Old China in the morning, party time at night

8/30

Woke up 5:45. Took a shower, got ready, got on our tour bus that would take us out two hours west of Shanghai to a smaller, older style Chinese town (I can’t recall the name). We went to a touristy type area where we looked around a very old Chinese village on a river and an older market street. This is where we learned of real poverty. The people must have immune systems of steel here. They don’t have washers and they have only, not too long ago, acquired running water. They wash their clothing in the river outside their homes, which is green and has garbage in it. There is garbage on the street, stray dogs, many beggars, etc.

A group of five of us took off away from the tourist area to the surrounding village. We saw live fish markets with all kinds of animals from live crab, some weird long nosed fish, to baby/adult chickens and ducks.

Here’s a story. So we were off on our own without Ying or Edwin (the Chinese speakers). We were able to communicate with a couple who were running a small noodle shop in the town. We pointed to what a man had and they made us all a dish of this awesome bowl of noodles. We got drinks, told the chef (who was practically in reaching distance from us) that the food was very good (pictured), asked how much (about 15 Yuan per person which included the drink ($2)), paid and then left. Myself and Rachel still had our Sprite bottles with us about a third full. We all waked around some more and were confronted with a Chinese midget. He spoke with us and we couldn’t understand. He held out a hand full of Yuan coins and then took Rachel and my soda bottles strait from our hands and walked away. We were stunned to say the least. People laughed at us and we laughed a little too before edging away. We figured later on that he wanted the deposit on the bottles caused he just poured out our remaining soda. Oh well, we weren’t that thirsty anyway.

The five of us ended up getting really lost and ended up on a highway. Had our large tickets with the tourist town we were at originally so we pointed to it to some people who thought our ignorance was hilarious. We got pointed in many different directions and 99% of what was spoken to us, we couldn’t understand. Different groups of people all pointed at one time or another in the southbound direction so away we went. We ended up after walking though large crop farms, huge duck farms, and the nearby highway (where the locals would honk at us for no reason) but finally made it back with plenty of time to spare.

Drew and I went and haggled at some shops, saw a cool kung-fu artist perform, Drew got a stamp with his name engraved in it (the man engraved it right there in front of us). We were a little late in getting to the restaurant for lunch but we made it, ate another incredible meal (although it was so hot none of us were really super hungry), then we continued with our tour guide (oh by the way, the tour bus had a tour guide with it who explained everything to us in Chinese and Edwin translated).

We were all very hot and tired but we followed the tour guide for another hour and a half through some places of the town that was significant Chinese history (although we didn’t know what most of it was about). The last stop on the tour was a distillery and how powerful the smell was! We were able to sample some of the liquor which made my inner ears burn even though I only had about a quarter shot. The distiller was filled, and I mean filled, with old pots all filled with wine and liquor (pictured). There were some kids touring with a group who took some interest in us so I got my picture with one of them (pictured) (I would have got one with both but the boy was very shy).

Got on the bus and I slept most of the two hour drive home (the heat and constant walking was so exhausting).

We rested when we got back, got in the nice cool pool… then were ready for another night on the town! It turned out that we split into a guy group and a girl group for dinner and we decided to meet back at the hotel lobby at 9:00. The guys went out with our beers (it’s okay to drink in public) to a very busy restaurant. Another great meal. Back to the hotel.

The girls weren’t around, we waited for half an hour and then left. All guys plus Jen. We asked around for directions to where a bunch of Chinese hangout bars were. They turned out to be quite a ways away so we took the subway for the first time. It was PACKED. I barely made it in. The doors closed against my back I was literally shoulder to shoulder with three people plus the door. The subway is quick though so we were to our destination in minutes.

Bars lined up and down the streets, most of them full of people. We stopped by the “Hello Bar” which was too crowded for us to find a place. We went to another bar where a more mellow live band was playing, had a drink, then took off. The next bar was full of people, very dark and very loud with techno music. We all couldn’t sit together let alone let the waitress know what we all wanted to drink (so incredibly loud!) so we soon left.

Our final destination was the Eighty Eight Bar (the number eight is a symbol of good luck and fortune in China cause the word eight sounds very close to the word fortune). It was an awesome bar with good music (not live), enough space for us all to sit at the bar (seven of us) and a staff of cute Chinese girls. We had a few drinks there and learned to play a dice drinking game (one of the waitresses taught Edwin and he taught us). After an hour or two we decided to head back to the hotel. The subway was closed so we caught a cab.

Got back, had another beer and chatted in the rooms, then went to bed at around 1:00.

Some rain today, among other things...

8/29

I woke up on my own this morning at about 6:45 and I started working on these blogs. We’ve been so busy lately I haven’t been able to have time to do them till now. The internet has been a pain to work with so I will post these as soon as possible.

Same start, a huge breakfast down on floor two and then we were out to the museum. There was a ton of old Chinese bronzes, coinage, jades, etc. Lots of stuff that I’ve seen pictures of in my Chinese Art History class at home. After an hour there, (oh and by the way it’s pouring rain but a group of us took the opportunity to enjoy the warm rain and walked around from place to place) we went to an contemporary art museum to see some other artist paintings, photographs, etc. It was pretty cool.

We decided to go find some random place for lunch. Almost all the students and Edwin (our GTF and only other person besides Ying who speaks Chinese) went out and Joel tried to converse with a lady at a while we were waiting for Katie to try and get her ATM card out of the machine that stole it. Joel was hilarious, he was trying to find the word “chicken” in his small Chinese/English book and couldn’t find it. We told him he should play charades and he acted like a chicken. The people laughed and we laughed and the lady acted right back but still didn’t seem to know what he wanted. We left that stand and found a random restaurant and went in. We got our own room for free and free tea (one thing that is great about China is people really appreciate your business and they’ll try hard to impress so that you’ll come back again). They gave us the only English menu they had which was barely in English. It was very poorly written and there was even some made up words in it. Edwin just ordered up some stuff, it was fantastic, and we left. Once again the meal with drink was only about $4 per person and they never expect any tips. Time flew by and we barely had enough time to make it back to our hotel where our bus was waiting to take us into the, I guess art district where a lot of students studios and galleries were.

We walked around a lot of galleries with some really good, some really boring/bad artwork. After that we met up with a famous Chinese artist that Ying had arranged for us to meet. He owns studios in Shanghai and New York and spoke great English. We talked with him about his work and his life and then we left.

Afterwards we went to a tea house for refreshments. The rain had stopped and once again it was hot and extremely humid, like a rainforest humid. We had some drinks and food. I got some ice cream for 20 Yuan and when they brought it to meet it looked great. It looked so good that two other people ordered it. The ice cream was good, but once I got down to half the glass I found that the bottom half was ice cubes, odd.

We caught taxis to get home, which by the way are also dirt cheap. They’re 11 Yuan flat fare which will get you a mile or two, the most we’ve had to pay is 19 Yuan for a ride for four people, which is about $2.50.

When we got back we relaxed in the hotel for a bit and then had a group meeting about what we want to do for our projects. By now I’ve thought of a bunch of different stuff to do. A few of my ideas were: exploring the patterns and normalness of what appears to us as absolutely chaotic traffic. Another idea is researching more on the roles of the homeless, which are so much sadder here then back at home.

After the meeting we got ready and headed out to dinner. We tried to order some king snake but they said that we had to order it some time in advance. So we got some eel instead. Not to mention more dumplings, more fried noodles, etc.

Afterwards it was about 9-9:30 and we had to get up and be ready by 6:00 am the next morning… so naturally we went out to check out the night life and visited some bars. We went to the “bar district” which was where there were expensive tourist bars (lots of old white business guys with their beautiful young Chinese girls). We stopped by a bar where some live music was going on. The band was all right. We ordered a drink, which was about 80 Yuan each! None of us wanted to pay any more so after 45 to an hour we took off and walked back home. It was about 12:30 – 1 and most of us decided to go to bed.

First day!

8/28/07

Woke up about 6:45am Shanghai time (again that would be 3:45pm Oregon time, we are 15 hours ahead). Breakfast was a large one and excellent. Now I can say I’ve had freshly made fried rice for breakfast.

Our day was packed with stuff to do. We started out walking through the city to get to the Yuan Garden (pictured). First of all it was already, probably about 85 degrees F and quite humid at 8:30 am. The streets and allies were quite packed and some smelled really bad. Most people here do not have dryers (and more than likely washers either) so there were lots of clothes of all types hanging from clothes lines out of windows.

Yuan garden is beautiful; I’ll share more of the 70 pictures I took when I return home. The architecture in the area is really beautiful (pictured).

We had lunch at a very popular dumpling house. A lot of stuff in China are still equivalent to the prices of the US, but the food and drink are cheap! My meal was 22 Yuan for the dumplings and 5 Yuan for each of my two sodas totally at 32 Yuan, which is about $4.25 US, and this is in a good restaurant, mind you. In shops, all food and drink are cheap. They sell large bottles of different types of beer for fewer than 50 cents (some of our group stocked up).

We left and went to barter for an hour. I got two shirts in case my luggage didn’t come for a few days. It was my first time bartering so I wasn’t sure if I could be good at in or not. I was. I got a pretty nice shirt that was marked for 398 Yuan down to 150 Yuan ($20), so that was cool. I also got another shirt for about $4. By the way, it’s about 7.5 yuan to the dollar.

So we walked around the city a little more, had our first really authentic Chinese food for dinner, it was good, but definitely a different kind of taste. They offered chicken “claws” and bullfrog but we didn’t have that yet. Ying told our waiter that we don’t really want anything that still has its head and/or feet.

After dinner we went up the currently tallest building in Shanghai (pictured). It’s the fourth tallest building in the world, I think it is just 10 meters shorter than the Sears Tower. Another skyscraper is being built next to it that is almost done and will be the tallest in the world.

We got back and were going to go out to the clubs and bars but were once again exhausted at 10:30 so we went to sleep.

8/26-27/07
The 14 hour flight from San Francisco to Shanghai was surprisingly quick. All I have to say is thank god for in flight movies. We ended up watching four of them. I slept for about 30 seconds and was then woken up to be served what must have been our fifth meal. They really didn’t let us go hungry, my stomach didn’t growl once.
Finally we arrived in Shanghai, at about 5:00pm our time (2:00am Oregon time) and I was still surprisingly awake, probably from the adrenaline. There were no more caucasions ANYWHERE.
Three of our group bags are missing, which includes my duffle bag with all my clothes in it. Oh well, at least I have all my stuff. They figured the missing bags were still in San Francisco because our flight was delayed in Eugene and when we arrived in San Fran we only had about 30 minutes to get to our next flight, so the didn’t get it to our next plane in time.
We finally connected with Ying outside. It was very hot and muggy! We got on our bus that would take us around central Shanghai and then to our hotel. Shanghai is a gorgeous place at night. All the skyscrapers are lit up and tons of shops and bars are lit up all over town.
At the hotel we were catered to very well, especially at dinner, the food was awesome. I have used the phrase “sheh sheh” (“thank you”) many times. At dinner the food was all fairly “normal” Chinese food except for the whole shrimps. I mean head, eyes, legs and everything. I had one and it was fine but it’s really hard to get over the thought. It was also really crunch cause the shell is left on. After dinner I became extremely exhausted cause I had been awake for about 27 hours and it had been daylight up until the last two or three hours. We went up to our room and went to sleep. The bed is actually very hard, like a wood floor with some roll out padding on it. But it felt wonderful after the long day and I fell asleep in no time.

P.S. Not sure yet of what my first project will be on.

Almost ready to go: My test posting

It's the day before I leave for China and I need to create a blog account. I'm really excited and I look forward to adding interesting and exciting stuff. Later.