Shanghai - Feb 5, 2007 9:26pm

Starr and I took another overnight train, hard sleeper, this time from Xi'an to Shanghai. We arrived today at 10:30am and checked into our hotel near Caoyuan Lu. It was a fairly slow day, walking up and down the Bund and checking out the architeture in the foreign concessions.

We agreed that Shanghai looks like a poor man's Japan. We have been appreciating how clean most of the city is and, unlike Beijing, most people aren't constantly coughing up phlegm and spitting it into the street and all over the sidewalks. The sound that will always remind me of Beijing is 'Aaaaccccckkkkhhhhhhh!' Everyone was constantly doing it and I'm not even exaggerating.

I had a love affair in Japan with nikuman, which are little dumplings filled with seasoned meat. I always got them from convenience stores and they came in three varities: pizza, curry, and meat. They almost always ran about 100 or 105 yen and I thought they were one of the best bargains in Japan. Chinese ones kick the ever-loving shit out of the Japanese ones. Now, granted, I got the cheap convenience store variety in Japan, but the ones here are unbelieveable. I don't know the Chinese name for them, but picture some kind of meat, pork or beef usually, rolled up with lots of veggies and seasonings, and then steamed inside of a dough shell. Starr and I ate vegetarian ones tonight that were the tastiest thing we've eaten so far in China (not really though). They were 0.8 yuan, or 10 cents US, and they had tofu, mushrooms and a bunch of green veggies inside. The people who were cooking them wanted to know, like everyone in China, which country we came from but other than that it was perfect. The place itself was even down an alley and there was only a kitchen exposed to the street with three Chinese guys making them as fast as they could inside. I had one filled with meat and fat in Beijing that was almost as good. Actually, better, but it had the unfair advantage of being about 50% pure fat inside. I bit into it and the fat burst out of it all over my hand. It quickly congealed and for the next 30 minutes (until I could find a bathroom) my hand was covered in hardened white animal fat. It was tasty and only 13 cents too.

We've both become fed up with the 'WHERE YOU FROM!?' question that we've both started to give jackass answers. Samoa, Japan, China, Canada, and Kokomo came up. I can't remember if I've already mentioned it or not, but someone asked me that question in Beijing and I said really angrily, 'GREENFIELD!' They asked the follow up question, 'WHERE THAT?' so I said even louder and more irritated: 'Near TURNERS!'