Last night Sierk Vojacek invited me for dinner at the Shintori restaurant in Julu Lu. Susanne Viguurs, SVP’s financial advisor/accountant from Holland, was visiting Shanghai and she also joined the dinner. Shintori is one of the better Japanese restaurants in Shanghai. Most of the Japanese places are either teppanyaki style or buffet style, but Shintori is different. No RMB 150 all you can eat and drink deal, but a hypermodern environment (only concrete on the inside, but very beautiful – forgot to take pictures of that…_) with very special menu items.

The Rock and Roll salad is a regular for me when I go here: they shake the salad ingredients in a glass cocktail tumbler. Also the codfish dishes are fantastic, and as appetizer you should order the cheese and shrimp rolls. The beef sukiyaki is something I can also advise, excellent taste and a reasonable portion. Of course you can also order sushi and sashimi here, and their quality is definitively better than in most other Shanghainese Japanese restaurants.

Pricewise you should count on about RMB 500 per person, including drinks. 3 times the price of the all-you-can-eat places, but the atmosphere and great food compensate for that. Shintori has several outlets in Shanghai, but this is the nicest one in my opinion.

The Spring Festival is over, and suddenly the weather turns spring-like! Today it is 17 degrees and sunny in Shanghai, very nice after 3 months of colder weather. On the street most people still wear their winterwear (three sweaters and double pants) because inside the unheated Shanghai houses it is still very chilly, but walking in the sun it is already too warm to wear my winter coat.

But of course this is only temporarily, by the end of the week the mercury will drop to 5 degrees again (and around zero degrees at night). And this weekend I am flying to Beijing where it still freezes 7 degrees at night… I am actually planning to go skiing in a resort close to Beijing on Saturday, so I hope it will stay cold there for a few more days.

Today is the last day (15th day) of the Spring Festival, and therefore today it is full moon. Because it is a cloudless day today the moon can be clearly seen in Shanghai’s sky. The festivities on the last day of the Spring Festival are called the Lantern Festival. Many people make their own lanterns, and my assistant told me that Nanjing Lu is covered in red lanterns. All around us fireworks are being lighted again, so I am afraid sleeping might be a problem tonight… Traditionally Yuan Xiao (glutinous rice balls) is the food of choice for this day, so later on Qi and I will go out to buy some. Happy Lantern Festival!

Last night Qi and I had our pre-Valentines Day dinner at Laris in Shanghai. Qi will be on a business trip next week, so we decided to have our Valentines dinner a couple of days earlier.

Laris is one of the very best restaurants in Shanghai, but also one of the most expensive ones. It is located on the 6th floor of 3 on the Bund, right below New Heights. The ambiance is modern, but very elegant. The design is stunning, but might feel a bit cold for some people, due to a heavy usage of marble. The atmosphere is very relaxed for a top restaurant, and the view over the river and the Pudong skyline are stunning (as in all restaurants on the Bund).

We started our dinner with a glass of champagne. Executive chef David Laris offered us some tasty amuses-gueules, a mousse of crab and a small glass of warm potato leek soup. My appetizer was a foie gras in three ways ( as a terrine, poached au torchon, and seared quickly in a very hot pan – I think…) with a warm brioche, that I combined with a glass of Sauternes. Qi decided to have scallops with a glass of champagne. The foie gras was excellent, and among the very best in Shanghai. Laris actually has a separate menu for foie gras, so if you are a fan you can order as much and in any style you like.

After the appetizer I had a cauliflower soup with caviar, that I combined with champagne. Also an excellent combination, something I had never had before. Qi decided just to have an appetizer and main course, so she continued to enjoy the champagne. As a main course Qi went for a half lobster with a glass of Margaret River Chardonnay, while I had a medium-rare beef tenderloin with a New-Zealand Pinot Noir. Both dishes were excellent as well, and the wines fit very well.

To finish it off I had 5 kinds of cheese (although I only got 4 – but it was so good I did not complain) with a glass of Taylor’s vintage port. Qi had a coconut mousse with fresh mango puree with a pot of earl grey tea. The coffee with handmade bonbons was a nice end of the evening. Total bill was not low (over RMB 1000 per person), but worth every RMB of it. If you want to have dinner in a luxurious ambiance in Shanghai, and want to have excellent food, this is one of the top 5 places to go. The menu has a separate section for oysters, caviar and foie gras, so if you are fan of those this is definitely a restaurant you should not miss.

It’s well-known that food is one of the most important things for a Chinese. So a holiday like the Spring Festival means eating good food several times a day. A heavy breakfast with filled buns, a big lunch with meat, fish and vegetables, lots of snacks and fruit during day time, and then a big dinner followed by even more snacks. This is supposed to be healthy.

But is it really? The Shanghai Daily wrote today that Shanghai’s Liren Women’s Hospital’s out-patient department treated 30 percent more patients for intestinal problems this week than normal. Doctors said many patients suffered diseases due to an improper diet over the Spring Festival!

Several of my Dutch friends in the China/Hong Kong area have lately started blogs. The first one was Thijs Bosma, who set up heyworldhereiam.com on Dec. 11, 2005. Thijs moved to China early December and is working on several projects, and at the same time looking for a job in Shanghai. He is obsessed with skyscrapers, so Shanghai is the right place for him to be. On his blog Thijs talks about his daily experiences in adjusting to life in Shanghai.

On New Years Day 2006 also Marcel Ekkel set up a blog: MarcelQPO. Marcel is a former Dutch marine, and the title of his blog derives from there (Qua Patet Orbis, the motto of the Royal Dutch Marine Corps). Marcel is now an entrepreneur in Hong Kong who might move to mainland China in the near future. He loves endurance sports, he will for example run the Hong Kong marathon this weekend, and is considering to join Gary and me on our Himalaya mountain biking trip later this year. His blog talks about his observations and experiences of life in Greater China.

Lastly, Floris Fibbe set us a blog on January 6: Fibbe in Shanghai. Floris is a Dutch lawyer who decided that being able to speak Chinese is essential, so he studied Chinese for a full year in Shanghai. Still not satisfied with his proficiency in the language he moved to Harbin (North-China) last week, and just found a local family to live with during the next two months. If you want to follow his hardships there (no shower!) make his blog a daily read.

Today’s Shanghai Daily has an article about the possible end of free taxing booking in Shanghai. Although it is still a discussion point, this could make my life a lot easier. Let me explain.

In 1999 the fee for booking a taxi was abolished to ‘promote business’. Well, that certainly worked. On rainy days or around holidays it is impossible to find a taxi on the street, let alone to reserve one through one of the taxi call centers. There are just not enough taxi’s in this city (the ratio taxi’s per inhabitants is half that of Beijing for example), and more and more people become affluent enough to take a taxi to work or to the supermarket (for readers from outside China: a taxi in China is dirt-cheap, a 10 minute drive will set you back just one Euro). In the morning I always reserve a taxi to get to work, but I have to reserve 3 days in advance to make sure I can get one. If I forget, or if my schedule changes, I am not able to book it anymore, because so many other people also reserve a taxi. And if you are a new customer you cannot even book a taxi during rush hour (only people who regularly book taxi’s have this ‘right’).

Because Shanghainese are extremely price sensitive, adding a reservation fee to the price will likely reduce the amount of reservation calls. People prefer to wait on the street for half an hour in the hope of finding a free taxi instead of spending a few kuai extra. Hopefully it will then be possible to call a taxi 10 minutes ahead, like outside China. I really hope this decision will be made (and implemented) soon.

In China everything can be a fake, even the Great Wall. Chinese media reported that the authorities have built a fake Chinese Wall next the real Wall in Yuyongguan (this is the place where you first pass the Wall when you drive on the Badaling Highway north of Beijing – you literally drive through it here). The reason is that many people tend to write their names on the Wall, and this activity negatively affects the state of the structure. The fake Wall can now be used to write on. In capitalist China, you of course have to pay for this. According to nu.nl tourists will have to pay USD 120 for the honor.

Is this story really true? I seriously doubt it, but maybe one of my readers can confirm it. Who would pay USD 120 to write his/her name on a wall? And not on the Wall, but on just a wall next to the Wall. And thinking about it, even the Great Wall in that location is fake: in Yuyongguan it has been completely rebuilt, and I don’t think there is still one original stone left. They might just as well rebuild the parts that are most affected by graffiti, but that’s probably not as lucrative. So who is fooling who?