Single Beers in Shanghai

Sunday night, two ex-pats in Shanghai are bored and without many local friends. There’s no American football on and even if there was, we’d have had to wait until one o’clock Monday morning to watch it. SO, instead, we found Dean’s Bottle Shop, specializing in American (and Canadian) microbrews. While we walked past many Shanghaiese shops, we knew we had found our mark when we found multiple large format bottles of Rogue Brewing. Upon entering they had a refrigerator adorned with Rogue, at least five of their brews, and a nice selection of others. While they were out of Rogue’s 7 Hop IPA on tap, they did have their 8 Hop IPA, which Katy enjoyed. I enjoyed a few Barking Squirrel Lagers, from Hop City, the Canadian brewers. I was tempted to enjoy a six-pack of Moose Head Lager, reminiscent of our college days in Maine, but we haven’t seen beer sold in six-packs here yet, so I decided to go for the fancier, more refined lager.

Once we cheers’d each other and started to take in our surroundings I realized how cool a place we were in. There was an electronic dart board where some locals and/or employees were throwing darts; a large TV with the local sports station on; and the computer monitor playing American music videos and blasting them through the speakers. We heard many of our favorites, Adam Levine, Meghan Trainer, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, and then what seemed to be a Katy Perry marathon. Sure the free peanuts were spicy and there was a creepy white cat roaming around, but we drank our fill and the cat turned out to be friendly.

We had planned on having margaritas and quesadillas that night to make ourselves feel at home, but instead Katy found the Boxing Cat Brewery close by and we went in for some more suds and some proper bar fare. I was not disappointed with USDA short ribs and sweet potato fries, we both had salads and shared a pretty decent IPA. Things were going swell and we almost could have been in America until I had to go to the bathroom. There I ran into a large, drunk, aggressive Swedish fellow who probably was hanging out in the bathroom for too long. Luckily I thought I was in America, told  him to “fuck off” and we concluded our night by walking home in the rain, buying cheap flowers, and almost forgetting that we are halfway around the world.

Our home is as much like New York’s Fifth Avenue as anywhere I’ve ever been in the world (except of course Fifth Avenue) and the stores are almost identical: we live above an Apple Store, across from Dolce & Gabbana, Victoria’s Secret just opened across the street and Burberry, Tesla and Dior are all within spitting distance from our 32^nd floor bedroom window. It’s not quite the same once you actually leave the apartment because we are definitely not in America anymore, but it’s strange how a large affluent city on the other side of the world is more similar than most things in between.

There are plenty of differences; if anything, everything is the same except with a few slight variations.  But we are learning to make this place our home, the local supermarket is beautiful and expensive, with apples from Washington State and Avocados from Mexico. We found Snyder’s pretzels and Nature Valley granola bars. On Saturday we found a grocery store called Hunter Gatherer, which specializes in farm to store produce and even has a chain back home in Portland, Oregon. It’s not our home, but we are learning to make it ours and make it work for us. We are treating ourselves tomorrow to a guilty pleasure of home, but that is for another blog post . . .