The Amazing Race, part 2

The phone rang in our hotel room; it was my niece, Kelsey: “I’m hungry – let’s go out and get something to eat. There’s a strip mall across the street; I can see it from my room.” Apparently, the next leg of the Amazing Race would involve feeding the five of us armed only with my niece’s Lonely Planet phrasebook app.

We met her downstairs, and made our way across the street in the darkness, navigating around some large lion/dog statues and a moat. What we found sitting where the strip mall should be was definitely not a strip mall. It was a handful of shops on a small street adjacent to our relatively monstrous hotel. The five of us peered into the storefronts, sizing up the food establishments and wondering why a beauty salon would be open so late. There were basically two choices, restaurant #1 or restaurant #2. “This one looks a little more lively ... let’s go here.” Thankfully, Kelsey was not only hungry, she was also very decisive.

We walked into the well-lit, informally furnished restaurant, and an older gentleman and a very young woman spoke to us in Chinese – which we did not understand – and walked us over to a table, handing us five menus.

I flipped through the menu and quickly realized none of it was in English, and there were no pictures to help us out. I looked up at the gentleman and said, pathetically, “English?”

The gentleman looked at me for a split second, then turned to my Chinese American husband and said what we all took to be “English?!!! What?!!! Are you kidding me? You look Chinese, don’t you speak Chinese?”

To which my husband replied, in English: “No.”

The man burst out laughing, thrust the menus and notepad into the hands of the young woman, and said, “Ha ha ha!!! Here you go, sweetie, you take care of them – you are studying English now at school, right? English! Ha ha ha!”

The young woman’s eyebrows rose into an unhappy, worried rainbow as she started asking us what we would like to order. I looked at the menu again, trying to decode based on my limited knowledge of Japanese kanji. Well, that has meat in it, so does that one, and that has fish ... hmmmm ...

Not wanting to wait for me to decipher the menu, the young woman proceeded to talk to us in Chinese, which to me sounded like, “something something something jiao zu something something ...” Wait. I know that word. I practically jumped out of my chair with excitement and blurted out, “Jiao zu! Yes! Jiao zu! We want that!” I had recognized a word that was somehow embedded in my memory, thanks to Ben Sun and Alex Te circa 1982, when they told me that “jiao zu” was the Mandarin word for the Japanese “gyoza.”

The waitress seemed unfazed by my enthusiasm and continued talking. “What kind?” is what we think she was asking. She walked me over to a chart on the wall, which I assumed was a pricelist of the various types of dumplings with brief descriptions. Unfortunately, I could not recognize any characters beyond “meat,” “fish,” and “leaf,” so we are not sure what to do next. I look up at Kelsey, and we simultaneously noticed that they were plating up some dumplings for another table, so we both pointed and said, “That! We want that!”

Luckily, pointing is a universally understood gesture. The waitress took our order and we sat down to wait for our food. There were a couple of kittens running around, eating peanut shells and other scraps that were on the floor. A toddler roamed about, his little tushy peeking out from his special potty-training pants, reaching up to a table and helping himself to a half-empty glass of beer and some nuts. We were guessing he was the child of somebody who was working there, since none of the customers seemed to be concerned about this. We took our cues and tried not to act alarmed. I turned off my Mommy Reflex and watched with amusement. If there were any health code or child welfare violations here, nobody seemed to be worried about it, so I wouldn’t, either.

I start to comment that the dumplings look like those Shanghai dumplings that we used to get at Wu Kong in San Francisco or at Shandong in Oakland ... when I realize that we are in Shanghai so of course we are getting Shanghai dumplings! Wow. We were really here, half-way around the world.

Our food came out pretty quickly, and the dumplings were delicious. Although we must have been somewhat of a curiosity to the other patrons, nobody seemed to be bothered by us, and it was nice to just blend in (well, as long as we didn’t try to say anything). My family was nourished and happy. We had successfully complete this leg of the race.

The Amazing Race, part 1

We were finally ready for our trip to Shanghai. Well, as ready as I was going to be. The house was not spic-n-span the way I would like it to be, but this has been an elusive fantasy of mine for years now. The kids pitched in and vacuumed and tidied up, though, so it is in better shape than it was, and it was much easier to use the vacuum with the puppy at the boarder's (instead of barking maniacally at the vacuum with every stroke). We made a stop at the mailbox to pay for dance lessons and basketball, the middle school to pick up assignments the teacher neglected to give our daughter, and almost stopped for gas since we were running low. Got through the Bay Bridge toll plaza and muddled through the City on our way to Park n Fly, the first leg of the Amazing Race, Woo Family Edition.

For our next task, we must feed a family of four at the SFO eateries that line the concourse. I went with my son to Andale ... which, ironically, took a really long time to prepare his burrito. I started eating my ginormous Chicken Caesar Wrap, under the watchful gaze of my hungry son. I gave him half, although he did not eat it all, because he was still looking forward to his burrito. Tick tock, tick tock. Fortunately, the burrito emerged from behind the counter, and my son's ability to eat his food really fast was put to good use. It is still strangely satisfying to watch him devour his food, even while I am wondering how it will ever digest in his tummy.

In spite of my stressing out about being late due to burrito-waiting, we make it to the gate with plenty of time before boarding. We find our aunt, uncle and cousin there, looking very leisurely, as if they had arrived three hours before the flight, as recommended by the airline. My husband and daughter were already there, having gotten their lunches to-go, and eating in the waiting area. Boarding is uneventful. We walk by the Business Class section wistfully, and settle into Economy. I believe its code is "Y," and flying this trip on United, I began to understand why this is. I had many "Y" moments during the trip. "Y" is there no individual screen to entertain me on this flight, even though ANA, JAL and KAL all have that in Economy class? "Y" does my seat not recline properly? "Y" is the flight attendant's rear end bumping me in the face, again? "Y" is the food so bad? I was not prepared to feel so "Y"-ney about everything, but this was the worst overseas flight I had been on. It actually made me wish there were size restrictions on flight attendants. I am not proud that I had this thought, but I did. I suppose it is a natural reaction to being woken up by a flight attendant's butt bumping into your row repeatedly, just as you were dozing off to dreamland. Sigh.

Many hours later, we landed safe and sound in Shanghai. I love you, United Airlines, for delivering us safely to our destination. In the end, safety trumps discomfort on a flight. After getting our luggage, we push our carts through the passageway of drivers and guides holding signs with travelers' names on them. We were told that the local guide would be holding a sign with my husband's name on it, so we scanned the crowd expectantly. Nothing. We went back and scanned again, this time looking at the signs written in Chinese, too. Still nothing. Aunt Chrissy had the local phone number of the tour company, but none of us had a phone that was equipped to make calls in China. My niece, Kelsey, who had arrived a few hours earlier from Chicago, went over to the young men stationed at the World Expo information table, and they let her make a phone call -- which did not make a difference, anyway, since nobody answered. Things were starting to look grim. Finally, a woman named Megi -- who had been holding a sign that read "Champion Tours," with nobody's name on it at all -- came up to Uncle Leo, the most "American"-looking of all of us, to see if he was looking for a guide. She had apparently noticed the rest of us pacing back and forth along the row of sign-holders, but didn't think to ask us if we were her group. At least things were not so grim anymore. We piled into a micro-bus and made it to our hotel about an hour away from the Shanghai city center.

Finally, we had arrived at our destination.