They say that the cuisines of different Chinese provinces arose originally to serve different kinds of constituencies. Beijing was the cuisine of officials. In Shanghai, that was the cuisine of wealthy merchants and industrialists. In Szechwan, the food of the common people. Many great Szechwan dishes originated in street stalls.
In the 1970s and early '80s, Shanghai was quiet, cautious, a ghost of a once-great city - and yet physically, little was changed from its glittering heyday. When visiting, I enjoyed reading books on local history and used my time off to scope out the former haunts of gangsters and jazzmen.
