Jackie Chan

Yesterday afternoon I decided to take a little nap. I went to at about 3pm, expecting to wake up in an hour or 2. Four hours later I was still out like a light, while Professor Ferry banged on my door to wake me up for the Jackie Chan concert. I guess I'm still a little jet lagged.

The other two Union classmates on this trip arrived yesterday, Alice was on the same United flight that Nora, Tara and I took only it was one day later. Roy, on the other hand, flew from New York to Dubai, and Dubai to Shanghai. Dubai is in the United Arab Emirates, by the way. What? You don't....? Oh, yeah... the UAE is by Saudi Arabia. I think that's the long way around. Anyway, the two of them were there when I finally woke up last night, and we all went to Shanghai stadium for the concert. Professor Ferry seems to think I know Chinese, since when we take cabs (we have to take two since there are 6 of us) she gives me the money to handle and deal with the cab driver. I've done alright so far.

We took cabs to the subway station, and the subway to the stadium. The subway is nice. Much nicer than New York, probably even better than Boston and DC. It's strange how some things here are space-age and others still in the 19th century. Everybody has cell phones. And hand wash their clothes. There are men on bicycles with loads piled 10 feet high on a trailer riding through the streets, while a bullet train turns a 45 minute drive to the airport into an 8 minute cruise. And so on.

When we got to the stadium we waited outside the gate to meet up with Professor Ferry's friend, Claire. And we were promptly bombarded by street vendors selling posters, binoculars, little blinky-light pins, glo-sticks and more. The more observant and educated ones shouted "Hallo!" as they shoved their merchandise into our face, and held up fingers showing how many kuai. The most expensive item that I saw were the binoculars, at 10 kuai (1 dollar = 8 kuai/yuan/renminbi). My favorite vendor approached Roy and I with a poster of the Chinese diva that was to perform and pointed at her chest. I gave an understanding grin and politely said "bu yao"... "don't want".

The concert was big, as imagined. But everybody stayed seated the entire time, and never got too excited. Pop concerts in China are more of a family outing, sort of like a baseball game in the states. There's a lot of talking and raffles between songs, and the performers play just as many slow songs as they do high-energy hits. Claire bought a pair of binoculars, and it became clear why they were so cheap. They were blurry to the point where it was hard to tell if it was a better view with or without them, and I'm suspicious that turning the eypieces didn't actually adjust the focus. Since I was half asleep when we left I didn't think to bring my camera. I didn't think we would be able to bring it in to the concert anyway, but as it turns out, security at Chinese concerts just stands and looks intimidating, instead of frisking each and every person to come into the show.

There were two minor scares on the cab ride home. The first was about half way through the ride, when the driver started speaking on his cell phone. Since it was dark, I couldn't see that he was on the phone, and since I've only taken a year of Chinese, I couldn't understand what he was saying. So I thought he was talking to me. Eventually I decided he wasn't, but not before spitting out a few Chinese phrases that I do know, which probably seemed odd to the driver who was trying to have a conversation on his cell phone. The second was toward the end, when i realized that Professor Ferry only gave me 40 kuai, and the meter was at 50 something. But Alice came to the rescue with 20 that she had brought from home, and the cab driver accepted 60 instead of 64.

When we enter the dorm, we are supposed to show the doorman our room keys. Tara had forgotten hers. I did my best to explain the situation, and did pretty well, I think. Although they were a little suspicious of the fact that Tara didn't know her own name (her Chinese name). Ridiculous as it is that somebody might forget their own name, it's understandable in Tara's case. Having never spoken a word of Chinese in her life, the two times that she had heard her Chinese name, it sounded just like any other two Chinese words, so it was in one ear and out the other. After five minutes or so, I was able to convince them, or they just gave up and let us go. We got back to our rooms around 11, but since I had taken such a heavy nap in the afternoon. I didn't go to bed until 2:30. Once again, at 6:30 this morning I was wide awake and ready to go.

By the way, the timestamp on these entries are still at US Eastern time, so when I post, it's actually 12 hours ahead of when the entry says.