Shanghai Nosh Advisory: Exploring the Yin and Yang of Eating
Shanghai Nosh Advisory, has teamed up with City Weekend to show you some of the best authentic local fare in Shanghai. In this blog, we visit Chun-Store and sip on some white gourd drink to balance the body.
Like many expatriate residents of Shanghai, I rely on knowledge of traditional Chinese medicinal diet principles to maintain body equilibrium. However, in order to pursue my chosen dining habits with vigor and relative safety, I must at times make special considerations in order to ward off ailments.
The first step involves seeking natural countermeasures to afflictions such as food poisoning, parasites and gout. My most recent concern relates to street-side shellfish consumption and I was hence on the lookout for mung beans, as a hopeful alternative to another IV drip session at Renji Hospital.
Overall, this methodology proves to be weak, tardy and insufficiently informed at times. As such, it must be supplemented by maintenance of my body’s natural diametric energies in a manner which I tailor to recent or upcoming intrepid dining endeavors.
The first step in such a process involves a series of measurements of body conditions, followed by regulatory food intake. Consider the following chart [2*]:
Of course, the above subtotal would have to be further modified by external factors related to moods, weather, etc. But I was nonetheless clearly at risk, considering that in the evening I would be dining on highly spiced meat. A high y-score (in reference to the yin yang spectrum), or excessive hot energy, if unmanaged would leave me vulnerable to skin eruptions, rheumatism and heartburn.
To illustrate, imagine that you sit down to a Chongqing hotpot dinner already yang-heavy and then top it off with shots of deer penis rice whiskey. Those shots might as well be yang torpedos fired down the gullet of Darth Vader’s cold-sore laden yang star.
More often, spicy foods are improperly accompanied by cold beverages, which provides a temporal cooling effect at the expense of digestive irritation. If you care to witness this phenomenon in action, look no further than a certain Hunan restaurant on Dongping Lu. There, the only thing more ridiculous than the food itself is the reckless manner in which it is consumed by expatriates. Watch a short-stint supply chain executive furnish his own spleen with enough Hunan lava and cold beverages to produce gamma rays. His digestive tract will be more confused than the unlucky cab driver chosen to usher him back to Gubei. Perhaps, less time spent on regressions and more emphasis on y-scores would have been a more worthwhile pursuit while attending “international” business management studies.
A more appropriate means of treating a high y-score is with vegetables that have a savory flavor and cool energy, such as white gourd and our friend the mung bean.
In a recent New York Times article, an organic farmer is quoted as saying, “Some people these days are so unfamiliar with vegetables in their natural state, they don’t even know that a broccoli stalk is just as edible as the florets”. I would add to this by saying that some people are so unfamiliar with vegetables in their unnatural state, that they do not even know that white gourd is served in canned beverage form.
To acquire such a beverage and thus expedite the mitigation of my recent yang issue, I visited Chun-Store, a Taiwanese convenience store/cafe operation. Along with beverages such as white gourd drink, Chun-Store offers an array of snacks and set meal options. Turkey strip rice (huǒjīròu fàn, 火鸡肉饭) with a side of squid soup (yóuyú gēng, 鱿鱼羹) is a popular lunch set.
Shredded fried turkey strips served in gravy with stewed egg makes a startlingly good accompaniment to rice. The squid soup features hand-shaped squid balls with a coarse, natural texture and taste delicious in a gelatinous soup flavored heavily of white pepper.
Portions are rather small – suitable for schoolgirls on a Ximending shopping spree. But meal sets sell for a mere RMB28 and can be supplemented with other Taiwanese favorites such as meat sauce rice (lǔròu fàn, 卤肉饭) and oyster omelette (hézǎijiān, 蚵仔煎).
White-gourd drink tastes very much like Oreo cookies. This is perplexing, particularly so given that white-gourd drink contains only “white-gourd, water and sugar”. It is amazing what creative results can be brought about with such limited ingredients.
In the convenience store section, there is a wide range of meat floss options, which are sold under the Chun-Store brand.
The selection of canned items contains our requisite mung bean purchase.
There is also as an array of unusual beverages, including asparagus juice and Hey Song Sasparilla, which is derived in part from pine extract.
Hey Song offers a mild root beer experience, as the labeling suggests. Asparagus juice is offers some surprises, as despite a pale green appearance, its flavor closely resembles that of cream soda.
Chun-Store is run by a charming and unpretentious staff and the environment is similar to what you might expect in a university district. Their dedication to providing more exotic and healthful alternatives to typical supermarket fare is appreciated.
DETAILS
What: Chun-Store (佳思多食品料理店)
Where: Pudong District 146 Yushan Lu (across from Yuanshen Sports Centre), 浦东新区羽山路146号 (源深体育场对面)
Tel: 021-51387072
English menu: Yes
Chart extracted from Chinese System of Food Cures, Henry C. Liu. New York: Sterling Publishing, 1986
The New York Times, That’s Not Trash, That’s Dinner
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Hi pot, meet kettle..
"Like many expatriate residents of Shanghai, I rely on knowledge of traditional Chinese medicinal diet principles to maintain body equilibrium. However, in order to pursue my chosen dining habits with vigor and relative safety, I must at times make special considerations in order to ward-off ailments." Wow, put down the thesaurus and step backwards. This writing reads like a Grade 11 English assignment. It's also unscientific superstition, which I could accept, but poorly written superstition I cannot.
Whatever happens to people getting the tongue-in-cheek humor of it all? it's not like Cityweekend is trying to be the Shanghai's version of The New York Times.... grain of salt people. Grain of salt.
@Claire
If you think my posts are wordy, you should read the trash that I write for global newspapers.
It might be a little over your head, however.
@nguyent8
It's tongue in cheek? The only vibe I got was "pretentious".
yeah, you tell 'em narsf! This guy gots a real way wit woids. Am i right?
Indeed, sirrah, he has much in the way of verbosity and a truly loquacious style befitting, perhaps, a ridicule-worthy tome of teenage-angst inspired poetry.
Or one may well be inclined- though forgiven for not, to imply that his innate ability to over cogitate the contents of each composition suggests a cranium well-buried in an anus.
Recto-cranial inversion!
so anyways, this duck goes into this bar, hops up onto a barstool and
Ouch these flames burn. Nars and foodiedave - I see your points and will take them to heart next time around.
narsf, u no i learned me english good when spended 5 years in the joint makin and readin license plates.
@Bill
Look at it this way, sometimes a comedy routine just falls absolutely flat and no-one is laughing - ask albinomonkey, he's got a lot of experience in these matters.
There are things that work, and things that don't work. For me, this didn't work. For people like philipvasels, who are still in college (for the seventh sophomore year in a row) this goes over massively well.
If you write and publish, you expose yourself to criticism, which batters the ego but may well help the writing.
If you don't ever want to suffer criticism, then you should instigate a revolution in a country, install yourself as dictator, renege on all the principles you stood for in the first place and render critics as "unpersons" the minute they say anything bad about you.
@bill, man these dudes dave and narsf never fire any warning shots! but, don't be so eager to bend over and take it from behind. they will ream you everytime. Push back.show some spine, man.
Oh come on Philip.
My first piece in a magazine years ago contained an ENORMOUS factual error that I had overlooked.
The readers absolutely delighted in tearing the article to pieces because of it, it really got me down.
But it was my fault. I wrote a load of poorly-researched crap. What was a I supposed to say? Should you go all Wang Yongping and broadside them with a "you may not like it, but that doesn't matter because I like it" ?
That improves things how? How would that be showing any spine? The best way to grow a pair is take the criticisms that are valid and work on them, and not get all hissy and upset.
Fair play to Bill, he's not attacked those who criticise him, though I've no doubt it hurts. Good work, Bill.
aww I'm just jivin' is all. I had too much time on my hands this afternoon. You know what they say about idle hands and the devil. On the only serious note I've conjured up here, it's true that you put something out in the public shere and it is like hanging yourself up there for praise and ridicule. Got to have your facts straight and your prose written for the everyman when posting in a venue like this. This isn't the New Yorker. The style guide here is for simple, short, energetic eloquence.
Energetic is good, but eloquence is dangerous, I mean flinging these words around all over the place... You could really hurt someone!
It's all good fun until someone gets an "expedient" right in the eye, or catches a "bellicosity" across the ear, or even worse, ends up with a nasty dose of "didactic realism" in the bowels.
Man, you gotta be careful with words.
To be fair I went on the attack about the quality of the prose because of a) I'm an editor, and a that's what I do (and have had done to me, more times than I can remember) and b) the fact that CW is sourcing so much content from 'independent blogs' (read: cheap and easy band-aid solutions to the fact that SH CW is mismanaged) annoys the hell out of me. Simply put, a mag having lots of lists, outside content and simple editorial mistakes means that the big chair is too big for its current occupant. Flaming this was just collateral damage (sorry Bill!)
see, I meant the eloquence is in the energy of the writing itself not the specific vocabulary per se. The readership of this rag are those that have 10 minutes to get the news in short sound bites about the town . They just want to check in and check out and not have to open a dictionary. They are not looking to get educated. They are looking to get informed. That's the difference.
I'd argue that the average reader hits the listings to be informed and reads the articles to be entertained, but your point is well made. Unfortunately, CW SH has been slowly slipping at both of those tasks due to a power vacuum at the top. This magazine used to have editorial direction you could feel running through all the content- now it has Top X lists, lots of indie content, lots of editorial goofs and no sense of purpose. It is a magazine on a descending holding pattern, unfortunately. What is truly troubling is that they no longer publish errata (even in the comments!) when they screw up and are informed about it. They used to acknowledge the mistake and tip the hat, now its just a quick fix and down the memory hole- because like I said, there's a power vacuum up top.
And as a note to the Editor, just because you ignore the signs and pretend that nothing is wrong does not mean that we don't see them. We see the signs, but what we don't see is you doing your job and representing the magazine to its readership in any meaningful way here in the online community or in print. We haven't forgiven you for plugging Pho 88, and certainly not for letting Lee defend YOUR editorial call (and frankly, using That's as an excuse is pathetic- they didn't crap all over the That's website, did they?)
Dave and narsf, my comments were not intended as criticism, especially about firing without warning shots. I meant it as sympathetic advice to Bill to be ready for tough commentary whenever he publishes. Such is the life of a writer, an actor, an editor, a painter, a band, whatever. It's the heat inside every 'kitchen'. For a writer you have to know your readership and write accordingly. That's what I think and I could be wrong. But it is one reason why the job of an editor exists because many writers can't step back for the objective view so an editor jumps in to ensure the piece meets the style guidelines, is readable, and adheres to editorial ideas of content that makes it newsworthy from the mission and vision of the publication's point of view.
@Phillip, no offense taken- I don't fire warning shots, I fire broadsides :D
Dave, I totally agree with your last few comments. During this last week you and I have bantered back and forth in commentary sections here over what for us is disturbing lack of editorial mandate. In my criticism of Zhang's blogging for her hate-mongering, (did you read here blog regarding the fake Apple stores in Kumming?) I found the magazine to be complacent and complicit in encouraging that sort of low level 'journalism', which it is not. And we were asking the question-what does this rag stand for? I keep asking- what is its purpose?
Sorry, just had to point out how narsfweasels smoothly slipped in that he writes for 'Global Newspapers'. HOTDOG! Keep your chin up bill_greyskull, if you work hard enough, one day you may get a chance to work at one of these nameless, globe-spanning, ultra-pretegious publications.
The Diplomat prestigious enough for you? I'll let him post the link if he chooses, but yes, he's published in international, serious publications.
Dave, you know i was cracking wise about you and broadsides. haha I like to think that I have no qualms about calling a spade a club or a diamond or a heart either. I don't suppress aspects of my personality that are incompatible with the standards of society. :)
This is how you should handle errata: fix and acknowledge. (kudos to Taylor King for doing it right) http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/shanghai/articles/blogs-shanghai/cw-radar/news-flash-typhoon-incoming-high-rise-fire-sentencing-new-bohai-oil-leak/
This is not apparently standard policy.Ultra-pretegious?
I'd post the link Dave, but I'm worried if they find out my real name they'll use their olde-worlde magick on me and force me to do unspeakable things like spend a whole week reading back issues of That's Shanghai, use sandpaper instead of toilet roll, or even worse, spend an evening at a local "comedy" club.
@Philip
Also no offence taken, you've been remarkably polite. I'd prefer a debate like this to any that have cropped up recently.
narsf you can bet your bippy we would and more. That's just for the appetizer. Afterall, being the cannibals that we are, we're gluttons for mystery meat like you.
The less you say about my bippy, the happier I'll be.
:X
See? I knew we'd be friends! ;)
You saying you don't mind a little bippy between friends there Narsfs, 'cause it certainly looks that way!
A little bippy here and there does sound awfully tempting.... NO!
I've been clean for two months now and I'm not going to fall off the wagon...
...though I could really lap the bippy up right now...
Wait a minute, Dave, aren't you supposed to be my sponsor? A fine job you're doing!
Wow, just wow. Does City Weekend need to create a naughty corner for you users? @Narsfweasels and Foodiedave: wrap it up.
Claire ummm...these cats are the Landlords. you dig?
Claire, wrap what up? I'm not wrapping Narsfs bippy and you know it!
Claire , you feel me?
Sorry foodiedave, not prestigious enough. For me it's Modern Drunkard Magazine or nothing…
Well, at least you have your standards. I can respect that, so long as it isn't That's.
the monkey and I are probably in agreement that tuesdays are good for nothin' but drinkin beer and watchin' tv
Folks, just enjoy the food. :-) I certainly do -- still trying to find some consistently good southern China style meatballs for foodiedave/bill_greyskull. [HTML_REMOVED] @Claire, here something my old pal - travellinggourmet - did a cross-post of a Cityweekend's blog article on Supper Club. [HTML_REMOVED]http://thetravellinggourmet.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/our-man-in-shanghai/[HTML_REMOVED] (please copy+paste to a new browser tab if the html tag doesn't work).
Oops... perhaps not crossed post, but more "cross linked". Cheers!
This guys a bit wordy...