Food streets have dwindled but Tianping Lu survives and thrives

Since my first visit to China, I have been fascinated by the dexterity of roadside snack vendors. I am captivated by their practiced pinching of dough around dumplings, their folding of leaves around glutinous rice zongzi as natural and elegant as the folding of a bird’s wings, the smearing of batter and one-handed cracking of eggs on a smoking-hot iron plate--all done in effortlessly smooth movements, fingers dancing like ten synchronized swimmers. These street-side chefs are as skillful as practiced athletes in their graceful ever-repeating motions.

Sadly, street food markets have rapidly been disappeared from downtown Shanghai, pushed out by the inexorable jackhammer and crane of progress. I’m lucky that there’s one street near my home which still boasts steaming bamboo baskets and hot griddle pans on the sidewalk in the morning. On Tianping Lu, when the sky gets light, crowds jostle to throw their coins into tin boxes and get a hold of a hot egg and youtiao jianbing, or a big pizza-slice of sesame seed encrusted da bing.

I just returned from a month in Boston, so this morning, happily jet-lagged and bushy-tailed at 6:30am, I made my way to Tianping Lu to snap photos (who knows how long they will be there?) and order my favorite morning snack, a jianbing encasing extra cilantro and a cruller youtiao (not the crisp square youtiao). The jianbing with the fried dough cruller was the kind I first tasted in Nanjing on my university campus in 1996 and so it will always be “the original” to me.

Tianping Lu's street food spans the range: you've got doufu hua with soy sauce and dried baby shrimps sealed in plastic cups, like the kind you get for bubble tea. You've got salty and sweet shaobing, you've got maqiu, those sesame seed covered, black bean filled round doughnuts, you've got danbing, hey, you've even got morning guotie, if you can manage to get those crispy, oily, porky, savory dumplings down at 7am. And mostly, you've got the atmosphere--students with their red hankies and rolling backpacks, middle-aged bicyclists stopping off to throw some hot pasties in the basket, elderly folks shooting the gossip--it's a real honest to goodness neighborhood in full-swing, and in full appreciation of a hot, starchy, freshly-made-to-order breakfast.

I clutched my jianbing in a plastic bag with puffs of steam rising from it, and strolled over to the small but very lively park on the corner of Wanping and Hengshan. Inside, dozens of elderly people, who were clearly in better shape than I, were doing taichi, fan dance, ball room dance, and especially—making earnest and serious use of those garishly-colored exercise equipments with ropes and wheels and sliding parts. I sat on a bench, sipped my sugary ice tea, and chewed my greasy youtiao, as I watched the old folks stay in shape. A gourmet morning if ever there was one (but man, I really do need to get to the gym). Here’s hoping that Tianping Lu’s street chefs are there to stay, come jackhammer or crane.

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