Shanghai has been in a state of growth for years. With all the talk about the city’s inestimable cost of development and the daily encroachment of skyscrapers upon those with too-humble means, perhaps the biggest offender of modernization gets off almost scot-free: Shanghainese food. How can the native cuisine of a city teeming with excitement [...]
Nostalgia can be the darnedest thing. Growing up a young Chinese American in a household that favored Chinese culinary etiquette, I often wondered aloud whether I was getting the short thrift on what, back then, I considered to be my sole birthright: home cooked Western meals. That should’ve meant lasagna nights. More pizza. Even the [...]
Even those who are lifetime connoisseurs of fine dining will cop to a few dingier delights. After all, life can’t always be fois gras and duck confit, right? Sometimes it’s Hot Pockets and frozen dumplings and whatever else keeps your cupboards stocked (Mother’s Circus Animal Cookies, R.I.P.) and your bellies nourished. In Chinese cuisine, for every [...]
What makes for a proper Chinese feast? Some might say diversity of flavor, but I prefer the known quantities that are dumplings and camaraderie. Really, there’s no better time to test out the adage, “Liquor before beer; you’re in the clear,” than when you’re among friends – friends who care about such things as being [...]
I spent this past weekend in Pusan, Korea, ostensibly for the purpose of covering the best that Asian cinema has to offer at the 2009 Pusan International Film Festival. I say ostensibly because while there are a number of worthwhile pursuits in life (avid filmgoing among them), I consider them all ostensible when stacked against [...]
Let’s face it: No one rivals the Chinese in terms of sheer noodle mastery and versatility. We’re talking oodles and oodles of ingenuity-spanning centuries, regions, and tools. Oh yes, there are tools. Rolling pins, serrated knives, newfangled noodlemaking whatsits that whir and stir mounds of dough until – poof! – the perfect strands come out, [...]
Yangzhou, one of Shanghai’s oldest neighboring cities, is like the elderly couple around the way who, for as long as you can remember, have gone about their business as if nothing – not the brand spanking new community center with refurbished tennis courts, not the rapscallions living next door who dribble (thump thump) their basketball [...]
In Shanghai, there is no easy equivalent for the American breakfast diner, a fact often bemoaned by my expat friends and me. We tend to wear our artery clogging days of yore as a proud badge, our messy, gratifying right to remain uncomfortably full for the remainder of the day. However, I’m happy to report [...]
Chi Tung will be writing a biweekly column from Shanghai, China. Find out more about Chi on our About page and watch for his first post this Thursday! Being a proper eater means yielding to the gut. I don’t mean gut in the purely physical sense, though it’s no coincidence that some of the finest [...]
