spanish or my best managed drunk English. I have met you in a loud night club in NYC or on a storming middle island in HK. I have felt the most intense chemistry from the first time you laid eyes on me in purple. I have wanted to know every hidden corner of you as more gets revealed. In every situation, what I can't share with you is that camera lens, the cinematic version of what the director sees. We are the actors without a script and the camera will always produce the most vivid images.