Semolina Pilchard

Breakfast was always Mochi's favorite meal, but her favorite meal of all was that of the small appetizers called Dim Sum. These would range from small balls of pastry filled with meat to steamed vegetables to soft cakes of sweet rice and dumplings filled with just about every savory or sweet filling that a creative cook could come up with. At home she would be lucky to find a restaurant with plain bao buns or shu mai, much less custart tarts or pot stickers, but in Shanghai dozens of street vendors offered every kind of Dim Sum known to man and the quality was almost always about the best you could ask for.

Mochi was tired of sitting, first in the jaunt and then in the omnimovers, so she was really glad when she, Karly and JoJo made it to downtown Shanghai. Karly wanted to take some pictures first, since it was his fisrt trip to Shanghai. In fact, he had never been out of the North American Confederation and had spend most of his life within a few miles of downtwon New Chicago. Jo Jo and Mochi were hungry, however, so Karly was overruled and they headed to the business district. Once they got there, they quickly found the carts selling Dim Sum, and they proceeded with ordering

Jo Jo had quite a sweet tooth and went directly to the sweet rice cakes, egg custard tarts, and sweet buns. Karly and Mochi shared some potstickers, bao buns ,shu mai, steamed broccoli and other savory treats before head to the sweets themsleves. The three friends enjoyed the scenery, being smack dab in the middle of some of the tallest builings on earth; however, there was plenty of sunshine due to the buidings' shape and structure. They also enjoyed the rivers and fountains which doltted the landscape.

Every so often, a go-roller would glide by with an almost imperceptible 'whoosh'. "I wish we could just cruise around awhile," said Mochi, wistfully. The three friends weren't going to be in town long enough to take a full round-trip, and besides, this mode of transportation wasn't particularly cheap. Better to take one of the floating Rickshaws pulled by an automaton. These were fun anyway, since the automatons were programmed to be good conversationalists.