24th Aug 2016
I must confess that I’ve been very lapse with keeping up to date with all the places I have been of late, be it for work or for pleasure.
It took me until recently to publish my trip to Augusta in April and I’m yet to write up my travels to Melbourne, France (for seven weeks – that’s going to be a long one), Cambodia, and Taiwan.
I will get to them in due course – I’m sure you’re all dying to read them – but having just come back from Shanghai, and the experience still fresh in my mind, I thought I’d crack on with that one.
China is another place that until this year I’d never been to – add Japan, Cambodia and Taiwan to that list – so the opportunity to go there for work was greeted with enthusiasm.
The visa application process was trying to say the least – boy do they make you jump through hoops – but in the end we got everything sorted and we were on our merry way!
Day One:
Shanghai is a big, Big, BIG city. With the possible exception of Los Angeles - in terms of population - it’s the biggest city I’ve ever visited.
It’s also a city on the rise and is considered by far and away the most cosmopolitan of all cities in China.
On the slightly perilous journey from the airport to the hotel, I couldn’t help but wonder at the sheer volume of high rises and skyscrapers, perhaps less concentrated than Hong Kong but, boy, is there a lot of them!
After a reasonable journey we got to our hotel where the taxi driver insisted on treating himself to an CNY18 tip – I have zero Mandarin so who was I to argue?!
We were supposed to be interviewing former England manager and current Shanghai SIPG head coach Sven-Goran Eriksson at 3pm; the only problem was that it was now 3:30pm… Baring that in mind we hot-footed it over to the stadium and tried to find the pitch where he was at that point taking training.
We found it on the sign but managed to walk all the way around the stadium at least once before realising it was very close to where we’d began – fail.
Sweaty and now very late, we finally found where we were supposed to be and to our very good fortune, good old Sven was still happy to do the interview.
That went well and by the end of it his agent, a gentleman by the name of Athole (yes, I still snigger at that despite being 35 years old) had arrived and we met him too.
He adds nothing else to the story, I simply wanted to get a cheap laugh at the expense of a much wealthier and more important man’s name…
Once editing and sending back to Singapore was done, I realised that I hadn’t eaten since a surprisingly good poached eggs breakfast on the flight at about 9:30am and it was now about 8pm.
For me that’s the equivalent of regular people going about a week without eating…
Given we’d had a lengthy day of travel and work, YK and I decided to hit the hotel buffet and we did so with a vengeance.
Sashimi to begin with was soon followed by some traditional Chinese-style roast duck with a sickly sweet hoisin sauce, some surprisingly good sausages, steak and a thick portion of meatloaf – meat overload.
Don’t worry though, folks, I had a couple of potatoes and some greens so it wasn’t all bad… however, I did go back for a second portion of the majority of meats above so that definitely counteracted that…
There was also a number of traditional dishes on offer some of which I sampled but I avoided the duck tongues because, quite frankly, they looked like something out of a science fiction movie!
Dessert consisted of some bread pudding and custard – something that seems a staple of buffets in Asian hotels for some reason – and rounded off my meal with some cheese.
Hey, it’d been 11 hours without eating; don’t judge me!
Day two:
Now don’t laugh but I had every intention of going to the gym that day after a decent lie in. I managed to achieve my goal of sleeping in but was unable to go to the gym upon discovering that the Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors (yes, that’s their real name) press conference was at midday – blast! Foiled again!
YK, my colleague, was in the middle of an epic dumpling session when he found out so he had to high tail it back to the hotel, mouth still full of dumplings (probably) so we could get there in time.
After 30 minutes of being in the presence of coach Choi Kang-hee – the man with the world’s greatest poker face (google him, you’ll see what I mean) – we were done for the next four hours.
I could have gone to the gym then but having not had breakfast I was now starving!
Having heard about YK’s dumplings (ooh err) I decided that I wanted to experience some local fare so he took me to the place he’d been previously.
Everything was written in Chinese but all the dishes had pictures so I could pretty much work out what was what.
At this point I got a little carried away and insisted that YK order us some barbecued red pork, roast duck, beef ribs, and kalian with garlic. He also suggested some xiaolongbao – little soup and meat filled dumplings that are hugely popular in this part of the world.
Having had them before at the likes of Din Tai Fung I was DTF (down to feast) so he plumped for six with pork and six with crab.
Moments later our duck arrived along with a bowl of what I guessed to be jellyfish and cucumber – yuck (I bloody hate cucumber)!
The portion of duck was MASSIVE and I started to think we’d over ordered but like the troopers we are we got stuck in, believing that the jellyfish and cucumber dish was a complimentary starter…
We were wrong…
It turns out that the duck and jellyfish dishes were intended for another table but having eaten the majority of the latter they left that with us but took the duck away.
Whether they replaced the pieces I’d eaten before giving it to the rightful owners I can’t say for certain…
Jellyfish is a curious thing to eat. It’s texture, I can imagine, is similar to cartilage (doesn’t sound very appetising I know) but it comes pickled which gives it a nice taste even if it does feel a bit odd in your mouth.
Finally, our duck arrived with a sweet dipping sauce, as did the pork, beef ribs, and kalian, and thus the feast began.
The beef ribs reminded me of beef in black bean sauce complete with red peppers and onions from a Chinese takeaway back home so I was thrilled about that, the duck was tasty and tender, and the garlic and oyster sauce the kalian came in was delicious. Chinese chefs know their sauces.
The pork was also tasty but not quite as good as I’d imagined it was going to be.
That tinge of disappointment was soon erased when the xiaolongbao arrived. They were stupendous. Little parcels of hot and tasty soupy goodness all wrapped in their freshly steamed buns
Utterly glorious.
After consuming a small Chinese family we had around an hour or so before we had to head back to the stadium. This was the perfect opportunity for me to go to use the hotel gym facilities…
Needless to say I didn’t but instead exercised my mind reading Raphael Honigstein’s excellent book about how German football got its groove back (Das Reboot – clever, eh?).
Now fully aware of how Germany became world champions and left England stuck in the dark ages, we set off for Sven’s press conference (he still starts every answer with “Well…”).
During training I had to do my first live cross in months from the stadium to our studio in Singapore. I was more than a bit rusty and at one point stuttered so badly I sounded like a scratched record…
Consensus: must do better.
That pretty much meant I was done for the day and after compiling another package to be sent back to Singapore I decided to go sightseeing.
As I mentioned earlier, my Mandarin is non-existent but despite that I was determined to go and enjoy Shanghai’s famous ‘Bund’ area down by the river and to get there via metro and walking.
I managed to get the metro to a station close by and after a couple of failed attempts at navigation – I could lose myself in a crisp packet – I made it!
I had also planned on eating down there but by the time I arrived it was pretty late and the places I had picked out in my food bible: Where Chefs Eat – a guide to chef’s favourite restaurants (Thanks again, Harry) had all closed or I couldn’t find them.
The Bund, however, was very impressive and I was glad I made the trip even though I’d seemingly walked halfway around Shanghai to get there…
After enjoying the spectacular view of some impressive and well-lit buildings across a wide stretch of the river I took a cab back to the hotel with a view to ordering room service.
Taxi rides in Shanghai are terrifying to say the least! By the end of my journey I had resorted to closing my eyes so I couldn’t see what was happening in front of me!
I’ve been in taxis in Thailand, Indonesia, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Vietnam and many more places where the roads are, shall we say, ‘a bit crazy’ but this took the biscuit.
At one stage my driver attempted (and thankfully succeeded) a daring four lane move, sweeping from right to left with reckless abandon and he also almost hit two motorbikes although to his credit the first near miss was definitely the biker's fault.
Luckily we made it back all in one piece and the driver didn’t decide to award himself a tip – maybe my terrified squeals convinced him that he hadn’t driven as he might have!
Back at the ranch, I’d just missed the opportunity to order a local speciality through room service so opted for a burger with bacon and cheese (very Chinese, I know).
It was a damn tasty burger it must be said; sizeable and meaty with plenty of garnish to go with it. The chips weren’t freshly made but then again it was pretty close to midnight
I fancied some dessert and I remembered that there was a Movenpick ice cream cart in reception so I had a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of tiramisu. These scoops, it turned out, cost a princely $5 each! Thank goodness this was on the work tab and not mine!
Day Three:
Match day on trips like this goes as follows: wake up, have several hours to kill where you can take it easy, a very hectic few hours before, during and immediately after the match, and then rest.
On this occasion I got up and – sound the trumpets – went to the bloody gym!
I’d not done any running for quite some time (mostly due to a bad foot but also due to being a bone idle git) so I opted for a 500m walk to warm up, a 6km run at a reasonable (for me) pace and a 500m walk to warm down.
Like most places in the hotel, bar the lobby, the aircon in the gym wasn’t quite what it should have been and I genuinely felt like I sweated as much in there as I do on the rare occasion I run in Singapore!
Feeling energised, I decided to put on my exploring shoes again and try and find a local restaurant that had been recommended to me by Where Chefs Eat down in an area known as the French Concession – a one-time French settlement in Shanghai.
Looking at the buildings in this particular part of the city, it’s easy to see why it has retained its moniker as they closely resemble those that adorn the streets of Paris.
I found the place I was looking for without too much trouble only to find that it seemed closed. I checked Yahoo to see if I could find out opening times but it wasn’t much help to begin with – you really miss Google when you don’t have easy access to it.
Eventually I found a page that said it served lunch until 4pm so I went back and tried but they told me that they were closed.
At least I’m pretty sure that’s what they said...
I stuck my head through the door, said “food?” while making a shovelling motion with my hand towards my mouth. The staff inside did the classic Asian double-handed shake which usually means “no have” or “finished”.
Disappointed but not defeated I hit Tripadvisor – one of the few things I could access – to try and find an alternative.
Le Petanque was only a few hundred metres away and according to my new best friend Yahoo was open from midday to midnight – winning.
Very hot and extremely sweaty, I found the place after a 10-minute walk or so. Yahoo had come up trumps! It was open from midday until midnight, however,, it had stopped serving lunch at 2:30pm and was now around 2:45pm – bollocks.
By that stage I was hot, sweaty, thirsty and getting hangry so I headed back towards camp where I ended up having that most typical of Chinese dishes: a diavola pizza.
To be fair to the guys that made it, it was a pretty decent diavola pizza – light and thin crust, good helpings of tomato sauce and cheese, topped with plenty of salami. It wasn’t, however, what I’d set out to eat when I left the hotel so I was a little disappointed.
That said, having not eaten before or after the gym the pizza lasted all of about three minutes.
Disappointed at not being able to ‘go local’ with my two most recent meals I made YK promise he’d take me somewhere to eat something Chinese after the match – more on that later.
The football went pretty smoothly. My live cross was greatly improved from the previous night despite dropping a commentator’s curse: “this match should see goals”...
Inevitably it finished 0-0.
In addition, I was able to get a quick pitch side interview with Sven right after the final whistle so that looked good back in Singapore.
Dinner was next on the agenda and YK found a Chinese BBQ restaurant that claimed to stay open until 4am and when we got there it actually stayed open until 4am!
It was busy when we arrived but a table had just been vacated so we asked one of the waiters if we could take that.
His answer was (according to YK's translation) as follows: “You’ll have to wait because it’s busy and I can’t be bothered to clear the table”.
You have to admire his honesty…
We decided to just sit down and wait for him to clear the table which he eventually did. His cleaning technique basically involved him sweeping most of the debris on the floor but I was happy enough with that as it took us one step closer to eating.
YK took care of the ordering and I waited with baited breath…
The food started to arrive – barbecued squid and prawns to start, soon followed by barbecued chicken wings, beef and lamb skewers, braised beef belly, bok choi with garlic and oyster sauce, and then a roasted leg of lamb.
YK had ordered enough food to feed four people and we put a lot of it to the sword but it proved even too much despite us being big chaps and hearty eaters.
I also had a couple of beers to wash it down with... I say beers - one was Suntory Premium, the other was Budweiser. I really don't like Bud but it was the only thing that was cold. That said, it was better than the Suntory. Yes, it was that bad.
Never order Suntory Premium. It’s the only beer I’ve ever had that tasted worse than Carling… That bad.
The taxi ride back to the hotel was much less terrifying than the previous night but that might have had something to do with the food coma I was then experiencing.
A couple of local beers that weren’t Suntory finished the night off nicely and brought a long day to a satisfactory close.
Day Four:
The plan was to have breakfast in the hotel but after our immense BBQ feast the previous night I was still stuffed so decided to give it a miss.
The last bit of food consumed before leaving the country was a bowl of ramen at the airport which somehow they figured it was acceptable to charge almost SGD$20 for…
It did, however, come with a free orange juice and a bowl of mixed mushrooms and sweetcorn, the latter of which was slightly odd but there you go!
The ramen itself was pretty good and rounded off – internet access aside h - a very satisfactory first trip to China.