Shanghai Hotel Quarantine Diary: Day 9

6:58am - got out of bed. I’d been awake for a while now, trying to go back to sleep. Even on the weekend, still couldn’t really feel rested.

I had thought that last night’s air pollution was bad, but this morning it was even worse.

The haze was quite evident.

I think it peaked around noon with an AQI of around 250, which is horrible.

7:55am - pick up breakfast. Today’s the first day where I’m repeating meals, though I’ve been here for over a week. That’s because for my first day of quarantine meals, I was served the Western meal. So I didn’t start with the Chinese meal plan until Day 2. Today was a soy-dairy Vitasoy (维他奶) milk day.

Just like last week, the fried crueller (油条) was quite greasy. Given how the ends are also browned, I wonder if it’s actually fried twice, where a fried crueller is cut into segments, then fried again.

The mantou (刀切馒头), shrimp har gow (港式虾饺), and especially the hard-boiled egg (白煮鸡蛋), I’d come across more than once, and so I felt they could use some doctoring up with my handy condiments!

And since today was a weekend, I had time to have some extra fruit. This is where bringing one’s own dishes and silverware is really useful.

9:02am - temperature check

11:41am - lunch dropped off

11:49am - they called to say lunch was dropped off. I think this was a record for how quickly after lunch was actually dropped off to when they called! Some days there’s been over an hour gap!

So once again, there were the garlic shoots with cuttlefish (蒜苗炒目鱼). The cuttlefish was a bit strong in flavor for me.

Then there were the “golden thread shrimp,” the shrimp wrapped in crunchy noodles (泰汁金丝虾). You can see these have the shrimp tails sticking out, in contrast to the other fried shrimp dim sum that they served, the “noodle shrimp” (面线虾) . This I did spike with some hot sauce.

There was also the stir-fried bok choy (清炒杭白菜).

And then the very tasty corn kernels and peas (青豆玉米粒). Could it be because of MSG? I mixed this with the rice and saved it for the end, before the soup.

This was the kelp and daikon “miso” soup (海带味增汤). The description says miso, and perhaps that’s why the soup is slightly cloudy, but it’s truly undetectable. I added some salt with my newfound salt shaker from my flight. Now just look how pretty the kelp is!

12:45pm - Zoom chatted with a friend in the US.

3:35pm - cleaners came. Napped.

5:25pm - dinner was dropped off. This was early!

5:35pm - Picked up dinner.

There were the short ribs with onion (好味骨). I’ve complained on this blog multiple times about this type of breaded, fried, and then sauced ribs becoming quite soggy, and today’s version was particularly a gummy mess.

But, there were also the curried fish balls stuffed with crab meat (咖喱蟹粉球). Their color and conical shape really look like mini tetilla cheese from Galicia (and tetilla cheese is so named because of their resemblance to breasts)! These are really fun to eat.

The homestyle winter melon (家常冬瓜) today was just so so. Some pieces were a bit hard, while others soft.

Then there were the leafy greens, which had a strong flavor kind of like mustard greens. Though the description says that it has fermented black beans (豆豉春菜粒), I didn’t really notice any here.

Finally, there was the soup with goji berries, pearl barley, and spinach (枸杞珍珠米菠菜汤).

Though this description says “pearl barley,” they were very similar to the “rice kernels” from yesterday’s dinner soup, kind of like exploded corn kernels.

6:18pm - Chatted through WhatsApp texts with friends in Spain.

6:43pm - they called to say dinner was dropped off. I’d already finished dinner by now - over an hour after they dropped off dinner and I picked it up. I guess today’s lunchtime promptness was a one-off.

7:30pm - did laundry for the second time this stay. Hopefully I don’t need to do laundry again.