Perspective

Shanghai, November 18, 2007 (Sunday)

Some people like Sunday brunch; others like lingering over coffee and the Sunday paper. Me? Sunday morning massage. Bliss.

After that, I hopped on the 911 double-decker bus which winded its way through the former French Concession, finally ending at the Old West Gate area, near Xintiandi. The buildings in the French Concession still manage to maintain their French charm, despite the surrounding commercialization. One corner looks like it could have been plucked from France…except the signage is in Chinese. The height from the bus allowed a better view of the French architecture accents, and the buildings and cottages and villas still look lovely, age, bamboo poles laden with laundry, window boxes of blooming flowers, and all.

At the Old West Gate stop, I disembarked and wound my way up a seedy street market, on my way to Xintiandi. This market is decidedly not for tourists. Aside from woolen clothing, day to day necessities and vegetables and fruits, I spied a couple of vendors peddling porn DVDs and sex toys. Hey, maybe this street is meant for tourists!

Xintiandi came into view, after passing the lovely park with huge man-made lake that is adjacent to it. My first stop was the site of the First Communist Congress, which was a little ooky, since they created wax figures of all the members, and sat them around a table in an odd tableau, with amazing detail – filled teacups, writing brushes and ink, cigarettes and ashtrays. A young, handsome Mao Ze Dong was at the center of the tableau, standing and gesturing in a passionate, inspiring manner. Next I moved on to the Shukumen Museum, called the Shikumen Open House, which lovingly recreates a typical Shikumen home, down to the most minute detail. A narrative was woven, introducing us to a typical family during the 1920s, and as you walked through the painstakingly recreated living room (with a curio case with awesome antique cameras and a cocktail shaker shaped like a bird – reminded my of my own penguin shaker), study (with stocked bookcases, a full writing desk), kitchen (with bags of rice, hanging fish, chopping block, wok and cooking utensils), you really felt as if you have walked back in time to another era. As I made my way up the narrow stairs, I passed a small nook room between the two floors which was outfitted for a boarder, usually an academic, with a sparse bed and fully stocked writing table. On the second floor proper, all the bedrooms were interconnected, each complete with elaborate beds, wardrobes, vanity tables, wash bins, and desks. One even had this great antique sewing machine. I was so enamored with the writing tables and dressing/vanity tables. The details and accessories were flawless, from the abacus, antique typewriters, calligrapher brushes, inkstone sets, seals, mirrors, jars of cosmetics, shiny comb and brush sets. Even the child’s desk had a junior abacus and brush set…I kept taking pictures in that house, which was practically empty except for me, and the security guard who tailed me, since I could have very easily pocketed any of the accessories in the rooms.

After that delightful interlude, I decided to have lunch at T8, one of the hippest fine dining establishments in Shanghai. It’s on most of the top ten lists in Shanghai, and is supposedly frequented by celebs, though my celebra-hound radar didn’t twitch when I was there. T8 has an eclectic Asian fusion theme, with lots of natural materials, stone, hardwoods, coppers, bronzes, and running water. Upon entry, you step onto a granite block which is surrounded by a small pool of clear water with smooth stones on its floor. You pass an open kitchen, encased in glass, then can either go into the main dining room, a dimly lit, gleaming hardwood area, or into light, airy sitting rooms, near latticed windows, and separated by intricate lattice screens. These rooms sport comfy sofas and tables under skylights, and you can peek out the thin bands of glass windows and see the Shikumen alleys of Xintiandi outside. It’s playful and elegant, beautifully detailed, with cheeky elements like cuddly teddy bears in T8 sweaters sitting on the sofas, and Christmas jazz and Broadway showtunes playing softly in the background. I was offered a sitting room, and I ordered off the brunch menu. Guys, this place is pricey, regardless of country. This is world-class service, ambiance, and cuisine, at world-class prices. And I went with the brunch special, which is a three course set menu…and that was still relatively pricey. I dropped $38 on it…I know, that’s not that bad, really, but for someone who has been able to survive on $4 a day on food here, $38 seemed obscenely expensive! But boy, was it worth it. First off, I had the best cup of coffee ever. In my life ever. Fragrant Illy coffee freshly brewed, with a thick crema, served on an elegant, granite stone service, with a tiny matching pitcher containing steamed frothy milk, and a tiny matching covered dish filled with sparkling grains of natural raw sugar. First course: Seafood ceviche, with clams, shrimp, crawfish, scallops, olives, cucumber, tomato, peppers. Lovely. Spicy and tangy, this course refreshingly cleansed the palate for my second course, the Twice Cooked Pork and Pumpkin Pizza. The crust was thin and crispy, like the thinnest of flatbreads. The pork was tender and lovingly strewn on a bed of creamy goat cheese. Firm diced pieces of basil and pumpkin also melded into the cheese, and the overall effect was beautiful, sweet, tart, savory, creamy, smoky, and crispy. I finished off the whole pie, easy. The grand finale was the molten lava cake. The cake at Face the day before had only whet my appetite. I was craving more, and T8 delivered. A beautiful plate appeared, and on it, a decadent chocolate cake, framed artfully by a delicate scoop of raspberry sorbet, complete with thin fortune cookie wafer, a carefully placed pile of peach chutney, and a streak of graham cracker crumbs. I thought I was going to cry, this plate was so beautiful. I methodically made my way through the sorbet and peach chutney, before hitting the mother lode, the warm, ooey, gooey, chocolately cake. The flavors melded and complemented, and I savored every bite. I cleaned that plate, even after two hearty courses and two cups of joe. The wait staff, true to form, didn’t blink an eye, even though I expect they were aghast that I had finished everything, was still upright and not collapsed on the comfy sofa, belt undone to accommodate my expanded tummy, belching intermittently. Damn straight, yo. I am a seasoned eater and can eat all of you under the table. Speaking of the staff, the service was amazing. Attentive, discreet, accommodating, invisible unless needed. This contrasts greatly with the service from most other places. At most other establishments, “local” and “non-Western” establishments, for lack of a better term, the staff give you the distinct feeling that they are going through the motions, and there’s a subtle feeling of defiance, as if they don’t want to “serve”, and are too good for the job. And it’s not just to non-Chinese patrons, staff treat other patrons, Chinese or otherwise, with the same ‘tude. Locals take it in stride, just like the heinous traffic etiquette, I guess, but I’m a little non-plussed by it. It’s not that the servers are rude, they’re just not as accommodating as I’m used to in the US. Customer service culture is still a new concept here, I guess. Maybe the ‘tude is because of the no-tipping custom in China? If consumers tipped, perhaps there would be greater incentive for servers to provide more accommodating service to customers?

I waddled, happy and bloated, from T8 and Xintiandi up towards Nanjing Road. I spent a good two hours meandering along the main artery and some of the adjacent side streets, poking my head in various shops, and admiring the buildings, occasionally snapping a picture here and there. In sum, I was feeling pretty damn good. Top of the world, I’m gonna jinx it, good.

Dusk was starting to roll in. On one of my sidestreet sojourns, I spied a “Kung Fu” fast food joint, which is a Chinese chain that sells noodle and rice plates, and vows to have your order ready in 80 seconds. The chain’s logo is a Chinese guy in a yellow athletic top who looks eerily like Bruce Lee. I couldn’t resist pulling out my camera and snapping a photo, before slipping my camera back into my windbreaker jacket pocket. I can’t say for sure what exactly happened next, but I think I was so content after my lovely lunch, and my happy wandering, that I became careless and less alert than usual. I think I must have walked half a block with my camera in my jacket pocket, unzipped, with the grey camera strap dangling, and paused at a stoplight, where on the corner, some street hawkers were selling DVDs. It was rather crowded, and you know me and DVDs. Like moths to a light. I only looked at the first vendor’s wares for 30 seconds or so before turning back to the streetlight, which had just turned green. Long story short, after I crossed the street, I thrust my hand in my pocket, and found only my cell phone. My camera was gone. Someone must have pulled it by its strap while I was either at the crowded DVD stall or at the crowded crosswalk. Either way, I’d been pickpocketed. Me, the super careful, vigilant, ever-alert obsessive compulsive! At this point, people were swarming in all directions, and I couldn’t even say for sure where and when it happened. I wasn’t sure what to do. Call a cop? Start screaming bloody hell? The camera wasn’t worth very much, truth be told. Brand new, perhaps. In the current condition, dropped a couple of times, scratched up, not so much. I couldn’t ID the perp, or the camera, really. I had no proof of ownership. The pictures on the camera were worth more to me than the camera, and they were probably all erased by now. I took a mental inventory, and the pictures on the camera included my Botanical Garden bonsai shots, my Morris Estate and afternoon tea with Kevin at Face shots, my Xintiandi shots, my Lunch with Kevin at T8 shots (I had him posed with the T8 teddy bears, and with all of my courses…sigh), as well as some architecture shots I had taken. Luckily, I had just switched out cards, so all my pictures from before the past four days were safe on my laptop.

I guess I had pissed off, or drawn the attention of, some pickpocket when I took the picture of the Kung Fu restaurant, and he had tailed me for half a block to the stoplight. Who knows. I should count my lucky stars he hadn’t gotten more…my wallet, my passport, my phone, my ipod…or harmed me physically.

I know this intellectually, but at the time, at that very moment, I felt violated, betrayed. This city that I absolutely adore, whose spirit that I admire, where I was starting to feel a part of, had turned on me! I glared at every person I passed, at every car, person, bike, scooter that cut in front of me, or honked at me. Traitors, I screamed in my head. Actually, it was much more obscene, and nasty, what I was cursing, but you get the gist of it.

The chilly evening air and the walk back to the Bund cleared my thoughts. By the time I reached Nanjing Road, my snit had faded away, and I chased the last remnants with some retail therapy at Story of Shanghai, a chain of silk stores that sells lovely scarves and wraps. I made it to the ferry station about 45 minutes before the dance and costume extravaganza called “China: 5000 Years” at the Oriental Pearl Theater started, and hopped on. The ferry ride was short, and only cost 2 yuan (about 30 cents). Even better, though, was the view from the river at night. You got to see both sides, the neon gaudiness of Pudong, with the Pearl Tower and all the neon trimmed seaside restaurants, as well as the beautiful old buildings of the Bund, the stunning architecture lit up strategically to highlight the silhouettes of the buildings. Utterly magical. Cue “The Bund” theme song.

The Pearl Tower is a short walk from the ferry dock, and I made it to the theater about 30 minutes before the show started. I was really drawn to this show because the publicity touted it as a tour of fashion and history, which sounded cool. Tickets weren’t too bad, and it was a nice to have an excuse to cross the river.

The theater was quite ornate, and I would say houses about 2000 seats. By the time the lights dimmed, I noticed that not a quarter of the theater was full. Needless to say, we all made a move for better seats the second it got dark. I found myself in the second row, having jumped one section and three rows up. Not too bad.

The show, to be honest, wasn’t great. The sets and stage were stunning, ornate and blinged out to the max. The performers were passable, as the choreography wasn’t too complex. It couldn’t be, you see, because of the costumes. Oh the costumes. It was like all the sequins and bugle beads in the world had converged onto these delicate silks and embroidered brocades. The costumes were beautiful, but so ornately constructed, that the wearers often couldn’t do more than gracefully glide across the stage and wave their arms in unison. The show was broken into five “chapters” corresponding to five iconic eras in Chinese history, from the Tang, Ming, Qing Dynasties, plus a ordinary folk tableau, along with a chapter on the nomadic peoples of Mongolia. Costumes ranged from ornate imperial wedding and concubine wear, to bright, fur-trimmed nomadic wear, to operatic ensembles, and slinky dancing girl getups. Each chapter had its own narrative intro, which was also repeated in Chinese, English, and Japanese, and also captioned above the stage. Whoever wrote these intros is either a genius for the cheeky script, or is on propagandistic crack! I can’t imagine the voiceover guys keeping straight faces while reading the script. Each chapter has its own delicate music, and impressive backdrop and sliding 15 foot walls. The work needed to build those, as well as construct the costumes, must have been staggering.

The show ended in less than an hour, with the final epilogue being a propagandistic piece of fluff exhorting friendship, peace and joy, and the future, with all different costumes out dancing merrily about and holding hands and whatnot.

Needless to say, everything was bright, shiny, big, usually pretty, and always eye-catching. One note on the more revealing outfits. A couple of the outfits appeared to be sequined brassiere type tops, but upon closer inspection, the girls would have the brassier worn over a flesh-colored camisole. I wondered if the extra coverage was for warmth or modesty…for I have noticed that the mainstream thought here is still pretty conservative. One of my teachers said lightly, in the course of a casual conversation, that many people feel, herself, too, that the actress in “Lust, Caution” will probably be unable to be married off, since she appears fully nude in the movie. The teacher is of my generation, and is college-educated…I found the comment quite striking.

I also found the general ignorance about the dangers of secondhand smoke to be a little jarring as well. Many academic and college-educated people don’t smoke, because they understand that smoking is harmful to their health. Yet they don’t feel that secondhand smoke is harmful…just annoying. Office workers who share the building that my school is situated in take smoke breaks in the corridors of the building. Subsequently, the halls are often smoky, and I think I have inhaled more smoke during my stay here than I have in my entire life. And one of my classmates is pregnant…where can I find a gas mask for her? Carrefoure maybe?

Consumerism, Colonialism, and Chocolate

Shanghai, November 17, 2007 (Saturday)

Another gray, rainy day. While I yearned to stay in, and tunnel under sheets with coffee and a book, I forced myself to take the book and coffee on the go. I hopped on the 911 double-decker bus, and enjoyed a circuitous ride through several districts in Shanghai, including the former French Concession. I hopped off at Central Huaihai Road, which is another shopping artery of Shanghai, with just blocks and blocks of retail stores, restaurants, and huge shopping complexes. This road’s neon rivals Nanjing Road, and probably surpasses it. There are huge LCD screens flashing ads everywhere, the sidewalks are packed with people, both shoppers and street hawkers, and the streets are packed with cars, buses, bikes, scooters, and motorcycles. I must confess that my mild fear of crowds kicked in: I gave most of the stores a perfunctory glance, and I didn’t even bother going into any of the shopping centers. I did go into a couple of book and stores, but that was it….interesting security and baggage policy in one of the stores: you make your purchase, the cashier wraps a paper band around your items, and your items don’t get bagged until you leave, when security checks your purchases against the receipt ala Costco, then bags up your purchases.

I located the Huangpi Road metro station and hopped on, getting off a couple stops later at Shanxi Road station, which incidentally, is also near a famous “bar street”. Lots of the bars were housed in a lovely Tuscan-style villa, that took up an entire block, and had a bunch of ethnic restaurants – Middle Eastern, Tibetan, Italian, TGI Friday’s, the usual multicultural fare. On my way to Yang’s Kitchen, a little Shanghaiese restaurant tucked inside an old French villa, I passed a sandwich board on the sidewalk with the words “DVDs! Movies! TV! Cheap!” with an arrow directing me into an alleyway. Like a mouse who detects cheese, I followed the sign, hopping over various muddy rainwater puddles, into a hole-in-the-wall shop selling, you guessed it, DVDs. Like other shops I’d visited, their selection of older Hong Kong TV series and movies was pretty sparse, but their Western stuff was pretty impressive. I bought a couple of obscure boxed sets for my Dad (Hogan’s Heroes – Seasons 1 to 4!), along with a few other movies. I hopped my way back onto the main street and a couple of blocks later, after winding my way into a French villa that also houses a pre-school and a French bistro, found myself at Yang’s Kitchen. A couple of guidebooks and websites recommended this restaurant for its Shanghai food, particularly the old school stuff. It also had a much calmer ambiance. It was a nice place, with rosewood furniture, an impressive wine case and selection, and a comprehensive bar. The menu had lots of high-end things, huge platters of banquet food meant to be shared family-style. The more affordable single-servings were in the back of the menu, and included lots of great noodle and rice dishes, along with Shanghai “snacks”. I decided on a seasonal crab noodle soup, and crab and shrimp “little dragon buns”. The crab noodle soup came first, and it was huge bowl of piping hot broth, soft ramen-noodles, and a beautiful mixture of crabmeat, egg, and spices. The crab mixture was creamy and flavorful, and melted in your mouth. The broth was enhanced by the crab, and with every slurp of the noodles, you got a double whammy of crab flavor: from the broth, and from the crab mixture that clung lovingly to the noodles. That huge bowl o noodles would have been more than enough for lunch, and I shouldn’t have been able to finish it…but of course I did…as well as the steamer of “little dragon buns”, which were lovingly crafted, and consumed, and burst beautifully with flavor with every bite. Hmmmm. That huge meal, served in elegant surroundings, set me back less than ten bucks US.

Feeling more than a wee bit bloated, I roly-polyed my way to the metro station and hopped on for a quick ride back to Huangpi Road. I walked off my lunch by heading a half mile or so south, to a hip artists area on Taikang Road. It was a series of connected alleys that housed tiny artists shops and cafes, and was really cool. I found a neat boutique called InSH (i.e. In Shanghai) that sold cutting edge women’s fashion and great graphic t-shirts. They were having a T-shirt promotion, so I picked up three black I Shanghai T-shirts, and was delighted to see that I could charge them on my Visa. Oh, how I’ve missed using plastic!

The artists’ alley had lots of expats and cool hipsters in the cafes and shops, and there was even a photo shoot in progress, that I kept crashing, I’m sure, since I got confused and kept going in circles inside that labyrinth! The models were a man and a woman in traditional Chinese wedding attire; she in a gorgeously embroidered cheongsam (qipao), and he in long embroidered dress robe and jacket, known as a magua, complete with he red sashed bow. The light wafting in from above, and the shiny, dark stone walls of the alley, made a striking backdrop, I’m sure.

In the very depths of the alley maze, I found a really cool shop called Shirtflag that sold awesome graphic T-shirts. There were some tongue-in-cheek Mao shirts, as well as shirts that made fun of Western pop culture icons like Mickey Mouse (with crossbones), the Michelin Man, etc. The pouty panda, an original design for the store, called Hello! Panda, was cute, too. I was sad they didn’t have the Converse-style shoes with Mao’s face painted on them…that was my main goal from that store. I consoled myself with a T-shirt and a set of Pandie buttons. I also passed by a nameless toy shop on my way out. It was the size of a walk-in closet, filled with colorful and whimsical things, and staffed by a charming, friendly lady who knew how to sell. I ended up buying way more than I expected, including a brightly-colored mobile of the Chinese zodiac, with each animal a chubby, pudgy, adorable design hand-stitched and embroidered, and two adorable suede and paisley stuffed horses. Like I said, she was a great salesperson…she gave me discounts without me even bargaining, she complimented me on my language skills…yesh, I am a sucker for compliments on my language skillz. She also shrewdly played on the tribal instinct of “belonging” by saying confidentially “I normally don’t discounts, but since you are of Chinese descent, and speak Chinese, you can have it for half the marked price…” Yesh, I am a sucker for feeling “accepted.” Issues, schmissues.

I left the Taikang compound laden with bags. I haven’t done a lot of shopping since I got here…lots of DVDs, some books, and a few touristy knick-knacks. I really liked the things I found today. I liked getting things that were original, local designs…not something that was a cheap imitation of a Western designer brand.

The drizzling had stopped, but the day remained overcast. I retraced my steps northward, walking through the residential neighborhood, and pausing at a goth-y stone compound that looked pretty swank. Turns out it was the Ruijin Guest House (Hotel), formerly the Morris Estate. The grounds were beautiful, and the buildings looked like they were plucked from the English countryside, these grand, goth-y houses, with gargoyles and turrets. I remember reading in a trusty guidebook that Face, a cool bar that served afternoon tea, housed in one of the buildings. Afternoon tea was a nice way to chill out after an afternoon of walking and shopping, so I entered the grounds. Really lovely, even prettier than the well-maintained parks that I have visited here. In fact, a wedding was taking place on one part of the grounds, near a small pond and bridge. I hope he rain stays away long enough for them to say “I do!” There were five buildings on the estate, three large ones, and a couple of smaller ones. The signs pointing us to the different establishments weren’t entirely clear, so I had to ask a valet which way to go. A five minute walk up a curving path and there was Face, inside a lovely colonial house. I walked up the steps and pushed open the front door, and was immediately engulfed in an exotic, dim environment. It took me a few seconds to adjust to the lighting, at which point, a gracious hostess had already lead me into the main tearoom, which opened onto a spacious veranda. It was chilly, so the veranda was empty, and I sure as hell wasn’t going out there…instead, I opted for a small table near the window. Face is decorated in a tropical, colonial style, and once you set foot inside, you feel like you are in a Merchant Ivory movie, or a W. Somerset Maugam novel. I should be in a dress with petticoats wearing a hat and flapping a fan and saying “I declare” or something. The main tearoom was quite crowded, and after you passed the gleaming hardwood bar, and caught a glimpse of a game parlor with two pool tables, you are hit with the utterly decadent sight of a room with high ceilings accented by lazy ceiling fans, and trimmed with two day beds, with frilly canopies, at either end of the room, French doors opening onto the veranda overlooking the grounds. Those were comfortably occupied, of course, and the vestiges of a good tea were seen all around: sleek teapots, gleaming silver stands that held three plates of tea goodies, languid, bloated bastids hogging up the bed. I pored over the menu, and bemoaned the fact that I couldn’t have everything. I finally decided on a pot of Chrysanthemum, and a decadent Hot Chocolate Cake dessert trio. Tea was lovely, ambiance was lovely, blah, blah, blah. Now to the good part – dessert! The plate was a clean, white oblong that contained a dish of the bestest ice-cream ever, earl grey tea ice cream, pierced with a yummy toffee crisp. Next to that was an artful pile of sweet berry compote, and next to that, the silkiest, gooiest molten cake that has ever burst upon a plate. I teared up while eating this dessert. It was a near religious experience. The ice cream was a revelation, subtly sweet, with this wonderful, honeyed, subtle spice to it. The compote enhanced the sweetness of both the ice cream and the cake, but I must say, I liked the cake all by itself, in all its warm, rich, ooey glory. I can’t remember too clearly what happened after that, as I suspect I was in sugar-chocolate shock..I think it involved stumbling, drunk on chocolate, huge grin on my face, outside into the crisp autumn, drizzly dusk, with some off-key humming of “Singing in the Rain” and a cab that took me back to my hotel. Or mebbe dancing and singing on the bar, in an attempt to charm the pastry chef into marry me, then being tossed into a cab that took me back to my hotel. Details.

Week Wu (Five) November 12 to November 16, 2007

Shanghai, Week Wu (Five) November 12 to November 16, 2007

I am writing this very very late at night, and a couple of weeks after this occurred, so my apologies. Keeping a blog updated is hard work, and my hat is off to bloggers out there who post so frequently. Oh I know, I’ll blame the spotty Internet access and whatnot for the delays. Yeah, that’s the ticket. I hope you have all had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas, survived the holidays in tact. Now, to my post…Week Wu was not very exciting. I finally made it to the Qi Pu Wholesale Market, which, to put it simply, is bloody bedlam. Imagine two blocks of warehouse buildings packed to the brims with tiny stores that sell clothing and accessories, many to street vendors. In fact, there are street vendors right outside the buildings that sell huge woven bags and handcarts for people who buy in bulk and need to transport their goodies. As to the actual merchandise…clothes and accessories. Surrounded by lots and lots of people. First the clothes. Woolen checks for the granddad set, teeny bopper booty shorts trimmed in sparkly fripperies, meant for both teeny boppers and middle-aged ladies…punk/Gothic looks, over-the-top Harujuko wannabe looks…I’m sure I could have found something to buy…if I were comfortable enough to buy! Dudes, the place was packed. Buyers, be they tourists or street vendors stocking up on inventory, were all milling around, shoving around, and generally making my claustrophobic tendency to screech and claw to the nearest exit for fresh air to surface as rapidly as the wheeling and dealing swirling around the market. I went through the entire building of one of the smaller warehouses relatively unscathed, and after exiting the building, without making a purchase, I ventured to the larger building, and finally succumbed to the shopping gods at a shop selling T-shirts. I picked up a few, and bargained down from the opening price, but still came out feeling like Daffy Duck yelping “Duck Season, Fire!” I passed quite a few shops selling fake designer bags, but they were bad fakes. I think they took designs from 10 years ago (quilted camera bags with brass link chains?) and just stamped a bunch of fake designer logos on them. I can’t believe I made it through Shanghai without buying one fake designer item…anyway, I finally did claw my way out of the building in search of fresh air, and as luck would have it, I exited onto the “food court” alley, where street food vendors had set up shop, and thus was rewarded not with fresh air, but with the aroma of grilling meat, corn, potatoes, and stinky tofu. Hmmmm.

This week, in order to make up for the meat consumption overload, I went for a vegetarian meal. In a vegetarian restaurant. With no meat. Yep. Gaspety gasp, let me give you time to revive from your faint.

Anyway, on my way back from purchasing tickets for a Friday night jazz salon show featuring “Old Shanghai” songs, along with a dance performance featuring historical Chinese costumes, I stopped by Gong De Lin, a 100 year old vegetarian restaurant with Buddhist roots. And if this is standard vegetarian fare, then sign me up! This restaurant, and the particular line of monastic cuisine, has a history of creating “mock” dishes. So they had mock duck, mock beef, mock pork, mock crab, all lovingly crafted from tofu and various flour pastes. And then lovingly doused in oil and usually fried to beautiful perfection. Aside from mimicking the look and taste, the recipes also mimic the texture of the meat dishes, so it felt a little like the first time I had a Snackwell’s – there was a giddy feeling of “I can eat all I want! It’s vegetarian!” I had the set meal, which was like 8 courses, with a tiny vegetarian amuse bouche, appetizer, several entrees, a couple of soups, and then a fruit platter. The soups tasted like stuff my mom makes on Chinese New Year’s Day, so it felt like comfort food, with dried tofu, dates, and mushrooms. The amuse bouche was a tiny pile of flavored seaweed and tofu, and the cold appetizer was a cold smoked “duck”, which amazingly, had the texture of duck, along with a nice, gamey, duck flavor. A plate of traditional steamed vegetables, doused in oil, and sprinkled with vegetarian ham slices was lovely, along with a claypot of fried “fish”, mushrooms, and tofu. The fish tasted like fried fish, and I would have sworn it was the real thing. The piece de la resistance was the crab dish, served in a claypot shaped like a crab. The “crabmeat” was shredded and mixed with ginger, egg, and spices, and served with rice. I must say, charming presentation aside, this dish was my least favorite, because the ginger overpowered everything else. The texture of the “meat” was very good, though, so kudos on that. A couple of vegetable-stuffed dumplings followed, then dessert, a fruit platter. All in all, it was a lovely meal, served in an elegant setting, with stately bamboo, hardwoods, fountains, and Buddhist motifs throughout. I wish I could have snagged a menu, because the dish names were a hoot, flowery and grand names and descriptions, with at least one Buddha reference in each. Oh, one more thing: they provided a warm towel wrapped in cellophane at the beginning of the meal, to cleanse one’s hands before dining. I unwrapped mine and didn’t notice the price marked on it. They wanted 10 yuan for the towel…and sure enough, it showed up on the bill. The restaurant’s English name is “Godly”…cleanliness is next to godliness, and it is worth 10 yuan!

This week, I also visited the Shanghai Botanical Garden, which is located in the “suburbs”. I took the metro to the end of the line, and took a cab to the garden. It was a gloomy overcast day, damp from the previous night’s rainfall, and lightly drizzling…so of course I picked the perfect day to visit an open-air garden! There was a band of school kids on a field trip there, and their bright blue track suit school uniforms really popped out in the gray weather, and the greenery.

As I had limited time (basically a couple of hours before class started), I made a beeline for the bonsai garden. I passed quite a few lovely garden exhibits, with miniature bridges, waterwheels and whatnot. I crossed a bridge overlooking a dreary sewer-esque body of water..I say sewer-esque cause the water looked sludgy, and the aroma as I crossed the bridge, not so fresh. I was amused to see that the bridge was lined with planter’s tables that held heads of cabbage and lettuce. Sidenote: Heads of cabbage/lettuce are used in lieu of grass in many landscaping schemes here. I guess the color is preferable. I’ve seen heads of lettuce or cabbage (at least I think they are, I am not the most vegetable knowledgeable, I must admit) as the green foundation for landscaping in front of malls and shopping centers…funnily enough, the vegetation is in tact…I half expect people to lift the greens in lieu of a visit to the farmer’s market.

But back to the garden. Due to time constraints, I did not visit the greenhouses, where the carnivorous specimens lived, nor the Chinese medicine garden, though I think I would have liked to. The Bonsai Garden, with nearly a thousand specimens, was my primary target. Let me explain why: in Chinese, bonsai is translated as “Potted Scenery”, and is described in flowery (no pun intended) terms as capturing a scene of beauty in nature, in a miniature setting. Well you know me and miniatures. The descriptions conjured up visions of an au natural Legoland…and with that kind of build up, of course I’m going to be a little disappointed when the garden was all bonsai-- lots and lots of bonsai. Now I enjoy bonsai, don’t get me wrong. But the delicate, mini ones were pretty sparse; there were lots of larger, heartier specimens. All quite beautiful, and quite old, too. Some were unusually shaped, like high-heeled shoes, for instance. I could have spent hours in that garden, wandering and interpreting shapes like I would with cloud-watching. I had the garden to myself, and it was quite large, and pleasingly designed. There was a small pond, a greenhouse with smaller bonsai and an exhibit on bonsai care, and various pavilions and bridges and paths that allowed you to enjoy all the lovely bonsai in the garden. I was also pleasantly surprised to see a “rock potted scenery” area, which creates scenes from natural rock. This was quite delightful, as each pot held a mini scene of a lovely mountain, some greenery, sometimes water…I was smitten with these. One of the miniature mountains even had a Buddha carving and calligraphy, mimicking, I suspect, a mountain that exists in real-life, or in legend. Time was running out, so I had to jet. On my way out of the garden, I passed a couple of lovely cats, who blended in with the rock sculptures and greenery so eerily, that if they hadn’t moved, would have missed them.

As I walked back to the metro station, I noticed that I was really in the suburbs, or rather, a “less developed” area. The stores didn’t have neon signs; rather they had billboard canvases over their storefronts, with colorful painted lettering and graphics. There was also less traffic, and brick on some of the sidewalks were just being laid. There was a quieter, more laid back feel, and this was a pleasant change from the hectic, insane frenzy of the busier districts of the city. And of course, as far as I could tell, there were no tourists. Guess the Botanical Garden isn’t a real hot tourist spot.

I stopped by Dragonfly for another massage this week. I could really get used to this. Oh wait, I have gotten used to this. It will be painful to get back to the massage as a special occasion treat after building a massage into my weekly schedule. Yeah, yeah, woe is me.

I decided to pursue non-Arrrgh DVDs this week, and took a stroll up Shui Cheng Road, which is one of the main thoroughfares in the neighborhood where my school and hotel are located. It’s got lots of businesses frequented by locals, including a couple of DVD stores. I was looking for Canto-pop concert DVDs, as well as TVB soap opera DVDs. In sum, I was looking for Hong Kong DVDs. The stores had a comprehensive collection, though they tended to house more foreign (Western, Japanese, Korean) and homegrown (Chinese) items than Hong Kong and Taiwan items. I guess this shows the weakening pop culture influence of Hong Kong and Taiwan. The only Hong Kong and Taiwan singers they had items for were the superstars, such as Jacky Cheung and Andy Lau, Jay Chou, and some of the newer teeny bopper bubblegum pop singers. As for TV dramas, they only had new items as well…I was on the hunt for older TV soaps and movies. I did find the TVB version of “The Bund” with its infamous theme song that I keep referencing. I also found a DVD set that contains nearly every concert that Jacky Cheung has given in the last 15 years. That was quite a coup. I spied boxed sets of Buffy, Married with Children, and Hogan’s Heroes, and the fact that the stores didn’t take credit cards saved me from going crazay in there.

On Friday, I went to a Jazz Salon performance in Pudong, the newer, developed area of Shanghai. The show started at 7pm, so I didn’t have a lot of time after school let out to get there. So no leisurely, sit down dinner…I broke my “no Western fast food rule” by going to KFC. Time constraints aside, I was feeling so homesick, so craving fried, crunchy goodness, that I just had to go to a familiar place that would remind me of home. And am I glad I did…People, they had fried salmon!! Five pieces for 90 cents! And fried sea bass sammies! For a buck fifty! It’s like KFC and Long John Silver’s got together to dominate the fried fast food market. Brilliant. So I got my fried foods fix, and got to observe cultural eating habits up close. First off, the place was packed. I think that for all the anti-American scorn that might be omitted subtly by some mainlanders, the truth of the matter is, they do heart things American. Pricing wise, it was cheaper than what you’d pay in the US, by say 20%. As for the menu, they actually focused more on value meals of fried chicken and fish sandwiches, a drink, and a side, rather than meals with fried chicken pieces. Though you could pick up a bucket of chicken, too. The sides were different from what you’d get in the US – there was seafood soup, corn on the cob, French fries, and I think that was it. As for the self-serve aspect of the restaurant, you would wait for your meal, and bring your tray to a table to eat, but then after that, someone would bus the table for you, even though there was the standard fast food trash bin with place for trays that allow for self-service, too. The abundance of service workers is a nice touch in this instance – the place is so bustling, that you don’t have the ratio of two servers to one customer that occurs in smaller joints, and that can make the customer a little uneasy when the servers are hovering.

I hopped on the metro that would take me across the Huangpu River and into Pudong. It was bloody packed, of course; we were like sardines in the train cars. One thing about the metro: there’s no etiquette; you push yourself in, and if there’s no railing to hang onto, you just brace yourself. The threat of hurting onself when you don’t have a railing lessens when you’re packed in so tight with other passengers that they can support you if you lose your balance.

I tumbled off the train at the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum stop. Outside the station was what I assume was a beautiful plaza that led to the museum. I say assume because it was pretty dark, and what the lights did show was a wide expanse, trees and greenery, a bridge over glistening water, and a looming building. Before I began to panic (it was dark, after all, and there was no signage visible anywhere) I saw the illuminated butterfly wings of the Oriental Art Center, where the jazz salon was being held, and walked in that direction. Whew, close call. I could so see myself walking in the opposite direction, and then in circles, if I hadn’t spied the building.

The Oriental Art Center is beautiful, with different performance halls spanning out from the main lobby “body” like the wings of a butterfly. There’s a symphony hall, an opera hall, and a couple of smaller performance halls with a capacity of 200 people or so. I found my seat, which was actually pretty decent and settled in. As the hall is round, and intimate, there really isn’t a bad seat in the house. The stage was very close; in fact, people in the front row could use it as a footrest. (And some did.) A nine-piece band was tuning up, and it was quite refreshing to see a bunch of middle-aged Chinese musicians…I dunno why. Maybe because it’s gratifying to see men who look like my parent’s friends, or my friends’ parents, and who you expect to be accountants or some such, to actually be artists, career musicians. Kinda cool.

The show started on time, and was emceed by a local television host. The Friday night jazz band series focused “old school” jazz, and the theme for the night was “By the Suzhou Creek” which is a classic 1930s Shanghai song. Guys, I loooove old school music, and this was the famous era in Shanghai that I especially liked. The band was awesomely talented, and the bandleader, was an 83 year-old bass player who was utterly adorable. The first chair trumpet player was 80 years old, and he pounded out the songs like a man half his age. There were three saxes, two trumpets, one trombone, one elderly man on percussion (bells, xylophone, etc), one drummer, and one pianist. They played wonderful old school stuff for a good half hour, including some mellow, Broadway showtunes, some latin vibe stuff, in which the elderly percussion player stood up proudly wielding his castanets (adorable). Really great stuff. Then a gorgeous young opera singer dressed in strapless cocktail dress came out to belt “Memory” from Cats, and Nat King Cole’s “L-O-V-E”, quite respectably, I might add. A couple more instrumentals, followed by another singer, this time a local Shanghai celebrity who was a bit of an over the top diva. She sang a bunch of mandarin 1930s jazzy songs (like “Rose, Rose, I Love You”) and was quite the performer. The first chair sax player had a solo with her, and he was great. He also played the clarinet, and to hear his clarinet solo, in its sweet clarity, brought tears to my eyes. Miss Diva, who had initially looked a little miffed to have her spotlight shared, even looked affected when he did his solo. Miss Diva then took her leave, amid kisses and bows, and another lady, with a high, Peking-opera voice, came out to sing a few numbers. I was glad when she left the stage…her voice was a little too high for jazz, I think. A brief interlude where the 83 year-old band leader passionately extorting the importance of the old school jazz, and dissing on acid and electronica infused jazz ensued. The show closed with Miss Diva returning, in all her lion-maned, sequined cheongsammed glory, to sing the classic “Shanghai Evenings”.

In all, I really enjoyed the show, and highly recommend the Friday Night Jazz Salon. I really lucked out with this show, as I bought tickets to it as an afterthought…it was a condolence prize, since I couldn’t get tickets to the Lyceum Theater show “Shanghai, Shanghai” which was another limited run show featuring music from “Old Shanghai”. The theme of the jazz salon was perfect, as I prefer old school stuff, and the intimacy of the venue really allowed me to connect with the band and the performers. It was also nice to have vocal performances, too. My beefs (of course I’d have beefs!): one dude who kept taking flash pictures after the ushers continuously told him pictures wee forbidden. Actually, the announcement was made at the beginning of the show, then the ushers walked the theater holding electronic signs saying “No Photography Allowed”. But the same dude kept taking flash pictures…ushers warned him three times, and I guess they gave up after that. They should have just confiscated the camera. Another beef: the lack of programs for the show. Can you believe they ran out of programs to hand out? I bugged an usher at intermission, and she said they were out. I had to resort to taking a discarded program after the show was over. Another beef, actually, not really a beef, more an observation. The show’s organizers are so nice to their performers; they had bouquets of flowers for each performer. I saw out of the corner of my eye, the bouquet coordinator with her clipboard and flowers, who had recruited several younguns to help her present the bouquets. One bouquet was given by a true fan, though: Miss Diva received a gorgeous bouquet from a tall, middle-aged, balding, Caucasian man, who asked for a hug and a kiss, which was cute.

Duck Season, Fire!

Shanghai, November 11, 2007 (Sunday)

After a late brekkie, I hopped on the 925 to People’s Park, then walked to the Dong Tai Antique Market, an open air market of canvas booths that stretched a couple of blocks. The market is supposed to be a 10 to 15 minute walk from People’s Square. But true to form, I zigged when I should have zagged, and ended up taking the long way round. That is, I strolled along the Huangpu District for a good 30 minutes, aimlessly wandering, really, not super concerned about where I was going. The streets are so lively, with something interesting in every direction, that it’s hard to stay on a set path. Plus I suck with directions and map reading. I stopped for coffee at UBC Coffee, an upscale chain of cafes that serves beverages and soy sauce western food. The cafes are decorated in a tropical lagoon theme, with stalks of bamboo and running water fountains and walls. It was a really lovely setting to rest, refuel and reconsult my map. I had a lovely coconut roasted iced coffee, which cost about the same as a latte in Starbucks, only in a much, much nicer setting. I have to comment on the restroom here. There’s a unisex restroom, with individual “pods”, not stalls. The back of each pod was glass, with natural light spilling from a skylight onto stalks of bamboo and pebbles. The unisex bathroom shared a natural stone sink that was a trough-like structure with faucets that you controlled with foot petals. It was oddly elegant, and quite user friendly, actually.

Properly rested, I made my way, this time in the right direction, to the antiques market. The guidebooks recommend this market for tchotsky souvenirs and fake antiques. Most of the booths sold similar things. What stood out for me were Mao lighters and watches where the Chairman’s waving arm is the hour hand. I trolled the market before selecting a suitable stall to try out my bargaining. The lady was charming, and her opening price laughably high. She took my second offer…and while I talked her down to les than half her offering price, I still felt like Daffy Duck in the Bugs and Elmer Fudd hunting trilogy cartoons – “Duck Season, fire!” That is, I felt like I had won, yet I’m pretty sure I hadn’t! I really do suck at bargaining.

While still doing Daffy-esque calculations in my head, I lucked upon a lovely park with artificial lake. I think it was called Xintiandi Park, or I saw a sign saying Xintiandi, so I figured I was on the right track, as I wanted to explore Xintiandi next. Xintiandi, loosely translated as New Heaven Earth, is a shopping and residential area that is centered within a complex of painstakingly restored traditional Shikumen buildings. A note about the Shikumen buildings. They refer to the stone framed double doors of the single story buildings. The double doors are often black, and have round brass handles on them. Xintiandi is an immaculate, charming, slick, artificial yuppie nirvana of hip shopping and dining. Needless to say, the yuppie-hugger in me liked it…pristine, comfortable modernity wrapped in a traditional, old yet shiny, new package.

The shops here were high-end boutiques, lots of international brand names I recognized, as well as names that were probably too high-end for me to even recognize. A lot of the cafes had outdoor seating, and many expats and young hipster yuppies were out in full force. I thought I’d join ‘em, only it was a little too chilly, so I opted for afternoon tea indoors. Inside a neo-traditional Chinese tea house called Herbal Garden. The interior was modern, with traditional Chinese accents: traditional rosewood furniture, a wall of teas, another wall with brightly colored paintings of historical Chinese figures. I ordered the set tea menu, and soon, a steaming pot of Chrysanthemum and Wolfberry tea, a flaky beef curry layered tart, and a fluffy, airy, mango mousse cake magically appeared.

While reading my excellent David Sedaris book (I haven’t read this much in AGES, by the way…this is what happens when you take a break from your torrid, obsessive, co-dependent affair with Tivo, I guess…not that I’m complaining. I heart reading.), I eavesdropped on a table catty corner from me, where a European lady was speaking fluent Mandarin with the server, while speaking French with her friend. Some people just have a gift with languages, I guess.

After that delightful interlude, I stumbled upon Changle Road, which would take me to Thing, a tiny, very cool, local shop that sells awesome graphic tees and totes. I salivated over several designs, before finally settling on a clever design featuring a parody of the Puma logo, only with a cat, and the word “Miao”. Brilliant. I also had to get a vampire panda shirt. There is no original idea, my friends. I thought I was the first to think of Vampire Pandie, but alas, Thing beat me to it. (Sidebar: In 2006, a news story about Gu Gu, a Chinese panda who bit a drunken tourist (who was trying to give Gu Gu a hug, and who bit the bear back in response…he was really drunk…) captured my heart, and I decided to be a vampire panda for Halloween, sporting my favorite hostile catchphrase “Bite Me!”. Wait. Maybe I can still do something with it. Vampire Panda, “Bite Me”, Copyright 2007. Dammit.)

After that bout of retail therapy, I passed by a stall selling Arrrgh DVDs. (Ed. Note. Arrrgh is the sound a Pirate makes, and is my not so subtle code for something pirated.) First off, I was surprised there was so much American TV. That warmed my heart. Aside from fairly current stuff, like Prison Break, Ugly Betty, Desperate Housewives, Lost, and 24, there were some older, more obscure titles, like BBC’s MI5, Married with Children, Mash, Supernatural, Everybody Hates Chris, Dark Angel, Buffy, Veronica Mars. Also a lot of current American, Korean, and Hong Kong movies. I picked up a couple of things, but what I really wanted were older Hong Kong movies and TV series.

It was getting dark, and I found myself smack in the middle of HuaiHai Road, another neon-packed shopping artery of Shanghai. This street is packed, and it’s worse than Nanjing Dong Lu because cars are also thrown into the mix. The mall highrises here are big and numerous, and hordes of people spill from the malls to the streets and vice versa. Street hawkers also crowd the sidewalks, and huge LCD billboards cast their shifting light on the hawkers’ wares, ranging from socks and fake designer underwear to scarves to Arrgh DVDs.

I spied the grand old Art Deco Lyceum Theater, and hoped it had a box office. I wanted to buy tickets to an “Old Shanghai” music show that was running for three days next weekend. Unfortunately, the theater was closed. Grrrr. I’d have to go to a third party ticket vendor. Oh well. At this point, I was suffering from crowd fatigue, so I ducked into a Chinese fast food chain, called “Mother’s Dumplings” (mind out of the gutter, please) that serves, you guessed it, dumplings. It also serves rice and noodle dishes. I ordered up a platter of shrimp and crab dumplings, along with a bowl of chicken soup, and this hearty meal chased away the grumpiness, along with the last vestiges of my sniffles.

Sooo Suzhou

Shanghai, November 10, 2007 (Saturday)

Tour bus tourists, part deux. This time, I and my fellow tourists boarded a bus to Suzhou, a charming water town in Jiangsu Province, about an hour and a half south of Shanghai. This time, the whole bus was on the one-day tour, and there was no on-board tour guide, just the driver. When we hit Suzhou, we disembarked and boarded an older tour bus, where a local guide waited to greet us.

Suzhou is in the midst of an economic boom outside of the tourist industry, though it feels much smaller than Hangzhou, most likely due to the fact that there is a local height restriction ordinance in effect. Ahhh, height ordinances…petitions…checking signatures…good times! Before anyone gets too gung-ho about how progressive the height ordinance is and whatnot, it should be said that the height limit is 22 floors. I dunno about you, but 22 stories is still pretty damn high!

I’ve been so de-sensitized by the towering skyscrapers of Shanghai, that being able to actually see the sky without arching my neck back to a near-acrobatic angle, is unbelievably refreshing, and certainly gives Suzhou a small town feel. The fresher air is also a treat, though traffic is pretty gnarly. Another thing that gives Suzhou a fresh, quaint feeling is the “water town” aspect; that is, the abundance of water. Canals run throughout Suzhou, and we encountered many quaint, picturesque bridges over still water. A striking image for me was an overarching maze of elevated highways, with cars zipping crazily along them, and below those highways, was a serene canal with a lone boat drifting lazily along.

Suzhou’s local administrators must work hard to keep Suzhou looking pretty. In addition to the building height restrictions, public areas are kept sparkling clean and immaculately landscaped. Also, public buildings and spaces are designed in the overarching Suzhou garden theme (Suzhou is famous for its beautiful gardens). Imagine bus stops designed to look like garden pagodas and corridors, with beautifully carved eaves and dashing calligraphy denoting the bus stop name and route.

One additional note about Suzhou. It recently hosted the Chinese equivalent of the Oscars, the (I kid you not) Golden Roosters. Lots of Chinese movie stars had flocked to the area a couple weeks ago, not only for the awards ceremony, but for the film festival. I had been hoping to get tickets to some related event, but was too late. Alas, I had watched clips from the event on TV. Tony Leung, his gal Carina Lau, Jacky Chan, Alan Tam, and Karen Mok were a few of the stars who attended.

Our first stop on the tour was a small, intimate home and garden from the late-Ming Dynasty, called Ou Yuan. The main buildings were in tact, and we saw the reception hall, the bed chambers, a man’s study, and the lady’s saloon. Each room or building had a grand name, which was written in beautiful calligraphy and hung above the main entrance. Each room was furnished, and cordoned off so visitors couldn’t mar the antiques. The heavy, dark wood furniture sported intricate carvings, and accessories were sparse; a vase here, a calligraphy hanging there. Each room was simply decorated in order to highlight the garden view, I expect. Each room and building opened onto the garden, or was connected via airy corridors lined with art or open wooden screens. Indeed, one room had two large picture windows that acted as frames, that opened onto the garden.

And now to the garden…lovely, lovely, lovely. Beautiful rock sculptures (which are believed to be lucky) are one distinctive feature of the Suzhou garden. The use of water and greenery, especially bamboo and willow, is also common. The effect is a serene, beautiful space where every angle brings a delightful view, and every spot allows unique enjoyment of the garden. I think I’d be able to create lovely art and poetry, like the original owner, if I had a garden like this!

The garden connects to a canal, and has a small dock attached. Small boats, piloted by sturdy, strong, middle-aged ladies wearing huge bamboo hats, awaited us. We boarded the boats, which had a 10 passenger-capacity, and were taken on a short, charming voyage along the canal to the opposite shore where our tour bus awaited. The voyage was a little choppy, but our boat’s lady captain was an absolute delight, singing Shanghai folk songs while propelling out boat with a sturdy bamboo pole. This was one of those magical, indescribable moments: bouncing merrily along a clear canal in a boat with crisp cloth roof, willowy trees framing the shores, a plucky, tanned woman singing and rowing cheerfully, without missing a beat.

Our next stop was lunch. Another tourist lunch spot, with a set menu. Only it was a single restaurant, and we were the only tour group, which made it feel less like a cattle drive. And no restroom gang fights! The food was so-so, edible. One thing to note was that our individual place settings (chopsticks, ceramic plate, bowl, spoon and teacup) were all neatly cellophane wrapped, and marked as costing 5 yuan. Dudes, that’s 68 cents. How can they possibly afford to do that?!

After lunch, it was like déjà vu…we were taken to a silk factory…and given a hardsell. Seriously, they did the same “pull on the silk webs” demo as in Hangzhou! I must say though, it was interesting to see a fully operational silk production line (the on in Hangzhou was a single person doing demo, not a full production line), and the royal dragon robes on display in the silk museum (Suzhou produced the imperial family’s embroidered silk robes) were stunning. I picked up a few embroidered trinkets, since Suzhou’s silk embroidery is so famous.

After that retail interval, coupled with restroom stop, we hopped onto the bus and made our way to a larger garden, the Lingering Garden (Liu Yuan). This one was even more gorgeous, and crowded than the other garden. It had a larger body of water, with a little rowboat, and several bridges. Tall rock plateaus dotted both shores, and four pavilions named for the four seasons were strategically placed in the garden. Each pavilion was designed to be enjoyed for a particular season, and would take into account the elements and the landscaping. The pavilions were beautifully designed with carved wood and eaves, and included a stone table and seats. I can imagine sitting in this garden, in one of the pavilions, a soft breeze blowing, enjoying tea or rice wine, armed with a good book, perhaps calligraphy brushed and soft paper scrolls. Or an iPod, wireless TV and DVDs.

Gorgeous rock sculptures were prevalent throughout the garden, framing the views, as well as creating natural divisions between areas of the garden. Like the other garden, every step, every turn of the head, brought a different, stunning picture, and this garden could be enjoyed at any and all points. Open air, roofed corridors ran along all four edges of the garden, connecting the various buildings, and allowing people to enjoy the garden from an elevated perspective.

We briefly stopped by a Buddhist temple next, called Winter Mountain Temple. The guide warned us that there would be no independent exploration. We followed her like ducklings, and she gave an interesting spiel on some of the major points of interest in the temple. The towering pagoda was the main event here, as well as the bell ringing. We entered through the back door and exited through the front door, which was a little odd, but it sounded like that was customary.

After that whirlwind visit, we were herded to a nearby pottery factory for yet another hardsell. They sold special “purple sand” teapots that were exquisitely crafted, that floated in water, and didn’t drip a single drop down the spout when you poured. I was tempted, especially when I saw the one shaped like dragon, head and tail and all, but ultimately did not succumb.

Our last stop of the day was Tiger Hill (Huqiu), where the King who founded the city way back when (I think in the early ADs or late BCs?) is buried. There is a huge, leaning pagoda, a stunning sight, at the top of the hill. It mocked us as we huffed and puffed our way up the hill via narrow, and potentially slippery, stone steps. It was quite a hike, but worth it when we got up there. A little below the crest, where the pagoda sits, is a dark, cavernous pool called the Sword Pool, and has been featured in legendary mystical stories. Supposedly the King, or some heroic figure who served him (I wasn’t entirely sure – my Mandarin still bu tai hao; not so good.) had buried a magical sword in the pool. The rock walls surrounding the pool had several carved inscriptions on them, and the guide mentioned that several ancient poets, moved by the beauty and mysticism of the pool, risked their lives to inscribe the walls with verse.

We had an hour of independent exploration there, and I spent the time poking around the Sword Pool and around the tower, before finally making my way down the mountain, where I admired another creek and canal (how beautiful is calm water, willow trees wisping over the shore, a stone bridge, and dusk?). Our bus was late (the local bus had taken its leave, and we were waiting for the bus from Shanghai) so we were left in the parking lot, waving off the food (roasted chestnut and yam), and tchotsky (gourd shaped flutes and lace cloth) vendors and solitary beggar. The only plus to having to wait in the parking lot as darkness fell, was the leaning pagoda, which is lit up dramatically at night. What is it about light, twinkling, bright light, at night? The flashing neon signs in Shanghai do the same thing to me….I am like a moth to a flame, or a mosquito to a bug zapper lantern. It’s so purty.

An hour or so later, we were back in Shanghai, grumpy, hungry, and needing to pee. Oh this is the life of a tour bus tourist….

Week Si (Four)

Shanghai, Week Si (Four) November 5 to November 9, 2007

This week has been pretty mellow. On the school front, I channeled my Colbert Report withdrawal into an essay and presentation entitled “My Favorite TV Personality”. Using the visual aid of my First Edition Colbert, along with sound bites from the ebook, I was able to persuasively present the awesome-ness of one Mr. Stephen T. Colbert. My classmates were especially interested in the US presidential electoral system, especially after I shared the grand news that Mr. Colbert was running for president in his home state of South Carolina. It took a little pantomiming, white boarding (Mr. Mark, master of the white board, you would have been so proud…I had an impressive array of stick figures and blobs and arrows and whatnot) and English supplementing, but I think I got the gist of the primary and two-party system across.

On the non-school front, let’s see. Another visit to Dragonfly for the long awaited foot massage along with a Shiatsu massage. I got the Shiatsu massage first. It was quite lovely, similar to the Chinese-style, but with subtle differences. After the Shiatsu, and my therapist lead me to the foot massage treatment room. I was quite mellow and docile after that massage, she could have been leading me in front of a truck, and I would have happily went. Then on to the main event…The foot massage….heaven. The treatment room is a dimly-lit, serene oasis with a wall of gently running water, a striking centerpiece stone sculpture lit with soft candlelight, and eight, super-comfy reclining chairs and ottomans, upholstered in crisp linen. The room was occupied with only one other patron when I entered. It was so dark and quiet, and she must have been so blissed out, that I don’t think she realized another person had walked into the room. The therapist brought a steaming tub of scented water for me to soak my footsies in, retrieved some heated, buckwheat cushions to drape over my shoulders, along with a soft, warm blankie, and began rubbing my much-abused toes with a fragrant scrub. After my feet were rinsed and dried, what commenced was the most mind-blowingly awesome foot massage ever known to man. That went on for a good half hour, before my therapist let my feet enjoy their state of complete happiness….and then she went to work at my neck, shoulders, and arms. I was ready to profess my love to the therapist right then and there.

This week, I also visited a couple of other sights. One was the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center located in People’s Park, near the Shanghai Museum and Grand Theater. It, like the other buildings, is an architectural delight. It reminds me a bit of a pi sign, with a sweeping, arched room over a straight metal body, intersected with shimmering glass panes. Now don’t be turned off by that the Planning Center name. This is actually a very cool museum that documents the past, present, and future growth of Shanghai. It uses scale models (I heart scale models) to illustrate the changing and current Shanghai landscape, as well as state of the art technology to bring an educational, interactive, multimedia experience. One floor was dominated with a scale model of the entire city. Now I know intellectually, that Shanghai is huge. But to see it scaled in a way that gave me a bird’s-eye view, the true scope of this city really hit me hard...kind of like a bird against a windshield of a car going 60 MPH on the freeway. The transportation plan, the housing plan, the greening plan, the information technology plan…my OC heart swelled to Shanghai-ian proportions at the thought and care that the city went into making, and implementing these plans. This center is the best “invest in Shanghai” promotional vehicle ever made. And we have to pay to see it. Genius. Seriously, though, I think my former peers in the good ol’ CoB Planning Department would have loved this center. The emphasis on sustainable, smart, planned growth is admirable, as is the conscious decision to include well-being issues like green space and conservation. Sidebar: The center mapped the growth of per capita green space since 1900, and it went from the size of a pair of shoes to the size of a 10x10 room. That is pretty amazing, especially when you take into account the population growth in the time period. I can see now why the parks and landscaping is so cherished…citizens actually use the space, enjoy it, and know that the green spaces offer them a respite from the wacky hectic pace of the city.

Aside from the scale models of the city, the harbor, and various transportation hubs such as railway and metro stations and the airports, the center also had multiple LCD kiosks at every display, some encased in nifty casings that were shaped like huge books. You would page through the information just like a book, by tapping at the corners as if turning a page. There were a couple of huge dioramas with LCD features, as well as various video exhibits. The best one, for me, was the huge Virtual Reality theatre, which is a round theatre with 360 degrees of high def video screen. The movie that shows is a short, nausea-inducing ride through Shanghai’s main development areas. It’s very slickly shot, and I got more of a “amusement park ride” feel from this movie than I did from the Bund Tourist Tunnel. Very cool. The center also had this random “interactive educational game area” where a bunch of computers were set up with pre-loaded games that were pretty lame, but had an odd, “edutainment” charm to them. Think Oregon Trail with prettier colors. All in all, the center is worth a visit. Directly beneath the center is a small underground corridor that leads to a cavernous shopping complex. The corridor is called the 1930-Flavor Street, and is done up to look just like a Shanghai street from that era, with dark crowded shopfronts, cobblestoned paths, and authentic-looking facades. Oddly enough, this “street” reminded me most of Las Vegas more than anything else, including the neon-and people-packed Nanjing Road. You wanna know why? The fake sky. Just like the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace, the sky in this street is artificially frozen at dusk, and the street’s fully operational shops, despite their retro facades, hawk, like the Forum Shops, modern services and merchandise. The Internet Café and modern hair salon detracts a little from the painstaking artifice of a 1930s street at dusk. I got a little lost in that cavernous shopping mall. All those tiny shops, all squeezed together in a maze. Like a lab rat, I followed my nose to the food court, and found an escape route to fresh air.

Another touristy site that I absolutely had to see was the Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, which is right off People’s Square, in the 12^th Floor of a huge shopping mall/hotel. I went to the Madame Tussaud’s in Las Vegas (I like Vegas, sue me) and must confess, I was hooked. I am true to my Chinese blood and thus, am a sucker for celebrity in any guise, even a wax one. The admission price, the student price, mind you, was outrageous (100 yuan -- $13.50 US, which could buy me food for at least 2 days). I paid it a tad reluctantly. However, I must admit, my celebri-hound heart was absolutely smitten with the likenesses found here. There was Yao Ming, of course, along with a couple of Chinese Olympians. Then there were the Chinese pop and movie stars. Tony Leung, Aaron Kwok, Andy Lau, Rosamund Kwan, Anita Mui, Coco Lee, Twins, Teresa Teng, Joey Yung, Nic Tseng, Louis Koo, Leslie Cheung, Kelly Chen, Bruce Lee…I know I’m missing quite a few. There were also lots of non-Chinese celebs (Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Audrey Hepburn, Pierce Brosnan as James Bond), a couple of politicians (Putin and Clinton), British royalty (Princess Diana, and a cute display of Prince William next to a tufted pedestal complete with glass slipper); Sports figures such as Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and David Beckham; a couples/quartet exhibit with Becks and Posh, Brangelina, and the Beatles. A cute display had Bill Gates and Li Ka-Shing (very rich Chinese businessman) together in a rich guys club setting. I love how the wax figures are posed in different environments…movie stars are posed on movie sets, sports figures in sports arenas, etc. I also like how the museum encourages interaction with the figures, many times the displays had seats that let you pose with the celebs, size them up close, so to speak.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and loved the cheesy, shiny celebration of international celebrity, and celebrity-hounds. Great fun.

My student ticket also granted me entry into a Haunted Maze exhibit. What a waste of space. The build up was huge, with dire warnings for young children and people with heart conditions, etc to not enter the site. We were given stern warnings to not take pictures, as there are “live actors” in the exhibit, and flash photography might jeopardize their safety, and were handed 3-D glasses. A long rope was pulled out, and we each took hold of it. The group consisted of about 10 peeps or so, with lots of nervous giggles. I just wanted to get my money’s worth…I wasn’t too keen on going through this exhibit, since, to be honest, it sounded really lame. And it was…Dark, exaggerated soundtrack full of screams and chains rattling, we following a path that twisted between more dark blobs (ok, my night vision sucks, maybe that’s why I couldn’t get into it.) A couple of “actors” jumped out at us, scaring the crap of one gal, while the rest of us, just looked at him, and her, blankly. The actor skulked away, probably sulkily muttering he went to a prestigious acting academy or some such and was too talented for this. This went on for another 5 minutes, and with another actor trying to one up his predecessor. No luck. We groped our way out of there, grumbling about how lame, and what a rip off, that was. In different languages. No need for a translator here. “That sucked” is pretty universally understandable, even in different languages.

Up, Up, and Away...

Shanghai, November 4, 2007 (Sunday)

Another laidback sightseeing day. I went back to Yu Yuan, hoping that all the tourists had miraculously gone home. No luck. I did get some yummy fried bits on a stick though.

I made my way to the Bund, and then up to the Bund Tourist Tunnel, which connects the two sides of the Huang Pu River: Puxi, which is where a lot of the action has been historically, and Pudong, which is where a lot of the action is starting to go.

The guidebooks recommend a one-way trip on the Bund Tourist Tunnel. However, the pricing for the round trip made more economic sense for me, since it is only a fraction more for the return trip back. So I went with the round trip.

Dudes. How to describe the Bund Tourist Tunnel? At its very core, it’s an underground tunnel that you cross in a tram car. Simple enough. Now let’s add to the picture. Imagine all the neon lights in Las Vegas, Atlantic City and Nanjing Road were eaten by, say, a fire-breathing dragon, who subsequently barfed up all of those lights into the Bund Tourist Tunnel, resulting in a haphazard, neon and Christmas-light extravaganza; A whacked out, psychedelic experience. The tram ride takes about 5 minutes and begins with this sense of grand expectation…kind of like a ride at an amusement park. Then…lights. And more lights. Lights that twinkle. Lights in different colors. Large video screens showing, you guessed it, colorful lights. The lights were arranged in different patterns and twinkled in sync with the atmospheric music blaring in the tram car. Someone had also thoughtfully put up wind sock figures (a scarecrow, a ghost), which were relics of Halloween, I suspect. The figures shimmered eerily as we glided past them. And then the ride was over. So that’s why the books recommended a single visit! Oh goodie, I get to do that one more time…

Bemused by the experience, I weave my way to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, the iconic, space-age, slightly phallic tower that is 350 meters high, making it, I think, the third highest in the world. Being so close to it really gives you an idea of its size. The pricing for the tower admission is based on where you want to visit. You can opt to go to one, two, or all of the spheres (the 90, 160, and 350 meters), or just the revolving restaurant (at 160 meters). I opted for the whole enchilada, all the spheres, plus admission to the Shanghai History Museum on the ground floor.

We were herded like cattle into an elevator that took us to the middle sphere (160) first. The ride up was slow and allowed us to savor the pressure building up in our ears. Then, onto the observation deck. The view was amazing. The number of tourists was amazing. The incessant picture-snapping and V for Victory posing was amazing. Kidding aside, to see the Bund from this vantage point was a true treat. The day was clear, so we were able to see pretty far out. You really do get a sense of the scale and scope of Shanghai when you have a bird’s eye view. I boarded another elevator to the next sphere, at 350 meters. This sphere is smaller, and is also known as “the Space Cabin”. It was slightly less crowded than the 160 meter sphere, but still had a good amount of traffic. The higher height provided a wider perspective, and also more picture taking opportunity. I climbed a small spiral staircase up to the very top, which is a very small space, with all-pink windows, that provided no real difference in vantage point. You just climb it so you can say you made it to the top of the tower. The top sphere had a couple of exhibits, an autograph wall dotted with flags and handwritten messages from world leaders, as well as a Sister City display case showcasing gifts given to Shanghai from its Sister Cities. San Francisco gave Shanghai a bell and a vase, if memory serves.

After that, I made my way down to the 90 meter sphere, which was an outdoor observation deck. It was nice to breathe fresh air, as well as gain a closer vantage point. The 90 meter level also sported a space-themed theme, with some random attractions (astronomy and astrology exhibit, ET statues, a “dizziness” chamber, a roller coaster.) Then one final elevator ride in a clear glass elevator different from the one that we used to ascend. One note about the elevators. They were all manned by operators who recited some fun facts to us, in two languages, Mandarin and English, during the rides. Regulating the traffic and flow of the elevators require much planning and staff, I expect, as visitors essentially had to line up for everything, including boarding elevators.

The final stop in the tower is the fantastic Shanghai History Museum. I am an absolute sucker for models and recreations, and this museum delivers. One the first floor, “getting around” was the theme, as there was a charming display of land transportation options throughout Shanghai’s history, from rickshaws to horse-drawn carriages, to the first hugely ornate motor cars, then the pimp wheels of the 60s and 70s, then locally-manufactured cars, including the ubiquitous Volkswagen Santana, which is the standard issue taxicab in Shanghai at present. A couple of antique trolley cars were also on display, with original retro ads on them. I would also like to note that the curators make an effort to bring these displays to life, by painting backgrounds of Shanghai streets, as well as placing mannequins dressed in period clothing in, on, or near the vehicles.

The next floor was huge and housed several exhibit halls, basically mapping Shanghai’s history from the 1800s to present. The exhibits included painstaking reproductions of an average person’s life in the past, their home, the shops they would visit, etc. Then there were models of Shanghai’s changing landscape, particularly the Bund, as well as scale models of various iconic places during various periods in time. If you saw my LegoLand pictures, you know I am absolutely smitten with scale model reproductions. To see wonderfully-detailed models of places in Shanghai throughout time was amazing. The Bund, Nanjing Road, the French Concession…all in perfect, precious detail, all beautifully lit. Aside from the miniature models, there were recreations of various streets. To be able to walk through these exhibits, you could almost imagine being in Shanghai during the 1930s. (Cue music, where’s my cashmere overcoat and white scarf?) There were some cool interactive bits as well, including a green screen display that allowed you to see yourself in a 1930s Shanghai street. The recreation of the early stock market was a hoot. Inside this beautiful scale model of the tri-level stock exchange, with real wood furniture and details like tiny exchange slips in tact, the designer decided that rather than use actual dolls (which would need to be 8 to 10 inches high) they would use glossy cardboard cutouts of people to show how crowded the stock exchange was. They must have had fun with it…the individual cutouts were from screen captures from old Chinese period movies! Imagine different people with different expressions, some wacky and screwball, all placed together to give off a cheeky aura of pandemonium. I think I’d love to work here…any job that allows you to screencap and cut out wacky characters from wacky movies and use them as cutouts for exhibits is aok in my book. Or, as in LegoLand, I’d love to shrink down in size and just live here. If the museum exhibits really do come alive when the museum closes, ala the Ben Stiller movie, then sign me up.

It was dinnertime when I finally emerged from the tower. After three weeks of gorging on excellent Chinese cuisine, it was inevitable that I want something else. I was, in fact, craving a big, fat, juicy hamburger, with crispy, salty fries. No grey fast food burger and soggy potato sticks, though. A proper burger. With proper fries. The huge, sparkling Super Brand Mall was near the Pearl Tower, so I ducked in, as I recall reading that a nice sports bar type joint with very good burgers was housed there. I noticed that there was a Hooters --yes that Hooters-- in the mall…and while utterly tempted (how surreal would it be to say I went to Hooters in Shanghai?), I decided Blue Frog it was. It’s a cute little mellow sports bar that serves sports bar fare. I ordered the classic Blue Frog Burger, with cheese. When it arrived, with a heaping mound of crispy golden steak cut fries, I thought I was going to weep with joy. Pink tender beef, fried bits, and ketchup. USA! USA! I think I must be a little homesick.

Yes, dammit, despite all the wonderful, exciting, new things I am experiencing here, I do miss home. I miss my dearest beloved Tivo, er, friends and family, I miss being with people who get me and love me, I miss being able to communicate eloquently, (ok adequately!), I miss the crisp cold clear SF air. And I miss the TV! I had made a conscious decision to not spoil myself by reading any eppie recaps, and not download any eppies while here. (OK, granted, the conscious decision was forced upon me when I discovered the websites that I would usually go to for said downloads and recaps are in fact blocked here…details, schmetails.) But I digress. It’s not to say TV here is bad. It’s actually got some cool shows. There are dubbed versions of old TVB soap operas, as well as a dubbed Mexico’s Ugly Betty. Editor’s Note: Very surreal. I watch it for language purposes (and I must admit, I am picking up a lot from just watching TV in Mandarin). The storyline and production values are pretty awful, especially in comparison to the US version. It just seems very soap opera-y, insanely cheesy and over the top, with none of the tongue in cheek comedy and fabulousness of the US version.

There are also lots of reality shows. One is kinda like the Amazing Race, only set in America…teams from Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, and the US travel across America doing various challenges. It’s not a race per se, as they all travel together at the same pace. They do challenges based on different localities, and are judged by local experts (ie cooking, dance, knot-making, barrel-making, rapping, etc) It’s kind of interesting to see how America is depicted (very foreign). Another reality show called European Challenge is more like the Amazing Race in that teams are in Europe racing against each other while doing challenges. I must say, I was hooked on that one for a while, even sobbing when my favorite team got eliminated. (PMS, you know. Sidebar: That was the first time since Lasik that so many real tears fell from eyes. ‘Bout damn time. You need a good cry, sometimes.) I also religiously watch an Entertainment Tonight-esque show that details the fluffy gossipy happenings of major Asian stars. There are also quite a few travel and food shows, which I’m also a sucker for.

I also discovered a dubbed version of Project Runway! Absolutely surreal. It’s last season, not the current one (which I need to watch, so no spoilers, dammit) so I know who won the different challenges, and have a basic idea of what’s being said. Hearing it all in Chinese is really surreal. And hearing Heidi’s “Auf Viederson” (sp?) being replaced with “Zai Jian” is just wrong! I must admit, I was quite tickled pink by it, though.

I also get HBO Asia, which is way different from HBO in the US. They don’t show the original HBO series (though evidently they do show Big Love occasionally.) Rather, it’s essentially all movies, all the time, all pristinely captioned with Chinese characters. Some movies are fairly recent (within the past couple years). Others aren’t. The programming director must be on crack, or picked up lots of crappy movie licenses for cheap, because a lot of the movies are gawdawful and/or completely random. Free Willy 2? Gremlins 3? Weird Canadian made-for-TV horror movies? And yes, I still watched them. But that’s besides the point.

Hangin' in Hangzhou

Shanghai, November 3, 2007 (Saturday)

Today I am officially playing a tourist. On a tour bus. With a tour guide. With a portable speaker system. Yes, it was inevitable. I did the math, and economically speaking, it was cheaper and less of a hassle for me to go with a tour group, since lunch, transportation, and all admission tickets were included in the price of the tour.

So where did I go? To grossly misquote Marco Polo, I was going to Hangzhou, “heaven on earth”, a small town about 2 hours outside of Shanghai. It is home to the famously beautiful West Lake, where many an ancient poet has gotten drunk on, and written amazingly beautiful verse about.

I bought a ticket for a Chinese tour, that is, not your sterile, safe, Grayline tour where the guide is English-speaking, and everything is carefully chosen for the western palette. I was going hard-core domestic Chinese tourist here. (By the way, the tourism industry here is driven primarily by domestic Chinese tourists, not non-Chinese foreign tourists, as is the common misconception. The Chinese are earning more, and thus, have more resources to enjoy leisure activities, such as traveling on tour buses to see famous sites and snapping many, many pictures. And wearing matching hats or buttons silkscreened with tour companies’ names. But we’ll get to that later.) Bottom line, the Chinese tour cost a third of the Gayline tour, so obviously, I was gonna go local. The catch is, of course, that I had to go to the bus, because unlike Grayline tours, the Chinese tour bus was not coming to pick me up at my hotel. No problem. The tour bus station was right near a metro stop so I got up bright and early and made it to the bus station by 8:30am.

The whole bus was full of Chinese tourists, some on the two-day tour, and only a handful, me included, on the one-day tour. The bus had AC, and was relatively comfortable. My one beef, as always, is the fact that I am, without fail, always stuck behind some dude who insists on reclining his seat fully back immediately upon being seated. And unlike an airplane, there is no flight attendant telling him that seat trays and seatbacks need to be in a full upright position.

The tour guide, a defeated-looking middle-aged dude, who reminds me a bit of my cousin, asked the one-day tourists to identify themselves, provide hometown info, and a mobile phone number. When he got to me, I found it easier to say I’m from Hong Kong, so I fibbed. I figure it’s more prudent to say you’re from Hong Kong than the US, as A) many Chinese tend to think Americans are wealthy and I didn’t need that stigma; and B) saying I’m from Hong Kong gives me just the right balance of belonging, and not belonging, if that makes any sense. Also, it’s common for Hong Kongers to travel Mainland China, and also common that they not be able to speak fluent Mandarin, or to bumble through it with a Cantonese accent, as I do.

The dude who ended up sitting next to me reminded me of an old uncle, and it turns out he’s from Guangzhou, and speaks fluent Cantonese. We exchanged niceties, and then he went promptly to sleep, and I turned up the iPod volume.

The drive to Hangzhou is about 2 hours, give or take 30 minutes. It went by pretty quickly, with the last 30 minutes being occupied with the tour guide mechanically giving us an overview of Hangzhou and the day’s itinerary. I think I understood about 60% of what he was saying. I did get that he was an anti-chewing gum crusader, though. He showed the most signs of life when describing the evils of chewing gum, especially its improper disposal. He was quite passionate about the topic, actually, spending a good five minutes or so ranting. I wonder if he had messed up a designer suit, or pair of shoes, or some such trauma, because of a wayward wad of chewing gum…?

We got to Hangzhou at about 11:15am, and as we rode through the city, I kept thinking how this WAS NOT the small town all the guidebooks made it sound like. The city center was well developed, and had its quota of high-rises, five-star hotels, shopping malls and western fast food joints. The first stop we hit was the tourist restaurant. It is a squat building with ample parking for tour buses, a convenience mart, an area hawking “Treasures of Hangzhou”, restrooms, and two huge dining rooms. Its very existence relies on the business of tourists. Thankfully (for them at least) there is no shortage of tourists. Our guide warned us that it would be crowded, as it was the weekend, and also one of the more pleasant times to visit, weather-wise. He was not kidding. Guys, imagine all the people you know in the world, times 1000, packed into the same building, vying for the same restrooms. And imagine them wearing nylon trucker caps emblazoned with some tour company’s logo. My goodness, it was bedlam. Especially in the restrooms. A riot almost broke out when one dragon lady in a red cap thought another (I think she was in a blue cap) had cut in front of her. It was like some alternate universe gang fight. Ladies, can’t we all just get along? We’re all Chinese, we’re all women, we’re all wearing crappy trucker caps, and we all need to pee.

After that lovely interlude of precious relief, we were herded to our tables. His was a no-frills place. The server brought over huge dishes of a set menu, lots of veg, tofu, fish, and meat. We got bowls, chopsticks, and were told to go for it. No napkins, no beverages. We all dug in, very matter of factly. We didn’t know each other, but we shared a table, and a meal, quite amicably, silent except for the sounds of eating. It was surprisingly pleasant, actually.

We were herded out after 15 minutes, as another bus had arrived and needed our table. This place had amazing turnaround. The volume of people served must be mind-boggling, if the sea of parked tour buses is any indication.

Our first stop was the amazingly beautiful West Lake. I wish I could throw some cool facts at you, but the guide spoke in Mandarin, through a portable (and tinny) PA system, which meant I didn’t pick up very much. Speaking of PA systems…there were many guides with cool portable mikes like our guide..and then I spied one lady with a kid’s megaphone. I kid you not. It was bright yellow with sparkly animal stickers all over it, and looked exactly like something you’d find in a toy store. Amazing. How much did that tour cost?!!!

We boarded a cool boat with a dragon head on it, and zipped across West Lake, admiring the views. It was sunny, clear day, and we were able to see the Hangzhou shoreline on one end, and the misty mountains dotted with tea on the other. As we cut smoothly across the clear water, I could absolutely see how this lake inspired many a poet and artist. We disembarked at one of the several islands on the lake, and walked along the shore for some obligatory photo ops. Then we strolled through a maze of bridges to a pavilion over water housing bright orange carp the size of dogs. No joke, man…those fish were huge.

A few more photo ops, and then onto the boat again, where we were taken to the other end of West Lake, where our tour bus was waiting for us. A short drive through the increasingly rural area, and I was able to see what all the hype about Hangzhou was about. The countryside is gorgeous. Misty mountains, rows and rows of verdant tea bushes, residents shooting the breeze on a lazy afternoon with their clear glasses of green tea seeping…this would almost be enough to convince me to forgo cable and set up shop here. Almost.

We arrived at a silk factory next. Hangzhou is famous for its fine silks. This was another popular tourist trap, and we knew we’d be in for a hard sell. And we were. But we did get to see the whole process of silk production, as the factory set up a hands on exhibit showing how the silk is produced. I was able to refrain from buying anything, as the Shanghai residents on the tour felt that you could get the same (if not better) products in Shanghai for less.

Our next stop was a tea plantation. Another popular tourist trap. More hard sell. We did get to sample some lovely green tea. They brewed it in a very interesting manner, without a teapot. They placed dried green tea leaves into clear highball glasses, then pour in water just off the boil. Steep gently, then drink. The tea lady was saying that the leaves are edible, so a popular term “eating tea” has come into the tea lexicon. We sipped, and nibbled, and I thought it was just lovely. Think of it as a calorie-less, non-sweet, tapioca tea. This time, I couldn’t resist and purchased a tin of tea, packed right before my very eyes from the latest harvest.

Our final stop of the day was the Ling Yin Temple (or Temple of the Lost Souls). As with all of our stops today, the place was just teeming with tourists. Our tour guide had warned us about proper behavior in the temple, how we should be respectful, quiet, not take pictures inside the actual worship halls, and how, if we obtained (er, purchased) any charms or blessings, we should donate the change to the temple. (The temple priced things at amounts where there will be 1 or 2 yuan in change…the numbers are symbolic of certain teachings in Buddhist scripture) I think the guide is a devout Buddhist…He showed us a charm that he carries with him all the time that he had obtained from the temple.

I should also clarify that the temple is on a park with various historical relics and statuary. For example, there is a whole cavernous mountain that has various images of Buddha carved into it. The temple proper requires another admission fee that is separate from the fee that allows entry into the park. We were given an hour of independent exploration in the park, and I opted to explore the caves first while the rest of the group went into the main temple. The carvings in the mountain were amazingly intricate; the path up the mountain was amazingly treacherous. I toned my legs more in the 15 minutes it took to climb that path than my entire life,. You see, it’s about isometric training. Every step was carefully made, as each rock was shiny and worn, and ergo, slippery. So I made my way very very carefully up, and down, the mountain. The carvings were worth it though. Simply awe-inspiring.

Couple of things to rant, er, comment on: Ladies in three inch heels climbing the mountain. Specifically, a lady in studded three inch boots blithely making her way up and around the mountain, with a toddler, no less. Another beef: Incessant picture-taking. I get that we’re all tourists, and that we want to remember our visit, and that digital cameras are fabulous. But must everyone take pictures of everyone in front of everything? All the digi-cam snapping got tired really quick…and why the same pose, with the victory sign, even in a picture with a Buddha statue? Sigh.

After that sore, but inspiring interlude, I made my way over to the main temple, paid my admission, and walked in. The relics are amazing. Golden statues twenty feet high, friezes intricately carved with Buddhist chants…everything was big and bold and grand. There were many people with joss sticks and incense praying seriously, but for some reason, the sight was not as moving as the one from Jing An Temple in Shanghai. Perhaps because in addition to the presence of the faithfully devout in this temple, there were also many, many, many tourists snapping pictures at every chance, some ignoring the signs asking that pictures not be taken inside the areas of worship. Grrr. Also, oddly enough, the grandness of the relics, with their precious materials, and large size, gave off an air of ostentatiousness. The carved statues in the mountain and caves emitted a simpler, quieter, more natural and organic aura.

We left the temple and park, amid many hawkers of incense, toys, and snacks, and made our way back onto the bus, for our return trip to Shanghai. We made a pit stop at the tourist restaurant where we had lunch, in order to load up on snacks for the ride back. OK, have I waxed poetic about snacks here yet? If not, here I go. The snacks here are awesome. I must admit I am not super adventurous on the snacking front, as my tastes are simple: fried, crunchy, laden with salt and MSG. The chip flavors here are the bomb. Lay’s makes a fried chicken flavor (very rich and chicken-y), a pepper steak flavor (sweet and peppery), and a red wine roasted chicken flavor (very sweet). Enough said. That more than makes up for the ketchup flavor and the cucumber flavor. (Ed. Note: Cucumber? WTF?) I have yet to try the seafood flavor yet, but that’s on the list. One of the Asian brands makes a Thai Beef Curry flavor, which is quite good as well. For the more adventurous, there are also individually wrapped vacuum-packed braised chicken feet, duck gizzards, and chicken wings. I tried the chicken feet, hoping they would taste like the flavorful chicken feet from dim sum houses, but alas, it was lacking in flavor, and overcompensating in gelatinous goo. I do like the shredded beef and pork, sweet-tinged beef and pork jerky and fried cuttlefish. As for sweets, I have a soft spot for Pocky. You know Pocky, the sweet cracker sticks, that are dipped into various toppings? Pocky toppings include dark chocolate, coffee, milk tea, white chocolate, caramel, and strawberry. And they also make pretzel versions. Bliss.

One more thing about snacks: people love bringing and eating snacks EVERYWHERE. At the concerts, on the bus, on the metro. You can always hear the crunch and crackle of plastic wrappers being ripped open. Like music to my ears. I found it refreshing that there are no “No food or drinks allowed” rules, though I do wish people would make better use of the trash bins a bit more. It’s not too bad, though. And the tree hugger in me is glad to see that many trash receptacles have a separate recyclable receptacle attached, and there is a widespread energy conservation public awareness campaign afoot.

We made it back to Shanghai in about two hours, and even caught a fireworks show half way in, since we were driving along the water at one point. Then…grumpy and hungry, we all went our separate ways. The bus depot is at the Shanghai Stadium parking lot, and A-Mei Zhang was having a concert that night. It was just starting when we hopped off the bus. I was tempted to buy a ticket from one of the straggling scalpers, but then remembered that a lot of fake tickets were on the market, so had to pass. Quickie dinner at a noodle joint, and then hotel-bound, to rest my weary feet, and dream of crowds and crowds and crowds of tourists in colorful trucker hats scrambling to get into bathroom stalls and tour buses.