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Photo Essay: CET Shanghai

Photos by Benjamin Straus (Johns Hopkins University), Student Correspondent CET Shanghai, Summer 2019

It’s a long flight to China, but that’s not all. Between getting to the airport early, a layover in Shenyang, navigating the airport upon landing, and an hour-and-a-half bus ride to campus, it’s about a 24-hour journey. So, what do you do once you’ve put your stuff into the dorm? Eat! This is my roommate (Dennis) and I on my first day at a local restaurant. The first astonishing fact (to me at least) was that all the food in front of me was 30 yuan (around $4.35) and it wasn’t a small portion.
If you thought my first meal was a good deal, this will shock you even more. My typical meal at the dining hall is less than $3. Here are two of my favorite selections of dishes. In one, I got beef in a sweet brown sauce and rice with assorted vegetables. A particular favorite is the 茄子 (pronounced “chee-eh-ze”) which is eggplant. It’s served in a sweet and spicy sauce.
My other “usual” selection includes a soup. You can choose from many different vegetables and proteins and it costs around $1. In this specific picture, I got just the vegetables without the hot soup because I was already warm with it being 85 degrees (Fahrenheit, which I specify because Celsius is the norm here).
The CET roommates are experts when it comes to food in the area, so they took us to get hotpot! Hotpot 火锅 (pronounced “huo guo”). In Shanghai, a very famous chain of hotpot restaurants is called 海底涝 (pronounced “hi dee lao”). Unfortunately, this isn’t that and so 海底涝still remains on my “Shanghai bucket-list”. However, this is another delicious hotpot called 捞王 (pronounced “lao wang”). Since I haven’t yet tried the other this is hearsay, but the one I tried (and shown in the picture) supposedly has less oil.
We had two broths in which we boiled the meat and vegetables: one made from mushrooms, chicken, and pork stomach (yep); and the other was tomato based. My favorite items were the 荞麦面 (“chee-ow my meean”) which are buckwheat noodles and the 虾滑 (“she-ah hua”) which are balls made of shrimp. But we also had some other notable items including beef tongue.
This picture was also taken during our trip to Shaoxing. As we walked around, we smelled something horse-like but there were no horses to be seen. It was “stinky tofu” (known as 臭豆腐 “cho dou fu”, literally meaning stinky tofu). And what do you do when you smell a very repulsive smelling food? You eat it, of course! Though it smelled different, I thought it tasted just like normal tofu. The actual reason that it smells so bad is that the tofu is brined using fermented milk and other foods. However, some of this tofu is only brined for a day or two, which explains why it only gets an iconic smell and no change in taste. I’ll have to seek out some that has been fermented for longer to see if it tastes different too. But it shouldn’t be too difficult to find as it can be smelled from about 15 feet away! (Note the person on the right reacting to the smell of the tofu!)
When running between classes on campus at Donghua University, you can often spot these furry friends scurrying about. It brightened my day as I walked from to my International Marketing class, so I thought I’d share it.
Friday night was CET movie night! We watched a great film called “Dying to Survive” about a man who smuggled drugs into China for thousands of cancer sufferers who otherwise couldn’t afford a critical, but high-priced medicine. This picture was taken after the movie. Why the gloves? CET provided pizza, and in China you use gloves to eat pizza. One notable type of pizza (that I’ve never seen in the US) was an egg, potato wedge, sour cream, and ham pizza. I have to admit it was pretty good. And who doesn’t love a 10 PM “breakfast”.
Our first Saturday outing, led by Nova (or “SuperNova” as she’s referred to by many CET students), was around the Bund area of Shanghai and the Suzhou creek. This picture is taken over the Suzhou creek. One notable detail I found particularly interesting is that the building on the left was a home for many Jewish refugees during WWII when it was owned by Victor Sassoon, a famous businessman.
Included in our first Saturday outing were some traditional Shanghai snacks. At this place, we tried Jianbing (煎饼) a common street food much like a crepe. It was very good. In its simplest form, they put a crunchy wafer in the center of the thin dough and add sweet brown sauce, spicy peppers, and chives. The dough itself has an egg cracked into it making it savory and delicious.
And the first set of photos wouldn’t be complete without a picture in front of the famous Shanghai skyline. This was also taken on our first Saturday outing.

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Cover photo caption: CET arranges a trip for students and their roommates in sets of around three to go to some location in China. This picture is from that day. Our group went to Shaoxing (绍兴) a place about an hour-and-a-half by high-speed train away from Shanghai. We woke up early to catch our 8:04 AM train. After arriving, our first location was the hometown of a famous Chinese writer, 鲁迅 (“Lu sh-ooin”). This picture is taken in a courtyard in his hometown that is now part of a museum that shows the setup of many rooms as they were when he lived here.

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