My friends often wonder what I do in Shanghai every now and then, isn’t that right? So. Apart from the fact that the Shanghai female race is superior, etc. (this is contested), I come here to enjoy food amongst the masses. So it was CNY, and I attended a banquet held just on the outskirts of the outskirts of Shanghai.

the banquet hall

Indeed, my photography skills tend to filter out the ugly and the bad. We arrived at the banquet hall at about 5:30, just in time to start. We had travelled for some time along the main road before we turned into a small alleyway full of pecking chickens and wandering dogs. A few turns later, we passed by abandoned buildings and great fields of vegetables. The villagers are very resourceful, transforming patches of wasteland into arable land.
We entered the banquet hall. I was not at all surprised, given the circumstances of this previous village banquet I had attended on a duck farm.

The great chef had refused to move out of his hovel, but made great food nonetheless. In a matter of an hour or so, 18 dishes swept out of the single-stove kitchen onto the table. Pigs tongues, bamboo shoots, dumplings, fish, shrimps and all manner of festive delights piled onto the table.

all manner of food

Then the drinking will begin. Bouts of yellow wine, rice wine and cheap beer chilled by the winter wind will come through and up through noses. It will be a long night…