In Shanghai

Eels 'n' frogs, comfortably numb

Thursday June 24

Long flight, wretched food and  so  on. Felt bad about a woman in line for the head who surely could not have actually fit through the door…

The boys were waiting, and have been gracious and helpful.We took a cab into the city. They do wonderful things with color and lights. Besides whole skyscrapers being cloaked with changing lights, the trees on the nearby main drag were hung with red luminous persimmons the size of a teapot and had green uplights crouching in the center where the branches leave the trunk, illuminating the foliage.  It created a Ali Baba’s cave, or cartoony effect that was marvelous. Then  Ryan joined us for dinner at a hotpot place they said was famous—Beijinger? – bugs, hot pot with lamb, tofu, noodles, several greens, quail’s eggs… fiery booze (jiu?) which  I tasted.  A peanutty sauce not spicy. Ryan will go antique shopping with me, I think. Briefly met Xing. And so to bed.

Friday, June 23

I got up around 5—quite a dawn chorus. The air is heavy and a little fetid. Outside a couple of neighbors are watering their plants. One old man is growing rosemary, basil, mint, thyme, other western herbs with the idea of repelling bugs, rather than culinary uses. Another has an elaborate trellis system with beans and cukes growing in the roof’s drainage ditch. I drew the view from the roof. The building across the street that I drew is called the Normandy, so-called because it is somewhat boat shaped (a less acute flatiron) at the bottom of Huaihai Lu, poised as if to sail up the street…anyway, from Max’ rooftop garden, I get a view of the back. This building is reputed to have such terrible feng shui that residents suffer evil fates and the place is haunted. Even so, I later saw a wedding couple posing with the Normandy in the background.

Jacob came and we wandered around the French Concession, had breakfast (fried not-sweet giant beignets ad a crepe-omelet-tofu-chili-hoisin bundle) and looked at the wet market with bundles of frogs, eels of several types, fish, crabs, shrimp and bugs. They were kept in buckets with bubblers to keep them alive and fresh. We walked down a long and lovely street lined with pollarded plane trees like the picture from Barcelona.We stopped at his place which is even tinier than Max’, maybe 200 square feet, or 30 in all, but nicer environs and bath, but no stove or penultimatehouse garden. Went to the Shanghai Museum and looked at paintings and ceramics. There were huge brass drums with frogs around the edges; a fine dog; a camel facing off a dragon at the base of a temple pillar; those lovely, blade-necked multiglazed horses. Jacob was patient and stoical, though I know it wasn’t his idea of a good time. There was a model of the ‘dragon kiln’, a tunnel kiln built at an angle on a hillside, so that the whole kiln was a chimney. There were ceramics labeled celadon but that were orangey and yellowy colors as well as the dreamy green that I love; a four thousand year old jug with bird designs that looked like southwest Indian designs in their geometric look, and the overall shape. Upstairs, there were paintings that looked almost impressionistic—blobs of color applied wet-on-wet with a few details inked in. And a colored ink drawing that I loved of caterpillars eating leaves (didn’t look like mulberry leaves) of which there were, sadly, no reproductions in the museum store. I asked the guard (in Mandarin, except a gesture for ‘photograph’, if I could snap a picture; he said yes, but then was upset that I had used a flash.

Max' penultimatehouse garden

That night, there was a going away party on Max’ roof.There were maybe 8-10 people, and it was pretty quiet on the rooftop, but there was an irate neighbor who complained, then called the police who came but were noncommittal, and who then escalated to throwing plastic gallon cartons of water at the collected gathering, and then in a rage, glass bottles. The police took a ‘can’t we all just get along’ tack; the turn of events animated but then pretty much quashed the party. Jacob was furious; eventually everyone but me went off to a bar.Tomorrow we may go to the silk market in the afternoon and I will try the bus tour in the morning. I get Max’ place and he is sharing with Jacob- generous on both their parts.