二月。吃饭! FOOD

What you've all been waiting for,,,

This entry will be dedicated to the kinds of food you can find in China--ranging from 2 kuai (30 cents) breakfast sandwiches, to fancy French restaurants at the Bund

#1 煎饼 (jianbing) - breakfast crepe/sandwich
This is the 煎饼 lady that a lot of us buy jianbings from. She's only there in the morning--we tried going in the afternoon once, but they don't serve jianbings after breakfast :( I haven't had a chance to talk to her very much, but I'm hoping to find out a little bit more about her..like where she's from, how long she has been making jianbings for..etc. Guess how much they cost? 2 kuai! which is equivalent to about 30 cents. A filling meal for less than 50 cents--only possible in China!













Here's how you make a jianbing!

#2 米饭 (mifan) - Rice









Here's a place we go to for lunch almost everyday because it's super fast and yummy! One plate ranges from around 8 - 15 kuai ($1.25 - $2.25) We usually order rice dishes with some kind of meat or vegetable on the side (like shown above~ (L) Beef & Rice (C) Tomato+Egg & Rice (R) The restaurant) It's a popular place for students because it's right across the street from our classroom building~ Whenever we go, we always have to remind the 服务员 (fuwuyuan- waitress) not to put 味精 (weijing- MSG) because it makes all of us sleepy! It probably also has some other negative side effects as well, I don't really know-all I know that it's not good for you :)

#3 普通中国菜 (putong zhongguo cai) - average Chinese food










Every week for Chinese class we have "中文桌子" (zhongwen zhuozi- Chinese table) we meet with the other Chinese level students (同学) and teachers (老师) to practice speaking Chinese and try typical Chinese dishes. We usually order stew/soup type dishes to share, as well as vegetables, meat, tofu, etc! I don't think I've tried a dish here that I haven't liked so far...probably because we don't order any strange dishes that foreigners wouldn't eat =P When I go out for Chinese food with friends (surprisingly not every meal) we usually go to restaurants that serve these types of dishes. The prices per dish range from about 15 - 40 kuai ($2.25 - $6) but when you're with a group, you can get a filling meal for about 20 kuai ($3). I think the majority of the restaurants around our dorm/Fudan are Sichuan style restaurants, so we've been getting plenty of spicy foods lately :)

#4 点心 (dian xin) DIM SUM!












Here is where Min and I had our first reunion dinner together :) We went to a Cantonese restaurant by our school and had delicious delicious dim sum！We ordered 虾饺 (hargau- shrimp dumplings) 叉烧包 (char siu bao- pork buns) 粥 (zhou - porridge) 肠粉 (cheong fun- rice noodle roll) 干炒牛河 (niu rou chow fun - dry beef noodles) Even though dim sum is not as common here as I thought it would be, all the restaurants we have gone to so far are pretty good. Before coming to China, I thought I would be eating dim sum everyday, but I guess it is not as typical in mainland China! The restaurant we went to was a little bit pricier than the restaurants we go to for lunch and dinner everyday during the week, but compared to Korea and the U.S. it was still pretty inexpensive. We had several dishes for about 70 kuai each, which is about $10! and of course with a delicious dinner, you have the option of having China's finest Tsingtao beer or the Great Wall wine (which tastes like diluted wine)
#5 外滩 (Wai tan) The Bund

This is where Min and I went on our unintentional "romantic date" Our original plan for the night was to go to Cloud 9 (which is the highest bar in the Shanghai, maybe the world?) to look at the night view, but we ended up at the wrong Hyatt Hotel. However, we were lucky and the Hyatt we wound up at had a nice bar on the 34th floor, where we got to see the Shanghai skyline. By the time we got to the bar, we were so hungry...but they only served small appetizer dishes at the bar, so we went out to look for a restaurant. We were directed to the 32nd floor, where they supposedly had a restaurant; we had no idea the restaurant we came across was a French restaurant until we sat down and looked through the menu. We ended up having a very fancy dinner together, spending more than we probably will ever have to for our next 3 months in Shanghai. I won't reveal the price, BUT I will tell you that the hotel restaurants aren't any cheaper in China :) the entire time we were there, we were laughing at how funny it was that we ended up at a French restaurant in Shanghai..only because Min doesn't eat French food and it's just really random that we ended up there.

Well, that's all for now :)
Hope you're not too hungry after this entry!