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Most Pinoys would marvel at how delicious and tasty Chinese food is. Binondo, Manila, would be the best place to get cheap, but infinitely versative Chinese cuisine. Here in Shanghai? Things are a whole lot different.

However, I won’t discuss how disappointed I am with the local cuisine. Instead, here’s a surprising fact: local, Shanghainese food is greatly influenced by flavors of Muslim/Arab/Middle East populace. Even sausages have hints of curry paste in it.

So, I found myself with my usual officemates/posse enjoying some good food, now in buffet form. A recent discovery, the Punjabi restaurant over at Jianqiao Lu, near Carrefour, sports a less-than-50RMB tag eat-all-you-can feast, with drinks! Mind you, restaurant drinks usually peg soda and fruit juices at a minimum of 10RMB, drinks that would usually cost less than 3RMB at your neighborhood convenience store.

And then there was dancing, and what seems to be a joyous gathering:

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Madame Tussaud’s Shanghai opened last month, and here’s a shot of Shanghai-native Yao Ming’s wax figure, outside the exhibit. More photos when I do actually shell out the 120RMB admission fee.

Food

• Fishballs, kikiam, and its hybrids are also available here, but they are boiled, not fried. One stick costs 2 kwai (roughly, x7 for Peso conversion), and they come in plastic cups with the water they’re cooked in, which some do fancy drinking. Almost always available at a neighborhood convenience store. Oh, no kwek-kwek here.
• Siopao, the one in my neighborhood at least, cost 6 jiao (add 4 jiao, you get 1 kwai; kwai is the same as RMB), so thats about 4 pesos each. Not bad at all. The one I like has a soft, very juicy, bola-bola-like pork filling.

Public Transportation

• Buses are usually numbered to signify their routes, but some do have Chinese-characters only, which I was told bears the name of their destination. 95% of the time, the buses only stop at the designated bus stops.
• There are air-con buses (basic fare: 2 kwai), and ordinary buses (basic fare: 1 to 1.50 kwai). Orindary buses don’t have bus conductors, so you have to drop your fare at the designated money bank near the driver. Its also common to see women drivers here.
• To ease public transportation travel, its best to get a Transportation Card, which is an RFID-enabled card for bus, subway, taxi, and -well, according to the pictures on the card- even ship rides.
• If you ask me, if you don’t speak Mandarin, but would like to go around Shanghai, the subway is the way to go. Subway signs and maps do have English translations, and, when armed with a Transporation Card, the only hindrance to discovering the rest of Shanghai on your own is your sense of direction.

The HR Department of the company I work for gave everyone zongzi, or rice dumpling, which are made for the Dragonboad Festival held today.

As most Shanghainese food doesn’t really fare well to my fellow-Pinoys here in the company, only a select few of us actually dived in. I coined another name for it: suman surprise, since you’d never really know what’s in ‘em, or we weren’t told how to. I had the rather sweet monggo-filled one first, which works. I had another two, meat-filled this time, and I didn’t really bother going past a third bite.

It doesn’t help that I read this over at ShanghaiDaily today:

ALMOST 10 percent of zongzi, a traditional sweet eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival, has failed a bacteria test by the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration. The administration checked 90 zongzi ahead of today’s festival and 11 failed, it said yesterday [source]

Oh, what I’d give for some good ol’ Antipolo suman.

So, after reading my stats, specifically those of search engine results, I found out someone actually wrote about my long-lost, fave-when-I-was-little, much-craved for seafood, the Tatampal (I posted a plea for it before). Oh why am I so far away from you know? :(

Arrived a little before 9PM on Thursday, and the best pasalubong I could bring home was a massive headache. Well, ok, I brought some cheap foodstuff home for a little over 50 kwai to disperse.

My first pinoy meal came in the guise of my fave Jollibee combo: the chickenjoy and spag meal + extra rice. This was taken 20 hours short of my last meal -the shrimp-and-something plane edibles- since I expected to be taken to another physical exam yesterday. Wrong mistake.

As for now, I’d prefer to stay in dont-spend-anything mode, since RMB seems to be an unknown currency for money exchange in the local banks, even HSBC. Any readers (assuming anyone would actively read my crap) who can offer suggestions over this dilemma?

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My pre-breakfast meal (?) before going back to Manila. I was finally able to tell my ShangDong Style Mixed Grain Pancake suki my ideal blend of spices: some chili, less of the usual strong green herb (wansoy?). The purchase and food customization was all done via common-sense sign language.

Lastly, head on over to my Flickr account for more Shanghai photos.

The weekend felt short, and concluded with a sad note that the two girls in the apartment will be leaving, to make room for the all-male abode. There wasn’t any semblance of the standard three-square-meals at all, I think I still have a bellyful of junk (mixed with Suntory-with-Pepsi on Saturday). The waking hours was mainly spent on finishing -unsuccessfully- the first two seasons of Nip/Tuck, which I’d always see neatly in the bangketa DVDhan’s; it was the only sensible thing a housemate brought with her to kill time with, though, yes, I’d rather have Six Feet Under or Arrested Development. Oh, there was also a nobody-cares-but-me screening of Memento (which I’ve seen, but has gone bland on this second view) and My Summer of Love (young lesbo love story; nice photography, but doesn’t have enough meat on it for the casual viewer).

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How my Saturday morning sustenance was made:

More Shanghai food photos here.