When the seasons change from summer to winter, your body requires different foods to stay healthy – as anyone who has come down with a fall cold can attest. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) says that the changing temperatures result in a dry season, medicinally speaking, meaning that your body lacks fluids, affecting your lungs and throat, as well as your digestive systems. Autumn is also a chance for you to build up your body’s immunity before the harsh winter. Nourish yourself with these foods now, and you’ll be thanking yourself when winter sets in.

For the first time in 14 years, I have not left China for an entire calendar year – actually 620 days, but who’s counting? It’s a weird feeling, and one that makes me more than a little sad, so I’ve been trying to make up for it by eating delicious food as often as possible. Luckily, Shanghai was spared the brunt of the pandemic. The shutdown was never an official lockdown in China’s financial capital, although very few restaurants were given official permission to offer in-person in early 2020. Shanghai didn’t shut down in 2021 either, and while some restaurants went bankrupt, the pandemic pushed other great local spots into offering delivery services when they never had before.

In 2017, Shanghai’s longest-running open-air market at Tangjiawan Lu, which had provided the neighborhood with fresh produce, fish, and seasonal foodstuffs for almost 115 years, shuttered its doors. The market and much of the area around the Laoximen metro station were some of the last historical (albeit run-down) structures in an otherwise central area full of expensive new residences. Construction has already begun on the entire city block’s worth of high-rises being built in its place, and the surrounding blocks – like many of Shanghai’s backstreets – are on notice, as the wrecking balls and construction crews continue to reshape the urban landscape at an incredibly fast rate.