I was not disappointed. The meal is family style and the first things on my plates were: some sort of fried/crunchy jelly fish tentacles, pigs hoof, pigs tail, (there was pigs ear but since I gave that as a treat to my dog it wasn't something I wanted to experience), dumplings that had soup in them (you have to bite a small hole in the bottom, drink the soup, then eat the rest of the dumpling), and a ton of other food I can't remember. I really wish I could say that I took time to really savor the meal put before me but after 12+ hours on a plane and the debacle at the airport I could only appreciate the food so much and since the adrenaline of being in shanghai had worn of, the added benefit of food quickly made me sleepy. After dinner I crashed.
The next morning we were headed to our company headquarters so we got to see a bit of the city as we drove there. I should also probably take some time to mention that I was in Shanghai not only with my normal coworkers but a lot of people that I had previously only knew through email and phone. Suddenly I went from being a minority in a diverse department to even more inundated with culture. Not only was I in China, I was in China with people from China, Hong Kong (do NOT make the mistake of calling them Chinese... lucky someone made that mistake before I did), Italy, Spain, Pakistan, India, Kenya, Honduras, England, Germany, Singapore, and I am sure other places as well. Not only was I getting a taste of China I was getting a taste of the world cultures coming together. At the time I didn't realize it but that was an amazing gift and while I can't say that being with all those people gave me a greater understanding of their culture, I can happily say that somehow we crossed all cultural borders and had a great time just being in China.
Ok back to the interesting stuff
The day was, as any work day might be, informative yet boring. Especially when a city you have never explored is waiting outside of those walls. We were on our own for dinner that night so our lovely coworkers from Shanghai took us to a dumpling restaurant that we had been hearing rave reviews about. Now I like dumplings as much as the next person but I believe that Jesus himself is a cook at that restaurant. Located in a shopping mall (yup yet another one in a shopping mall) they had the most fantastic steamed dumplings. Perfect temperature, the tastes of each layer in the dumpling perfectly complimenting each other (My mouth is watering just thinking about it). I also tried to expand my horizons with new food such as Ox neck soup (really good if you avoid actually eating the neck part), Chinese rice win (horrible awful cough syrup tasting stuff), and some strange beef tofu wrap thing I am still not sure what it was.
The best of all though was the dessert. For dessert there was this steamed dumpling filled with purple sweet potato. Since it is family style again they brought out 10 for the 8 people at the table. Everybody grabbed one and I am only slightly ashamed to say that since I was one of the last ones to get my dumpling from the steamed bamboo thingy, it was right in front of me and well... I ate the other two. Someone saw me really enjoying these dumplings and let the whole table know. The entire table stared at me while I tried to swallow the last dumpling. I hadn't even thought about how rude it was, just how good those dumplings tasted. Luckily almost all at once they started cracking up (probably because I realized what I had done and my eyes got really big). I am sorry that I ate more than my fair share but since I am not going back to shanghai sometime soon I am just going to revel in the awesomeness of those dessert dumplings.
Eating a Steamed shrimp and soup dumpling
My first bite of the infamous dessert dumpling
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