Maybe China’s government doesn’t care for McDonald’s because of the increase in obesity among the Chinese, but many Chinese think of McDonald’s and Pizza Hut as gourmet restaurants or at least they act like they do.
For instance, a few years ago, my sister-in-law hired a young Shanghai ballerina to model for a photo shoot. Afterwards, the ballerina called her husband on a cell phone and told him to meet her at the two story McDonald’s in the middle of Shanghai to celebrate the extra cash she’d earned.
McDonald’s is even planning to increase the number of outlets in China, and to get ready, they have opened a leadership school that only accepts 1% of the applicants for training.
We also saw long waiting lines outside a fancy Pizza Hut on Shanghai’s Nanjing Road, a crowded pedestrian mall.
More Posts about Shanghai:
Shanghai
Shanghai Huxinting Teahouse
Shanghai Huangpu River Tour
Shanghai’s History & Culture
Chinese Pavilion, Shanghai World Expo
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the lusty love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
Finalist in Fiction & Literature – Historical Fiction
The National “Best Books 2010” Awards
Honorable Mentions in General Fiction
2012 San Francisco Book Festival
2012 New York Book Festival
2012 London Book Festival
2009 Los Angeles Book Festival
2009 Hollywood Book Festival
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[…] Gourmet dining at McDonald’s in Shanghai […]
Maybe McDonald’s makes better food in China? Cause here, I would barely classify it as fit for human consumption.
No, McDonald’s is McDonald’s—the food isn’t that much different. They might tweak it a bit to fit Chinese tasted but not much. The Chinese were better off with their own traditional diet. Since American fast food arrived, the number of Chinese that are fat skyrocketed and diabetes shot into orbit around the moon.
McDonald’s is where we eat when we are on the road and it is the ONLY food choice. Otherwise, the food is dreadful. I suppose when you haven’t grown up with the stuff, it’s a different experience.
When we go on the road, we pack a suitcase with apples, almonds, and Lara Bars. Even on trips to China half of what goes in the suitcase is healthy food that lasts a long time.
We’ve started doing that too. Because eating at McDonald’s is usually worse than nothing.
If McDonald’s was the only choice, I think I’d live off water.
It could be worse. It could be Burger King.
Is there a ranking of fast food chains from bad to worst? On that note, I wonder if VeggiGrill is considered fast food. This new chain plans to spread to the east coast.
http://veggiegrill.com/
[…] (Afterwards, the ballerina called her husband on a cell phone and told him to meet her at the two-sto….) […]