Shanghai Hotel Quarantine Diary: Day 12
7:02am - woke up. A nice view through Xujiahui with the Shanghai Tower in the background. Did my Centr workout. Forgot that the Tiff and Jorge workout cycle ended last week, so restarted the 9-week cycle again. It really is my favorite workout series in the app.
8:09am - picked up breakfast. Some of my favorite items!
I quite like the vegetable bun (香菇蔬菜包) filled with dark green vegetables.
I also really like the purple sweet potato (红薯hong2shu3) which I peeled once again. Now I think the peel really isn’t meant to be eaten, since it looks kind of ashy. Anyway, I think the sweetness comes through a bit more.
And I love the brown sugar rice cake (红糖松糕) with its serious chewiness.
And of course there was the hard-boiled egg (白煮鸡蛋), and it was a soy-dairy Vitasoy (维他奶) day.
8:10am - call to pick up breakfast
8:53am - temperature check
12:11pm - call to pick up lunch.
Yummy, one of my favorite dishes of all, the very savory, not saucy salt-pepper-garlic ribs (椒盐金蒜骨) with green and red bell peppers and purple onion.
The potato and fish cake (土豆酱爆鱼饼); the fish part is still too fishy for me, and a bit too mushy soft. But the potatoes were well cooked and quite good.
The black bean stir-fried lettuce (豆豉油麦菜); there were in fact little black beans to be found at the bottom.
And then the surprisingly savory julienned carrots with bean sprouts (胡萝卜黄豆芽), which went well with rice.
The celery flavor in the celery and starch noodle soup (香芹粉皮汤) was nice and strong. Compared to last time, this week’s soup was very different in color!
5:40pm - I thought I hear the dinner placed outside? I checked through the peephole, but the two rooms across the hallway have been vacant, so can’t see if they have anything on their stools.
7:15pm - Finally got around to eating dinner, after a long work session and call.
Yay, the yellow croaker (酱汁小黄鱼) with crispy edges. I really like this one a lot! I even nibbled at the head - something I don’t usually do - to get the last flavorful bites.
The Napa cabbage with fried tofu dish (大白菜烧油豆腐) was good; I especially liked the Napa cabbage part. Today’s dish was not gloopy at all like last time.
The chives scrambled with egg (韭菜炒蛋) was much better seasoned this time as well, though I did add some pepper to both this and the cabbage and tofu dish, just because both had that kind of direct and plain (yet savory) flavor.
Stir-fried bok choy (清炒小塘菜) was another welcome vegetable source.
Tonight’s winter melon and tofu soup (扁尖冬瓜汤 bian3jian1 dong1gua1 tang1), was surprisingly well-seasoned. It wasn’t salty by any stretch, but I didn’t feel the need to add salt (and that’s a good thing, since I’m out of salt!).
7:49pm - tonight’s peephole excitement was that new people moved into the two rooms across the way. Since the previous occupants vacated I think a couple days ago and today, I actually had had that feeling of being the last person to finish the exam with everyone else getting up and leaving before me. I couldn’t look out across the way to see if the food arrived. But now with new people in and sounds in the hallway, I feel less lonely!
Right after moving in, someone went through the hallways with disinfectant (the yellow blur is that cube they wear on their backs). They’re very careful here!
9:11pm - view of Xujiahui in the evening, with the rotating LED graphics of the Shanghai Tower (it says “nghai” at the moment, for Shanghai) in the distance.
