Ginless in Shanghai
We have made efforts to track down a few things from home. Our Shanghai schedule included regular trips to the Starbucks, but the heat made me long for the pre-made Barrista iced coffees we purchased at the corner stores in Taiwan. I regularly discuss the possibility of buying wine. We did buy one bottle only to discover that we need to spend more than five dollars for a bottle of wine. It went down the drain. The heat subdues my cravings for wine in any case. It has the opposite effect on my desire for gin and tonic.
We have had gin at a couple of bars. We decided to buy a bottle after seeing one at what Jan has dubbed a “vice store”, which is a government store selling liquor and cigarettes. We were ready to buy the first bottle for 10 dollars. However, we left because we didn’t know if we should wake the sales person who was sleeping on the counter. The next six stores we visited had no gin. The last store had cheap gin starting at twice the cost and the Bombay Sapphire was even more. Upon returning to the first store the next day, we found no sleeping lady to thwart our purchase.
Gin requires tonic in my experience. Tonic water is a beverage almost entirely a companion to gin, much like clamato juice and vodka. However, vodka can mix well with many things and gin’s options are more limited. Gin is not very popular in China, which makes tonic water rare, if not absent from stores. Bars seem to have little trouble acquiring it. I’m not even sure why they sell gin at the vice store.
This trouble forced us to consider substitutions. I had accidentally bought salted soda water, thinking it was regular water. After taking a swig, Jan immediately informed me, “This is not water.” It was sparkling and quite salty, like bubbly saline solution. We also discovered a lemon version. Our best bet is still to combine gin, salted soda water and 7up. On the train we settled for gin and warm, watery sport-drink. This was passable to us, but the smell of warm alcohol was not likely appealing to our potential roommate, who may have sought alternate accommodation for that reasons. Gin and cool 7-up in our hotel room was a bit more palatable. What both really needed was a large quantity of ice.
UPDATE: After visiting the Embassy area, we noticed the Friendship Grocery Store. Thinking that a grocery store in an embassy area may carry specialty import items, we went in. They carried three different brands of tonic water, two of them Canadian. They also had a large chunk of canned foie gras for $350CAD. The Friendship Store is better known for the giant Chinese gift shop which we were forced to walk through when exiting.