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.