More than just food

　　By Bill Symington

Dining out in Shanghai

　　The two-lane highway from Nanjing to Shanghai, completed only a few years ago, has already turned into a bottleneck. It seems that the people in charge of planning the road system, in whatever country, have a tendency to underestimate people's fondness for motor vehicles. Unlike the situation in places like the United Kingdom or Germany, however, where widening a road can take several decades, no time is being wasted by the powers that be in Jiangsu province. It's a costly exercise, for sure, but this is the richest part of China, and there's no messing about. Hundreds of diggers and graders are at work to make sure the task is completed ASAP.

　　We're moving through a mixed landscape: Lush rape fields - their yellow blooms stretching for dozens of miles - fertile farmland, countless little fishponds, even a new church, then on to the thick smell of industry around Changzhou and Wuxi. The closer we get to Shanghai, the denser the traffic. On reaching the outskirts of Suzhou, we are hopelessly stuck. Finally, after a four-hour journey we reach the Big City and I find my way to a taxi stand. The driver is keen to get back home. For him, my inability to get a seat on the train has meant a whole day's work on the road.

　　As for me, I'm ready for a quiet evening with my friends Patrick and Tricia. The next morning, it's a Saturday, we get up early and head for Maixin (美心酒家), a restaurant on Shaanxi Nan Lu, whose name is borrowed from the famous Maxim in Paris. Unlike its namesake, however, this is a rather more modest establishment specialising in a kind of cuisine known as hai pai yue cai (海派粤菜).

　　As the name implies, this is based on Cantonese food (粤菜,yue cai), and its origins date back to the civil war period of the last century, when there was a large influx of people from Guangdong and Hong Kong into Shanghai. Being wary of the original Shanghai food, which was based on a blend of the type of food eaten in Anhui province and that of Suzhou, Wuxi and Changzhou - where many of the early inhabitants of Shanghai came from - and altogether too oily for their sensitive palates, they brought their own recipes with them. Most popular were the many kinds of delicately flavoured dim sum (点心) but, as the materials being used were of local origin, it was only natural that the taste of the dishes changed. The resulting blend, to many a connoisseur, often tasted better than either of the original constituent elements: Fusion cuisine, here we come!

　　A popular example of this type of dish is yuntui qingyujiao (云腿青鱼饺), tasty morsels of fish wrapped in a delicate soft pastry and served steamed in a bamboo basket. Another is lawei baozai fan (腊味煲仔饭), vegetables and cured meat on a base of steamed rice.

　　Apart from its food, Maixin prides itself on the many celebrated personalities that have been its patrons over the decades. Among its illustrious customers was the famous beauty and film actress Ruan Lingyu (阮玲玉,1910 - 1935). She had won fame at an early age, with films such as Guaming Fuqi (挂名夫妻, A couple in name only). Sadly, that fame brought her no fortune, and she soon found out the power of the old saying 'Gossip is a fearful thing' (人言可畏, ren yan ke wei). Being a highly sensitive young lady, she soon could take the idle gossip and slanders (流言蜚语, liu yan fei yu) about her private life any longer and committed suicide.