PHASE 0: INTRO
Friends!
Thanks for joining us through our East Asian adventures. A few notes before we begin the content:
-There are bazillions of photos, and we'll be sharing with you some of the highlights. Albums can be found on Facebook (we'll link you), but we'll share particular highlights as the story unfolds.
-Things won't be in chronological order within a particular phase.
-We're going to both leave out details and also potentially bore you with our musings, but deal with it.
PHASE 1: SHANGHAI
The unintended adventures of logistics will be a repeating theme for us, starting from the very beginning. To start, getting to Shanghai was a bit worrisome. Erik had to travel to Canada for work sans-passport (which took both skill and luck to pull off) as we got our visas processed by the Consulate. Luckily, Erik managed to sneak through the border both ways with only a NEXUS card, which is usually respected but not technically allowed and definitely not a good idea. In one of the legs coming back to the US, Erik was asked to present his passport... which he didn't have. How he got through that is an exercise left to the reader.
Once at Logan, Erik and Mark discovered hiccup with our flights that almost had one of us getting a seven-minute layover in Chicago, but we fixed it. Whew. We took off from Boston and got into Shanghai without further incident.
Upon landing, we hit the MagLev train to get into the city, reaching speeds of 300km/h (we thought this parituclarly impressive until we saw the same speed on the regular rail going to Suzhou--more on that later) and covering the 30km in something like 8 total minutes.
Erik & Mark were thrilled to find that Erik's Chinese was more than good enough to get around, despite a 4-year hiatus. Waiters, taxi drivers, etc, immediately assumed Erik was fluent after he spoke. Despite having some trouble (Mom always said, "you talk a lot better than you listen"), Erik was able to pick up all the key bits and parse out what didn't make sense. We made by with little issue. Mark even picked up a fair amount of Chinese and by the end was easily parsing out words that were part of his vocabulary.
Shanghai was in many ways reminiscent of Beijing, but had some key differences. The biggest two: first, it embraces most aspects of its past (where Beijing was much more Communist and much more manicured about the pre-Communist period), and second, it has a much smaller and more relaxed feel to it--at least in Downtown.
The familiar parts for Erik were the smells, the noise--lots of weird emotions of nostalgia popped up from the three-month stint in Beijing (one of the smells in particular was that unidentifiable, city-wide one that never leaves you). The traffic was probably even more chaotic, the stall vendors possibly even more aggressive. We were offered "ladies" probably a dozen times (which hadn't happened in Beijing). Sadly, there are a lot of aspects of Shanghai that irk the traveler in fairly stereotypical ways, like old ladies following you through the bazaar, yelling "Hello! Watch, Bag! Hello!"
But some of the general chaos was stuff that we really liked. A lower economic barrier (in labor/consumer regulation, in paperwork, etc), culture of personal initiative, and no-safety-net world meant that there were tiny businesses of incredible sorts. We saw an entire block of moped repair shops; countless street stalls selling all sorts of wares for local and tourist alike; road vendors sold home-cooked food and raw stuff, including two of our favorite dishes: a fried wrap of noodle-and-vegetable (local fare), and a spicy onion/garlic naan-style bread thing (Muslim northwest food, or "Uyghur"), both of which were less than 30 cents. More on food below.
So the chaos, while sometimes bothersome, also meant great tastes and smells and little bits to buy around every corner, which one just doesn't get in the US. The "grey market" has its charms.
SHOPPING: We got a few prezzies for folks back home, and had a fun time haggling. Erik had to warm up to his old skills (got "burned" the first run at it, but still got a better deal than would be expected in the US), but Erik and Mark turned to a "good cop / bad cop" style of haggling that worked brilliantly well. Mock anger, yelling, and general boisterous gesticulation was followed by laughing and mutual back-slapping after the deal was done. We obviously didn't "win" (if we define" winning" as pushing the vendor down to the edge of what they'd be willing to sell for), but everyone walked away feeling like they got a good deal and had fun, which is what's important.
ARCHITECTURE: Mark and Erik loved the architecture. As we mentioned above, Shanghai is a lot more laid back than Beijing and embraces its history well. It has much less of the "central planning" feel to it that Beijing has and for that reason has a fairly incredible amount of creativity in the new architecture out there.
We'll break down the architecture, as we understand it, into three parts: "the really old," "the occupation," and "the new."
The really old: Very much what you'd expect--lots of great pagodas, a few temples. Much of it, for whatever reason, is under active construction and renovation, which was actually fairly neat in its own way. More below.
The occupation: So Shanghai was largely occupied by various powers (namely the British, French, Russians, and Americans) during the 1800's, and the architecture shows off in a big way. The Bund is the best example of this. You can see from some of the photos here that the Chinese flags all over these buildings used to be of other nations and there's clearly a Point Being Made by them now being Chinese (rather than either the flags removed or the buildings replaced with something else). The former Western influence is also fairly obvious from the fact that the lion statues are often westernized (and are not all the same bloody lion from 4000 years ago).
The new: Pudong is the best example of the new in Shanghai, with many of those super-creative buildings we spoke of earlier. The most recognized is the "Pearl" TV tower, which Erik thinks looks a bit silly.
Some other great examples:
-Hotels tend to be some of the most creative, making a fairly wide departure from what you'd normally expect in Western countries.
-The Knife (not the official name)
-The Tazer (also not official)
-Pudong as a whole, truly spectacular at night
-Mark's favorite, the Citi tower, which has a giant screen Mark wants to play Tetris on
SUZHOU:
We took a day trip out to Suzhou (silk capital of China!) via regional train, which is a nearby city with a different taste and history. Much less influenced by international trade, visitation, and occupation, it's got a bit more of an "old school" feel, more poverty, and a whole lot less English. Taxis here were cheaper, friendlier, and a fair bit less terrifying than those in Shanghai (we're fairly certain one of our cabbies was falling asleep at the wheel while in Shanghai, but we made it okay). Much of the city was lined with canals, and boat transit is still a fairly legitimate means of moving people and goods alike. Interestingly, the lower number of tourists may account for the shop vendors being a bit less aggressive and incessant, which made it a bit easier for us to just walk around the shopping districts.
We saw a few nifty pagodas and a very nice garden (the "Humble Administrator's Garden," which was not so humble), as well as the Suzhou Silk Museum. At the museum, we got to see some live silk worms noshing on some mulberry trees and rolling out silk coccoons.
The Humble Administrator's Garden ("not so humble!" I joke, as the first person who has ever made that joke, ever) had loads of rocks, trees, ponds, and juxtaposed rocks and trees and ponds in a fairly gorgeous fashion and with the kind of terrifying obsession you'd expect of the Chinese.
From the top of the tallest pagoda in Suzhou, we had what was actually a really great view of the Suzhou area. Note that the city is actually fairly large, though this is usually the case for eastern China.
SHANGHAI PARKS & SITES:
Other sites of note in Shanghai included:
-Yu Yuan Gardens, which were fairly peaceful and pretty. Lots of great rocks to crawl around. Lots of awesome roof architecture. Koi ponds galore.
-The City Temple, where a lot of folks actually went to pray
FOOD: Mark and Erik really prioritized getting good food in all three cities, and Shanghai really set the tone as a hard act to follow. Shanghai, like Beijing, is best eaten by jumping into little nooks and gesticulating wildly at the stuff with red peppers on it. When they say, "tai mala le!" ("it's too spicy!") you must insist that they are wrong and that your stomach is made of iron. They will lament and give you what you want. Just make damned well sure that you have some good beer beside to cut some of the spice, or else you're going to shame your ancestors, and you wouldn't want to do that (definitely not... stay tuned for serious ancestor shamery in later episodes...). So here's what we've got for food:
-Spicy stir fry thing #1 (I have no idea what the names of these things are--we pointed at pictures)
-Hot and sour soup and some other spicy braised saucy thing
-Dumplings from Din Tai Fung, the consistently-rated best dumping chain on the planet
-Spicy soupy thing of some sort, we liked it and in short order annihilated it and the Hot and Sour soup kindof got left to the side
-Obligatory teahouse tea, complete with quail eggs
-And, as necessary, some good beer. Japanese in this case, but tastier than the Chinese stuff
NIGHTLIFE: We were a bit disappointed with the nightlife--it consisted mostly of Western-tailored bars and clubs, which we realized we could get back at home and so we instead spent our evening time getting to bed at a reasonable hour (we're so old!) and got up early to putz around the city instead. It seems the bar/club scene is such a Western concept that even Chinese folks want to go to something Western themed to go out. And, to boot, the beer was at least as expensive in these places at the US, so it just wasn't worth it.
PHOTOS:
Links to photo albums on Facebook (public, don't worry if you don't have Facebook [yes, some people don't]):
So that just about wrapped up Shanghai. Our last day there was quite lazy, and involved sleeping in and moseying our way to the airport after the Din Tai Fung, where we hung out in the lounge for a bit and raged over being unable to figure out how to connect to the internet (poor us). Onto our Asiana flight, and we were on our way to Seoul...
Stay tuned for the next episode! Same Bat time, same Bat channel!
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