Shanghai Dolls may come from all around the world, but one experience unites us: we’re all wai guo nu ren (foreign women) here in China!  This experience can be exciting, glamorous, and advantageous… as well as frustrating, isolating, and inconvenient.  In addition to sharing this unique experience, we often share language and culture, which makes it easier to share friendship.

Although foreign girlfriends (especially Dolls!) can be vital to our happiness and sanity, most of us would probably be thrilled to add a few more Chinese friends to our circles.  The thing is, despite your best efforts, sometimes it’s just so… hard.

Most obviously, there’s the language barrier.  Then, you can’t agree on the best way to spend a Friday night: you like to dance until dawn after a few drinks at el Coctel, while she prefers to get a full night’s beauty sleep after KTV-ing it up at the nearest Haoledi.  On a deeper level, you have different life experiences and goals.  You’ve been able to visit several continents, and are working to establish yourself in your career before starting a family.  The only stamps in her passport are from the Expo pavilion staff, and she worries that if she doesn’t secure a husband by the magic age of 28, she’ll be forever doomed to a life of spinsterhood and financial insecurity.  There’s often a financial barrier as well:  many of us maintain or improve our lifestyles in Shanghai, while many educated, professional Chinese women still struggle to heat their homes and care for their aging parents.  Oh, and what is the deal with her texting you all the time and holding your hand?

The Shanghai Dolls book club has been going since May 2009, when about eight of us held the inaugural meeting at Julia’s apartment.  This was the first time I met the Dolls.  Many books were suggested and we eventually decided on the first three (one book per month), the main influencing factor being their availability, what with this being China!  Since then the Dolls Book Club has been held every month at different venues around Shanghai. 

From now on, I’ll post a monthly review of the book that we’ve just read.  I guess this means that I’ll have to take notes form now on…  The usual way of things is lots of chat, catching up, drinking of wine and then “oh, we should talk about the book!”.  All pretty informal.

There’s a wide range of literary tastes in the Dolls Book Club, so it’s a great way to try out a genre that you might not normally go for.  There’s a few of us sci-fi fans in there so July’s book is “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick.  The film “Blade Runner” is based on the book and it’s being screened at Dada bar on Tuesday 27July and listed on Dolls Events Page. 

Sitting at home with a head cold, looking at the clock and thinking about what to make for dinner, I thought about the beautiful cookbooks my sister-in-law gave to me while visiting my husband's family in France for CNY. Mind you, I did not have any intention of whipping up a french dinner in a moment's notice, but I did want to share one of my favorite, and easiest, french recipes that I turn to when short on ideas. It sounds more difficult than it really is, but make it once and you are sure to return to it. I am not that loyal to recipes for I am not good at following them and the measurements drive me crazy, but this one, I can do (even though I still made up my own quantities).

I also thought of doing something along the lines of “Julie and Julia”, cooking up one recipe per month (not per day!) in one of those books. I will think more on that...it will fine-tune my recipe-following abilities; never mind my french!

Tonight's dinner menu:

Carbonnade (the Flemish kind) served over pasta or rice

Low-fat strawberry muffins