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Inside and Outside, East Meets West
in Shanghai
SHANGHAI - The last time I saw Shanghai it was 1982,
the populace wore the obligatory blue Mao jackets and
cotton shoes, we ate as ''special guests'' in cavernous
greasy-spoon restaurant dining rooms reserved for foreigners,
and everyone rode bicycles. It was as if the city had
been closed for repairs.
Today, the dress is more likely to be Armani and John
Lobb, the dining halls are named Haagen-Dazs, Baskin-Robbins
and KFC, and the mode of transport is a VW Golf.
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The city is as haze-choked as ever, and you can wander
down the city's main drag, Nanjing Road, from the Peace
Hotel and watch as whole blocks of China's Fifth Avenue
are torn down, not with a wrecking ball but with bare
hands and hammers by men in wicker hard hats.
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Food Imitates Life
Food mimics cultural, political and financial trends.
And so it comes as no surprise to see a reawakened Shanghai
sporting the familiar golden arches, Kentucky colonel,
pizzerias, waiters on roller skates, German microbreweries
and shopping-mall food courts with U.S. beef, alongside
the hundreds of street vendors offering deliciously
fresh traditional snacks for eating with your hands.
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If ever there was an East-meets-West cuisine culture,
this is it. As Shanghai works to compete with Hong Kong
and Singapore for the Asian capital of the next century,
it is inevitable that modern, Western-style restaurants
will make inroads, as the city relearns its past and
invents the future.
One of the first East-West restaurants is fittingly
named Park 97, the creation of a group of Australians
who already have no less than seven Hong Kong establishments,
all trendy and designed to appeal to the young, beautiful
and well-heeled, more interested in seeing and being
seen than in gastronomy.
Park 97 is nestled in a rare stretch of Shanghai greenery
at the edge of Fuxing Park near the city's ever-popular
French quarter, where the character-filled, two-story
buildings are being torn down at a frighteningly rapid
pace, to be replaced with the ever-expanding overhead
expressway and inevitable high-rises.
Decorated in an understated Art Deco style, this seven-day-a-week
restaurant caters to local Shanghai residents as well
as the mass of transient businessmen and women aiming
to set up business in the city. The menu is designed
to please its lean, health-conscious clientele, with
a gentrified, East-West mix of sushi, asparagus in balsamic-vinegar
dressing, breast of chicken with saffron couscous and
vegetarian-oriented casserole with mixed grains and
beans.
What we did not witness, but heard much about, was
China's favorite new drink. A passion for cognac has
been replaced by a wine obsession. But not just red
wine alone. Wine has become the Chinese toasting drink,
drunk bottoms up, mixing red wine with Sprite and white
wine with Coke.
But I was in Shanghai to sample the people's fare,
so one raw, misty, drab-gray Sunday in December we strolled
with masses of Chinese along the two-kilometer walkway
that parallels the Huangpu River, stopping now and then
for a sidewalk snack. The most popular remains a steaming,
conical mass of rice steamed in lotus leaf. Just tear
the leaf back and bite into the compact rice, eating
it all like an ice cream cone. The piping-hot package
of glutinous rice, chicken, dried shrimp and black mushrooms
will warm you all the way through.
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EQUALLY delicious, and found every few blocks throughout
Shanghai, are the pan-fried buns - known as pot stickers
- steamed dumplings filled with Chinese black mushrooms
and fatty ground pork, finely chopped scallions and
fresh leaves of coriander. The best are steam-cooked,
then bottom-fried to a crisp, often at curbside over
a makeshift brazier. Delicious on a cold winter's day,
they're designed for dipping into doses of soy, wine
and ginger.
For indoor dining, one could hardly do better than
the grand and popular Mei Long Zhen. With its grand,
jade-green pagoda-style entrance, the restaurant was
established in 1938 by a group of filmmakers, actors,
playwrights and authors and has long been one of the
city's premier dining establishments.
Today the enormous restaurant boasts seven dining halls,
all traditionally decorated with painted wall scrolls,
lanterns and frescoes and reliefs. Television monitors
are a modern addition: In one of the main-floor dining
halls, monitors hung in each corner of the room while
the Chinese equivalent of MTV treated us to a series
of young, bashful, awkward Chinese girls singing and
dancing their hearts out.
The place was bustling. At one table, a family of 10
celebrated a girl's eighth birthday, complete with candles
and a baroquely decorated cake that twirled atop the
lazy Susan. At another, a young Shanghai couple sat
devouring their lunch, accompanied by Coke in the can.
Our meal was truly magnificent - a refined Shanghai
version of Sichuan cuisine, not nearly as spicy as that
you'll find in the capital of Chengdu. The food is prepared
with superb local ingredients and subtle seasoning.
Service follows suit, with efficiency and attentiveness.
Start with the steaming hot pork and crab dumplings,
ethereal dim sum delicacies that one must learn to eat
with dexterity and patience. Hold the little pillow
between two chopsticks, deftly sucking out the vermilion
juice that's colored by sweet crab roe.
For a soothing balance of texture and elegance, try
the broth-like mixture of buttery, sliced bean curd
and crab meat punctuated by the lively addition of fresh
ginger and chives. As suggested by our waiter, we drizzled
it all with a touch of pungent Chinese black vinegar,
adding a perfect acid tone.
But the finest dish of the day was the ''dancing''
crab - sautéed crab in pepper sauce, one of the
most satisfying and exciting Chinese dishes I have ever
had. The raw crab was cracked with a cleaver to allow
the seasoning to penetrate the meat, then stir-fried
in a mix of rock salt, coarsely ground black pepper,
garlic and chives, and showered with a bit of cornstarch
to bind the seasonings to the crab shell. This is finger
food, designed to suck noisily and happily, savoring
every bit of sauce, extracting every morsel of sweet
crab.
Unusual were the crisp cakes of radish, puff pastry
prepared with lard and wrapped around a ball of shredded
daikon radish, then steamed; and one could make a meal
of the hearty fried rice, studded with mushrooms, peas,
shredded eggs and ham, with another dose of black vinegar
to cut the fat.
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a scrumptious end Dessert lovers will devour the date
pancake with melon kernel, an Asian version of a date
strudel, with sweet date filling wrapped in a thin,
golden-yellow pancake.
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Wash it all down with a glass or two of delicate Dynasty
nonvintage wine, a drinkable all-purpose wine that's
made from the muscat grape in the Tianjin region of
China as part of a Chinese-French joint venture.
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Park 97 Shanghai, 2 Gao Lan Road, Fuxing Park; tel:
(86-21) 6318-0785; fax: 6387- 4716. All major credit
cards. Open daily. About $50 per person, including wine
and service.
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Mei Long Zhen, 1081 Nanjing Road; tel: (86-21) 6256-6688.
All major credit cards. Open daily. About $35 per person,
including wine and service.
Next week: Hong Kong.
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