When I was first getting settled into Shangdi, I felt determined to prove that it wasn’t a complete dining desert and to find some places to eat around the neighbourhood. I went walking along the strip of restaurants that ran beside Shangdi Dong Lu, going all the way up to the path to the Xierqi metro, looking for anything exciting amongst them. Most of them were dingy, one room places with tattered pictures in the windows and bright white light inside. The whole rooms, through smeared windows, looked grimy and uninviting, and there was never anybody inside.
I walked on past the pink-lit massage place, set back from the street discreetly. Sometimes you saw tough looking women in tight dresses going in, broad thighs and worn faces.
The first few restaurants after that looked pretty grim, the typical little local noodle shops and things that you see all over less developed and modern parts of Chinese cities. Then I came to this place with a green sign at the front saying in white writing it did 拉牛肉面, beef noodles, as well as other writing flagging it as a Xinjiang place. Out the front a lady with a thin scarf pulled over her hair and a tanned face stood next to a barbecue where she grilled some small chuar skewers. Through the window, I could see a big pile of round golden flatbreads that are part of Xinjiang and Muslim food.
I went in and ordered a beer and some chuar, then some rice noodles in a tomato sauce with chopped up carrot and celery (more like a pesto really). The lady owner seemed really excited that I was there. She tried to explain to me that it was a muslim restaurant, pointing to a picture of mosque on the wall, and telling me this many times. When the food came, it was fantastic. The noodles were really fresh and the skewers much softer and more succulent than in many places. I sat for a while, eating happily and trying to chat to the woman and her sons.
And that was the start of my relationship with what we would always refer to as “the Muslim place”, because of the owner’s enthusiastic introduction to it in this way.
In the weeks after that, I went back more times and talked a bit more to the people who worked there. This was the woman and her sons, and also a couple of nephews. They were sturdy, chubby boys with skullcaps over their dark hair. Their tanned cheeks had patches of rosy red, like a lot of people from Xinjiang and those areas. I think there was also a man somewhere, but out the front the woman was the boss. She was a small but energetic lady. She took care of everything. I sometimes used to see them all hanging around at the front in the day time.
Then came the shock. One day, I saw all the restaurants along the strip busily clearing out, lugging out friers and tables and things from their insides to piles on the street. It was around the same time that the places around the corner were also shut down, a poster in the window saying they’d been closed.
I remember I rode past the Muslim place and there were a few of them stood outside looking sad and stressed. The lady owner saw me and said hello, shaking her head and telling her sons what to do at the same time. I wanted to ask them what was happening, but didn’t feel they would appreciate me interfering when they were in the middle of sorting everything out. When I went back later, they were gone. I later read something in Xinjing Bao about them not having the right licenses, but I sensed this was partly just an excuse to clear the area out. A day or so later some construction workers came and demolished a few structures along the roadside, but left others. Then a few days later a big metal wall was built along the front, blocking the shops off from the street in front. This blue wall was covered in large propaganda posters. Then for a while it seemed like that was it for the restaurants along there.
Several months passed and I grew accustomed to Shangdi being without any eating places. The blue wall stayed, hiding anything behind it. Then suddenly, one day, I noticed a doorway to one end of the wall as I was walking past. There was a sign advertising Pizza. I went to explore and tucked in just behind the barrier here was a small “pizza” restaurant, tackily decorated with western kitsch. It seemed like it had been set up in a hurry, and was basically one guy selling some strange named pizzas like “The Arab String” and “Fruit Shower” which he cooked himself in a little over there. It didn’t look like it got many customers, and I wondered who really could know it was there, hidden away as it was behind this wall.
Gradually, more doors started appearing in the wall. I think that actually the doors had probably always been there, but had been painted over. Now shops and restaurants were opening again and trying to draw customers in from outside. It was as if they had suddenly decided that long enough time had passed and they could open again.
Finally, on a day in February, I rode past on my bike and saw that the Muslim place was open again. They had a door in the wall, through which you could see their shop front behind. The lady cooking the chuar was back out the front, although in a note of caution they no longer had any tables out on the roadside. I paid a visit the next day. They’d renovated a bit inside, both otherwise it was much the same. Tables with rugged men drinking, smoking, and spitting as they tore bits of meat from skewers between their teeth. The lady boss was bustling about and the same boys were serving. The invisible guy in the kitchen sent out food through a small window.
I said to the lady that I thought they were closed for good. Yeah, but now we’re back, she said with the flicker of a smile. I sat at one of the tables with menus under the glass top. Unable to understand so many characters, I asked her for the photo menu. She went away and was gone a while, searching for their only copy of the bigger menu with photos on it. Finally she came back, brushing off the dust that had gathered on the cover. “Here,” she said with a grin, and pointed to one of the dishes. “I remember you always used to have this one.”