Oh yes, I am a very good tourist, I visit local restaurants.

[cerealjoe]

Now it's time for the story of the epic restaurant visit. On the first day in Shanghai, four of us wandered into town and after a while we decided we needed food. We did what proper tourists do, we went into some side streets and picked a place that looked half-way clean and hoped for the best. First good thing was that they had some English on their menu. It would have helped if there were also explanations of what was in the dishes because just reading the names sometimes left us baffled. There were rices from about fifteen different provinces or towns or whatever but they didn't tell us what was inside. The waiters also did not exactly speak English... so we pointed at the menu, raised one finger to indicate we want one of those and hoped for the best. We also ordered drinks. Two cokes and two beers. We had to ask for the drinks five or six times once all the food arrived and we called it "soft drink roulette". I got a 7-up and the other person who ordered a coke got a Sprite... from what we gathered they were out of coke. But it could have just been our way of saying "cokecola" which wasn't good, who knows. In any case we didn't attempt to order any "Spruce" (Sprite?) or "Fantasy" (Fanta?). The food was ok. It was decent enough, and certainly getting a full plate of rice and filling for 20 or 30 yuan is good enough. As good tourists who just arrived in China, one of us took our a guide book and read out to everyone how does one hold chopsticks. We're serious folk like that, we don't try to hold them without proper education! The communication with the waiters was another story. There was one girl, the one who took our orders, who was courageous enough to attempt to talk to us. The others just kind of ignored us when we tried to get their attention and made a five mile detour to avoid our table. They did enjoy our attempts at getting understood though, it was the first time we were faced with the "giggle" syndrome. They would start giggling the moment one of us said something. We met this giggle syndrome multiple times afterwards so I think it must be quite common! At the end of the meal we did get a proper "bye-bye" repeated fifteen times from one of the waiters. So yes, when written down the story doesn't seem all that epic, it's one of those things you have to live to fully understand. The giggling, the soft-drink roulette, the enthusiastic bye-bye... that's what makes a person a proper tourist. It reminded me of that time in L'viv when I witnessed some tourists trying to ask for some toasted bread and trying to understand if the "toast" mentioned on the menu was a French toast kind of thing or just plain toasted bread. That same night we visited the restaurant I noticed that there are many stores related to crocodiles along the shopping streets. I suppose they're mainly meant to resemble the Lacoste logo and they all have different names. The name that I liked the most was "Cliocoddle".

I do hope the name was chosen because of the way it makes fun of Chinglish in the second degree. It's like people making fun of themselves in a way and that's rather rare... and I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to the namers of the store and I still continue to believe they are extremely witty! And now two photos of food from this restaurant we went to close to the FinChi headquarters. The whole area is still in Shanghai I believe but it's basically offices for miles and miles.

I believe this was fish. It was ridiculously good. You can see how good we were with our chopsticks by then... only one piece fell during the transportation from the main dish to our plates! This must have been pork. It looks like pork, right? I quite liked the flower but no one knew if it was edible or not.