Kunitzer in China

Rode the train to Shanghai over the weekend. Walked on The People's Square. Visited the Shanghai Museum. Saw The Temple of the Jade Buddha. Walked on Nanjing Street. Copy and paste the following link into your browser to see my pictures of Shanghai:

http://www2.snapfish.com/share/p=386201156077169241/l=119563585/g=57456423/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

The only thing I did not get pictures of (but wish I had) was of breakfast on Sunday morning. Our plan was to go to Starbucks (hooray!) for breakfast (coffee) because it was just around the corner from our hotel. Just as we walked out of the hotel, we saw a group of ~100(?) Chinese loitering across the street at the intersection. It looked like they were getting breakfast too. Despite having my heart set on Starbucks (hooray!), my wants to check out their breakfast (boo!). We walk over to see what's cooking and it actually smells quite good. Of course, we are the only non-Chinese there so we get a lot of stares. And since we are joining their group, we are getting a lot more stares than usual, but our money is just as good as theirs so they don't give us any hassle. The closer we get, the better we see how crazy their set up is for cooking food. There are two shop bikes - the kind like a big tricycle with bed in the back for hauling things around. The bed in the back of these have a 55 gallon drum converted into a grill. These things are loaded up with charcoal (probably not Kingsford) that is already reduced to perfect coals for grilling and are cooking some kind of bread in at giant skillet. One person is busy rolling out the dough and another is busy cooking the bread. A set up like this would be shut down by the US health inspectors without even bother to make an inspection, but here it's just a part of everyday life. We bought two different kinds - one with some sort of green onion and another with cooked egg. We ate both kinds too. They weren't selling this at Starbucks, but it was good - good enough to do it again. Even good enough to again eat before going to Starbucks the next time this happens. I only wish I had taken pictures because it wasn't just the taste of the food that made it good, it was the whole experience - the smell of the hot oil and charcoal, the crowd of people, sitting on the curb of the road as we ate our food, seeing people throw their trash on the ground even though there is a trash can right beside them, the laughs and smiles from the Chinese as they watch these four Americans eat breakfast with them, the taxis honking at all of us to get out of their way, getting ripped off because we are Americans, and enjoying ourselves because you can't get this at McDonald's and it's a lot better than an Egg McMuffin. Even if it wasn't as sanitary.