Tom and Jerry

Today is Friday, which means souvenir shopping tomorrow! Big fun in China!
I started today with a car coming to pick me up. This happened yesterday, so I expected the same car to come today…..my first mistake of the day! The vehicle that came to get me today was weird. It was the size of an old school Volkswagen hippie bus, but only had two doors, drivers side and passenger front doors. So this got my attention right away…because I saw through the window that there were at least 10-12 seats in the vehicle. So I opened the passenger door and to my surprise, it was set up like a miniature bus. There was a hand rail and three tiny steps to walk up. Then you had to go down a super tiny aisle to where all the seat s were….very strange. So I loaded up in the hippie van/ bus.
We took off and started driving to our Rockwell repair facility, known as JQD. I really didn’t want to go there. I tried to explain to Jennifer that I didn’t want to go, because I went last time I was here. I think they take all the Ex-Pats here from my business group. You just have to do it, there’s no explaining your way out of it. They want you to see “Their repair capabilities”. Which is fine on your first ever visit to China, but once you’ve seen the place your more interested in knowing the scope of repairs…not the actual facility again….She wasn’t having any of that, so off I went.
So as we drove over, I just looked out the window and observed the surroundings. The best part of the trip was the quality of the ride. The driver couldn’t have been going more than 89 kilometers, but the ride felt like we were getting ready to break the sound barrier. That thing was coming apart at the seams. I was waiting to hear Scottie from Star Treks voice come over the radio….”Captain, I’m giving her all that she’s got…she can’t take much more!”
So we arrived at JQD…I saw everything was pretty much the same as last time I visited JQD. I complimented Jennifer on the facility…she was happy. We then went to lunch at a cool spot. It was an old house that was owned by a Chinese General 100 years ago, it had now been converted into a restaurant. Although it had one downside, it was a seafood place! So the whole live aquarium show was under way. It smelled like the ocean had been emptied of water and all the creatures were left to bake in the sun for two days. They had a fish head that was chopped off, and the tail end was stuffed in its mouth! (Of course I didn’t have my camera)
I told Jennifer I was not down with the fish, and we needed to get some meat going on! She wanted some fish…so we compromised. We had some kind of crab/tofu mix and a pork and vegetable mix that you stuffed in rice bread to eat…actually quite good! We also loaded up on veggies. All and all, everything was good. It was a nice lunch. The house was cool and the conversation was good.
After lunch we had a conference call and wrapped up some loose ends before I fly out to Dalian on Sunday. After that I headed back to the hotel to await my dinner plans with STEEL!
You might remember Steel from my last blog. He’s a great guy and we kept in contact after I left China last time. So we went to dinner tonight!
Steel met me at 6:00 at my hotel. He said the restaurant was a 5 to 10 minute walk from the hotel, which translated means about 30 minutes. (I am wiser my second time around…was prepared) So we headed out to go to a hot pot restaurant. I love me some hot pot! I was excited to go. He said this was a very happening place in Shanghai, it had been featured on a local Food network show…..that could be good or could be bad….only time would tell. The walk was great, just being out in Shanghai is fun to watch, there are people everywhere. We crossed a street through an underground connection, which also was a subway entrance. I was kind of shocked, 6:00 at night and it was nothing compared to what I’ve seen in New York or Chicago. I asked Steel was it didn’t seem as busy as New York? He told me that it was because some people are still on vacation for the Chinese New Year.
So we are walking down a main street, then we turn down an alley and walk up a set of stairs into a building. It kind of reminded me of when Morpheus and Trinity go to see the Merovingian in The Matrix Revolutions. There was a lady doing a coat check, then an elevator down a hallway that took you up to the fourth floor. The whole time there was a weird Chinese techno music playing….kind of cool actually.
So we take the elevator to the fourth floor which opens into a dark restaurant with weird lighting that looked like fluorescent red lighting in weird shaped fixtures, cool looking, but not expected. Steel talked to the hostess, it was a 30 minute wait, which Steel was not fond of. I asked if we could get a beer at the bar and wait….there was no seating at the bar. So Steel talked to the hostess again. They went back and forth for a moment, and then Steel said I should follow him.
We went around the corner to a glass enclosed attachment to the restaurant. It looked like it might have been a sun room back in the day. Steel then tells me that we can have a beer and a smoke in here while we wait…..cool.
There are wicker block chairs all along the walls of the room. No one is in there but us. There is a plastic table at the far end (The room is a big rectangle). We go sit at the far end, around the table. A waitress brings us a couple beers. I start to take in the room, when I notice at the opposite end of the room is a flat screen TV playing Tom and Jerry cartoons ….really old ones…like from the 40’s or 50’s. It’s just cartoon after cartoon. I ask Steel why Tom and Jerry are on, “For our entertainment.”
Right!
So we sit there and drinking beer watching Tom and Jerry. As we wait, the room starts to fill up with other people…no one is talking except Steel and I. No one is drinking except Steel and I….no one is having a smoke expect Steel and I. The whole room is watching Tom and Jerry…not taking their eyes off it….SO funny.
Steel then gets up to check on our table…everyone keeps watching Tom and Jerry…just I’m the only one enjoying it with a beer.
Eventually we get our table and order our food. Steel asks me what I want. I look at the menu and for some reason the only thing I make a point of ordering are oysters. This was really dumb….I know better…I don’t know how I screwed up. For some reason I was thinking of oysters like we have them in America…thought they might be good in a hot pot. Why not try? There’s a good reason not to try…
The oysters come out late in the meal. I’ve already tried a couple things I didn’t want to…but I did. Here come TWO oysters…that’s it…but here’s the problem, they are raw (Figured that much), they have all their internal organs still attached (Forgot about that one), and you don’t put them in the hot pot (Really didn’t count on that). The small one is the size of a McDouble from McDonalds. The big one is the size of a whopper.
Steel has a look on his face like…”Here they come buddy! Don’t they look delicious?”
He then says, “This you order! You can have big one!”
Hmmmm…..I guess I deserve that. I DID order them. “You’re too kind Steel, I insist you have the large one…you have been a great host.” That didn’t work.
I put about 15 different sauces on that thing….I’m staring at it…I still can’t get over how big it is…how big it’s liver is hanging off the side of it (Or whatever organ an oyster has dangling from the side).
I finally man up and put the whole thing in my mouth (Which Steel tells me is how you do it…one bite (Or gulp in my case). I survived, but that’s it with seafood. I guess I’m a slow learner when it comes to Chinese Seafood. I should have remembered from my last trip.
Still a great dinner with Steel, everything else was delicious! Off to the pearl market tomorrow!