Shanghai Hotel Quarantine Diary: Day 7

Yesterday was a super busy day, so just catching up on the diary!

5:30am - woke up. Did my Centr workout. Ate the last banana from my office care package. Got to work.

8:05am - call to say breakfast is outside. Today I’m excited because there’s a new type of baozi! (Along with the regular hard-boiled egg (白煮鸡蛋) and semi-regular soy-dairy Vitasoy milk (维他奶).

So the new baozi is the pickled vegetable baozi (酸菜包) , with some pork in addition, I think. Very tasty!

I was also super happy that one of my new-found favorites, the millet cake (小米糕), was back. It’s just this gentle, gently sweet cake.

Least impressive was the corn (玉米). I mean, I kind of knew what to expect. This is that kind of corn where the kernels are rather chewy and bland, and come cleanly off the cob. Basically I kind of only like the corn from North America…

8:32am - temperature check

11:43am - lunch placed out

12:03pm - lunch call. I opened the door and found that my office’s second care package arrived! They were going to send me more snacks, but I begged them no more snacks, because I’m being so well fed I’ve had little chance to eat the snacks I do have. I said maybe more water and fruit, if anything.

Oh my gosh, they really outdid themselves! 12 huge bottles of Evian, kiwis, tiny mandarin oranges, very perfect-looking organic tomatoes, and mixed nuts.

And today’s lunch was delicious.

Very impressive was the black pepper beef (黑椒牛肉粒), and the white chunks were pieces of king oyster mushroom, or whatever the Spanish setas are. This was richly flavored, and the beef was very tender.

There was also scallion steamed fish (葱花美极蒸四腮鱼). I’m not sure what the English is for this fish 四腮鱼(si4sai1yu2) but I came across “four cheek bass or perch” online. Whatever it was, I really enjoyed this fish!

Today there were three proteins; the third being scallion and pickled mustard tuber braised tofu (小葱榨菜末烩豆腐mo4hui4 - braised). I loved the soft texture of this tofu; it was delightful to eat with rice. The rice to non-rice ratio is quite low actually, especially compared to other quarantine hotel meals I’ve seen. It’s overall a good thing, although sometimes for eating pleasure I have wished for another spoonful of rice!

Our vegetable of the day’s lunch was a vinegared napa cabbage (醋溜大白菜cu4liu1 vinegar). I’d never had this kind of preparation before! It was VERY vinegary!

The soup was this fish ball celery soup (香芹丸子塘). Very watery or refreshing (depending on perspective), as usual.

2:58pm - temperature check. Strangely no trash pickup yet! They end up coming by sometime after wards.

6:07pm - picked up dinner

Just like lunch, there were three proteins for dinner! There was a very tasty “Irish” roast dark meat chicken (奥尔兰烤鸡腿肉). I kind of detected a smoky flavor, like kind of a barbecue dry rub. It definitely did taste “foreign,” and I liked it a lot.

There were also black bean steamed ribs (豉汁蒸排骨). They were okay, kind of in a gloppy sauce.

The third protein was this funny-looking cake type of thing: a five spice veggie duck (五香素鸡su4ji1).

The texture was quite different than what I expected. I was expecting layer upon layer of tofu skin, but this was more like a fried tofu with a kind of creamy interior. It was decent.

For the vegetable, there was this zucchini stir-fried with small shrimp (虾米炒小瓜).

The soup was a scallop winter melon soup (瑶柱冬瓜汤yao2zhu4 scallops). I must have eaten so quickly, to get back to work, that I didn’t really notice any scallops! Or maybe it’s just scallop broth?