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.