Adding Sugar to Everything

I looked outside and noticed that there were low clouds over the evening.  Lights were glistening, somewhat refracted.  I had looked and it was dusk.  Dusk is long gone.  Is it raining now?  It wasn’t then. 

Clearly it isn’t pouring.  But it isn’t dry out there either.  I do what anyone on the twelfth floor of a city apartment would do:  I lean outside and stare down for an umbrella count. I don’t see any.  But I don’t see much of anyone, anyway.  

Stepping out it would appear I made the right call.  It’s drizzling.  Nothing to fret about.  I walked up to my newest, local jiachangcai joint.  Another night, another compromised order.  The last time I was here I chose an appealing looking peanut dish from the menu.  I knew what I wanted in my mind’s eye.  What was served neither looked like the picture nor tasted like my memory.  It was peanuts drowned in vinegar and molasses.  Why is it the Shanghai people are so fond of adding sugar to everything?

Tonight I’ve got a pork dish I’ve been ordering by name for most of the last two and half decades.  Some kongxingcai.  It’s all acceptable, if not memorable.  But the jellyfish, which sounds horrible but should taste marvelous, was horrible.  Plane and undressed it wasn’t much to taste.  “Is this really how you serve your jelly fish?  It’s so plain.” “No really.  That’s how we do it.  We’re not trying to cheat you.” There is that logic once again:  the familiar Shanghai construction:  “I’m not cheating you” ringing much more frequently in Shanghai, then it does in Beijing.

I’m back in my little room.  I passed what must be a rather low-end hotel on the way back.  Their rooms are certainly smaller than this.  A few hours ago a remarkable bird showed up out my window.  It had this bubbly call that it sang, over and over.  It sounded so close.  I couldn’t imagine where he was based.  I opened the window with its sucking sound and the song stopped, of course.  I looked out the window and saw nothing there, nothing flying away.  Just the metronome like pulsation of the traffic, rising and falling.