SHANGHAI : A Dozen Late-Night Meals at the Cost of One (Day 1)

Shanghai for (almost) a month.

Prices mentioned are in Renminbi (currency of the PRC).
As of summer 2006, 1CDN = 7 RMB

Thirteen others and I were nominated to go on this exchange program for our results in the Mandarin proficiency exam (known as HSK). Although it was intended to be an educational trip, it turned out to be more of a month-long field trip to Shanghai and its vicinity.

Anyhow, most of us have only met once before in Vancouver and so it took a little time before we found each other at Pudong Airport (some 40 km east of Shanghai's center). I even had to find a member of our group holding a makeshift sign up while walking around the arrival concourse, which had been a little crowded for an international airport of this scale. While waiting, we caught our first glimpse of Chinglish...

Airport "Ba-Shi"

...and thank-you for the English sign!

After locating the two representative from Fudan University who were picking us up from the airport, and after settling down at the lodgings that we were staying at Yangpu District, we scrounged around for dinner. We came upon a restaurant just outside the gates of our student housing complex that offered various types of dishes (e.g. fried noodles, fried rice, among other choices) at a unbelievably low price. I ended up going with a Yangzhou Fried Rice (with green beans, ham, and shrimp). We all did take-out on our orders and when we opened them up from the plastic bag, we found the rice itself served inside a plastic bag only to be held in shape by a styrofoam bowl. We could not figure out at that moment why the earth was not placed right in the bowl itself (but we shall discover what goes on behind the scenes later on...) and wondered about its safety. This bowl of fried rice (below) had only cost me a mere four renmenbi. That's not even 75 cents Canadian for a full meal! But it didn't matter to us then since we all felt like hungry ghosts.

My bowl of Yangzhou Fried Rice at 4 RMB (0.75 CDN)