CHINA 2005: American in Shanghai — Day 2 and 3

Hi All-
Hope all is well back in the states…
Shanghai is fascinating. You know we love big cities.. so we’re very much in our milieu.. and are well aware that Shanghai is unique for China.. so we expect things to be surprising in a very different way when we hit the rural areas next week. But for now, it’s dealing with the scale of the city, the verticality, the language, etc. For the most part we are doing fine.. language is a real challenge. Almost no one speaks any English. In the hotels the reception people speak, as do the concierges.. but that’s about it. Obviously shop keepers, restaurant staff, taxi drivers, etc. speak no English.. Getting into taxis and trying to explain where we want to go is quite interesting.. Now, if we know exactly where we need to go, we ask the front desk people at the hotel to write it out in Chinese and then just hand it to the driver. Our map is written in English so we cannot show the street on a map since taxi drivers can’t read the street names. And we’ve had some humorous experiences in restaurants.. If you stick with tourist restaurants or very expensive restaurants they will have staff who speak English and menus in English, but if you eat in other venues.. you’re on your own — as we’ve been…

In some local, casual restaurants.. they have sort of “home-style” translations.. which are often about as useful as choosing your meal with blindfolds on… They say things like “green
vegetable” (which is often listed a few times to represent, I assume, different green vegetables.. )

Anyway, I think I wrote about Day One… when I sent the previous email — except to note that when I unpacked on the first day, I realized I left my toiletry bag back in California — you know, favorite shampoo, skin cream, make up, etc. etc…. I phoned my cousin Fanny and asked if she could stop by my house to send it Fed Ex, which she did.. It was supposed to arrive today.. But, alas…  Chinese customs will not release my little package unless I give them a copy of my “Inspection Certificate from the Cosmetic, Toiletry, and Fragrance Association of the USA” for clearance with The Chinese Commodity Inspection Bureau.. along with my passport and visa…  If I can get all of this paperwork to them, they believe they will “release” the package in three days!… I’m now just hoping they send the package back to the US.  But enough about that..

First one of many funny translated signs… In the museums and other locations with escalators, and whenever there is a low ceiling.. the signs all read “Be Careful Head” …

So, here’s the summary of Days Two and Three…

Having been museum-ed out from Day One… on Day Two (Monday) we set off for (and spent most of the day in) the old sections of the city.. meandering little narrow streets and markets and areas totally packed with small vendors… These parts of Shanghai were very reminiscent of much of Southeast Asia — Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam,  — and also totally different (and yet a stone’s throw) from the high rises and huge shopping centers of the “new Shanghai”… And while buses serve these areas, the main mode of transportation (and clearly the best way to get around) is by bike and motor scooter. It’s truly amazing that everyone seems to maneuver easily and accident-free (or at least from what we could see)… We eventually stopped at a little second floor tea house for some green tea (quite a ritual, even though we were not going for the ceremony..) Very quaint old tea house, with the usual array of birds in cages (like you see all over Asia)…  including very loud parrots and mynah birds.. They were all squawking loudly, so we’re assuming they are bird flu-free!

Late afternoon we taxied to some really interesting neighborhoods and also checked out some craft centers.  By 6 p.m. we were totally exhausted but decided to keep going — stopped for dinner and then headed to see the Chinese Acrobats… an amazing performance… which builds to an incredible climax with 6 acrobats on 6 motorcycles inside a metal sphere that is about 40′ in diameter… They are riding at top speed criss-crossing each other and jumping over each other in perfectly balanced timing.. moving constantly and driving the entire circumference — upside down, etc….

This obviously made the plate spinners and guy who throws and juggles pottery and the synchronized hula hoops and contortionist seem rather dull!… I was totally exhausted by the time the show was over.  The performers are all about 15-18 years old… maybe even younger. At the end, we caught a glimpse of crowds of teen age girls trying to take pictures with the
motorcyclists.. and screaming for their attention..  Here they were — Chinese motorcycle groupies.

Today, we changed hotels… so we are in another part of town.. (and we have Internet access in the room).  We walked along the Bund (the river edge) and then into different neighborhoods… hopping in and out of taxis (which are very very cheap) so that we could see very different areas of town that are quite far from one another.. Tomorrow we’ll take random Metro stops… As in Singapore, regardless of what floor you live on, everyone uses very long bamboo poles (about 12 -18′ or so) that perch in holders (kind of like flag poles coming off window ledges) that cantilever out and laundry hangs out to dry.. all the time… It’s bizarre to see these poles coming out on the 30th floor with laundry flying around… Mike is worried about liability.. thinking it is pretty dangerous if the pole drops… In the lower residential buildings, laundry is often hanging on the electric lines that zig zag everywhere… into a dense maze…  As a result the city is ablaze in laundry… And as you can see from so many photos, I’m really obsessed with this laundry deal.

Anyway, at about 3:00 we realized we forgot to have lunch, despite the fact that there’s food all around.. little stalls, vendors cooking on the streets, and also restaurants and cafes…  So, we stopped in  a fairly local restaurant.. that was still serving lunch.. We were the only ones eating at that hour… No one spoke any English, but they seated us and then hurriedly found a rather ragged hand made translation of the menu… Took us a while to figure out the deal.. but it was one of those Mongolian style places where there is a big copper pot on the table.. You select from a small range of soup stocks… (we picked the yin and yang  version — 1/2 very spicy (and they mean it) and the other half medium… (The copper pot is actually two parts… so you get the two stocks… then you select from a wide array of vegetables (not really sure what the selections might have been, since we picked green and green– and beef, and noodles, etc.).. It all comes in separate bowls and you cook it in the stock…  They also come over with a cart carrying about 30 bowls of  different spices and sauces…   It was great, huge, and the spicy stock had about 100 red chilies…   The little meal turned into an unexpected gem… The two waitresses who tried desperately to help us fish out all the red chilies so that we wouldn’t accidentally eat them… tried desperately to converse.. but we had no Chinese to offer and they had no English to offer..

Weatherwise — it’s been overcast, but no rain… cold, about 40 degrees… sometimes goes up to about 48 during the day.. and maybe as low as 32 at night..  It’s cold, crisp.. and unfortunately no sun…

The economy is difficult to understand.. supposedly the average annual salary is $5,000… and it’s clear there are some pretty strong differences within the population… and that the Communist effort to even the classes is no longer evident… Everyone works… there are “traffic assistants” at many intersections.. And every restaurant we’ve been in has been over-staffed, by American standards. The young Shanghainese are pretty image-conscious and shops are filled with very fashionable items… both Asian and Western…  A follow up to yesterday’s email about the lighting on all of the buildings (I think I mentioned this… that all the buildings are lit very theatrically in the evenings — ) I read in today’s China Today (an English language newspaper) that there is a power shortage and that the government is trying to convince residents to use energy-efficient light bulbs and to carefully monitor power usage.. and now there are some “counterfeit” energy-efficient light bulbs being sold in the markets… Apparently, the caution about use of electricity does not extend to these buildings.. By the way, they built 5,000 high rises (each greater than 20 stories. ) in 14 years… meaning one a day (7 days a week) for 14 years.. and from the amount of construction we see all around us.. there’s no end in sight.

We then walked  to some other parts of town and  came back to the hotel before dinner.. It’s about 9:15 p.m. now and we’re about to go out to eat dinner.  Will try to send a note tomorrow about Day 4…

Take care —
Fern