Water

Every day since the day I arrived in Shanghai, there has been a thunderstorm at around 4pm. The heat and humidity builds and builds throughout the day until finally when nobody can take it any more, it breaks out in a spectacular thunderstorm. Today it resulted in a minor flood. 2-6 inches of standing water in the street is fun to ride a bike through.

Food, Rain, and Massages

This morning both Carl and I woke up before 4am again, having passed out at around 6:30pm the night before, without eating dinner. By 6 or 7am we were both starving and decided to go find breakfast, which came in the form of some fried batter thing with an egg and meat, cooked streetside, of course. We returned to the room so I could talk to Hilary when she got home from work at 8 (am here, pm there), and set out again to run more errands around 10. First, back to the international office at Fudan to finish up registration and pay tuition, and then to the grocery store to buy toiletries. In the checkout line at the grocery store there was a little boy who was apparently impressed with our English-speaking abilities, and watched us the whole time as if we were putting on a show. Next we stopped in a shoe store in the mall outside the grocery store, and I bought a pair of “Qiao Dan” shoes, better known in the US as Jordans. Although I wish to wear as little as possible in this heat and humidity, all of this running around has my flip flops wearing thin fast.

I am very thankful to have a bike again, it is truly a necessity here. We need to cover literally miles to take care of all of the things we need to do, and it is tiresome to walk and expensive (relatively) to take cabs.

We had lunch at my favorite authentic Chinese restaurant, and the stomachache I had from the greasy breakfast went away and was quickly replaced with a stomachache from overeating. Having spent enough time in the heat, we returned to the room to relax in the air conditioning and watch a movie.

In the afternoon, it rained a spectacular thunderstorm, just like yesterday, and continued a soft rain with random flashes of lightning into the evening.

When I passed out again at 6pm, Carl woke me up and forced me to get up and go get dinner and a massage so that we would stay awake until a reasonable hour and help our jet lag issues. So we rode our bikes over to where we used to live and found the dark alley that we knew to be a hot spot for peddlers of “chaofan, chaomian!” (fried rice, fried noodles). We found a spot on the sidewalk with shelter from the rain and ate our meals and watched the lightning.

Full again, we went for massages. 90-minute, full-body massages. Bliss. Our umbrellas were stolen out of our bicycle baskets when we came out, but I wasn’t even mad.

Great Success

At 7:00 this morning, we set out for breakfast. We found dumplings (10 for about 30 cents). Then, we tackled the living situation once again. After speaking to several different people in various offices, we finally found somebody who knew what was going on. She pointed us to the hotel where the summer program students are supposed to stay. So we checked out of the first hotel with all of our luggage, caught a cab, went 10 minutes in the wrong direction, had the driver read the address off the pamphlet again, and arrived at the new hotel. After paying for the entire month’s stay, in cash, we arrived in our room. It’s actually quite nice; a suite with two single rooms, a small common area, a bathroom between the two of us, air conditioning, and internet for around $11 per person per night. All in all, much better than the foreign students’ dorm.

After a quick breather, we set off to complete a few more errands, as it was still only 11am. The new place is further from campus, about a mile or two, which made for another long walk in the heat and humidity. Thankfully, before the day really heated up (y’know, from the 90° it started at), a thunderstorm came through. Caught out, Carl and I took refuge with twenty or so Chinese under a bicycle parking awning and watched the torrential rainfall for half an hour until a woman came by selling umbrellas for 10 yuan. Opportunist.

Buying cell phones and bikes was relatively uneventful; just the usual little bargaining game that you have to play for almost everything here. Sometimes it can be fun, but after some time it becomes tiresome, and especially difficult to put up with after you’ve been on your feet all day. Good thing everything is dirt cheap anyway.

Now that it’s 6pm I’m exhausted, having had a full and successful day of settling in. I would enjoy another foot massage, but I’m too tired and lazy to find a place again.

The Return to Shanghai

So I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue my blog from my last time in Shanghai, but within moments of arriving I realized why I did it in the first place. China generates way too many stories not to write down.

The journey went like this: Woke up at 3:45am, took of from La Guardia at 8:00am after a half hour delay, fell asleep. Woke up at Chicago O’Hare, met Carl at the gate, waited for our plane to arrive, and took off after another 3 hours delay. Sat in a chair for seven hours, fell asleep somewhere over the North Pole, and woke up at Pu Dong international airport another six hours later, where the pilot informs us that the outside temperature is 37°C, 99°F. He didn’t mention the 100% humidity, which I discovered immediately as I stepped off the plane.

Shanghai is split into two halves by the Huangpu river, Pu Dong (poo-dong, east) and Pu Xi (poo-shee, west). Pu Xi is where the city originally grew, with nothing but farmland across the river in Pu Dong. The European countries that claimed spheres of influence in Chinese cities in the days of imperialism built their houses, businesses, and white-only polo clubs here, in Pu Xi. So in an effort to make the most impressive portion of the city theirs again, the Chinese created the Pu Dong development zone, which, when I was here two years ago, contained an eighth of all of the world’s construction cranes. When you see a picture of the Shanghai skyline, it is always of Pu Dong, with the Pearl tower, the Jin Mao tower, and another, taller than the rest, that wasn’t there last time. Pu Dong international airport, designed to be the largest hub in all of Asia, is just one of the monstrous projects. It still feels like any other airport though.

After going through immigration and getting our luggage, Carl and I walked through the corral at the exit, where hundreds of Chinese drivers stand with signs for the people they are to pick up. Outside the airport, the heat and humidity is suffocating. Immediately a Chinese man spotted us and asked “Taxi? Follow me.” As we started off behind him, I thought for a moment perhaps we should negotiate a price first, but Carl (it’s all his fault) insisted that it would be a metered cab. After following a the man through parking garages and up a stairwell that was 20° hotter than the air outside and smelled like urine (definitely on my list of top ten “worst places to spend more than 30 seconds”), we got to the car. It was nice, with leather seats, air conditioning, and a driver already waiting inside. We loaded up our luggage and got in. Now that we had given up almost all leverage in negotiating a price, it was clear that we must. They demanded 700 yuan, and we were only able to talk them down to 500 for a ride that would cost around 150 at the most on a meter. We both knew better than this, we say, but I suppose we were just rusty. Oh well, lesson learned. It was still only around $60 for an hour’s ride all the way from the airport in Pu Dong to Fudan in Pu Xi, and the car had seat belts.

When we arrived at the foreign students’ dorm, we went to the registration desk and showed our admission notices. After looking through several rather unorganized lists of names, none of which included either of us, we were told that they had no rooms for us until late August. Strike one. A disappointing blow, but nothing we weren’t mentally prepared for; this is China, and this is the way things work. We have a number to call about housing, but it was after business hours, so we admitted defeat for the time being and took a cab (metered this time, only 11 yuan) to the hotel. After dumping our luggage, changing out of sweat-soaked clothes, and turning on the air conditioner full-blast, we left to attempt some of the first-day errands we had planned. Bicycles were first on the list. Once we had bicycles, the other errands would be easier. So we walked to back over to the area by the dorm, with which we are both familiar, and to the bike shop. Closed. Strike two. Oh well, that will have to wait until tomorrow. From there, we walked to the electronics store to look at cell phones. Also closed. Strike three.

So it was time for dinner. Muslim noodles; two heaping, steaming plates for 12 yuan ($1.50). From there we walked back toward the hotel, and considered finding an internet café. But after having traveled several miles on foot for no apparent reason, we decided to get foot massages instead (20 yuan for 45 minutes). Back at the hotel we put in a DVD Carl bought during our wanderings (The 300, not on sale in the States for a few days yet) and much to my surprise, I passed out almost immediately. I woke up, fully clothed and confused, just before 4am and found that Carl was wide awake as well. It’s now about 6am and we just finished watching the movie, for real this time. Check out time is noon, so we have that long to figure out where we are going to live before we have to worry about moving luggage again. But first we’ll attempt breakfast.

The Long Trip Home

Wednesday morning we woke up on the train coming back to Shanghai. After a little while running around and shuffling luggage (which we would do for the next 72 hours), Tara, Nora, and I went to one of our favorite restaurants for the last time and had a going-away feast for ourselves. Tara’s plane took of around 7, so at 4 in the afternoon we took her to the airport. As Nora and I had half of our luggage with us and we would be taking the same flight 24 hours later, it felt like sort of a practice run. We saw Tara off and went to Nora’s friend Florbella’s house for the night.

Florbella and her husband Ling live in PuDong, the suburbs of Shanghai. Their house is beautiful and their food is delicious. They are rich. But they don’t have a backyard.

Today, after an amazing European breakfast, we went back to Fudan in the chauffeured Audi, where we were bombarded with reasons to want to stay. We saw friends we had made in our Chinese classes, ate a meal at the Muslim noodle place (no canary today), and had friendly conversations with Chinese people along the way.

To kill time in the afternoon, we had a haircut. When they wash your hair here, they do it for about ten minutes, and massage your scalp. It’s amazing.

Finally, at 4pm, just like yesterday, it was time to go. We had to call a van from the cab company just to fit all of our junk. A final goodbye to our international friends, and we were off. Now, almost 4 hours into a 13 hour flight, the plane is over the Pacific, coming up on the International Date Line. Time to go back to yesterday…

Hours later, but a day earlier, I’m in Chicago. There are fat people everywhere.

Chillin' in Xi'an

Today, we killed time in Xi’an. We had the day free, until we met at 5pm to catch the train back to Shanghai. We had to check out of the hotel at noon, which was probably a good thing, since we may have ended up spending the entire day inside watching HBO if we weren’t kicked out. We went back to the Muslim market for some lunch, and then to a touristy pedestrian street for a little browsing and shopping. At 3:30 we went to Pizza Hut where we would meet to go to the station. I had a pepperoni pizza.

The train station was really crowded (something I definitely won’t miss). A night on the train, a night at Nora’s friend’s hous in Shanghai, a night on a plane, and I’m home. Somehow I feel like the next three days are going to blend together into one. 

More History

Monday wasn’t very interesting. Really, it wasn’t. We went to a pagoda, and another temple, and a museum. The museum was ok. It was organized chronologically, starting with the beginning of civilization, and all of the pieces were found in Shaanxi province (which I estimate to be a little bigger than NY, but I actually have no idea). The pieces themselves were just old clay pots and tools (boring), but just the pure volume of history in the one small area of the world was really cool to see. The history of Shaanxi starts with one of the very first organized civilizations, almost 5000 years ago. New York, not so much.

Side note: Shaanxi borders a province called Shanxi. Same exact pronunciation, different tones. Gotta love this language. 

Over-indulgent Emperors

The weather is back to cold and gray. Suddenly Xi’an doesn’t seem so grand. I’m not sure if it’s true of American cities, but Chinese cities get a disproportionate amount of cloudy days, thanks to pollution. I wonder if the migrant workers know this before they move from the country in search of a job that pays more than farming does. I’d be pretty pissed if I gave up my country home in a sunny village only to find that the city is noisy, dark, and polluted. But then I don’t really know much about the daily life of a farmer, either.

This morning was all about the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, the first to unite China, around 200 B.C. And man was that guy self-centered. His tomb is a 70-meter high manmade mountain. The emperor, (who combined the words ‘god’ and ‘king’ to come up with the Chinese word for emperor, which he then had everybody call him) lies inside along with all of his concubines, anybody who worked on the tomb, and his most valued treasure. The concubines were buried alive with him, because a guy can’t be expected to enter the afterlife without his concubines, obviously. The workers had to die as well, for security, since they would know the secrets and booby traps protecting the tomb. The emperor was gracious enough, however, to spare the lives of some 10,000 soldiers, and allowed for a mere life size clay representation of his army to be buried for his protection.

The terracotta army is impressive. Some guy discovered it in the 1960s when he was digging a well for his farm. He’s still alive now, and he’ll sign your postcard, for a price.

After seeing the selfishness of one emperor, we skipped ahead about 1000 years to another horny emperor. The story is that of a woman so beautiful that she single-handedly brought down the Tang dynasty, the mightiest civilization in the world at the time. The emperor took this woman as a concubine, built her a palace outside the capital, and spent all of his time with her there, neglecting his duties while the rebellion gained momentum. There was a statue of her in the garden there, you can judge for yourself if she is stunning enough to bring down the greatest empire in the world.

In other news, we’ve decided to skip Hong Kong, or any other travel after the program ends. We’re out of money and out of energy and out of ambition to see more of China. Our tickets have been changed to December 1st, the day after we get back to Shanghai. Anyway, if I saw all of China on the first time around, I would have no excuse to come back. Except for the ’08 Olympics in Beijing. That’s a good excuse. 

Xi'an

The sun does shine in central China. It shines in your eyes at 7:30am when you’re trying to grab an extra hour of sleep on a train to Xi’an. At least it’s a nice day.

Although it isn’t the capital now, Xi’an was the capital of China for about 1200 years, for many different dynasties. As such, Xi’an has a little bit of history attached to it. It also has the world’s only complete city wall. Last repaired during the Ming dynasty (most recent, 1800s), the modern wall was used militarily once, in 1926 when a warlord besieged the city for 8 months. No really, it happened. A warlord besieged a city in the 20th century. The city has outgrown the wall since then, but most of the notable sites are still inside the compact 2x4 kilometer protected area. Between the drum tower, bell tower, and city wall, the whole place has a really imperial feel to it. You drive through the gate under the wall and can’t help but think about people doing the same thing 1000 years ago. You can tell this place has always been sort of in the center of things.

The three major stops today were all inside the wall. First, the Forest of Steles museum, then the Bell Tower, and then a mosque dressed up in traditional Chinese architecture. We walked from one to the next instead of being carted by bus, since they were all near to each other. Although I find myself less than excited to be back in a city, Xi’an is a pretty nice place to walk around.

In the Muslim corridor, there’s a night market. It’s not quite as renao as Urumqi’s, but it’s still a night market. The soup dumplings we got were somewhat disappointing, though.

The hotel here has HBO. Yessssss. 

Goodbye Sichuan

Today was for the most part uneventful. In the morning, we went back to the Buddha carvings in a different area. These ones were much bigger and better, but whether they were worth the drive is still questionable. Anyway, the weather cleared a bit more, going from cloudy to hazy.

We got back on the bus (ugh) for another five hours back to Chengdu, stopping for another delicious meal along the way. In Chengdu, we walked around for a bit, ate a horrible dinner at a mock-western restaurant, and got on the train, which is not crowded, luckily. And that’s the end of Sichuan. In a nutshell:
The food is spicy and delicious.
The land is beautiful.
There are a lot of Buddhas. Seriously, a lot.
The weather is wet, but not rainy.
There’s a lot of stairs. Again, not kidding about that one either.
Many people have dogs. 

Driving

We were told it would take the morning to drive from Le Shan to Dazu. Apparently, in this part of China, morning lasts until 4pm. The 7-hour bus ride rivaled the ride through the desert in Xin Jiang for length, bumpiness, and discomfort. We did get to see a lot of the countryside, though. Like the rest of China, every square inch of arable land here is used for farming. Terraces are cut into every hill and mountain, as high up as possible. We got to stop in a small farming village (not on the original tour path) and took a look around. The Chinese character for ‘home’ is the character for ‘pig’ under a roof radical. There’s a reason for that.

The destination in Dazu is another set of Buddha carvings. Impressive, again, but too much of the same thing. Especially after seven hours on a jarring bus ride. On the bright side, both meals today were delicious, despite the fact that they were not turkey. Professor Ferry has promised us some Thanksgiving Pizza Hut when we get to Xi’an. 

Monkeys!

Another cold, wet day in Sichuan. Today’s activity is Emei Shan (Mt. Emei). Emei Shan one of the four most holy Buddhist mountains in China. Scattered across the mountainside are Buddhist temples (which, again, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all). The temples, are connected by paths, not one step of which is on natural soil. Up, down, and across the mountain are millions and millions of stairs. This time, we elected to climb up and take the lift down. Having climbed a mountain or two in the past, a two hour hike up a mountain did not seem like it would be a big deal. But for whatever reason, a seemingly endless staircase is so much more intimidating than a normal trail up the side of a mountain. Emei Shan is actually quite large, so we only actually climbed a fraction of the way up. According to Sky, it takes three days to hike all the way up and back, a total difference of 30k. Judging by the map of Emei Shan and the 18-mile Marcy hike that Caitlin and I did last summer, I decided that it could be done in one long day, but I guess I’ll have to save that for next time. You wouldn’t have to carry a very heavy pack, if you did want to do it. Food and water was for sale all over the mountain, as well as the usual tourist trinkets and stuffed animal monkeys.

Why would they be selling stuffed animal monkeys, you ask? Well, its because Emei Shan is home to wild macaques. Yes, macaques are as hilarious as the name implies. My most notable encounter was when I was taking a picture of one, another snuck up behind me and reached in my front pocket. Tara and Nora were lucky enough to have monkeys jump on their heads and shoulders. Of course they didn’t think it was so great, but I was jealous. It was only slightly disappointing in that the monkeys weren’t truly wild. They were wild, but only really concentrated in the designated “monkey area” where handlers threatened with bamboo poles to make sure the monkeys behaved themselves. Something tells me they got most of their food from humans, as well, since they knew exactly where to look for it. So in that sense, it felt more like a monkey pettings zoo, but it was still pretty cool.

Anyway, we climbed up to the 10,000 year temple, and rode the gondola back down from there. The weather was a little clearer by this time, but still not clear enough for an significant views.

After Emei Shan, we drove to Le Shan (not French) where we would stay the night. The main attraction in Le Shan is the worlds tallest sitting Buddha. It was the world’s second tallest sitting Buddha, until the Taliban had its way in 2000. Le Shan’s Buddha is pretty cool to look at, but not much to talk about. 

Du Fu, Thousand Buddha Cliffs, Hot Springs

I woke up cold this morning, packed up, grabbed some chips ahoy from the small convenience store across the street, and got on the bus. The first stop today was Du Fu’s cottage. Du Fu is a famous Tang Dynasty (circa 800AD) poet. His cottage, the place where he supposedly got inspiration for his work, has since been expanded into a larger garden complex. The cottage itself is gone, of course, but there’s an exact replica on the site. Yes, Du Fu’s real cottage did have a gift shop inside. It’s an exact replica. Anyway, we looked around for a bit and got back on the bus to head to the thousand-buddha cliffs.

On the way to the cliffs, we stopped at an extremely large and extremely empty tourist rest stop. Apparently tourism in Sichuan isn’t so busy this time of year. As we ate in the cavernous, un-heated building, it wasn’t hard to see why. The staff did seem grateful for our visit, though. We could tell they must have been a little bored before we got there, as they waited on us hand and foot. The building was cold, but the food was hot, spicy, and delicious. I continued eating for ten minutes after everybody else had finished.

The thousand-buddha cliffs were not extremely spectacular, but I loved it anyway. So far, most of the sites we’ve been to on this trip have been everything that Shanghai is not: peaceful, quiet, scenic, charming, uncrowded, clean, refreshing… I guess it’s the difference between city and country. Ever since I arrived in Shanghai, I’ve been craving a place with fresh air and the rest of the aforementioned qualities, so when I get the chance to hike around and explore the stone steps on the cliffs, I was in heaven. Scattered along the cliff sides are various Buddha carvings (of which there are 1000, I imagine). Although the concept is cool, this type of stuff has never really sparked my interest, so I just enjoyed the hike. It was still overcast today, but the fog lifted, so there were some decent views of the countryside at the foot of the cliffs. The scene was as I had always imagined China to be like before I went to Shanghai. Steep, green mountains drop down into a river valley where peasants work on terraces and in fields. The houses have clay shingles, and people ride bikes slowly along bumpy roads.

After dinner, Nora, Alice, and I checked out the “hot springs” at the hotel. They were a series of hot tubs and heated pools, around 10 in all, each held at a different temperature. One was kept really cold, so I used it as an ice bath to ease my sore legs before returning back to the hot one to warm back up. I just got back from the hot springs and I feel like a million bucks. 

Pandas & Buddhist Chairlifts

The first stop on Monday was what everybody had been waiting for. The panda reserve. On the way there, Sky told us all the statistics about how endangered the pandas are. As soon as we saw them, it was clear why they struggle to survive in the wild. They look like couch potatoes. They eat 20kg of a specific kind of bamboo a day, of which they can only digest 20%. This keeps them busy eating pretty much all day. Nothing about them indicates that they would have what it takes to survive in the wild.



Next was a holy Buddhist mountain that I’ve since forgotten the name of. It has a temple built at the top, with a continuous stone staircase running all the way up the side of the mountain. Oh, a chairlift, too. The lift took us most of the way up and climbed the rest of the way. At the top were the temples and gift shops, but no view. A different kind of mountain than the ones I’m used to.

Half of us walked down the staircase instead of taking the chairlift. Apparently, every mountain worth climbing in China (excluding Tibet) has thousands of stone steps for a trail. We probably went down a little faster than we should have on the slick, wet stone, and ended up beating the chairlift to the bottom. It felt good to get some exercise and warm myself up, as I hadn’t been warm since leaving Shanghai. A lot of Chinese buildings don’t have heat, and when they do, it’s usually not on at this temperature. For this reason, it’s sometimes said that winters in Shanghai are harder than winters in Harbin (close to Siberia) because most Shanghai residences have no heat. Chengdu is about the same way. 

Fog, Spicy Food, & Aging Revolutionaries

At 5am, after 3 hours of sleep, we got up and started checking out of the foreign students’ dormitory at Fudan University. By the way, did you know that dorm houses almost as many people as all of Union College? Interesting. Anyway, I left my big rolling suitcase in storage there, filled to the brim with stuff bought in China, and not much else. In my backpack are clothes for the next three weeks traveling. Professor Ferry showed up at 6am with a van, as well as her husband Danielle (also a professor at Union) and their 4-year-old son Camille. They speak only Spanish with Camille so that he will grow to be bilingual, and I understand about as much of what they say as I do Chinese. After listening to Chinese for 3 months, Spanish sounds like English with a really thick accent. Anyway, I had been hoping to get a solid three hours of sleep on the plane to add to the four that I got in bed, but thanks to a charming little Chinese girl who sat behind me passed the time by kicking my seat, I only got about half an hour.

We landed in Chengdu in fog thick enough that I could not see the ground until we were on it. That was a little startling. As I write this two days later, the weather hasn’t changed much. It’s about 40-50F and as damp as it can possibly be. Feels just like November in Rochester. Sky, our tour guide, tells us that the weather here is so damp because the entire province of Sichuan is in a basin surrounded by mountains, which I imagine are very beautiful, if only I could see them. The upside to the dampness is the vegetation, which is so lush it looks almost tropical.

This tour is different from the Xin Jiang trip because we have our own private tour guide and bus driver. Though Camille’s energy is enough to replace the 40 Chinese tourists from the Xin Jiang trip, it’s still a much better arrangement. We can adjust the itinerary of the trip as we wish, skipping the stuff we know will be a waste of time.

The other major difference is the food. Sichuan is notorious for the food, which is amazing, especially if you like it spicy. The Sichuanese have a saying about their food. It sounds a lot more poetic in Chinese, but the translation is “I’m not afraid the food will be spicy, I’m afraid it won’t be spicy.”

Being so much further inland, the people here don’t have as much exposure to western culture and people. This basically means two things: more staring, and more spitting. However, they make up for both ten times over with one endearing quality. In Chengdu, people have a remarkable ability to drive their bikes, cars, trucks, and buses without laying on the horn every two seconds. It’s amazing how quiet a bustling city can sound.

The first tour stop after lunch was a Daoist temple, which was essentially the same as many of the other 10 we’ve visited. Behind the temple was a nice little park, where an ‘old people’s club’ had gathered. The old men gathered in groups of 4 or 5 around Mahjong and Chinese Chess games, where the spectators would study the board and give advice to the two players as they saw fit. Walking a little further on, we found old women dancing in pairs to the revolutionary songs being played by a small, ad-hoc band and chorus of more elderly men. Some of the men in the chorus were OK singers, but most were delightfully out of tune, and the guy with the wooden flute squeaked every four or five notes. Regardless, the energy was definitely there, helped along by a woman conducting the ensemble and an energetic old man half dancing half marching in place in front of them all. It was hard to tell if they were practicing for a performance or just singing and playing for fun, but I don’t think it mattered much. Every one of them was smiling from ear to ear. If ever a group of people truly earned there retirement, it’s these people. They endured Japanese occupation during World War II, fought the civil war during the Communist Revolution, suffered ten years through the Cultural Revolution, and worked hard every day in between. Almost every day of their life has been difficult. Now the state supports their hard-earned retirement, and nobody appreciates it more than they do. 

Flying Home

Thursday, December 1st:

As I write this, I’m sitting on the plane, about to copy all of the entries since November 20^th into my computer. Since I had limited internet access on our trip to Sichuan and Shaanxi, I hand-wrote my blog entries, and I will post them when I get home. All of the entries are copied directly as I wrote them on the trip.

Leaving Shanghai

Sorry for the lack of updates in the past couple weeks, but I just haven't had very much that I felt the need to write down. Not that I haven't been doing anything, because I've been doing plenty. I think it's just a sign that I've gotten used to life here... just in time to leave.

I'll try to recap the highlights of the past couple weeks:

First, Qipu Lu. Lu mean's road. Qipu Road. It's another pedestrian street market, except all clothes. A really big one, where it seems everybody in Shanghai goes to get their clothes. I don't think we even saw half of it. It seemed to be on more than just the one street, as well. On all sides there were malls and shops selling more clothes. We went into one of the buildings and found 4 stories of clothes shops and vendors. In the basement of another building, were more shoes than I have ever seen in my life. An area about the size of a football field, crammed with individual vendors' shops, each about the size of a carnival booth, all stacked floor to ceiling with shoes. Nora saved me the agony of shoe shopping and brought Tara and her family back later. My crowning achievement of that little outing was finding a t-shirt with ridiculous English written on it. It's a women's t-shirt, so it will have to go to Caitlin, but written on it in sparkly writing, next to a picture of a pair of jeans, is "Noun Adverb Verb Adjective".

Next, the Textile market (pictured). Like the place with the shoes, except textiles now. You can have anything you want, tailor-made. Just pick out a fabric you like, get measured up, and come back a week later. Easy as that. Or is it? The answer, for us, was no. It's not. Nora and I both got measured for suits, and gave the guy 300kuai a piece for the deposit. A week later, as planned, we show up with our receipts, to find that the guy forgot. He forgot our suits. This was yesterday, by the way, that we went to pick them up. We're leaving Shanghai tomorrow, which left us with essentially no time to fool around with this guy forgetting to make us our suits. After 2o minutes of arguing for our money back, or any kind of deal that doesn't leave us suitless and moneyless, we finally give up and agree to meet him outside our dorm at 10pm that night, where he will deliver our suits. So now he has 6 hours to make and deliver two suits. We were giving it about a 40% chance that he was going to show up at all, much less with what we asked for. At 10 last night, we go down there and wait for him. For an hour. Now we're really skeptical that we're ever going to get out of this without being ripped off. Eventually I went back up to my room to call him, and found Tara in her's and Nora's room struggling on the phone with him. I talk to him on the phone, and he says he's there and he's been waiting. Now, my Chinese is still not perfect, and it's even worse over the phone, but from that conversation, I could tell there was no way that he was at a different gate. Eventually, after a few more trips between the gate and Nora's room, one of the gate guards asks me if I'm looking for the guy with the clothes. He's been waiting for an hour and he's mad. So have we, and so are we, I tell him. Anyway, we got the suits, and they are good. I also got two button-down shirts made (by different people) and Nora had some shirts tailored as well, but that all went perfectly, and that just makes for a boring story.

We went to the Tennis tournament. It's actually the first time I've been to a professional tennis match, so it was pretty cool. We saw Gaston Gaudio vs. Nikolai Davydenko. We missed Federer, who played the next day, but I decided it was just as well, because we got to see a good, competitive match. Federer generally beats the pants off of whoever he plays, and it's not much of a match for watching. The highlight of the tennis outing was the conversation we had with the ticket scalpers, which was probably one of the best Chinese conversations I've had with Chinese people outside of class. I am nearly fluent in two situations: bargaining prices, and telling people about my background. This conversation was both.

I can't really think of much else worth mentioning, besides a few more trips to the fake market, and a ton of DVD shopping. The CD/DVD store down the road is always playing Jack Johnson, which I appreciate.

The academic term is essentially over. Exams are done and the papers are in. Tomorrow morning at 6am, we leave for a ten-day trip through Sichuan (spicy food) and Xi'an (terracotta army) with Professor Ferry. This time, we'll have our own private tour, instead of the big tour bus we had last time. There's a lot of mountains on the itinerary, which I'm very excited about. I've been dying to go for a hike since I got here. And maybe, just maybe, we'll find a corner of China that's not noisy. Somehow I doubt it though.

After that, Nora and I have 12 days to kill until our flight leaves. We're both itching to get home, but last Spring it seemed like a good idea to schedule some travel time after the term ends. We have explored every possibility, dreamt up all sorts of crazy adventures, and finally decided to just chill out with those 12 days. We were going to go to Beijing and see the sights up there, but decided it's not going to be worth the trouble or the money. So the plan, for now, is to go to Hong Kong, and stay on the big island (where the city isn't). Hopefully we'll find a beach or something to hang out on, maybe go hiking or something. But most importantly, chill out and spend as little money as possible. I wouldn't mind finding a place that I could rent a surfboard, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.

So now it's time to say goodbye to Shanghai. I certainly won't miss the car horns.

Is it worth the risk of Avian Flu?

I’m not sure if I’ve written about them before or not, but scattered around the city there are what we foreigners like to call ‘Muslim noodle restaurants’. They’re mom-and-pop operations run by Chinese Muslims, and specialize in noodles made from scratch. Out in front, sometimes right out on the sidewalk, they pull the dough into long, thin strands and boil them in a big pot. Inside the small shop, you sit on a stool at one of five or six tables, often with strangers when it’s busy, and eat with cheap disposable chopsticks. They all follow this same format, and are sometimes so similar that you might even think that they were a chain.

My favorite Muslim noodle place is right around the corner from the dorm, and I often go there for lunch. I don’t really like Muslim noodles very much, but this place makes really good stir fry as well, which I usually get with some white rice. It’s good food, a perfect distance for a good walk if I’ve been inside all day, and usually not much more than 10 kuai for a meal. On top of all this, they have printed menus (many of these places don’t) with characters, pinyin, and the English translation. It’s great to be able to know what you are ordering and say it to the person in Chinese instead of just pointing at the menu and saying “I want this.” So all in all, it’s a really great place for lunch. Until today.

Today, they got a pet canary.

Another interesting NYT article

This one features a Fudan professor... we're famous.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/22/international/asia/22xu.html