ISpyShanghai

He’s a miserable bugger my landlord. I pay him an obscene amount of rent each month, in cold hard cash which takes me 4 days to extract from the ATM (since I hit the daily limit otherwise). I don’t complain that the internet has never been hooked up (since I steal wireless from a neighbour), that my TV only picks up “Bollywood Hits” or Fashion TV (I always just watch hooky DVDs), nor that he left me a cupboard full of dirty underwear when I moved in (shamefully, I washed and now wear it), but is he grateful?

Is he flip.

However, he does send a quality text message:

Let’s hope he spends this month’s rent on a new English dictionary.

On Sunday I like to walk around the back streets of my neighbourhood: Wuding Lu, Xinzha Lu, Xikang Lu, I get lost within about 5 steps of my apartment block. Most of the streets have the same stuff on them- DVD shop, fruit stall, foot massage place, two guys with their shirts off sleeping in deck chairs whilst still smoking cigarettes, and a dumpling/noodle shop.

At the dumpling shop, the ayi who worked there disagreed with our order. “That’ll never fill you up” she said, and gave us an extra ration of pork Jiaozi  for a special price. The total bill was 5RMB (35p) so perhaps she was right. Whilst they were boiling, I went to the fruit stall opposite and saw something new-

Emma thinks it’s called a ‘Strawberry Apple’ in English,  but since that’s clearly some name she just made up, I’m not 100% convinced. Anyhoo the woman in the shop told me to eat it like a tomato (people just eat whole tomatoes here as though they were some kind of delicious treat) and it tasted, funnily enough, like a cross between an apple and a strawberry.

Took these photos with my new camera by the way. The old one got dirty so I threw it in the bin.