Quarantine Diary Day 5: Repeats Already??

A word about my day numbering convention on this trip. When I came to Shanghai in 2020, I called my day of arrival as “Day 0,” and then the first full day of quarantine was “Day 1.” Then I was released on “Day 14.” This time, I’m calling my day of arrival “Day 1.” That’s because this is how all of the paperwork refers to the days. Specifically, they say that we need to take PCR tests on Days 1, 4, 7, 10, 14, 16, and 21 (whew!). So “Day 1” was the test we took in Pudong Airport on day of arrival, and then Day 4 was the test we took yesterday morning. This makes it easier to remember by matching up the days of quarantine with the days which we’re supposed to get tested.

So, while today is Day 5 of quarantine, it’s only the 4th day of meals. That’s why it’s so sad to already get repeated dishes during both lunch and dinner so soon.

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Breakfast today came with soy milk, hard-boiled egg, and plain mantou 馒头.

Also a vegetable bao.

And 3 beef and corn dumplings. These looked like they were for sure industrially made, but were pretty good. I sure was glad I brought Tabasco from the US to perk these up!

Lunch was quite a mixed bag. I was happy for the orange. Their oranges are very good - juicy, sweet, and a very orange-y flavor.

This shrimp with celtuce(?) was oddly soupy.

Also a bit soupy was this dish of yellow colored potatoes. It looks like it should be curry flavored, but didn’t taste like curry.

Then we had a slab of pork belly. It’s Thursday, and we just had this for dinner on Monday, the first day of meal service.

The best part of the meal was the mapo tofu. For me, it’s fine that mapo tofu is soupy.

Dinner had repeats, yet again!

There was salt and pepper shrimp 椒盐虾, which is what we had on Tuesday for lunch! And once again, while the flavor was decent, it was still pretty dry. Though not as shriveled as on Tuesday.

There was again a dish with finely diced mushrooms and peanuts in a soupy sauce, but maybe it was pork this time rather than chicken Tuesday evening? The flavor felt very similar to last time.