The Charm of Nanjing Road

The atmosphere of Nanjing Road always seems to be the same, regardless of whether you’re there during the day or at night.  On our very first night in Shanghai, we arrived back at Nanjing Road late in the evening to discover a big gathering of people in the middle of the road.  I’d say there were probably about 30 senior citizens assembled around a couple of microphones and speakers and they were just taking turns singing their hearts out to old tunes. They didn’t have a TV screen though and all the lyrics were written out on a piece of paper. 

A little further down the road, another 30 or so middle aged women had music playing and were dancing together.  I knew that Chinese people were big on 廣場舞 (public squares dances).  Middle aged ladies would often gather together in public squares and put on their favourite tunes and synchronize their steps.  It is a very healthy form of exercise for these ladies, which I think is fantastic.  However, this was the first time I’d seen it in the middle of a busy pedestrian street.

The thing that we seemed to do more on Nanjing Road than anything else is eat!  In my two (short) trips to Shanghai, I think 80% of the meals were eaten somewhere along Nanjing Road.

One place that I ate at more than once was YongHe Dou Jiang (永和豆漿).  I love breakfasts consisting of soy bean milk and green onion crepes, and I decided that since I was in Shanghai, I should try salty soy bean milk instead of always sticking to the sweet kind that I knew very well.  I had no idea what to expect but I certainly didn’t realize salty soy bean milk meant that they would just be adding Chinese donut and green onions into my milk.  I guess I was thinking that it was just soy bean milk with salt!  Unfortunately, it was a bit much for me and I couldn’t really handle the salty soy bean milk and had to re-order the regular, sweet kind.

We found this restaurant in a small alley that was packed, so we decided to give it a try.  We weren’t overly hungry so we just decided to order some soup dumplings (小籠包), fried rice and a Kung Pao Chicken.  The soup dumplings were still steaming when they arrived.

We were fortunate enough to find this wonderful restaurant inside one of the shopping centres on Nanjing road.  It was a popular establishment and we ended up lining up for about 20 minutes before we were seated.  Once inside, we indulged in 6 dishes, even though there were only 2 of us!  We started off with a vegetable soup dish that had chinese sausage as well as century old egg. Then, came the fried sweet potatoes, spare ribs, bamboo shoots, ham wrapped lettuce and fish. 

For breakfast the next morning, we made our way back to Nanjing Road yet again to try some of the local specialties including Shanghai noodles, sweet rice dumplings and lion’s head meatballs.  Lion’s head is actually a large pork meatball that is stewed with vegetables.  The meatball is supposed to resemble a lion’s head, hence the name.  Of the three items, the rice dumplings were a bit of a letdown for me.  It did really just taste like clumps of rice in a sweet soup.  The different colours were supposed to be of different flavours, but I really couldn’t tell the difference.

Hopefully I’ll be able to go back again one day to add even more to my list of Nanjing Road food adventures.

For more photos, please see my Photo Gallery of Nanjing Road.