Ah, so the rumors are false and I can access the blog from China with little problem, fantastic.
Our flight a little over a week ago commenced phase 2 of Liz and my post-collegiate plan. Phase 1 being summer, 3 shall be Ecuador.
Upon landing we were surprised and then relieved (that we survived) by the amount of water on the runway. Typhoon Wipha was breaking land much further south along the coast than us, but the beast was supposedly the biggest typhoon to hit China in a decade. Our cab ride home was extremely treacherous, some areas flooded by nearly a foot of water. We were told this was just the preamble, so I waited until after the good stuff to bring my camera to the streets. The good stuff never came. Typhoon Wipha, as all ocean-born storms, shrank tremendously after breaking land, allowing her (him? do you know a Wipha?) to bypass Shanghai almost entirely. Wah… Waaaahhhh…
Our days since have been great. We’ve been knocking some major landmarks off of our list. Xin Tian Di, which was once an old bustling Shanghainese neighborhood, is now characterized by its large Starbucks on the corner and expensive (and usually empty) shops. It is the future China that Shanghai wants us Westerners to believe in, modern and clean. Also the perfect example of development model in Shanghai: move everyone out (forcibly if necessary), knock it all down, rebuild it so it has a manufactured, slightly Disney-China feeling, and for people like my dad, if you put a Starbucks up, they will come. There are very few of the old neighborhoods still around, and during my last trip to Shanghai we had the fortunate opportunity to tour a few of them with tour guide/photographer Wang Gang Feng, or “Gang of One” as he calls himself. We had family portraits taken in one of these neighborhoods also, but I’m getting off focus, which is bad because the focus should be delicious, hot dumplings.
Xin Tian Di contains the best dumplings I’ve ever had, which are found at Din Tai Fung. This restaurant’s Taipei branch (the original) made the New York Times’ best 10 restaurants in the world list in 1993. While at this point it’s an international chain with even a location in L.A., it’s still the perfect spot for juicy Chinese dumplings.
Another landmark we saw that same day was the gorgeous Yu Yuan, or Yu Garden. We will return to the garden itself, but the buildings surrounding it are pure Chinese tourism. While the neighborhood is gorgeous, you can only stomach so much of the place. We were swamped by Chinese and Thai tour groups. It really didn’t get much more Disney-China than this spot. Every fifth little shop with crafts, souvenirs, and chops were the identical. Chops are little wooden pieces on which they carve a Chinese character for your name as a stamp. These are remnants of the traditional ways of signing documents. We can’t wait to get to the smaller cities where not everything is so commercialized, but from what I hear we may have to venture outside of even the small cities to avoid this kind of scene. With 1.3 billion in the country, it’s hard to find places to hide without language skills.
Speaking of which, we have been taking many lessons since we’ve been here. Li Yang is our instructor, a very sweet young Chinese woman who tutors my brother Michael. They’re going really well, and we’ve started using our learned phrases to get around and to barter. We’ve had 5 lessons so far and are cramming as many in as we can before next week’s Chinese holiday. Nobody works next week, everyone travels. My parents are heading off on a silk road adventure, Michael is going on a Habitat for Humanity trip, but to avoid the madness we are staying put in Shanghai, maybe doing a couple of day trips to Suzhou and Hanzhou. Next week’s holiday is one of only three big national holidays in the year. The others are the long break for the New Year and the few days off around May 1st.
The other activities we’ve made sure to cram in are the massages. For 8 to 20 dollars you can get all kinds of hour-long massages down the street. We’ve been spoiling ourselves lately, but this will all be compensated by our dirty weeks of backpacking later on. Recently I got the full body oil massage for the first time and was given what was the size of a roll of life savers to wear. Upon expanding the package I found what appeared to be a hair net for my crotch. It was a speedo-area-covering mesh bottom, that’s all I got. Liz was given just pants, as she’d asked for a back oil massage. We couldn’t keep from laughing as we received and negotiated with our outfits.
Saturday night we met up with my buddy Rod who is spending a semester abroad here in Shanghai. He joined my parents, Lizzie, and I for dinner, wine, and a trip to Jade on 36, a very very fancy place on the thirty sixth floor of the Shangri-La hotel. There were space-age bathrooms, funny house music, and decent martinis that were enjoyed.
Tuesday, after an afternoon of exercise at the athletic club and a relaxing massage, we got gussied up, went to my favorite Sichuan restaurant in Shanghai, and followed onwards to a place called the “Cotton Club” for some blues and jazz and drinks. On the way home we stopped at the local noodle place. It was Liz’s 23rd birthday, and it was our most relaxing day yet.
So it’s Thursday as I finish this, and I realize now that I’ve dipped in and out of detail as I went along. There’s plenty more to tell somewhere in there, and I feel like we’ve been a lot busier than this entry sounds, but there’s always the next entry.
