Still day 2 (1st in China) - Dinner

We arrived at our hotel, checked in, then went to dinner.  Our hotel was the Shanghai YMCA Hotel.  It was beautiful.  We went to a beautiful restaurant.  It had a fountain with koi in the entrance, fish tanks with live fish for purchase, a huge chandelier in the main dining room, and private dining rooms to which we were led. We used two rooms with the sliding doors in between open.  The tables had glass turntables in the middle.  The staff put a variety of dishes on the turntable throughout the night.  Whenever we thought we were done, yet another dish would appear.  Apparently, this is a Chinese tradition, to have a multitude of small dishes from which everyone gets a few bites.  The number of dishes greatly increases with guests.  Real Chinese food is nothing like what we eat in the U.S.  In fact, it is a joke to them.  I liked most of the food, although it did disturb me that they serve all parts of the animals.  Chinese etiquette:  never touch any food with your fingers, don't dig in the dishes for the parts you want - take what's in front of you, and eat everything you put on your plate, except for bones.  They put very small plates in front of you, like a cake plate.  You serve yourself a bite or two from the dishes you want as they turn to you.  The person in the seat facing the door is reserved for the host or honored person.  This person should serve themselves first from the dishes.  They don't always give you napkins, and when they do, they are very small and often just Kleenex.  Apparently the Chinese people are much neater eaters than we are.  We were in for a shock when we used the ladies room (if you are ever there, ask for the toilet).  The toilet didn't have a seat - just the bowl.  We were in for much bigger toilet shocks in the next couple weeks.

In the back room: Pat in the jacket with the blue collar, Joy whose face you can see, and Yarla sitting with her back to us. In this room: Soo on the left and Marilyn on the right.

In the back room:  Yarla on left and Tanya.  In this room from left:  Christina, Xiaoling (standing), Soo, Marilyn, Christal (waving) and Neva.  You can see the turntable in the middle.  The ceramic container in the middle is a covered toothpick holder.  Note the ashtray - the restaurants are all smoking as well as the hotel rooms.  There were ashtrays in the lobbies, by the elevators, on our dining tables, in our rooms.

 The little octagonal cup is a teacup.  We used the rectangular dish to eat off, but after going to other restaurants, I'm betting it's where a washcloth was supposed to rest, and the plate under the cup was our eating plate.  They served green tea every where we went but the type varied.  We had Chamomile, Oolong, Jasmine, and who knows.  All I served without sweetener of any kind.

My plate with my first serving.  The cucumber has a creamy sauce and a shrimp, the front dish has mushrooms and vegetables, and in back is pork.  All of this food was really good - I ate more mushrooms in China than I have in my whole life I think.

Clockwise from the teapot:  the mushroom dish from my plate, tofu, sliced mushrooms (it's one huge mushroom), the pork, boiled shrimp, and the cucumber/shrimp dish.

The dish in front is not worms - it is tofu and green bell peppers and the one to its left was pork and red bell peppers, the center dish was mushrooms and a vegetable they called a radish (its a long root vegetable nothing like a salad radish).

The toilet had no seat!

In the front of the restaurant, they sold live fish.  Much fresher than our fish at the supermarket!

There were bicycles, scooters and motor cycles everywhere we went.  We frequently saw them loaded down like this.  Sorry for the blurry picture, but it's something you have to see to believe.