January 31st 2009
The rest of my time in Shanghai was pretty relaxed. I was hanging out with Yannick, Cornell's roommate, a lot because he is self-employed and so can work from home. Very nice guy. His current existence seems to revolve around a few hours work and then many more hours of leisure: books, dvds, occasional massage or walk around the city, completed with an evening of relaxed dinner and drinks with the good expats of Shanghai. He says its only a temporary thing, but it's one heck of way to spend your time, if only temporarily.
Cornell and I went old Nihon school for a couple evenings and went to play darts at a local Japanese bar. Of course I didn't want to show up my host, so I let him win most of the time. I did win a game now and again for the sake of appearances, just enough to sooth my ego... With a mug of a Asahi draft in hand, it really was a little slice of good old Wakayama.
Saturday morning (1/24) saw me up at crack of five bloody thirty to catch the metro to the maglev to the airport for my 7:45 flight to Hong Kong. The maglev was a pretty cool ride: a German-engineered 300km/hr speed machine that brings you 30km in about 7 minutes. Unfortunately the platform exits were not engineered by the same German; at the terminus there was one single escalator and no stairs for all one thousand passengers trying to rush to their planes.
The only hiccup at the airport was the suspicious interrogation I got for my deodorant. I had two sticks of Old Spice in my bag and the security guard took them out and shook them above his head: “What is this?! What is this?!” I took the cap off, took a big dramatic sniff and made the appropriate gestures under my arm. He seemed unconvinced but another guard cut him off and let me go. I'm sure there's a lesson there...
As you may have guessed from the title, when I finally got to Hong Kong my week was pretty mediocre. Which isn't to say that Hong Kong itself is mediocre, or that the people are mediocre, but rather that what I accomplished in 6 days seemed rather mediocre compared to what might have been.
My new home in Hong Kong's Tsim Sha Tsui, Traveler's Friendly Hostel, could not have been further from its namesake or the luxury I'd experience in Shanghai. I've stayed in many a shabby place on several different continents, but this place takes the cake as the hands down worst hostel of all time. It would be difficult and tiresome to explain in all it's painful glory just how dilapidated this place was, but I'll give you some more of the so-pitiful-its-humorous hi-lights.
My room, Room 27 with the yellow door, was a six-bunk dorm room. The beds literally shook so from my top bunk I swayed violently when I or anyone else moved. In stead of lockers, a large portion of our room was stacked high with cardboard boxes filled with toilet paper. The quarrelsome, warlike staff would enter without knocking to retrieve some required TP at all hours, usually not acknowledging our presence or locking the door again behind them. I suppose they were upset at having all these foreigners in their utility closet. A few unlucky visitors who had booked a bed ahead of time but arrived late in the afternoon found themselves relegated to the new “7th bunk” of our room, namely the tile floor, for which they received no discount or apology. I suppose it was better than the twelve-bunk room, which was actually just a hallway with beds in it.
I beg of you not to have me relive the horrors of contained in that cesspool they called a washroom/shower.
The list goes on. Alone I may not have stood a chance, but united through our common adversity, my bunkmates and I overcame these hardships and had a good time. In the mix was Chris, the relaxed and intelligent med student from Florida; Dani, Iowa party girl extraordinaire teaching in northern China; Eveline, a.k.a. Dutch, the sweet-as-only-the-Dutch-can-be student from Beijing; and Jessica, the internet-addicted Canadian teenager with a Danish boyfriend (I seriously heard enough about this guy to name him as a good acquaintance; he must be a patient man). The five of us partied pretty hard the first 3 or 4 nights, hence my utter failure to accomplish anything culturally stimulating in Hong Kong. As the days passed Chris, Dani, and Eveline were replaced by Dave the pregnant Brit (inexplicably sick every morning, yet never drank a drop of alcohol), and Mike the comedic Scotsman (I'm pretty sure humor a prerequisite for citizenship, anyway).
There were some other one-day friends who I only encountered briefly, such as Asser the German. Poor guy came into this room of six where the five of us were already well and good into the game. We rolled back in at 5am one morning with all the delicacy of a prison riot. Asser took it in stride, though we invited him to hang out the next day he either declined or disappeared. One day he said he was off to the Macau casinos and that's the last I saw of him. The last replacement friend of note was Joseph from New York, though he insisted he was there to represent China. I hate to be the one to propagate stereotypes, but this guy fit the bill for craziest foreigner on the mainland, within and without. Joseph rocked waist-length dreads and a beard to match, brown teeth (top left center missing), several layers of brown pants and sweaters (may or may not have been original color) and, well, his hands being the only piece of actual person visible, nothing pretty to look at. Now you can chide me for judging someone on appearances, but I made an honest effort to accept people as they come, as is necessary in the backpacker life. Joseph, however, oscillated between scary and batshit crazy. Here are some of Joseph's pearls of wisdom:
“Lung cancer is good for you.” (after our repeated denials to his requests to smoke in the room)
“So you support Al Qaeda?” (in response to some poor Japanese girl admitting she was an Islamic Studies student)
“I only watched the inauguration to see Obama get shot, like the NSA did to Kennedy.” (no instigation, just crazy talk)
Weird guy. Added tension. Didn't like it. Needless to say, I kept my stuff a little closer and slept a little lighter that last night in good old Room 27.
Party as we did, Hong Kong wasn't an entire bust. We saw the parade and the fireworks on the first two days of new year. There was a light show at the pier the first night. I got to the first half of the Hong Kong Historical Museum and a random Kung Fu show in Kowloon Park. The best bit though was at the end of the week I went to Lantau Island with Jess and Mike to see the largest outdoor Buddha in the world on top of the mountain. It was big. Sadly it was a bit foggy so the photos weren't so hot, but it was nice to get away from the hustle and bustle of Hong Kong. Also on Lantau was the monastery connected to the Buddha and a short walk away was the Path of Wisdom, tall tree planks arranged in an infinite sign and inscribed with the Heart Sutra. And yes, I do feel wiser having walked it.
Random side note: yes, I have about a bajillion pictures of all this stuff I've been writing about, but no I don't have a good way of uploading it. I was able to download Picasa, which is what I usually use, but after the initial install it isn't recognizing any new files I put on the computer. Yes, I've done the regular troubleshooting but it's still bugged. I am beginning to regret having gotten Linux with this thing. If anyone can suggest any Linux compatible alternatives, I'm all ears.
Til next time...
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
Shanghai -- More
January 23rd 2009
My second day in Shanghai started early. I woke up with Cornell and crew as they went out to work and got an early start at the train station looking for tickets. I was cut down pretty quickly, however, by the stone-faced ticket clerk who told me trains to and from Hong Kong were sold-out through January 30th. Mild panic. I zipped back to Cornell's apartment to hit the internet for flights. Just when I was wondering whether I could really trust any of the numerous Chinese online travel agents with my credit card info, Yanick came to my rescue with C-trip, a service he'd used many times before. They have a website but he suggested just calling up and making arrangements. To my pleasant surprise they spoke perfectly fluent English. Cooler still was that Yanick's phone was registered with them so they already had all the delivery details. Call me a dork but I love these little moments of technological synergy. Anyway, they hand-delivered the tickets later that afternoon (free of charge, woot) and with I breathed a huge sigh of relief. One problem down, one visa to go.
It was now 10:30 and the Vietnamese Consulate closed at 11:30 for lunch so I had an hour to get there and get straightened out. It takes exactly 4 business days to process the visa and, it being Monday morning, that gave me just the right amount of time to get it done before the weekend -- if I could only get there in time. I did, thankfully, just under the wire at 11:20. It was as exciting as most consulates tend to be, but I picked up my completed visa yesterday afternoon and so I'm officially set for the next couple weeks (at least until Laos).
Feeling accomplished, I spent Monday afternoon strolling around finally able to take in Shanghai with a carefree attitude. I was wandering down the street when I spotted a temple doorway. I meandered through into red, red, and more red. Inconspicuously watching some people pray from the doorway, ultimately some stony-faced guy (lots of stony faces in this place) waved me out. Well I thought he was waving me out but when I turned to leave he shook his head and held up five fingers. I gave him 5 CNY and he gave me two bundles of incense. After studying the basic prayer patterns of other visitors I gave it a shot myself and asked the temple guardian to grant me a safe journey. Sadly I had lit the incense from the wrong end and the bundles began to fall apart. Nobody else saw, anyway, and I haven't been hit by any cars/scooters/buses yet.
Which brings me to the nature of traffic in Shanghai. I could go on for ages about the various nuances required to survive the streets here, but suffice to say it's pretty wild. Not Accra-caliber wild, mind you, or even Bangkok-dangerous (nyuck), but definitely a cut above, say, New York. The city's infrastructure is as good or better than most other cities I've visited but drivers tend to take street lines and traffic lights as mere suggestions. Right of way belongs to those with the greatest inertia, so pedestrians are at the bottom of the food chain. You can't really trust the lights so whenever you need to cross a street it really is a frantic scamper, trying to look all ways at once. The scooters zip every which way – on streets, on sidewalks, with traffic, against traffic – and most have silent electric motors so you don't know how close you were to death until the blur has just passed out of your peripheral vision again. I haven't seen anyone get hit yet, but Cornell has assured me it happens often enough. Stay on your toes.
After the temple I headed to the east side of the Bund. This is the side with all the new skyscrapers and upperclass commercialism and etc. I think Shanghai must rival New York for skyscraper density, no joke. Anyway, one of these towers is called the Pearl and its a TV tower for some Chinese network. You can go up the tower for various views (its right on the riverside), but I contented myself with the “Notes for Entering the Tower” posted just outside the entryway. I'll post the photo as soon as I can, but the very first rule on the list is as follows:
“The ragamuffin,drunken [sic] people and psychotics are forbidden to enter the Tower.”
Oh my, the questions bubbled, boiled, and swirled in my mind. What exactly is a ragamuffin? Must one be both ragamuffin and drunken to be refused entry? Is there such a thing as a sober ragamuffin? And what exactly is the difference between a ragamuffin drunkard and psychotic? Who could possibly be in charge of answering these questions?
I mulled these and other tangential inquiries over a hot pot lunch (“Cooking Master” restaurant, where all the staff wear jackets proclaiming “I'm Cooking Master!”). It wasn't until later that evening that I was able to settle the ragamuffin question with the help of Cornell and Caroline. Cornell was of the opinion that it must be some synonym for 'hoodlum' or 'vagrant' and I was inclined to agree with him. Caroline, however, surprised us with a vehement declaration that 'ragamuffin' is in fact a reggae-hip hop fusion style. She grew up on a small island in the Indian Ocean, after all, and Marley and disciples rule the islands. It turned out that everyone was right. Wikipedia favored us with the following definitions:
1.Raggamuffin music, usually abbreviated as ragga, is a sub-genre of dancehall music or reggae, in which the instrumentation primarily consists of electronic music. Sampling often serves a prominent role in raggamuffin music as well.
2.A ragamuffin is a shabbily clothed child.
However, I prefer the definition offered by Urban Dictionary:
A grimy dirty little urchin or waif with ratted greasy hair. Usually female.
Brilliant. You've got to love that appended “Usually female.” I wonder who must have taken a survey of ragamuffins and discovered its disproportionately large female constitution.
Later that evening I met up with Cornell after he got off work. We tried a restaurant recommended by his boss for being both authentically Chinese and foreigner friendly. Even on a Monday, however, this place was already booked solid. The hostess gave us the “are you serious?” look when we said we didn't have reservations. Must be more popular than we imagined. It looked pretty posh, I suppose, but I'll never be able to attest to the menu.
Instead we went to the opposite side of the spectrum but no less appetizing. Nearby Cornell's apartment complex is a noodle shop that you'd walk by every time unless you had the go-ahead from someone in the know. It was just a small, tiled, unheated room with four tables and couple scattered stools and picture menus on the walls. Everything is in Chinese but the noodle dishes have pictures up so for me at least I could point and choose. The noodle master then rips off a hunk of dough and stretches out fresh noodles for you right then and there. After they finish cooking the noodles are taken in the back, topped off with whatever you had chosen and then served as a heap so massive my brother would appreciate it. All this for 10 CNY. And don't forget your soup.
The restaurant was one of many similar throughout the city. They are all run by domestic immigrants from the Muslim region of China. The menu and style is uniform at every location though I'm not sure if all the restaurants are connected or independently run. There must be a connection at some level, anyway. If soup doesn't cut it for you, you're free to bring your own beverage, just no alcohol. Also, no pork. If you can get past that, this place is an epic find.
Of course, with Cornell there that was not nearly where the cultural trivia ended. When I asked what the main noodle chef's name was, I was informed it's best to just call him shifu, or master. Any Kung Fu Panda fans out there might remember the redundantly named Master Shifu; same idea. So basically in Chinese culture anyone outside your circle of intimacy is called by their title rather than their name. So we call cabbies and chefs 'shifu' and the cleaning lady 'ayi'. There's probably a bunch more but that's all I've come in contact with so far. This idea is interesting in and of itself but is also telling about greater Chinese culture as well: how everyone treats strangers utterly callously until some connection is made or found, at which point (having entered the circle) people can treat each other as family. Anyway, the noodle shifu was a nice guy from the get go. Its hard to describe without sounding strange but he and the other workers there had a certain kindness about their eyes that was conspicuously missing from the vacant stares most people tend to give strangers, whether in China or elsewhere. Although we couldn't communicate at all, it was clear to me that these were good people or were genetically blessed with kind facial features, or both.
Tuesday was blur of walking around Shanghai sites. I saw Yuyuan Gardens, which must be the prototypical Chinese style garden. I gave up on taking decent pictures because its winter but I'll be back in the spring and I'm sure it'll be pretty outstanding. The garden is set in the greater Yuyuan “cultural area”, which is essentially stylized street mall. Still fun to walk around and people, however, and that's exactly what I did. The decorations for Chinese New Year are pretty impressive.
From here I walked through Old Shanghai, basically quasi-slums. I find it strange that nearly every source I looked at suggested seeing this place when in reality you're just walking through narrow alleys thinking “these people are all pretty poor”. Shanghai might be moving fast but these people aren't so much. And when they do it'll probably be literally: relocated to have their old neighborhoods renovated and redeveloped. I suppose it's a “see it while it lasts” sort of thing, but it still doesn't sit well. The redeeming end to this misadventure was that I found some street markets that don't make it on to any tourist maps. I could tell immediately because the hawkers weren't cat-calling me in broken English; I just got curious looks and then people went back about their business. These markets were cool because, in stead of selling the usual knock-off watches and apparel, they were overflowing with old Maoist paraphernalia. I had to stop myself from getting anything, mostly because I can't carry anything new but also because I'm sure Beijing will also be a treasure trove.
No wrap up for this email, just going to stop here because it appears I'm breaking my promise to stay succinct. Thanks for reading. Loving your response emails. Talk to you again soon.
My second day in Shanghai started early. I woke up with Cornell and crew as they went out to work and got an early start at the train station looking for tickets. I was cut down pretty quickly, however, by the stone-faced ticket clerk who told me trains to and from Hong Kong were sold-out through January 30th. Mild panic. I zipped back to Cornell's apartment to hit the internet for flights. Just when I was wondering whether I could really trust any of the numerous Chinese online travel agents with my credit card info, Yanick came to my rescue with C-trip, a service he'd used many times before. They have a website but he suggested just calling up and making arrangements. To my pleasant surprise they spoke perfectly fluent English. Cooler still was that Yanick's phone was registered with them so they already had all the delivery details. Call me a dork but I love these little moments of technological synergy. Anyway, they hand-delivered the tickets later that afternoon (free of charge, woot) and with I breathed a huge sigh of relief. One problem down, one visa to go.
It was now 10:30 and the Vietnamese Consulate closed at 11:30 for lunch so I had an hour to get there and get straightened out. It takes exactly 4 business days to process the visa and, it being Monday morning, that gave me just the right amount of time to get it done before the weekend -- if I could only get there in time. I did, thankfully, just under the wire at 11:20. It was as exciting as most consulates tend to be, but I picked up my completed visa yesterday afternoon and so I'm officially set for the next couple weeks (at least until Laos).
Feeling accomplished, I spent Monday afternoon strolling around finally able to take in Shanghai with a carefree attitude. I was wandering down the street when I spotted a temple doorway. I meandered through into red, red, and more red. Inconspicuously watching some people pray from the doorway, ultimately some stony-faced guy (lots of stony faces in this place) waved me out. Well I thought he was waving me out but when I turned to leave he shook his head and held up five fingers. I gave him 5 CNY and he gave me two bundles of incense. After studying the basic prayer patterns of other visitors I gave it a shot myself and asked the temple guardian to grant me a safe journey. Sadly I had lit the incense from the wrong end and the bundles began to fall apart. Nobody else saw, anyway, and I haven't been hit by any cars/scooters/buses yet.
Which brings me to the nature of traffic in Shanghai. I could go on for ages about the various nuances required to survive the streets here, but suffice to say it's pretty wild. Not Accra-caliber wild, mind you, or even Bangkok-dangerous (nyuck), but definitely a cut above, say, New York. The city's infrastructure is as good or better than most other cities I've visited but drivers tend to take street lines and traffic lights as mere suggestions. Right of way belongs to those with the greatest inertia, so pedestrians are at the bottom of the food chain. You can't really trust the lights so whenever you need to cross a street it really is a frantic scamper, trying to look all ways at once. The scooters zip every which way – on streets, on sidewalks, with traffic, against traffic – and most have silent electric motors so you don't know how close you were to death until the blur has just passed out of your peripheral vision again. I haven't seen anyone get hit yet, but Cornell has assured me it happens often enough. Stay on your toes.
After the temple I headed to the east side of the Bund. This is the side with all the new skyscrapers and upperclass commercialism and etc. I think Shanghai must rival New York for skyscraper density, no joke. Anyway, one of these towers is called the Pearl and its a TV tower for some Chinese network. You can go up the tower for various views (its right on the riverside), but I contented myself with the “Notes for Entering the Tower” posted just outside the entryway. I'll post the photo as soon as I can, but the very first rule on the list is as follows:
“The ragamuffin,drunken [sic] people and psychotics are forbidden to enter the Tower.”
Oh my, the questions bubbled, boiled, and swirled in my mind. What exactly is a ragamuffin? Must one be both ragamuffin and drunken to be refused entry? Is there such a thing as a sober ragamuffin? And what exactly is the difference between a ragamuffin drunkard and psychotic? Who could possibly be in charge of answering these questions?
I mulled these and other tangential inquiries over a hot pot lunch (“Cooking Master” restaurant, where all the staff wear jackets proclaiming “I'm Cooking Master!”). It wasn't until later that evening that I was able to settle the ragamuffin question with the help of Cornell and Caroline. Cornell was of the opinion that it must be some synonym for 'hoodlum' or 'vagrant' and I was inclined to agree with him. Caroline, however, surprised us with a vehement declaration that 'ragamuffin' is in fact a reggae-hip hop fusion style. She grew up on a small island in the Indian Ocean, after all, and Marley and disciples rule the islands. It turned out that everyone was right. Wikipedia favored us with the following definitions:
1.Raggamuffin music, usually abbreviated as ragga, is a sub-genre of dancehall music or reggae, in which the instrumentation primarily consists of electronic music. Sampling often serves a prominent role in raggamuffin music as well.
2.A ragamuffin is a shabbily clothed child.
However, I prefer the definition offered by Urban Dictionary:
A grimy dirty little urchin or waif with ratted greasy hair. Usually female.
Brilliant. You've got to love that appended “Usually female.” I wonder who must have taken a survey of ragamuffins and discovered its disproportionately large female constitution.
Later that evening I met up with Cornell after he got off work. We tried a restaurant recommended by his boss for being both authentically Chinese and foreigner friendly. Even on a Monday, however, this place was already booked solid. The hostess gave us the “are you serious?” look when we said we didn't have reservations. Must be more popular than we imagined. It looked pretty posh, I suppose, but I'll never be able to attest to the menu.
Instead we went to the opposite side of the spectrum but no less appetizing. Nearby Cornell's apartment complex is a noodle shop that you'd walk by every time unless you had the go-ahead from someone in the know. It was just a small, tiled, unheated room with four tables and couple scattered stools and picture menus on the walls. Everything is in Chinese but the noodle dishes have pictures up so for me at least I could point and choose. The noodle master then rips off a hunk of dough and stretches out fresh noodles for you right then and there. After they finish cooking the noodles are taken in the back, topped off with whatever you had chosen and then served as a heap so massive my brother would appreciate it. All this for 10 CNY. And don't forget your soup.
The restaurant was one of many similar throughout the city. They are all run by domestic immigrants from the Muslim region of China. The menu and style is uniform at every location though I'm not sure if all the restaurants are connected or independently run. There must be a connection at some level, anyway. If soup doesn't cut it for you, you're free to bring your own beverage, just no alcohol. Also, no pork. If you can get past that, this place is an epic find.
Of course, with Cornell there that was not nearly where the cultural trivia ended. When I asked what the main noodle chef's name was, I was informed it's best to just call him shifu, or master. Any Kung Fu Panda fans out there might remember the redundantly named Master Shifu; same idea. So basically in Chinese culture anyone outside your circle of intimacy is called by their title rather than their name. So we call cabbies and chefs 'shifu' and the cleaning lady 'ayi'. There's probably a bunch more but that's all I've come in contact with so far. This idea is interesting in and of itself but is also telling about greater Chinese culture as well: how everyone treats strangers utterly callously until some connection is made or found, at which point (having entered the circle) people can treat each other as family. Anyway, the noodle shifu was a nice guy from the get go. Its hard to describe without sounding strange but he and the other workers there had a certain kindness about their eyes that was conspicuously missing from the vacant stares most people tend to give strangers, whether in China or elsewhere. Although we couldn't communicate at all, it was clear to me that these were good people or were genetically blessed with kind facial features, or both.
Tuesday was blur of walking around Shanghai sites. I saw Yuyuan Gardens, which must be the prototypical Chinese style garden. I gave up on taking decent pictures because its winter but I'll be back in the spring and I'm sure it'll be pretty outstanding. The garden is set in the greater Yuyuan “cultural area”, which is essentially stylized street mall. Still fun to walk around and people, however, and that's exactly what I did. The decorations for Chinese New Year are pretty impressive.
From here I walked through Old Shanghai, basically quasi-slums. I find it strange that nearly every source I looked at suggested seeing this place when in reality you're just walking through narrow alleys thinking “these people are all pretty poor”. Shanghai might be moving fast but these people aren't so much. And when they do it'll probably be literally: relocated to have their old neighborhoods renovated and redeveloped. I suppose it's a “see it while it lasts” sort of thing, but it still doesn't sit well. The redeeming end to this misadventure was that I found some street markets that don't make it on to any tourist maps. I could tell immediately because the hawkers weren't cat-calling me in broken English; I just got curious looks and then people went back about their business. These markets were cool because, in stead of selling the usual knock-off watches and apparel, they were overflowing with old Maoist paraphernalia. I had to stop myself from getting anything, mostly because I can't carry anything new but also because I'm sure Beijing will also be a treasure trove.
No wrap up for this email, just going to stop here because it appears I'm breaking my promise to stay succinct. Thanks for reading. Loving your response emails. Talk to you again soon.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Shanghai, A Long Beginning
January 21st 2009
It's Wednesday afternoon in Shanghai, raining, so I'm taking the opportunity to take a break from the hustle and bustle to recount the goings-on of the past couple days. Plenty to talk about.
I walked off the ship Sunday morning and filed through a surprisingly casual Chinese immigration checkpoint. I didn't have any checked luggage to pick up so I ambled up the garage exit onto the street and – voila – Kevin was in China. Success! This victory was short-lived, however, because I realized I hadn't properly prepared for arriving in China. I needed to contact Cornell, but to do this I needed a phone. If I could find a phone, I needed money to pay for it. I was carrying plenty of money – USD and JPY – but no CNY. At most airports there are moneychangers in every corner, but having arrived by boat I was let off in a still-developing much-deserted corner of town. I started walking in concentric circles looking for a bank, contemplating the whole time that I was looking for an open bank on a Sunday morning. Just before panic and despair set in I did finally find an open bank and managed to change some of my JPY to local currency, though not without the requisite questioning by foreign authorities over my last name as printed in my passport (White III). This has happened to me in just about every country in the world and after a few futile attempts at explaining the peculiar naming traditions of my native culture I've decided to let the world's bureaucracies come to know me simply as “Whitey”. At any rate I'll need a new passport in 2010 so I'll take care of it then.
Now that I had plenty of cash, I had to find a phone. Unhelpfully, all the phone booths I found had the phones ripped out. Made me feel right at home, actually, because the same usually happens back in the states. I wandered in to a convenient store and attempted to express my predicament in sign language. When the women behind the counter figured me out but could not help I was saved by my first friendly stranger. The guy in line in front of me had stuck around to observe my act and, after his own gestured performance, led me around the corner to an inconspicuous kiosk. I wouldn't have guessed the two people chilling on lawn chairs were actually selling anything, but they had big white boards with long strings of numbers and two phones on a desk. The numbers were apparently SIMM cards and the phones were replacement public services. Sure. I made contact with Cornell and everything was good again. My new mime friend went back about his day and I hopped in a taxi.
Although Cornell was having lunch with his grandmother, I was let in to the pad by one of his roommates. Cornell lives in Shanghai with two lovely French expats, Yannick and Caroline. As for how I know Cornell, when I originally lived in Japan in 2005 we lived across the street from one another in Iwade. Yannick let me in to the apartment to drop off my stuff and then I headed to People's Square one metro stop away on Cornell's advice. People's Square is the very center of Shanghai and on Sunday afternoon was covered with the milling crowds one would expect from one of China's three largest cities. Walking down the pedestrian streets absorbing the vibe was a good first-contact with the city. I turned one corner and came face to face with a Howard Johnson's set into a an 1920s style building. A HoJos in downtown Shanghai? Call me crazy but I thought I remembered this hotel string going out of business when I was a kid. Well HoJo is alive and well in contemporary China and even constitutes an upper-middle class experience. Weird.
I probably don't give myself enough credit with my Japanese because when you come to a place where you really can't communicate it becomes very apparent very quickly. Ordering food or buying anything anywhere has degenerated to pointing at products and punching numbers into a calculator. So when I had lunch as a busy noodle shop on the pedestrian strip at People's Square it was quite a scene for everyone around. Even in metropolitan Shanghai the fascination with foreigners is more robust than it was in Japan and kids especially seem curious with a white man that can use his chopsticks skillfully. The aged woman next to me unobtrusively appraised my dexterous fingering and, I think (hope?), nodded approvingly.
When I related my lunchtime adventures to Cornell he quipped that my restaurant, Ajisen, was actually a localized Japanese noodle franchise. Oh well, so much for branching out. We met back at his place around 2:30 and reminisced about Wakayama for a while. I hadn't seen the guy in three years but rest assured he's still the same good old Cornell. He's an intelligent, professional, thoughtful sort of guy that you'd be lucky enough to meet two or three of these sorts people in your lifetime. Aside from granting me the gracious hospitality of his home and showing me the better parts of the city, his combined knowledge and experience of the place offers an insight into Shanghai that you couldn't get from a guide book and would be supremely lucky to get from even a good professional tour guide. I'd be fortunate if a fraction of what he's told me will be transmitted to you, and I'm sure it will end up significantly less eloquent. At any rate, I'm lucky to have met him this early in my trip as his advice will be useful throughout all of China and elsewhere. On with the good times.
We made our way to a local fake-market to test my bargaining skills. I got a Billabong t-shirt and Lacoste polo shit for a combined 100 CNY (I should note here I'm not sure exactly the best way to refer to Chinese money. I've heard it called “RNB”, “kwai”, “Chinese dollars”, “yuan” and the official international market abbreviation is “CNY”. For simplicity I'll stick with CNY). The current exchange is about 6.8 CNY to the USD, so I usually just divide by 7. Not a bad price, I thought, but now that I've been back a few times and having seen others haggle, I'm sure I could have gotten down to 50 CNY. Note, as well, that my opponent started somewhere around an absurd 480 CNY. As Cornell has explained its just a game to them and they're always going to be better at it than you. I'm sure they receive these shirts for less than a dollar apiece anyway so anything over 10 CNY is probably pure profit. Anyway, if you don't take it too seriously its great fun.
For dinner we went to restaurant that specializes in a Shanghai original, cold boiled chicken. The chicken is sliced with a butchers knife and so comes served bones and all. You gnaw the flesh away from the bones and then spit out on to the table. Yup, on to the table. Soon I had a morbid hill of delicious death growing beside my rice bowl. Considering the long history of bone-spitters before me, you can imagine that the 3-second-rule certainly doesn't apply here. We also had a boiled spinach dish and a mushroom beef dish. Cornell noted that 1) in Shanghai its traditional to eat rice last (as opposed to everywhere else in Asia where rice is ubiquitous with your meal) because its a sign of wealth not to have to serve such a cheap commodity as filler with your meal, and 2) the Western tradition of serving cold drinks with meals flies in the face of Chinese traditions of yin-yang, and so in China you'll find that the “drink” with you meal is typically the hot soup which accompanies it. Foreign infidels that we are, we ordered to Wong Lo Kats (totally not sure of the accuracy of this name), sweetened tea served by the can. All in all a good meal and a great introduction to proper Chinese cuisine.
After dinner we went to an area called Xin Tian Di which is being developed by Cornell's firm, Shui On. The firm was granted master planning rights to a huge swath of land south of People's Square and in stead of knocking everything down and starting from scratch there was a modest effort made to preserve the traditional Shikumen structures, a Euro-Asian fusion style developed when foreign powers exacted concessions from a weak Chinese governement back in the 1800s. Except for the unfortunately prominent placement of a Starbucks the place has a very good vibe. The developement's theme is “Where the past meets tomorrow, today.” and while this may sound cheesy it is actually a pretty apt description. Xin Tian Di has a museum on Shikumen architecture which I later visited, but coolest of all is that on one out-of-the-way street corner is the site of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China, back when it was just thirteen guys in a room doing their best not be discovered by the KMT. The museum has short biographies with back-then photos of each of the thirteen delegates, including a 20-something Mao. Curiously, based on the biographies about half the original thirteen ended up being arrested, if not executed, at some point in the future by the very party they founded.
The last thing we did that night was to visit the west side of the Bund, the strip along the water that is home to Shanghai's famous skyline. I've seen many a skyline throughout the world, but Shanghai is blessed with one of the best. The west side is lined with roaring-20s style regal buildings that used to house European banks and now house Chinese banks. If any of you appreciate the old WB Batman cartoons, these buildings come straight out of that old-school Gotham City. On the east bank are more modern skyscrapers, all of which are impressively tall but have less personality. The exception to this rule is one building which fuses the two styles and is now my favorite. Not sure what it's called but it's a modern skyscraper, with the sleek glass and steel look, done in the 1920s tiered style that makes it look like something a cyborg King Kong might climb.
At the end of that day it was hard to imagine that I had woken up on a boat, but the next day was shaping up to be just as action-packed. And not in the good way. I had arrived the week before Chinese New Year's, arguably one of the most heavily and densely celebrated holidays in the world. My plan to travel the following weekend to Hong Kong started to seem laughably naive. On top of that, I had to get my visa for Vietnam and the consulates were sure to be closed in China over the holidays. As happy as I was to be in China at last, these problems were both large and pressing. No rest for the weary.
It's Wednesday afternoon in Shanghai, raining, so I'm taking the opportunity to take a break from the hustle and bustle to recount the goings-on of the past couple days. Plenty to talk about.
I walked off the ship Sunday morning and filed through a surprisingly casual Chinese immigration checkpoint. I didn't have any checked luggage to pick up so I ambled up the garage exit onto the street and – voila – Kevin was in China. Success! This victory was short-lived, however, because I realized I hadn't properly prepared for arriving in China. I needed to contact Cornell, but to do this I needed a phone. If I could find a phone, I needed money to pay for it. I was carrying plenty of money – USD and JPY – but no CNY. At most airports there are moneychangers in every corner, but having arrived by boat I was let off in a still-developing much-deserted corner of town. I started walking in concentric circles looking for a bank, contemplating the whole time that I was looking for an open bank on a Sunday morning. Just before panic and despair set in I did finally find an open bank and managed to change some of my JPY to local currency, though not without the requisite questioning by foreign authorities over my last name as printed in my passport (White III). This has happened to me in just about every country in the world and after a few futile attempts at explaining the peculiar naming traditions of my native culture I've decided to let the world's bureaucracies come to know me simply as “Whitey”. At any rate I'll need a new passport in 2010 so I'll take care of it then.
Now that I had plenty of cash, I had to find a phone. Unhelpfully, all the phone booths I found had the phones ripped out. Made me feel right at home, actually, because the same usually happens back in the states. I wandered in to a convenient store and attempted to express my predicament in sign language. When the women behind the counter figured me out but could not help I was saved by my first friendly stranger. The guy in line in front of me had stuck around to observe my act and, after his own gestured performance, led me around the corner to an inconspicuous kiosk. I wouldn't have guessed the two people chilling on lawn chairs were actually selling anything, but they had big white boards with long strings of numbers and two phones on a desk. The numbers were apparently SIMM cards and the phones were replacement public services. Sure. I made contact with Cornell and everything was good again. My new mime friend went back about his day and I hopped in a taxi.
Although Cornell was having lunch with his grandmother, I was let in to the pad by one of his roommates. Cornell lives in Shanghai with two lovely French expats, Yannick and Caroline. As for how I know Cornell, when I originally lived in Japan in 2005 we lived across the street from one another in Iwade. Yannick let me in to the apartment to drop off my stuff and then I headed to People's Square one metro stop away on Cornell's advice. People's Square is the very center of Shanghai and on Sunday afternoon was covered with the milling crowds one would expect from one of China's three largest cities. Walking down the pedestrian streets absorbing the vibe was a good first-contact with the city. I turned one corner and came face to face with a Howard Johnson's set into a an 1920s style building. A HoJos in downtown Shanghai? Call me crazy but I thought I remembered this hotel string going out of business when I was a kid. Well HoJo is alive and well in contemporary China and even constitutes an upper-middle class experience. Weird.
I probably don't give myself enough credit with my Japanese because when you come to a place where you really can't communicate it becomes very apparent very quickly. Ordering food or buying anything anywhere has degenerated to pointing at products and punching numbers into a calculator. So when I had lunch as a busy noodle shop on the pedestrian strip at People's Square it was quite a scene for everyone around. Even in metropolitan Shanghai the fascination with foreigners is more robust than it was in Japan and kids especially seem curious with a white man that can use his chopsticks skillfully. The aged woman next to me unobtrusively appraised my dexterous fingering and, I think (hope?), nodded approvingly.
When I related my lunchtime adventures to Cornell he quipped that my restaurant, Ajisen, was actually a localized Japanese noodle franchise. Oh well, so much for branching out. We met back at his place around 2:30 and reminisced about Wakayama for a while. I hadn't seen the guy in three years but rest assured he's still the same good old Cornell. He's an intelligent, professional, thoughtful sort of guy that you'd be lucky enough to meet two or three of these sorts people in your lifetime. Aside from granting me the gracious hospitality of his home and showing me the better parts of the city, his combined knowledge and experience of the place offers an insight into Shanghai that you couldn't get from a guide book and would be supremely lucky to get from even a good professional tour guide. I'd be fortunate if a fraction of what he's told me will be transmitted to you, and I'm sure it will end up significantly less eloquent. At any rate, I'm lucky to have met him this early in my trip as his advice will be useful throughout all of China and elsewhere. On with the good times.
We made our way to a local fake-market to test my bargaining skills. I got a Billabong t-shirt and Lacoste polo shit for a combined 100 CNY (I should note here I'm not sure exactly the best way to refer to Chinese money. I've heard it called “RNB”, “kwai”, “Chinese dollars”, “yuan” and the official international market abbreviation is “CNY”. For simplicity I'll stick with CNY). The current exchange is about 6.8 CNY to the USD, so I usually just divide by 7. Not a bad price, I thought, but now that I've been back a few times and having seen others haggle, I'm sure I could have gotten down to 50 CNY. Note, as well, that my opponent started somewhere around an absurd 480 CNY. As Cornell has explained its just a game to them and they're always going to be better at it than you. I'm sure they receive these shirts for less than a dollar apiece anyway so anything over 10 CNY is probably pure profit. Anyway, if you don't take it too seriously its great fun.
For dinner we went to restaurant that specializes in a Shanghai original, cold boiled chicken. The chicken is sliced with a butchers knife and so comes served bones and all. You gnaw the flesh away from the bones and then spit out on to the table. Yup, on to the table. Soon I had a morbid hill of delicious death growing beside my rice bowl. Considering the long history of bone-spitters before me, you can imagine that the 3-second-rule certainly doesn't apply here. We also had a boiled spinach dish and a mushroom beef dish. Cornell noted that 1) in Shanghai its traditional to eat rice last (as opposed to everywhere else in Asia where rice is ubiquitous with your meal) because its a sign of wealth not to have to serve such a cheap commodity as filler with your meal, and 2) the Western tradition of serving cold drinks with meals flies in the face of Chinese traditions of yin-yang, and so in China you'll find that the “drink” with you meal is typically the hot soup which accompanies it. Foreign infidels that we are, we ordered to Wong Lo Kats (totally not sure of the accuracy of this name), sweetened tea served by the can. All in all a good meal and a great introduction to proper Chinese cuisine.
After dinner we went to an area called Xin Tian Di which is being developed by Cornell's firm, Shui On. The firm was granted master planning rights to a huge swath of land south of People's Square and in stead of knocking everything down and starting from scratch there was a modest effort made to preserve the traditional Shikumen structures, a Euro-Asian fusion style developed when foreign powers exacted concessions from a weak Chinese governement back in the 1800s. Except for the unfortunately prominent placement of a Starbucks the place has a very good vibe. The developement's theme is “Where the past meets tomorrow, today.” and while this may sound cheesy it is actually a pretty apt description. Xin Tian Di has a museum on Shikumen architecture which I later visited, but coolest of all is that on one out-of-the-way street corner is the site of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China, back when it was just thirteen guys in a room doing their best not be discovered by the KMT. The museum has short biographies with back-then photos of each of the thirteen delegates, including a 20-something Mao. Curiously, based on the biographies about half the original thirteen ended up being arrested, if not executed, at some point in the future by the very party they founded.
The last thing we did that night was to visit the west side of the Bund, the strip along the water that is home to Shanghai's famous skyline. I've seen many a skyline throughout the world, but Shanghai is blessed with one of the best. The west side is lined with roaring-20s style regal buildings that used to house European banks and now house Chinese banks. If any of you appreciate the old WB Batman cartoons, these buildings come straight out of that old-school Gotham City. On the east bank are more modern skyscrapers, all of which are impressively tall but have less personality. The exception to this rule is one building which fuses the two styles and is now my favorite. Not sure what it's called but it's a modern skyscraper, with the sleek glass and steel look, done in the 1920s tiered style that makes it look like something a cyborg King Kong might climb.
At the end of that day it was hard to imagine that I had woken up on a boat, but the next day was shaping up to be just as action-packed. And not in the good way. I had arrived the week before Chinese New Year's, arguably one of the most heavily and densely celebrated holidays in the world. My plan to travel the following weekend to Hong Kong started to seem laughably naive. On top of that, I had to get my visa for Vietnam and the consulates were sure to be closed in China over the holidays. As happy as I was to be in China at last, these problems were both large and pressing. No rest for the weary.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The Ferry
January 18th 2009
Two days ago I took a ferry out of Osaka port bound for Shanghai. This morning (it's around 9:00am) we're currently pulling in to Shanghai. I woke up to find a red disk sun rising over sparse forest off the port side... and warships lining the canal off the starboard. What an apt representation of this country's many curious dichotomies. I like China already.
My last night in Osaka I took a bath with three yakuza. The top floor of my Osaka business hotel had a sentou on it and so I went for my last ever Japanese bath. At first the businessmen were giving me dirty/curious/stony looks for my tattoo. When the yakuza walked in the businessmen's all eyes strayed toward fixed spots on the ceiling. All three of them had the tell-tale body-covering Japanese tattoos which identified them immediately. If surface area-covered is any indication of mafia hierarchy then the guy with both arms, back, neck, pectorals and cheeks (not face, ladies) was probably their leader. Of course, by nature of the fact that they were themselves staying in a cheap business hotel meant they couldn't be very far up the line. Anyway, when they started to read my back out loud I turned around and we made sparse conversation. They feigned interest in my up-coming trip; I forced laughter at their racist jokes. Most of the businessmen had taken this opportunity to excuse themselves so when the yakuza had sated their curiosity with me I was finally free to relax with my hot bath and ume-shu. Japan is all about the small pleasures.
The last week in Japan was full of sayonara parties: good food with great people and copious amounts of drinks. Thanks to everyone who helped me celebrate my many send-offs. Its hard to believe my Japanese adventures are over, at least for now, but I haven't had too much time to fret about it because all of mainland Asia awaits.
The ferry from Osaka to Shanghai hasn't been bad, exactly, but I can't really call it good, either. There isn't much going on on the ship. There's only about fifty passengers, including about six other foreigners, though everyone has mostly kept to themselves. My book was supposed to last me the entire trip (3 days and 2 nights) but I was so bored out of my mind that I finished it the first day. For anyone interested, The Kite Runner was good but incredibly depressing. Also, the ending was embarrassingly predictable which, considering the premise of the story, felt somehow cheap. Don't let this stop you from reading it, however, because despite my diatribes I still read it cover to cover in a single sitting which is more than I can say about most books.
The rest of my time on the ship has been spent on rotation between sleeping (twelve hours a day to kill time), eating, listening to lectures and podcasts, and also (children, earmuffs) a good amount of time on the john. Something from Friday definitely hit me hard on Saturday, and that's all I'm going to say about that.
Nothing else of note really happened during two days at sea. We hugged the Japanese islands for the majority of the time, only going into open water for the short stretch between Kyushu and maindland China. My room, advertised as “authentic Japanese style” was actually just a big open room with about twenty or thirty sleeping pads and a variety of passengers milling about. Besides the fact that I couldn't really roll over, on the whole it wasn't as bad as first appeared. Everyone was pretty mellowed out and except for the occasional talkative old man people generally kept to themselves.
Time to get off the boat.
Two days ago I took a ferry out of Osaka port bound for Shanghai. This morning (it's around 9:00am) we're currently pulling in to Shanghai. I woke up to find a red disk sun rising over sparse forest off the port side... and warships lining the canal off the starboard. What an apt representation of this country's many curious dichotomies. I like China already.
My last night in Osaka I took a bath with three yakuza. The top floor of my Osaka business hotel had a sentou on it and so I went for my last ever Japanese bath. At first the businessmen were giving me dirty/curious/stony looks for my tattoo. When the yakuza walked in the businessmen's all eyes strayed toward fixed spots on the ceiling. All three of them had the tell-tale body-covering Japanese tattoos which identified them immediately. If surface area-covered is any indication of mafia hierarchy then the guy with both arms, back, neck, pectorals and cheeks (not face, ladies) was probably their leader. Of course, by nature of the fact that they were themselves staying in a cheap business hotel meant they couldn't be very far up the line. Anyway, when they started to read my back out loud I turned around and we made sparse conversation. They feigned interest in my up-coming trip; I forced laughter at their racist jokes. Most of the businessmen had taken this opportunity to excuse themselves so when the yakuza had sated their curiosity with me I was finally free to relax with my hot bath and ume-shu. Japan is all about the small pleasures.
The last week in Japan was full of sayonara parties: good food with great people and copious amounts of drinks. Thanks to everyone who helped me celebrate my many send-offs. Its hard to believe my Japanese adventures are over, at least for now, but I haven't had too much time to fret about it because all of mainland Asia awaits.
The ferry from Osaka to Shanghai hasn't been bad, exactly, but I can't really call it good, either. There isn't much going on on the ship. There's only about fifty passengers, including about six other foreigners, though everyone has mostly kept to themselves. My book was supposed to last me the entire trip (3 days and 2 nights) but I was so bored out of my mind that I finished it the first day. For anyone interested, The Kite Runner was good but incredibly depressing. Also, the ending was embarrassingly predictable which, considering the premise of the story, felt somehow cheap. Don't let this stop you from reading it, however, because despite my diatribes I still read it cover to cover in a single sitting which is more than I can say about most books.
The rest of my time on the ship has been spent on rotation between sleeping (twelve hours a day to kill time), eating, listening to lectures and podcasts, and also (children, earmuffs) a good amount of time on the john. Something from Friday definitely hit me hard on Saturday, and that's all I'm going to say about that.
Nothing else of note really happened during two days at sea. We hugged the Japanese islands for the majority of the time, only going into open water for the short stretch between Kyushu and maindland China. My room, advertised as “authentic Japanese style” was actually just a big open room with about twenty or thirty sleeping pads and a variety of passengers milling about. Besides the fact that I couldn't really roll over, on the whole it wasn't as bad as first appeared. Everyone was pretty mellowed out and except for the occasional talkative old man people generally kept to themselves.
Time to get off the boat.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Kick Off
January 9th 2009
It's been a while but Kevin's Travel Journal is about to make its much-talked-about-but-little-seen return to prominence. Or at least regularity. The occasion, of course, is the start of my long awaited Asian Tour. This Tour has been my brainchild for the past five years, from the coffee shops of Montreal and lecture halls of McGill to month-to-month pay savings of Japan and the good people at UFJ Mitsubishi Ginko. I've finally managed to pull together a sufficient amount of funds to make this the trip I wanted it to be and with favorable weather patterns and planetary alignment it is time at last to set off. Departure date is set for January 16th from Osaka Port, headed straight for the Asian mainland via Shanghai. And so it goes.
The tentative plan is to travel south for warmth, through China to Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. By Spring I hope to travel north into India and then back east again through China and to make Mongolia by summer. That's the short of it; the long of it will be doled out over the next several months as it happens. The who/what/when/where/why/how will hopefully entertain, inspire, motivate and captivate you – do not hesitate to show your enthusiasm with response emails or Western Union wires.
In response to past commentary I will be pro-actively curbing the worst excesses of my infamous prolific tendencies. That's not to say there will be absolutely no exercises in reader-patience, but I promise that the majority of entries will come in more manageable bites.
In keeping with that spirit I will end this first email here with one last double-invitation: if you'd rather save your in-box some space don't hesitate to let me know and I'll remove you from my send-list with minimal offense; on the contrary, if you or someone you know needs more Kevin in their life, send their email address my way and I'd be happy to add them to said send-list. Finally, for those of you who want all your Kevin in one convenient location, simply bookmark this page, the official repository of all things Kevin: past, present, and future.
Take care for now, ya'll
Kevin
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