Cafe Opening; or, How it Almost Suddenly Ended

Last Friday I started cooking brunch at a cafe near the former French Concession, and predictably, something caught on fire. 

The cafe's kitchen is in the basement, and has about two square meters of floor space. There's a big deck oven, two refrigerators, a cluttered countertop, a sink, flour bins, and a filing cabinet claiming most of the room. In the remaining space we managed to squeeze in a big gas-powered grill, sticking a five kilogram gas canister in one of the cabinets below, rubber hose sticking out and running under the grill to the back. 

This big grilling surface was the key component in our operation: our showcase dish was sourdough buckwheat pancakes, and to cook enough pancakes to satisfy the orders that were going to be pouring in as soon as we started, we would need to be able to cook a whole batch all at the same time. The lonely little electric burner the kitchen already had was going to be laughably insufficient. 

I had tested the burner the night before. The stove had filled the kitchen and the cafe above with toxic-smelling fumes, part of it had turned from the original shiny silver to a plasticky yellow, and the back of the grill got much hotter than the front. But these problems notwithstanding, I was pleased to see it produced some of the most evenly hued golden-brown pancakes I've been able to make so far. 

I got to the cafe early Friday morning, crouched into the basement kitchen, put on my gas mask, opened the gas canister, and started the grill. I mixed the pancake batter while it heated. The stove began letting off noxious fumes again, but not as profusely as the night before. 

The barista/cashier came in and stood by the door. He started coughing. 

What's up? I asked. 

Not much, just curious, he said. 

Just making some pancakes, I replied.

Oh. Cool, he said. He went back upstairs. 

I had just turned back to my batter measurements when there was a sound like a big match head igniting, and kitchen got noticeably brighter. Something other than the burner itself was shooting flames from under the stove: the rubber hose had caught on fire. 

While the rubber fire blazed, I turned off the grill and cast around for something to smother it with. I was dimly aware that if the fire reached the gas canister, something bad would happen, but the sudden adrenaline rush kept me from reflecting on this idea for too long.

The fire went out on its own before I could do anything to it. The kitchen went quiet. Hands shaking, I opened the cabinet door and closed the valve on the gas canister.

I took my first coffee break.

No orders came in that day, luckily. The barista had been telling customers all morning that breakfast wasn't ready yet. 

The next morning, Saturday, I came to the cafe with a bag of bagels and eggs.

Over the past few weeks I've set up a mini home fermentation lab. It comprises many layers -- this is just the top shelf. 

From left to right, back to front: mashed grapes (i.e., wine), kumquat pu'er tea mead, shiso mead, burdock beer, traditional kvass, kefir, basil soda, grape tea enzymes, pineapple soda. 

Underneath and not shown are all the pickles, including various kimchis, dill cucumbers, spicy okra, and beet kvass.

I'm hoping to produce bigger batches of whatever works best and sell it at the local craft market.

Here are some more photos of Shanghai:

 

Typical breakfast foods: tea eggs, fried glutinous rice cakes, doughnuts, and sesame balls

 

Buildings, a Stone Lion that Actually Resembles a Lion, and other Things that Defy Expectation and Common Sense

Here are some photos from the Yangpu area in northeast Shanghai where I'm currently living.

No, those aren't Snickers bars, they're carrots. And we wonder why our youth can't keep up!

"Chinese amaro": herbs and medicinal plants steeped in alcohol. Best served warm.

A steamed bun, cleverly shaped to look entirely like a mushroom.

An alley in Suzhou, an ancient city west of Shanghai.

The Lion Grove Garden of Suzhou

A little over two weeks ago I came to Shanghai to earn my living making pancakes in a basement. But that's a story for another time. Happy new year. 

Suzhou is a bit inland from Shanghai, and takes only about twenty minutes to get there by bullet train. It's a much older city than Shanghai, and looks it -- it's even surrounded by medieval-looking walls and a moat. Other than escaping the smog of Shanghai for the day, my main goal was to visit the Suzhou Museum, whose building was designed by I. M. Pei and which is supposed to have a lot of cool ancient Chinese art. 

By these measures, the trip was a complete failure. The PM2.5 AQI in Suzhou was well over 150 the entire day, and the museum had closed early. With face mask securely blocking my nose and mouth and nowhere else to go, I settled for the nearby Lion Grove Garden. 

The garden is a complex of carved stone, with multiple levels of intertwining trails that make it feel sort of like a maze, and sort of like that structure you can test out hiking boots on at REI.  It was supposedly started in the 14th century by a monk named Tianru (were any non-monks starting gardens back then? Apparently none have survived). The garden is now in the yard of a big house that for most of the early 20th century belonged to the renowned Bei family, and was then appropriated by the government and in the 50s opened up to tourists. 

This stone is supposed to be in the shape of a lion

The apex of the artificial mountain

A lake in the middle of the courtyard, next to the artificial mountain. This was taken from the walkway that crosses the lake.

On the deck of a stone double-decker boat (stationary)

A secret passage behind the house

The entrance to the artificial mountain

A park in Suzhou, not far from the Lion Grove Garden

Tokyo capsules

I had heard of these so-called capsule hotels, where instead of a room you get a box to sleep in. I'd imagined they were like dresser drawers, which you pull out, lay down in, shut and are then enveloped in darkness with only an opening near your nose so you don't suffocate. 

I bravely booked three different capsules for my first five nights in Japan, with just one night's break staying on a friend's couch in Yokohama.

The lobby of the first capsule looked disappointingly a lot like other backpacker's hostels. It was cheerfully lit, the walls were covered with photos of guests, postcards, and drawings. The other guests seemed to be from all over, and I heard more English than Japanese being spoken in the common room and the hallways. The receptionists spoke to me in English from the beginning, and I didn't try to subject them to my broken Japanese.

There were still some surprises. The first was the shoe locker. When I stepped into the foyer, barely big enough for me and my suitcase, a sign asked me to take off my shoes and store them in a locker. This became the ritual in all the hotels: when arriving, I locked up my shoes.

The hostel had five floors: The lobby was on the second floor. The first, third, and fourth floors held the capsules -- male-only, mixed, and female-only, respectively. The fifth floor was for showers and laundry. The capsules were numbered and arranged in long, double-decker rows. Finding the one that matched my number in the upper level, I climbed a short ladder and went inside. It was bigger than I expected, tall enough to sit up straight. Near the head of the bed was a control panel full of buttons and a clock, and a TV hung from the ceiling in front of my face when I lay down. Unfortunately, the mechanics seemed to have been decommissioned -- the only button that actually did anything was the light switch.

The next day I visited my friends Dora and Jun in Yokohama. We went to the upscale Minatomirai area, which was Japan's only open port for a long time, and home to Japan's first railway. A lot of the land around the harbor used to be water and was filled in, according to Jun.

We went to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant, where the chefs were showing off a whole tuna they had caught or bought that morning. After we sat down, they carried the tuna into the middle of the open kitchen and one chef ceremoniously dissected it, everyone shouting "maguro!" whenever he dislodged a piece. When this happened, everyone in the restaurant played rock-paper-scissors, and the winners got free slices of fish flesh.

Pictures of Yokohama

~

The next capsule hotel was tucked down an alley near the train tracks in what I later learned was Tokyo's red light district. Jun said my room mates would probably all be Japanese businessmen who had missed the last train home.

The lobby was more austere than the first, a bit like a motel. The receptionist's eyes widened slightly when she saw me. I took off my shoes and stuffed them in a locker, and gave her my passport. She found my reservation, gave me a stack of maroon pajamas -- with the word "sauna" embroidered on the front -- a laminated breakfast ticket, and a locker key with a band to wear around my wrist, took my shoe key, and went over what sounded like the house rules in rapid Japanese. I nodded as she spoke, catching a word here and there.

She finished and looked at me expectantly. Worried I'd missed something important, I told her I hadn't understood. Her eyes narrowed to a scowl. From then on she spoke to me in an exaggerated voice, which succeeded in expressing both that she thought I was an idiot and that she resented having to deal with me, but somehow didn't make her any easier to understand.

The other guests were indeed all middle-aged men, who walked around wearing the maroon pajamas. In the basement was a bath, a massage place, and a room full of lounge chairs, half of which were full of sleeping men. The floors were not divided by gender like the first hotel, and the bathroom had both male and female symbols on the front, but the only woman I saw during my stay there was the receptionist.

I put my things in my locker and was ready to go out for the day. I asked the receptionist for my shoe key back, which she gave to me only in exchange for my locker key. I tried to think of a good reason to not let guests have two keys at once or leave with their locker key, but couldn't.

The third capsule hotel was at Narita Airport. It was decorated like a space station or a futuristic prison: everything was clean gray, white, and black, and icons were favored everywhere over words. Instead of maroon pajamas, I was given a gray gown with "9hours" (the name of the hotel) stitched on the front. The reception was a small room without decorations; on the left was a door to the male side, on the right a door to the female side. The capsules were set in one long, dark hallway stretching off into the distance. The clientele included more international travelers and fewer snoring businessmen. There was a strict "no food or drink" policy, though we were welcome to go stand outside in the cold and drink a chilled drink from the vending machine there.

Food section

Fermented

Nattoburger. The bun is made from fried tofu. The thing that looks sort of like pâté in the top right corner is "tofu cheese".

Clockwise from top: Pickled radish and carrot, grilled scallions with miso, eggs and mushrooms, pickled konjac and burdock. Center: Pickled greens.

From left: Sashimi wrapped in some kind of chewy leaf-like thing, tamagoyaki (egg mixed with soy sauce or soup stock, turned repeatedly while it's cooked so it ends up having layers like a millefeuille), craft beer made from red rice. Top left: Hands of my friend Hide, who took me here.

Seafood

Fried fish bones.

Tuna croquettes.

Sashimi platter and knife-wielding chef.

Yellowtail head nitsuke (simmered in sweet broth)

Chongqing Family Reunion

Full of duck heads and quail eggs, we went for a walk along the Yangtze river. The wharf was lined with yachts getting ready for the three-day cruise to the Three Gorges, or the longer journey to Shanghai.

The island of downtown Chongqing ends in a point where the Yangtze meets the Jialing, and this is usually a sightseeing spot, but that day it was under construction and closed off. Next to the construction site there was a slate gray windowless building. Inside was an exhibition about the future of Chongqing: panoramic pictures of what downtown would look like when construction was complete.

The skyline of downtown Chongqing is already impressive, but in the new version two enormous towers loomed over everything from right where we were standing. We stopped to watch a video explain the planned development of infrastructure surrounding the city. Under the video was a scale model of all of Chongqing, each area lighting up when it was mentioned in the video.

We left the construction site and fought for a cab, and half an hour later we were on a dirt road surrounded by jungle. Dark brick houses sat far back in the trees and others balanced on the edge of a cliff over a river. This is where Shushu and Ayi lived and raised their daughter until she was nine and they moved to Chengdu. It's also where most of Ayi's siblings and their families still live.

The family congregated in the middle of a quiet intersection. Ayi is the oldest of five sisters and a brother, the youngest. Instead of using their names, they were all referred to by their birth order. There was Two-Aunt and her husband Two-Aunt-Dad, Three-Aunt and Three-Aunt-Dad, and so on down to Five-Aunt/Five-Aunt-Dad and then the brother, Jiujiu.

We walked to a lean-to in front of a small house and everyone stood under it and smoked and chatted. Next to the doorway was a sink and a cutting board where a woman was chopping up fish.

Five-Aunt-Dad pours the rice wine 

Fish chopped, we went inside. The living room was big enough for two round tables: one for men and one for women. In the middle of each table was a large pot of deep red soup, into which the fish pieces were dropped. While we waited for the soup to boil, Five-Aunt-Dad poured cups of baijiu.

After dinner we went for a walk. In the darkened street a man approached us and exchanged a few words with Shushu, then led us down an unlit alley. In the alley was an unmarked door. The man opened it and beckoned us in.

Inside was a small room with a desk, a sofa, a stack of old newspapers in the corner, and what looked like a dentist's chair. On the desk was a pool of candle wax and a few metal tools.

Shushu got in the dentist's chair and five minutes later his tooth was pulled.

This was Shushu's best friend from his Chongqing days, he later told me. His friend had been the dentists for Shushu's work division. He was retired, but kept this little office as a private practice for his friends and family.

Five-Aunt-Dad in front of Shushu's daughter's old elementary school 

Shushu stuck a piece of cotton into his mouth, his friend bid us goodnight, and we kept walking. On the right now was the Yangtze, further downstream from where we'd been earlier that day. The sky was clear and we could see the moon reflecting in the water. For once there was no sound of cars honking.

Five-Aunt-Dad pointed into the dark across the water.

Lemme tell ya somethin', he said in his Chongqing accented Mandarin, the words running together into a single utterance.

See that island? he asked. Then his finger pointed to a large black shape next to it. What he said next I couldn't make out, but with Didi translating it into his school-taught People's Language, I understood him to be saying there was going to be a new bridge connecting the little island to the Chongqing mainland.

The unpaved road led us up a hill and we came to a row of houses. We walked into a gap in a wooden fence and to the back of one of the houses. This was where Five-Aunt-Dad lived with his daughter. We sat on the couch and Five-Aunt-Dad served us tea from a thermos while he explained the Chongqing fruit business.

Five-Aunt-Dad then showed us his fruit warehouse, right next to where he lived. As fruit season had just ended, there were just a few piles of pomelos and oranges left in the corner to share with friends. This turned out to be what sustained me on the train trip back to Guangzhou the next day. We sat on stools around a crate as Five-Aunt-Dad gave us samples of each variety of pomelo.

It was already well past 10pm, but we jumped into Five-Aunt-Dad's three-wheeled buggy and barreled down the dirt road back into town. We came to a big apartment complex and started peering into first floor windows, looking for the rest of the family.

The tenants in these apartments had started private majiang parlors. For some hourly rate you can sit in their living room, playing majiang, drinking tea, and smoking until any hour of the night or morning. We found the other aunts and uncles engrossed at two tables, barely acknowledging our entrance, silent except for Four-Aunt-Dad's bitter exclamations whenever he lost. The tenant sat in the corner looking exhausted.

They played for another hour and then everyone went back to the intersection where we first met. It was near midnight, but the lights were on in a little food stand. We took seats on little plastic stools and waiting while the woman rolled and cut noodles by hand under a camp light. Ayi's mother, wielding a devil's pitchfork, sat next to me, and everyone laughed as we tried to communicate.