Adventures in Shanghai 2008 - Part 3

Warning: for those with a serious case of ADD/ADHD or are afraid of being bombarded with a barrage of photos, this post is not for you. :P

Day 3 - Xiao Long Baos, here i come!

We've been in Shanghai for 2 days and we still have not eaten any good xiao long baos. Obviously we were displeased with the 'no xiao long bao' situation.

We vowed to ourselves that we'll go get the best xiao long bao the next day, when we visit Yu Yuan Garden.

Why, it's been boasted that if you wanna eat the best xiao long bao, go to "Cheng Huang Miao" (this temple in Yu Yuan).

So here I am, outside the pedestrian entrance to Yu Yuan Bazaar. Armed with a greedy stomach and lotsa cash, I was ready to eat, shop and be merry.

Blast from the past

It's nice to be surrounded by ancient oriental structures. I felt like a "xiao gu niang" from those historical chinese drama series.

Yu Yuan Bazaar is huge.

We were pretty lost actually, I thought the xiao long bao place would be easy to find. But apparently not.

I only knew the name of the xiao long bao place in Cantonese. I'd no idea if I translated it correctly when I asked for direction to the place.

We were thoroughly distracted from our mission of looking for food as we were walking along the street. There were so many things to see. Just too many...

Ancient Chinese Mcker's.

As we entered into Yu Yuan square...

The place was filled with ppl..both locals and tourists!

As we were walking, we kept getting harassed by locals asking us to follow them to check out their (fake) bags.

I can't recall how many times i refused already.

Still searching for my xiao long bao place, this place is bloody huge la.

Not to mention, it was tough to understand the locals' accent. I had to really ask a couple of times before i could understand the directions they were giving.

Ancient story telling via puppet play.

A couple of friends have warned me before.
"There are lots of places in Yu Yuan selling xiao long bao, don't be fooled ya. Only go to the one that's on the top floor. It's called Nanxiang".

So we by passed all the other eateries, in the quest for the perfect xiao long bao.

We reckon we'd check out the other stalls for some other snacks later.




Would you hang out at Starbucks? I wouldn't.

I'd planned to immerse myself in as many Chinese cafes and restaurants as I could.





Oh goody, directional signages!! Finally we're heading in the right direction.





This is what most ppl told me, "Keep going, you'll see a place where there's a long long queue. That's the place".

Okie, i see a crowd here. Should be the one..

Gosh. The queue is really super long.

And we made a mistake.

You see, Sue-Ann asked me to stay in line while she checked out if this is the queue for the Nanxiang place. She came back saying, "Yups, this is the queue, why don't you queue first while we walk around. And then we'll swap".

30 mins have passed, and I was growing more and more suspicious. As I was very far in line, and I couldn't leave my line to check out what was in the front, I continued queuing. All the while, I suspected something was wrong.

You see, I saw ppl going upstairs without having to queue. Padahal, we were supposed to be eating on the first floor or so.

I had a terrible suspicion that Sue-Ann might have led me to the tapau (take away) line cos I saw many ppl eating their tapau-ed xiao long baos.

Also, i was really annoyed cos Shanghainese really love to cut queue. Many times, ppl were trying to get in front of me.

Also, the old fart behind me kept pushing to the front, rubbing my ass in the process. I didn't know if it was intentional or not. Darn!

If you're queuing at the tapau line, you'll get to see the making of this famous Shanghainese delicacy.

Apparently the tapau ones have only 1 flavour - pork. This is the most basic and also the cheapest. It costs 1 yuan for 1. A basket costs 12 yuan.

The ones upstairs where you get to dine-in is more upmarket. A basket of six costs at least 25 yuan, depending on the flavour.

Took this as i was queuing up. Saw many ppl eating their take aways here.

When the gals finally returned, we headed upstairs to dine-in. Again, we had to wait for a table.

Sigh, i was so hungry i could eat a horse by then.

We ordered a big soup bao each - 22yuan for one. The scallop and crab soup was so so sweet.

Caution: Hot! Suck slowly.

I liked the prawn flavoured xiao long bao. The gals liked the mushroom ones, but I beg to differ. I reckon the smell of mushroom was kinda overwhelming. Nonetheless, the xiao long baos were so damn juicy. The skin was delicate and soft.

(Damn, i have major craving for xiao long bao now).

We were sharing table with a couple of Chinese from Guang Xi. It was nice to hear someone speak a language/dialect I'm familiar with. The 3 of them were speaking in Cantonese as the 3 of us were busy camwhoring.

They started speaking to me and were surprised when I answered in Cantonese. They shared about their trip here to Shanghai and Hangzhou and we exchanged notes.

These nice guys offered us their many baskets of xiao long baos (all super premium ones, 40 yuan per basket - hairy crab flavour). Among the 3 of them, they ordered like 6 soup baos, and about 8 baskets of xiao long baos.

We were curious about the tapau Nanxiang xiao long baos. Would the cheaper version be any good too?

So the plan was to return the next day and try the tapau ones.

A glimpse of the beautiful Yu Yuan..

A happy-smiley-super contented Carrie after filling her stomach with her fave food.

Chinese work of art. Ironically they are mostly foreigners' faces.

Carving portraits on stones

Sue-Ann loves miniature figurines. She was ecstatic when she found this stall which sells cute chinese figurines. And they're all painstakingly hand made.

A set of "Fu Lu Shou". I think they're only as huge as a thumb.

Chinese Engrish

Tell me if you can understand this..

Line 1: "Entry into YuYuan Eating the world wide delicious food"

Line 2: "Here we have Chinese cakes preparing for foreigners Foreign cakes providing for Chinese ppl And Shanghainese can taste nationwide cakes"

Amazing huh?

On the sidewalk, on our way to the main road.

I was told that Chinese love their back alleys. This is why their back alleys are always wider.

Pretty mural

Shopping time

We met up with a blog friend of mine, Aigie, whom I've been communicating for a while but have not met in person.

I requested for Aigie and her friend Nicole to bring us to Qi Pu Lu, as i heard that this place has lots of nice clothings, at wholesale prices.

What a wrong choice indeed. The entire place reminded us of Sungei Wang - only worse!

As soon as we arrived, we were harrassed by thugs, who persistently bugged us to go to the shop and see their bags. We went to view out of politeness, hoping that they'd leave us alone after that. However, they then asked us to go check out their clothing stores. Gosh, we were so fed up with having ppl following us our entire journey.

Left Qi Pu Lu after a short while and headed to the Pearl Market.

In Aigie's own words, "I can go crazy here...like kwai seong san (kena possessed)".

I agree. We were all possessed.

I kept buying pearls like nobody's business. I was actually stall hopping. Gosh, it was as if I lived in pearls or something.

Many of the pearls I've chosen are of this colour. Sweet!

At the end of the day, my eyes were weary from trying to choose from amongst the gazillion pearls to look for matching colour/shape/size.

Aigie and I.

Though possessed, we both vowed that this would be the last stall we're checking out.

Coincidentally, this is also the stall where I couldnt stop buying from. I kept adding on items to my already full hands.

Christine choosing her pearls.

These are only some of the stuff I bought from this particular stall. Gosh, Aigie was right when she says she normally spends like 1k here.

I already ditched the necklace i was wearing to don on this lovely strand of pearl necklace.

Aigie made reservation at 小南国, which is pretty near the Pearl Market. Initially she wanted to bring us for Sichuan food but we were all having sore throat, so we requested for local Shanghainese cuisine instead.

The exterior of 小南国 reminded me of an exclusive club house. The interior was pretty impressive too.

Shanghainese cold dishes

Shepherd's purse in bean curd sheet roll

Pumpkin with lily bud glazed with honey.

A superb dish for summer.

Wine-marinated croacker fish.

We were told that Shanghainese love this fish. It's a must have for cold dish.

Spring bamboo shoot - which kinda reminds me of sushi.

The mains

Sichuan stir fried chilli chicken

Grandma's meat pot.

Pot stewed mushroom in abalone sauce

Vegetables with bean curd sheet

Claypot bean curd with crab meat

Christine, Sue-Ann, me.
Nicole, Aigie.

We definitely over-ordered la.

For desserts we had:

1) glutinous rice tong sui with glutinous rice ball. I wasn't accustomed to the taste of this tong sui as there's rice wine in the soup.

2) pumpkin cakes.

I would have taken 2 if i wasn't that full. I love it!

Dinner was most amazing, I'm so missing those dishes right now. Thanks to Aigie and Nicole for the fantastic recommendation!



After dinner

As it was a Sunday night, and both Nicole and Aigie had to work the next day, they left not long after dinner.

The 3 of us headed to Xin Tian Di - the equivalent to our Bangsar. Maybe even better. :P

Xin Tian Di is Shanghai's hot new entertaining district. Here is where you find a celebration of fine food, nightlife and vast display of flashy consumer goods.

It is the place to people watch. The place to be seen.

Naturally, this is also the place where lotsa angmohs hang out. Which inevitably means you'll also see lotsa sarong-party girls lurking around or dangling themselves to the angmohs.

It was definitely a very fruitful day for us.

Stay tuned for Day 4. :)