Category: in china

bali

lately, p. and i have been talking a lot about bali, more exactly, about spending a week or so there, in the sunny beaches.

anything to take our thoughts away from this cold weather. i don’t know who told us shanghai would be cold and dry in the winter but so far, it hasn’t been true. there’s cold allright, but there’s also a sort of silly rain falling every now and then, just to keep the levels of humidity high enough. our stomach might have already adapted itself to the food but our body is still struggling to understand this permanently wet new weather, with little aches here and there…

anyway, i digress. what i wanted to say was that today i got this card, sent to me from a taiwanese girl living in malaysia who spent her new year in bali:

so bali again, gently sneaking into our lifes. sounds like a good omen. :)

Post author By ana
Post date January 21, 2008
1 Comment on bali

foooood in china

ginger café

today was my second time on ginger café, a little cozy place tucked away on the end of a little tunnel on fuxing road.

the drinks in this place are quite something. i had a lemongrass, orange and mint tea which was delicious, and i’ve had their ginger and honey tea before – strong, but oh so good!

the menu has a wide range of dishes and a quite a few are vegetarian. my little portion of spinach and pumpkin quiche looked a bit disappointing though, but p.’s spicy chouriço pasta was well served. both tasted good.

overall, i feel this is more the kind of place that you go for mid-afternoon drinks, or to read a book while sipping on a latte. the bright walls and the decoration have a sort of “asian treasure-chest” ambience to it, quite inviting for a nice chat on a rainy sunday…

info:
Ginger
299 Fuxing Xi Lu, No. 1
near Huashan Lu
(there’s free wi-fi, but we didn’t get the chance to take our laptops out – it was quite crowded).

in china links and ideas

the king and the sparrow

i stumbled upon this story on wikipedia the other day. it sounds like one of those stories you’re told when you’re a child, the kind that you’re supposed to figure out the “lesson” in the end. i leave that bit to you.

The Four Pests campaign was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows.

The campaign was initiated by Mao Zedong, the first President of the People’s Republic of China. Sparrows were included on the list because they ate grain seeds, causing disruption to agriculture. Additionally, Mao was annoyed one morning when a sparrow stole his toast as he was eating breakfast outside. It was decided that all the peasants in China should bang pots and pans and run around to make the sparrows fly away in fear. Sparrow nests were torn down, eggs were broken, their nestling were also killed.

Initially, the campaign did improve the harvest. By April 1960 the National Academy of Science issued that sparrows ate insects more than seeds. Mao declared “forget it”, and ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows. By this time, however, it was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward and adverse weather conditions leading to the famine. From 1959 to 1961, an estimated 38 million people died of starvation.

foooood in china

moon river diner

some people have asked what do i eat everyday here in china, so i think a series of posts on “what can you eat in shanghai?” are in order. a brief disclaimer:

1. if you’d like to find out how dogs, cats or rats taste, you’ll find the series disappointing… the strangest thing i ate here were frog legs – completely by mistake (no menu translation available and the dish looked like chicken on the picture…)

2. i do eat chinese food most days, at lunch, when i have someone to help me order it. i have a few favourites which i’ll try to cover. mostly though, shanghai is such a big and international city that we don’t feel the need to stick to noodles and rice. i hope i can show you why.

3. i’m not being paid to do this.

that said, meet moon river diner!

moon river diner is a an american style restaurant with a very typical/cliché look-and-feel, hearty burgers, maccaroni and cheese, tacos and salads, apple pie, sundaes, all day breakfast (pancakes, waffles …), bottomless mugs of coffee, smoothies and lemonade! isn’t it just like in the movies?

ah, and there’s even a jukebox and a popcorn stand – popcorn is served as the appetiser for the meal.

we came around for today’s dinner, i ate the waffle breakfast (with fruit, egg and ham or maple syrup) and paulo had the mushroom burger (with hash browns and salad). here are the obligatory pics, which you can click for larger:

they were absolutely delicious and decadent. :)

nice bonuses:
* the service is cool and the waiters don’t “hover” you.
* the music is ok (nice volume and selection) as long as you don’t sit too near the stairs, where one can hear the music from upstairs as well as the one from the floor where you are :S
* they have wireless – it isn’t terribly fast, but it works.
* the place is huge but quite cozy, with a deli on the ground floor (sandwiches, bread, etc), and a sort of bar/lounge on the last floor. i heard it has a patio, but i’ve never been there.

so there you go, this is the place we go when we feel like pretending we’re in the states. :)

info:
moon river diner (jingan)
66,77 yuyao lu, near xikang lu
the new factories, building #1

in china

baby steps, people, baby steps.

times are changing. just last week, from on day to the other, china announced the law that portugal dismissed a month ago: the ban on plastic bags.
from june onwards, there will be a tax on plastic bags at supermarkets and all thiner bags will be banned. tibet regional government wants to go a little bit further and ban all kinds of plastic bags in the region.

the planned outcome?

“With the right enforcement — that’s always the tricky part — and education campaigns, the upshot in China could be huge: China Trade News estimates that the country of 1.3 billion people must refine 5 million tons, or 37 million barrels, of crude oil every year to meet demand for plastic bags, which are used at a rate of 3 billion bags every day. Three billion. If that estimate is right, that means China uses as many bags in one month as the U.S. uses in a year–or that would mean that every day each Chinese citizen uses twice the amount of bags that each American uses.”

or “To put that into perspective, it would take Iceland about five years to use that much oil, but the USA would use that much oil in less than two days.“

which is huge. australia came to the same conclusion and is studying a similar measure to the one planned for china:

“Australia is also considering a plastic bag ban, for implementation in 2009. But as Planet Ark founder Jon Dee points out, “the fact that China desires to do it in less than six months, I think is a sign that … we could do it faster than that.”

He continues: “The fact that the biggest country in the world, the biggest users of plastic bags, are moving to ban them … is extremely important, because if it can be done in China it can be done in any country in the world.”

quotes from treehugger, shanghaiist and china time blog.

Post author By ana
Post date January 15, 2008
1 Comment on baby steps, people, baby steps.