A popcorn vendor in the Qibao district of Shanghai.
This man is about to make popcorn in the traditional Chinese manner. It goes something like this: Take one small cast iron cannon, rotate it over a small coal fire, wait until it is the perfect temperature then insert corn kernels and wait for the deafening explosion. Et voila! All your popcorn, popped in the same instant.
You don’t see too many of these popcorn cannons now but in times past such popcorn vendors would travel from town to town where customers would bring their own kernels and have them popped for a small fee. The popcorn cannon was a particular favourite with kids. Imagine the excitement when you heard the popcorn man had arrived and you could run out with your friends and your handful of kernels and watch while the cannon slowly rotated, waiting gleefully for the unholy boom that meant fresh hot popcorn.
I think I want one.
Posted in Food, Shanghai
|
How do I love thee. Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
Of your milky goodness, when feeling in need of your delight
Of squishy tapioca ball-filled grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and neon-light.
I love thee freely, by foot or scooter;
I love thee purely, hot or cold.
I love thee with a passion ….
Ok, I’ll stop there. But seriously, one of the best things about living here, or anywhere in Asia, is the range of non-alcoholic drinks on offer. Any SevenEleven, supermarket or roadside stall sells an amazing variety of liquid refreshment, from juices squeezed on the spot (watermelon and kiwi, yum) to canned peanut-syrup-with-real-boiled-peanuts-in-it to coconut milk with grass jelly and ice cream on top.
My personal favourite is Bubble Milk Tea.
The best Bubble Milk Tea is found where the stuff was invented, in Taiwan, but I have tried it here and as far afield as New York City as well as in Joburg. The concept is simple: take one part cooked tapioca jelly balls, add one part milk tea, seal in plastic cup with extra large gauge straw. But, ah, the whole is so much more than the sum of its parts. Bubble Milk tea is not for everyone (people with an aversion to chewy tapioca for example) but once you have acquired the taste there is little you won’t do to get your hands on it. Better yet, you can drink it hot or cold, winter or summer and because of the sealed cup it even works if you are a passenger on the back of motorbike.
“The town emerged slowly out of the white morning mist, the gigantic town, the vicious town, the industrious, dangerous and endangered town of Shanghai, the City-by-the-Sea. Foreigners had raised it from the marsh and mud, they had made their pile with opium and smuggling, foreign fortunes had been squeezed out of the sweat and blood of the Chinese coolies. Now it had the wild years of its first youth behind it and was beginning to reflect, to learn refinement and to be a little ashamed of its past. Three and a half millions slept under its roofs, in skyscrapers, in mansions, in luxury hotels and on tattered mats, in boats, in good beds and in dirty, slimy corners. They slept, they dreamt and woke up, missionaries and millionaires, victors and victims, the blackmailers and the blackmailed.”
- an excerpt from Shanghai 1937, a novel by Vicki Baum
Early morning sights around the French Concession
Heading towards People’s Square before the morning rush
Residents out for a stroll
