Wild SHANGHAI STREET FOOD in City God Temple + Yu Gardens Tour | Shanghai, China

The way it works is I'm going to pop it with a straw, suck out the soup, and then after that I'll eat. Okay, I've never done this before, a straw, oh right there, oh it's hot, it's hot. What's up guys, David Hoffman here from David's Been Here in Shanghai, China. Today I'm here with my friend Daniel from Newman Tours. They offer incredible tours in multiple cities here in China, Beijing, Xi'an, Suzhou, Hangzhou, yeah sorry, I was trying to think of all the cities but there's so many. And yeah, today we're here in like the ancient part of Shanghai, and this is called the Yu Gardens and City God Temple, right? Yeah, this is the old town, so we're going to go and see Yu Gardens and as you say, the City God Temple. Okay, we're also going to eat some street food here, and right here, this gate was like, this was the wall, right? Yeah, well this was one of the four main entrances to the old city, so there would have been a wall all around the edge of Shanghai to protect it to keep out marauding pirates, and this is a replica of one of the original entrances. Incredible. So when you come to Shanghai and you miss this place, you weren't in Shanghai. Let's go explore. So here we can see a Pi Xiu, which is a mythological Chinese creature, and according to legend, Shang Di, God, the King of Heaven, had a pet Pi Xiu just like this one, it was misbehaving and it did a poo on the heavenly carpet, so then the Emperor spanked the Pi Xiu so hard that its anus collapsed in on itself, and it's never been able to go to the toilet ever since. And the Emperor also said that the Pi Xiu from that point forth was only allowed to eat gold and jewels, and so it's able to consume money, but it's not able to poo any of out, so that's why they're always depicted outside jewelry stores, so there you go. So this is a mythological Pi Xiu. So I have a quick question. I have in my house, I bought it here, a little this, and you put the dollar inside the mouth. There you go, exactly, that's probably it. And that means it brings money, right? So you'll never lose that money. I'm going to buy a big one now, I'm going to buy one like this, put a huge bill in here. So that's a lucky Pi Xiu. Lucky Pi Xiu, perfect. Alright, so our first stop is this place that has like deep fried crab, deep fried Shanghainese crab. Okay, and this is like from here? Yeah, this is a local crab. She says these are local crabs. Alright, let's get one. How much is one? $25. Can you give us a cheaper one? She's not giving us a discount. So yeah, so this one's salty and this one's spicy. Spicy, spicy. Okay. I guess she went with salty. It's okay. There you go, you're getting both. Oh my God. Whether you like it or not. I mean, she literally had to give me these gloves because if not, it's going to be too spicy. And the problem is you don't want to get too much spice in your hands because then you touch your eyes and then that's not good. So start with the middle is the easy bit, the flesh in the middle. What? So turn it around. Okay. And then try and eat this bit. That bit, yeah. Like dive in here. That's a good starting point. It looks like the crab wants to sort of bite your nose. Oh wow. Oh, it's a little spicy, but nice crab meat in here. I didn't get any bone or any of the shell. You know? Oh, it's nice. How do I even get in here? Oh wow. Isn't it crispy? I guess we have to crack it open to find that. Oh, it's so good. Dive in here. Rip that open. So much meat. This is the most meat I've ever gotten out of a crab. Well then I think if you're really good, you can crack open the legs and you'll even find you can suck the meat out of there. So when the Chinese eat it, they get every single bit of meat out of it that's possible, you know? Yeah, but you can literally eat everything. Like it's fried. I'm eating it. I'm fine. Try to get in here. See here, you just gotta rip it open. Yeah. Right there. And inside there is all meat, so you just start cracking. Right there. Right? Oh, you've done this before. You're good. Oh yeah, I'm from Miami, man. We have a lot of crabs. Crab lobsters. But this one, I'm literally eating everything. Oh, it's so tasty too. The middle is the best though. A lot of flesh. She's like passing by us. We're in the middle of the street here. So the best thing to do is just go for the middle. The middle is the best. The only thing I can't eat is the claw. So you have to break it up. But here, really, there's so much flesh. I'm never eating crab where I can actually eat everything. The way they fry it, I guess, that's what's the key here. And it's very small, so you can actually take it down. It's not gonna hurt you going down. Alright, I'm done with this one. Let's keep going. Dude, have some. Oh, you want me to try it as well? Sure, yeah. Try it. It's good. It's good, right? The middle. I don't think I've got the same degree of skill in eating as you have. No, just go in. A lot of flesh in there. The next place we're going to is a spot that has the original xiaolongbao. But this one has crab and pork. And it's bigger than the xiaolongbao I've had, which is usually very small. It comes with six. This one comes with one. We have to go through this temple area. It's like a temple, but at the same time it's like a market place. There's lots of restaurants, souvenir shops, lots of food here. Everything looks so good. There's some Chinese equivalent of some beef jerky. I might have to have some of that later. Let's continue. We're in front of the most famous restaurant in the old city. It's called Nanxiang Mantou Dian. Normally you have to queue for half an hour to get in. But because you're a VIP, David, we're going to take you straight to the front of the queue. We're going to try some xiaolongbao in here, which literally means little dragon balls. But don't worry, they're not that kind of balls. This is the original xiaolongbao in Shanghai. It's a lot bigger than the regular xiaolongbao. Usually they're very small and they come in like six. This is just one big one, as you can see. It's massive. The way it works is I'm going to pop it with a straw, suck out the soup, and then after that I'll eat. Okay, I've never done this before. A straw. Oh, right there. Oh, it's hot, it's hot. This is like intense. There's a lot of soup in here. Just keep going until it's done. Here we go, chopsticks. Then I grab it. It's huge. It's a big one. It's a little thicker than the xiaolongbao that I've had before. Just grab all of it. Still a little hot. From the soup. But it's just a delicious xiaolongbao. Very big. The original. So now we're inside Yu Bazaar, Yu Market. It's been here for hundreds of years, ever since the 16th century. And they've got lots of food, as you can see. And then we're making our way towards the very center where we'll see Yu Gardens, this beautiful 16th century scholarly garden. And yeah, I mean, they've changed it obviously because it's way more modern now. Very clean. It feels like I'm in an open-air mall. But on top of it, it looks very Chinese obviously because they used the architecture of temples. It's really cool, man. This is awesome. So many things here. That xiaolongbao was ridiculous. So big. So yummy. And now we're going to continue here. We're going to go to a restaurant that literally has 100 different dishes. It almost looks like a buffet line but you just choose what you really want and you eat. Check this out. So guys, this is it. As you can see, we have some soups right here, some sweet ones, some sour ones. We also have a lot of different dumplings. They all look so good. Sticky rice. Got some brown rice and black rice. Then we have some snails here. Snails look freaking incredible. Some egg rolls, some pot stickers. Here we have eel on a sticker. This is also squid on a stick as well. Oh my god. It looks so good. This is like... What is that? Hot pot? This is like hot pot right here. It's like tofu in like a Sichuan hot pot. Looks really, really spicy. Looks spicy. Tofu, right? Tofu. Oh yeah, that's tofu. Mapo tofu, right? It's called Mapo tofu. So it was supposedly invented by a woman in Sichuan in central China that had lots of hot marks on her face. So she wasn't very pretty but she was a very good cook and hundreds of years later people are still eating her signature dish. It's ridiculously good but way too spicy for right now. Here we go. Shimicho rice balls. So it's glutinous sticky rice with red bean paste inside. I love red bean paste and it's like stuck. Okay. It's that sticky. Alright. Too hot. I thought it was gonna be cold, man. There's definitely water but it's very, very sticky. It's almost like super slimy on the outside. The inside, the dough, it just takes forever to rip through it. Nice amount of red bean paste in there. I love it but I think it needs to be a little colder. Gotta wait a little bit. Let it settle down and then eat some more. But wow. What a good dessert. But when I think dessert I think colder over freaking hot, hot, hot. David, I've got something even better than water. This is coconut juice from Hainan Island. Nice and ice cold. So have some of that. That should help you to cool off. It sounds amazing. Hainan Island, that's the island very south. It's like close to Vietnam. That island. Exactly. Let's open this. Did I open it right? Yeah, perfect. And then just yank it, yeah. Yeah, this is the old school way. I used to do this like when I was a kid. This is how we used to have it. Not anymore. Oh wow. Like delicious. Yeah, it's good, huh? Especially during the summer when I'm too hot. I always like having that. You have this? Yeah, I mean it's super refreshing. It's straight coconut water basically. It's actually more than coconut water. It's like a juice. Yeah. I don't know what percentage is coconut. Yeah. I mean it tastes sort of there's a lot of sugar in here. There's a lot of sugar in here. I'm going to try some Xi Mi Chou as well. If I can break these two apart. They seem to It's very sticky. They seem to be closely intertwined. I've always found Hong Dou red bean paste to be a bit of a disappointment. Sometimes you think you bite into something in China you think it's chocolate inside and then it's red bean paste and I've always been a bit because I think I prefer chocolate. Yeah, me too, me too. So David we're about to cross this zigzag bridge and it zigzags because in ancient China they believed that ghosts could only go in straight lines. So hopefully if there's any ghosts following after us then we'll leave them behind now. That's cool, dude. This is like really awesome. I love learning about the history because I didn't know anything about this. And talking of history that's the first ancient building we've seen today because everything else we've seen so far was built you know these buildings over here were built in the year 2000. They're way too tall to be genuinely ancient but this building straight ahead the old tea house. So David I'm going to give you this Hongbao and inside it it's got some goodies some bits and pieces. For the moment all you need is one of these because that there is the goddess of the lotuses. So according to legend she was an orphan she didn't even know her own name and yet she was always very kind so when she died the gods decided to make her into the goddess of the lotuses. She controls the blooming and the withering of the lotuses so make a wish and then try and land that coin on the stone lotus that she's standing on. If you can land it on that I mean it's very difficult right? True. But if you can land it on that lotus pad then you can have another wish. Two wishes for the price of one. What I have to do is I have to get it on top of the stone. Two wishes I get if I put it up there. If not I get one wish if I get it in the fence if I land it outside it's just some bad luck. Did you get it? No man! Do you want another go? I'll try one more. Oh inside! Inside there you go. What did you wish? Should I tell you? Yeah I reckon you can tell us. A million subscribers dude. So David I've got our tickets so let's go into this beautiful old garden Yu Garden. Thank you. Wow it's beautiful. How old is this place? So this place is right back to the 16th century to the Ming Dynasty and I want to show you a picture of the guy it used to belong to. This is the guy that commissioned it all those years ago. Here he is. It's not a very good picture but if I hold it back there you'll never know. So this is Pan Yun Duan. Pan Yun Duan came from a very wealthy family here in Shanghai. In fact his dad was the guy that paid for the city wall so they were pretty rich and he eventually passed the civil service exams and then he went to work in Sichuan in central China but he lost his job halfway through his career no one's sure why and we suspect perhaps he was embezzling taxpayers' money because he came back here and he built this massive garden and his family had a lot of money but I don't know whether they had enough money to build something of this size. So basically this place was built off of stolen goods stolen money stolen taxpayers' money we think quite possibly. I mean it still happens today all over the world. This is the male because he has the ball female because he has the cub. Very good you've won a sweetie there congratulations. So I mean quite right the female has the cub and the male has what we call the flower of life it's a symbol of his male potency his creative force but you can also it's a bit of ancient sexism I'm afraid because look the male has the mouth open and it's producing the sound ah and the female has got her mouth closed and it's producing the sound mmm so if you put those two sounds together what do you get? Om. So you see this is an ancient Indian belief that the male ah sound brought the universe into existence. So the oldest thing in the garden is this rockery so all these rocks stuck together with rice glue and then this water here representative of all the seas and the lakes and then these are all the mountains so it's like a microcosm of China a mini ah world within a world these are all references to money so here's a ah an ancient Chinese coin and you can see that coin depicted here and so what they used to do in ancient China before they had wallets and purses you put your red piece of string through there you tie yourself a knot make yourself an ancient Chinese bracelet and then when you go down the market and you want to buy something take coins off and then you can buy whatever you want so um so yeah so these these are ancient Chinese coins I'm learning something new every like minute here man amazing this is so cool so can I get my sure yeah well I think your hands a bit big so I might need to I'll get you a yeah come on I'll get you a longer piece it's okay I'm joking I don't need a coin dude you can't even buy anything with this anymore yeah I don't think it would work down the local market now but so we're about to enter this incredible doorway and here in the gardens there's so many doorways that are all shaped very differently some are like really round this one is like like it's like like a woman's body in a way on the side you know I mean they say that some of them look like the containers used to store Bai Jiu and Huang Jiu that's white wine and yellow wine but not the white wine that we drink in the west the rice based wine that they have here which is pretty strong the Bai Jiu yeah so David there's a split in our path here the path forks in two and the most common theory is that male members of the household walk down the right hand side and females walk down the left hand side so I guess we should go down this side and we'll have to find some concubines to flirt with as we head along are there still concubines here? probably not but we'll just flirt with whoever we see hi hey how you doing? not really the concubine we were hoping for would the man be over here? and what was the reason men walk down the right hand side? well they say that Pan Yun Duan the owner of this place back in the 16th century he'd walk down this side and then his wives and concubines because of course he had more than one wife would walk down this side and then they'd all he he he you don't even need me as your tour guide because we've created an audio guide for you gardens and you can either go to our office and buy this kit and listen to our audio guide or you can just download it from newmantours.com it's also available on gedigo and izzy.travel so yeah I'm going home you don't need me anymore bye no no I want you to be with me dude I need you to help abandon you I need somebody who speaks mandarin exactly that's the best thing what I love about the Yu Gardens is that you really jump backwards in time I think this is the only place in all of Shanghai where you really see what 16th century Shanghai was all about and here I'm loving this gate you have two huge dragons and what he was telling me is that the guy who created it he put the dragons with only three fingers instead of five because he didn't want the emperor to like chop his head off and so we're going now so now we're gonna go and feed the fish awesome let's go okay so this is where you feed the fish yeah we've already fed you David now the fish need to be fed as well so there you go there's the fish food probably not quite as delicious as what we fed you but here they go these are like schools of carp yeah so many though I mean easily like 500 here oh a lot of carp yeah very spoiled spoiled carp yeah they're just fat they get fed way too much it's all my fault I spoil them but what's funny is that when we're entering I saw a big huge bird come down and grab a small and yeah because these are huge I mean these are like two feet long some of them they're fat I don't think that bird would have much of a chance at all all right let's keep going David I want to show you one of the most famous features of this garden and that rock there with all those holes in it was supposed to be a gift for emperor Huizong but they stuck it on a boat and they sent it to the capital and then what happened it fell into the river exactly and then they couldn't figure out how to get it out until hundreds of years later they finally yanked it out the water and the man who obtained this rock his daughter married the owner of this garden so that was part of the imperial wedding dowry so nice wedding gift that's a great story man that's crazy so David I thought we could finish the tour by predicting your future with these ancient Chinese fortune sticks so what you have to do is shake the stick and you just want one stick to come out and then it has a number on it which corresponds with a fortune in here now if more than one stick falls out that means the gods are laughing at you so don't let more than one stick fall out okay and make a wish as well so think of your wish another wish a different wish this time you can wish for a billion subscribers okay that's hard yeah good good but remember only one stick if more than one stick comes out the gods are laughing at you oh very good so what number have you got is that nine or six that is a number nine okay your luck for today is number nine the fates declare is very fine if you would win success in life be honest straight and true for otherwise your plans will fail and ill luck will ensue there's a great temptation in store for you and you will get your wish alright guys so that is the end of our tour of Yu Gardens we had so many delicious things in the beginning of the tour we had some you know some crab little spicy then I had the delicious xiaolongbao the big one it's funny because you put a straw into it and you suck it all out so different from all the xiaolongbaos I've had and it's the original right the original yeah from the year 1900 wow that's amazing and then after that I had like a sweet dessert it was good I mean it wasn't my favorite but it was pretty good and then we walked around the Yu Gardens we saw a lot of different things in the Yu Gardens I mean it's way more in there if you really want to get into it and he can show you all that but you know I wanted to keep it limited you know it's a lot of history just a beautiful place the architecture is really incredible 16th century there's nowhere else here in Shanghai where you can see this type of architecture and what was really old Shanghai and guys next time you come to Shanghai definitely look up Newman Tours they have multiple tours here they also have in Beijing and other cities as well and Xi'an Chengdu take you to see some pandas to eat some spicy food in Sichuan oh my god I have to join you over there one day I want to see the pandas yeah so wherever you want to go I want to take my daughter to see the pandas she wants to go see the pandas okay I'm going to buy her a panda from over here alright guys if you like this video please give me a thumbs up leave me a comment below and subscribe to my channel for more awesome travel content I'll see you in the next travel food adventure in Shanghai, China peace bye