Shanghai: Eat, speak, shop

SHANGHAI - Thursday, Oct. 13 - We passed on the little fried ducks on a stick for sale in the warren of food stalls around the Yu Gardens Bazaar, but dug into the squares of tofu and brown bird eggs with black spots that came with our tea at Huxingting, the ornate teahouse on the gardens' lake.

The grass jelly soy drink we sampled at Renmin (People's) Square was refreshing, and the pancake shaped like a slice of pizza we ate while browsing through the Dongtai Lu antique market made a yummy mid-morning snack.

Eating is pure adventure in Shanghai, and cheap too. If you're on your own, don't read Chinese and don't have a guide or a tour operator to steer you in some direction (not necessarily the right one), feeding yourself means being willing to plunge in and take a few risks.

We scored our best meal so far last night as we were walking in the direction of several restaurants mentioned in our guidebooks. We never made it to any of them because we made our own discovery: the Wanchai, a few blocks from our hotel in the French Concession. The thick menu had pictures of all the dishes (not as low-brow as it sounds since some of the best restaurants do this).

English descriptions helped us eliminate the double-boiled pig special, boiled with pig blood and chili, and the shepherd's purse and bean curd soup, with plenty of choices left over to put together a fine meal. There was a plate of pickled yams, sliced thin french fries; a heaping platter of delicate vegetables with slivers of pork and squid and a beef dish seasoned with cumin. Best of all was the bill. The total for all of this plus a half-liter of Tstingtao beer, a bottle of mineral water and a glass of watermelon juice: $12.

"Ah ... you kill me!"

Shanghai is a shopper's paradise. The price on anything is negotiable, even in department stores. There's one word you'll want to learn in Chinese besides "Hello," "Please'' and "Thank you," and it's not "Bathroom." Toilets are all marked with stick pictures of men and women so you'll rarely have to ask.

It's "tai gui," the word for "too expensive. Ask a Chinese-speaking person to help you learn to pronounce it, and then practice it so that it comes out automatically every time you appear to be interested in buying anything.

I wandered in a store today, and the clerk immediately lowered the price on a faux leather jacket from $25 to $5. It was too small, so I passed. Instead we now own six Chairman Mao watches and two Bangqike Heating Bags, miniature hot water bottle-shaped bags about the size of your hand, that crystallize and heat up when shocked with an internal metal clicker.

Making a deal to buy something usually goes something like this: A vendor punches numbers into a calculator and offers you a "special morning price." It's usually about double what he's willing to take.

You say "tai gui," and start to walk away. He then hands you the calculator and asks you to "say how much you want to pay." You type in a really low offer and he makes a motion like he's going to slit his throat. "Ah...you kill me!"

The two of you continue back and forth like this for a while, and before you know it, your friends are all getting Chairman Mao watches for Christmas and your mom is getting a heating bag that comes with a written guarantee that "the product is harmless and has no side effect on man."

Getting around

We're running out of time with too many things left to do in Shanghai, so today we got around mostly by taxi. Taxis are cheap. No trip cost us more than about $2.50 and a few were less. But most taxi drivers don't speak English, so the smart thing to do is ask someone at your hotel to write down the names of your destinations in Chinese so you can hand the note to the driver. Some of the bigger hotels print cards with common destinations written on them. We're staying next door to the Hilton so I stopped in and picked up a few to carry with me.

Remember to remind the driver to set his meter, and ask for a receipt. The receipt shows the pick-up and drop-off points and the amount charged. If the driver refuses to give you a receipt, you're not required to pay.