Joseph's Visit to Shanghai

Michael's dad came to visit us in Shanghai in November. He stayed at Michael's relative's place, which is usually empty except for during the summer. The place had nice wooden floors and big windows that let in a lot of light, and I was jealous of the location.

Since Michael's dad is the king of personal connections, there was a lot of eating-out to be had.

One such meal with Michael's cousins took place at a hot pot restaurant. Weirdly, the restaurant also had shoe-shining, manicures, and board games.





Because I like the more boring ingredients for hot pot, they ordered a couple of rounds of noodles, which came with noodle-dancing:





We also took a train to see a Taiwanese man who runs a factory near Shanghai in Kunshan. He showed us around and then took us to a tiny stilted structure over a pond/lake/swamp, where he said they had the best crab. We were shown these baskets full of crabs in the water so we could choose which ones to eat:






I will never be able to believe how much food garbage is involved in eating Chinese meals. I'd probably end up eating a lot more if I didn't have to crack exoskeletons and suck on hairy claws and such. I left all that to Michael, but even so, I lost a lot of my appetite.