This is a post about sesame paste.

So, often in China, you need to get "creative" with food unless you want to pay a lot of money. For example, butter is really expensive here. (because it's not in Chinese cuisine, and thus imported). But, you can go to the "close to expiration" section, freeze it, and bam, a source of butter that doesn't cost a month's salary. Similarly, I have been on a hummus kick recently, and have also had to be creative. Tahini is super expensive, since, again, imported. But, there's a sesame sauce that is common at Chinese hot pot. While I'm sure it's not exactly the same, it's $2 a jar as opposed to $10, so, I'm willing to go with it. Anyway, I ordered some sesame paste a long time ago, along with some other things. The other things arrived, I went on with my life. In fact, I finished out the semester at school, and went on vacation (more on that later).

As we've learned, me complaining = cat pictures

Just like in Home Alone, on the plane I realized something was not right. I sat up and shouted "Kevin!", I mean, "Sesame!" It hit me just then - my precious sesame paste never arrived. After landing, I checked Taobao, and it said my sesame paste was still on the way! It was in a place called Datong. I like geography a lot, and I had no idea where that was, which is not a good sign. So I open up my map, and Datong is apparently a town near Inner Mongolia. I thought I had ordered from a local store. Maybe I made a mistake. All I know is that I had a jar of sesame paste that was 1800km away. I thought, "This is ridiculous, it's been several weeks and it's getting FURTHER away from me. I'm just going to cancel my order." But I can't. It's already been "shipped". So I got daily updates. "Your sesame paste is on the way!" "I bet you can't wait for your sesame paste!" Apparently I can, because it's been nearly a month! I dreaded the awkward phone call from the delivery guy and trying to explain why I ordered sesame paste and then left the province. But I had my holiday as normal, and thought about the ridiculous journey this $2 jar of paste has had. After Marco Poloing to Central Asia it had been inching closer to its me - and I do say inching. It would be sent to the next city, and then sit there for days. Skip to the next, and again sit for days. I had resigned to the fact that I will get daily notifications on sesame paste until I die. In a way, it was kind of reassuring in this crazy world, that somewhere, I had a jar of sesame paste longing to see me. And then, against all odds, on the last day of our trip, I got a notification that it had been delivered! I rushed to the airport to see my one month baby boy! Here I am, a proud father with my prodigal son!

Anyway, this post is mostly about our latest holiday. Because it's the end of the semester, that means a month off work. And a month off work means let's go somewhere. But, not so fast - I thought it would be interesting to both of my readers, who are likely American, to talk about what we had to do first. Because of COVID, China is really strict on people moving around. In fact, you can't leave the province without a nucleic acid test, which is only valid for 48 hours. (Like, can you imagine people from the US being told you're not allowed to leave your state? Or you walk into a mall, someone MAY have been positive, and you're not allowed to leave for 2 days? People would go ballistic.) So we trudged off to the local hospital to be greeted with a massive line, because it's Chinese New Year and everyone wants to go home to visit family. The sign said it was a 2 hour wait, but in reality it was a little under 1, so not too bad. It cost 40 yuan (~$6) to get, and it is a well oiled machine. Station one, show your health code, register, pay money, get the thing up your nose. Then a few hours later it shows up on the health code app. Easy peasy.

But, where are we going? Somewhere warmer, like Fujian. Fujian is the province across the strait from Taiwan, and actually has a bit in common with it - something like 70% of Taiwan's population is from there, after all. Nowadays, politics have made them into very different places, but you can still see the influence here and there. For example, steak is very popular in both - although this isn't steak as westerners would know it. I'm not sure what kind of cut it is, but it tastes like a cheaper one that's marinated in a black pepper sauce to make it more tender. And then it comes on a sizzling hot plate with noodles and vegetables. Just like in Taiwan, I think it's... fine? But I don't like steak very much, so I'm not one to say. Anyway, probably more importantly than steak, the local dialect is the same as Taiwan's local dialect, although the 3 words of Hokkien I know certainly isn't enough to pick out if there's an accent. Especially because nowadays most people just speak Mandarin, and even more so in the tourist place we went to, Xiamen.

Xiamen is a bit unique is that it was one of four special economic zones in China (now there are six), where early on it was more "capitalist" (along with Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Shantou). Basically that means that it got a lot of foreign investment, and thus foreign people. Despite only having a population of 5 million, Xiamen feels pretty international. And maybe because it's crammed into an island, Xiamen feels like a bigger city than it actually is. With warm weather, clean air, lots of international food, friendly people, and nice beaches, Ella and I were big fans. Really big fans, in fact, because the first night for dinner we hopped from pizza, to Japanese, to a Texas burger place.

But for the first proper start of the trip, we set off to see the Xiamen Museum, which unfortunately wouldn't let us visitors into, despite having a nucleic acid test. Anyway, we instead went to the Overseas Chinese Museum, which didn't care where we were from. As mentioned earlier, there's a huge Fujian diaspora, not just in Taiwan but all over the place. It was a nice museum with some neat exhibits, and that's about all I can say about it. I liked it, but nothing really stood out, except the temporary exhibit with some hilariously bad taxidermied cats. WHAT IS IT WITH CHINA and not being able to stuff cats? I think I've mentioned the infamous example from Shanghai museums several times, but anyway. Keeping that theme going, just down the road from there is Cat Street, which despite the name, is more decorated in cat things than actually filled with cats. Still, it was a dream come true for Ella. We ate some local food called Sha Cha Mian (Sand Tea Noodles), which does not actually contain sand, but shrimp and fish. Along with it was an oyster omelette, which I was a big fan of. We moved onto see Hulishan Fort, which has a massive cannon built during the Qing Dynasty. It was also important during the Chinese Civil War, because just a few kilometers off the coast is the island of Kinmen, which is controlled by the Republic of China (Taiwan). Up until COVID, mainland Chinese could go there with no visa, but alas, we'll have to wait another time to visit Taiwan proper. It had some great views of the coast, and was the first time we saw a proper beach since Sanya a year and a half ago. We got some bikes to move onto the next place, an village called Zengcuoan. Because it was low season (most companies begin their holiday in about 10 days), it was pretty sleepy. I felt bad for all the shop owners, because it was packed with empty restaurants. Still, it was fun to roam the alleys.

The next day we wanted to go to this smaller island nearby called Gulangyu. Unfortunately in order to go, we needed another nucleic acid test, so back to the hospital. Fortunately this one was really fast once we figured out where to go, and it was only about 10 minutes. (So fast in fact, I got my vaccine booster there the next morning, since Shanghai still doesn't offer them for foreigners.) Gulangyu has a really interesting history - previously Guangdong (Canton) was the only port opened to foreign trade, but during the Opium Wars, the British decided they wanted Xiamen to be open as well. They conquered the city, but decided it was too big to hold itself - so they built their base on the smaller Gulangyu nearby to make sure it stayed that way. Eventually other countries joined, and now it is a very well preserved slice of colonialism that looks very unlike China. It has a bunch of foreign embassies that are now museums and other attractions, and I just think this place is great. It is also overrun with cats, so Ella also thought this place was great. There are no cars, or even bicycles allowed on the island (aside from electric service vehicles), so it's amazingly quiet and peaceful. I absolutely loved it here, and it even had a mountain in the middle of the island you could climb for some great views. It had a really eclectic mix of stuff as well - for example, a piano museum that has a ridiculously large collection. Why? I have no idea. Oh, an organ museum too, with a demonstration by a professional organist that felt like I was back in church. Did I mention this is right next to the beach? Anyway, this place was just so cool, I feel like I need to throw out a bunch of photos.

From a place with a history you may not know about, our next stop in Fujian is a place with history you don't know that you know about. Quanzhou is practically a suburb of Xiamen, only about an hour away. Nowadays Xiamen completely overshadows it, but this city was once one of the most important in the world. Marco Polo once said Alexandria sucks compared to it. (Paraphrasing, but he did say Alexandria's port was a distant second to Quanzhou's, so it would be the largest in the world). Quanzhou used to have the largest expat population in the world as well, especially Arabs. In fact, the Arabic word for Quanzhou is "Zatin", which is where we get the word "satin", as it was exported from there. Also, because it was such a massive port, the Mongols used Quanzhou to try to invade Japan. And what is most interesting to me, the tea and the ship from the Boston Tea Party were from Quanzhou. So I figured this city was worth checking out, if only to apologize in person for wasting a lot of tea and to see if I owed them any cash for the trouble.

 I was a little disappointed to see that Quanzhou's international past is nothing but a distant memory. It is basically the same as most other Tier 2 Chinese cities - loud, chaotic, dirty, with some mildly interesting things. We only spent a day and a half there, and honestly it could have been a day. A few museums were completely uninteresting, like their Overseas Chinese Museum. Basically a collection of photos of rich, overseas Quanzhou folks who contributed money to build hospitals and schools. I mean, props to them, but I don't know these people nor these places, so it was pretty boring. The Maritime Museum is the real star of the show, much better than the one in Shanghai. It was modern, new, with some great exhibits. For Ella, she preferred Kaiyuan Temple, which is actually a UNESCO heritage site. It has some unique things befitting of Quanzhou's eclectic former expat community, with angel statues from the Christian influence and columns from the Hindu influence. But overall, to me, it's a Chinese temple. I've seen way too many. Plus I was pretty tired that day, so it didn't really do it for me. The highlight of that was the sky bar across from the entrance, which had a great view of the walking street below. The walking street actually, was pretty cool, reminiscent of Taiwan's night markets. It was completely packed full of people, shops, and food. Our hostel was right in the middle of it, and the owner had a cute and friendly cat. But overall, Quanzhou... meh. It's fine. Not worth a special trip for sure. Were I the mayor of Quanzhou, I'd really try to preserve and promote their history, because they've got TONS of it. Unfortunately it seems mostly wasted, and focuses on recent Chinese history. But every city has that. Maybe hiring a guide would help you uncover some of it, but I still see it as a lost opportunity.

Whew! A long one this time. However long it took you to read, I'm positive it took me longer to write. Fortunately I have time to kill - with a little over 2 more weeks until work begins again, I am looking forward to sitting around and relaxing. Truth be told I am actually looking forward to the next semester, because A) My planning for it is basically done, which is half my workload gone, B) my one student with behavior issues transferred schools, and C) the semester is shorter. Fingers crossed by the summer things open up and we get some international travel, but I'm not holding my breath.

Hey, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and all that!

Unfortunately Christmas is not really a thing in China, so there's not much of a difference between this week and any other week for me. Heck, I remember in suburban Hangzhou, ten years ago, people were about as familiar with it as westerners are with Chinese New Year - not very. They'd probably say, "There's some old guy in red, there's a tree, and people exchange gifts... I dunno?" Appropriately, that's about all you get in Shanghai. To SH's credit though, it's a much more international city, and there are quite a few decorations in areas that foreigners would frequent - downtown, malls, and the like. There's even a few Christmas markets around town, and we managed to go to two of them. Ya know... they're nice I guess. Got some glühwein, saw a tree. But this is definitely the exception more than the rule. I won't say no to a free day off from work though, which is more than I was expecting. The offer on the table was for a week off, but the rest of the staff voted against it, and opted instead for double pay. Which, I get, because it's not like we have family to visit here anyway. But I will always vote for time off over pay, because I guess that's the type of person I am.

But regardless of time off, we have gotten into a few things as of late. A few months ago, work had a staff welcome dinner at a fancy mall restaurant nearby. While I was incredibly, incredibly unimpressed with that dinner (seriously, one of the worst meals of my life, don't get me started), I did pass this place that was "Upside-down World" or something like that. I was so curious about it, I kept it in my mind, and now, one quiet weekend later, Ella and I went to check it out. It's basically an apartment where everything is bolted to the ceiling, and light fixtures to the ground. It is completely unnecessary, ridiculous, and only serves to take amusing photos. In short, I loved it, so here's a bunch of photos:

The last post or two I mentioned there are some day trips in Shanghai I've been wanting to try out, and we got a chance to do just that. We took the longest metro line far north to Jiading District, an unremarkable suburb that just happened to have two things I wanted to see. One was the village of Nanxiang, which claim to have invented xiaolongbao (Chinese soup dumplings). For some crazy reason, this is not the first time I have eaten the "original" xiaolongbao. But this one is on Wikipedia, so you know it's at least somewhat legit. I have to say, they were pretty good? But with only 3 or so ingredients, it's kind of hard to really stand out among the competitors. Still, it was a unique experience that was worth the trip, at least for me. While the restaurant there claims to be "the original", there is a competing claim from a restaurant that shut down recently, which is kind of a shame. It's kind of like "Original Rays" in NYC - there's a sort of well accepted answer as to what the "original" was, but either through greed, an absence of record keeping, or both, there are several claimants. Anyway, it's as close as you can get. Which, not going to lie, that's a big reason as to why I travel. So 50 years from now, at a dumpling shop in who knows where, I can stroke my beard and tell an unnecessarily long-winded story about how I took the metro, uphill, both ways, to eat "the original".

But also up in this part of town is a museum that I rarely see discussed, The Shanghai Automobile Museum. I guess because it is so far north of the city, it's not a place people make the time to go out to. And just like the Astronomy Museum from the last entry, it's a shame, because this place is something special. Now, let me preface by saying I am not a car guy - to me, cars are like power tools: they serve a purpose, I acknowledge how they can be cool, but I would prefer not to own them or have to own them. However, this museum was incredibly impressive even to me. It the first cars ever made up to today, and they are in absolutely amazing condition. I don't know if I've ever seen a Ford Model T before (maybe at the Smithsonian?), but this thing looked like it just rolled off the assembly line. Their collection is, IMO, the most impressive in the world. Maybe there is a better one somewhere in the US (honestly, there must be), but a place like this in suburban Shanghai is the absolute last place I would expect. There's a few hundred cars there, and all of them are in mint condition. For a car enthusiast, or even someone with a passing interest, I think this is a must see.

On Christmas Day itself, it was actually very cold for Shanghai - below freezing, in fact. We even got some flurries, so I guess it was a white Christmas? Ella and I decided that staying inside watching TV would be a bit depressing, so we decided to brave going out to do some stuff. The first stop was a noodle shop that has a Michelin Star, which I've been curious to try. We've tried another noodle shop with a Michelin Star before, and those are legit, some of the best noodles I've ever had. So I had high hopes for this one. But in the end I was pretty disappointed. They weren't bad by any means, but they were...fine? Good even. Still, I've had better noodles for far less. At $5 a bowl they didn't exactly break the bank, but I just expected better. And if you ask locals to direct you to better noodles in the $2-$3 range, what's the point? I have to think that the Michelin Star people just arrived in China the night before, woke up late, and went to the closest noodle shop to their hotel. In case anyone sees this in the future, you can skip 阿娘面馆 (Mother's Noodle Shop). Just down the road is the much better, cheaper, and equally acclaimed Michelin Starred spot, 味香斋 (which means... umm... Flavorful, Fragrant, and something? Anyway, it's "Weixiangzhai").

After a perfectly okay lunch, we headed across the river to the Pearl Tower. Despite being the most famous landmark of Shanghai, this is the first time I've ever been inside, although not to the top. Actually, I don't really get the appeal of going to the top. It's nowhere near the tallest building in Shanghai. Heck, regular apartment buildings are taller than it is. Yet it's 220 yuan (~$30) to go up. I should probably take a look online to see if there's anything interesting, because if so, they certainly don't advertise it. Also, if I want to go to an observation deck, I'd rather drop 180 yuan (~$25) to go up the Shanghai Tower, which has the highest observation deck in the world (the building is shorter than the Burj, but apparently the Burj's observation deck isn't at the top?). Anyway, one day I would like to do that, because you know, "Worlds Blankiest Blank". Today wasn't that day though, because we were going to the basement of the Pearl Tower. They have a Shanghai City History Museum tucked down there, which for 35 yuan (~$5 / one overpriced bowl of noodles) is much more palatable. It is a surprisingly good museum, with lots of dioramas and scenes from how Shanghai used to be from the turn of the century up to the 70s or so. I can't believe I've never heard of this place before - while it's not going to knock your socks off, it was a very nice experience and worth the money. So yeah, if you're in Pudong, check it out after you've snapped photos of all the buildings. After, we tried to see a mosque which apparently has a good night market, but it was closed. So, off to dinner at a local pub, which was pretty busy. We ran into a bunch of old friends, which made for a pretty nice Christmas evening, all things considered.

But I'll leave it here for now. Unfortunately, Ella was sick for New Years so we stayed in. I commented that I think this is the first time I've had a chill New Years, maybe ever. I remember when I was a kid up through High School I would always have New Years sleepovers, and then through my 20s there was always a bar or house party to go to. Maybe this is a sign of getting old, not staying out drinking until 1, 2 AM, and then figuring out some way to get home. Ella woke up, coincidentally, at 11:59. So we still got to ring in the new year together, which is really all I could ask for.

But if I could be greedy and ask for one more thing, it's that travel gets back to normal in 2022. I haven't been out of the country in two years, and that's too long. While there may be some domestic travel on the table for the winter holiday in a few weeks, it's just not the same. Happy New Year, everyone!