CRAZY STREET FOOD FOR REALLY CHEAP

Get a ticket to Shanghai, China. Statistically you’re safer there than anywhere in the US right now - especially compared to Florida or Texas. The first thing you’ll notice after your 14-hour long flight is the relentless humidity and heat - but its worth it, because then you’ll see the endless rows of skyscrapers, malls three times the size of the Mall of America, and the energy of 26 million people. After you’ve shopped your heart out and snapped out of awe of the incomprehensible scale of the city - you’ll be hungry. This is the important part - please, please, don’t look for food that you recognize. Especially if you’re not familiar with Asian food - if you’re walking around looking for orange chicken, you’ll die of starvation from walking forever and you might just deserve it. Instead, just pick restaurants and walk into them. You can use the popular food apps (wechat, duoping) to check their reviews, but if you can’t read Chinese it won’t matter anyways.

The two golden rules are that the place looks relatively clean and that there are people eating there. Although hole-in-the-wall restaurants have some of the best food, as a tourist, your stomach is already preparing for the worst. The second rule is pretty self-explanatory: if no one is eating at a restaurant that’s in a city with 26 million people, you probably shouldn’t either.

Anyways, after you tire of eating at restaurant after restaurant, and as you live in Shanghai longer, you’ll notice large masses of people crowding around food carts in the middle of the sidewalk. That’s street food. From people making dumplings from scratch to deep fried squid, this is the next stage of your experience. Grab a pork bun on your way to work, or chow down on a full course meal for lunch, or get late night snacks with your friends, or literally ANYTIME, ANYTHING you ever want to eat. This is true authenticity - there’s no americanization, gentrification, commercialization - just pure essence of food enjoyed how it is meant to: with a smile and greasy fingers. And guess what? You can get three meals for around 2-3$ a day. It’s difficult to express just how next level the food is - but I hope these pictures do it justice.