So, Shanghai Day 2! That is, if you count the evening of our arrival as Day 1. Sally's cousin or uncle or second cousin once removed or something called to say he wanted to take us around the city. Suspicious, we accepted mainly because no matter how lame her anonymous 40-year-old relative may have been, he would still be family - and more importantly, a free tour guide.
And then this 24-year-old dude named Stone with great English and a rather raunchy sense of humor shows up claiming to be Sally's half second cousin! We found out that he had visited her family a couple years ago but she was away at school. He'd worked in Texas for awhile, and wanted to study law at NYU next year.
Stone was everything we could want in a guide, and more. I would go so far as to say he sort of defined our stay in Shanghai. He took us to the best cheap food and all the big tourist destinations that day (best fried dumplings I HAVE EVER HAD by FAR), introduced us to three awesome friends of his, and took us out to the coolest bar I have ever been to on our last night there.
I already mentioned the architecture in my last, truncated post. That's basically what there is to see in Shanghai. Stone showed it all to us in the first afternoon... but I still loved it, empty as it seemed compared to Beijing's wealth of culture and history and places for tourists to spend their money! We had dinner with an expat American friend of his, an engaging cook-turned-manager who made us eat fish head. It was just fatty, bland meat. Also, Scott and Sally each ate one of the eyes!!!, though only after much heckling. Scott looked like he was gonna die... but at least he didn't wriggle out of it like I did :)
There's also People's Square, like a small Central Park but way less cool. Probably its most interesting feature is that it is intentionally the anti-Tiananmen Square: after what happened in Beijing, the city has built buildings, trees, railings and other impediments throughout it so people can't gather in protest. People's Square borders Nanjing Road, a big shopping area where Scott and I got amazing massages on Day 3. Sally was having a family day, ten hours at the Expo, which Scott and I were relieved to find we could decline participating in without pissing anyone off. So instead we walked around People's Square and got massages on Nanjing Road, near our hostel, before heading over to the expo for a much less horrifying 5-hour stint, 5-10 PM. (One **great** thing about China is that everybody seems to be early birds when it comes to sightseeing, so if you want to avoid the crowds of Chinese tourists that swarm all the same places we're going, all you have to do is sleep in and take your time getting there!!)
As an aside, I had a whole conversation with my masseuse! At this point I know just enough Chinese to induce people to respond to my requests by chattering in rapid Chinese I can't understand a word of. But this particular lady wanted to chat, and understood that my level of Chinese required her to speak slowly and simply, so I found out that her family is from Xi'an, she hasn't been to the Expo yet, told her about Scott and Sally and our vacation ("This friend doesn't speak Chinese. We have a friend speaks Chinese. We on vacation, her family Chinese," etc.) Stone told me how to say San Francisco - "Jiu Jin Shan," or "old gold mountain," is how most people know it, although you can also say a transliterated version, "Shan fu lang si xi ke" - so I told her "I go to San Francisco study Stanford. I want to be a scientist." Etc. Stanford is "Stan fu" in Mandarin, cutely enough. (Related: Take heart, Wash Uers! Everybody knows Washington University here!!)
Anyway, I had fun, Scott was impressed, it was great. And I was able to perceive her cooing over and over about how beautiful my hair is (while she worked on my back) and how pretty my eyes are (when I'd flipped over for her to massage my head, arms and legs.)
Listen, if anyone has ever referred to your hair as blond and your skin as pale or even pasty, do yourself a favor and go to China. Guaranteed self-esteem boost. Everywhere I go - family dinners, the terracotta warriors, the bathroom in KFC - strangers are constantly saying "Piaoliang!" ("Pretty!") Whereas all Sally hears is "What happened?You're so black [and therefore ugly]!"
Although at our glamour photo shoot, the makeup artists and photographers did keep complimenting her bust. Even when her little brother was around... it was super weird.
So anyway, the massages were great, the Expo was okay, and when we were done there Stone took us out with his rooommate Annie to this steampunk/1930s French shabby chic (maybe actual chic? it was dark and crowded) bar, Club 88. It was located in _the_ neighborhood for nightlife, also and not coincidentally a big foreigner hangout, the French Concession. We danced and danced and danced. Literally until dawn, for the first time in my life (and Sally's and Scott's, but not Stone's and Annie's, I bet!) At 4 AM on a Monday night it was still crowded, that's how good the nightlife is in Shanghai!
The next day, exhausted, Scott flew back to the US :-( We miss you, Scott!! He was a fantastic traveling companion. Sally, her dad & brother & I struck out for Nanjing. There, we had dinner with her aunt, uncle and 21-year-old cousin, all of whom teach at the same university - you know, the one whose foreign guest house we're staying at for $10/night. Later, her aunt brought out some watermelon, and I managed a couple slices before my stomach started to hurt a little (nothing out of the ordinary) and I stopped. When they offered me more, I said, "Bu yong, xiexie. Wo bu keyi. Wo duzi tong." ("No, thanks. I can't. I have abdominal pain.") To no avail - my polite refusal was met with "No, it's okay! Eat, eat! Eat!" So I ate :) There is so much social pressure over what you eat and how much. Like the duck brain.
We came back to this same restaurant the next day, and I had a quick lunch there today, so let's take this moment for a food update. It was okay, they have amazing egg rolls, but just like most other places we've been to since Xi'an, outside of the dumplings a lot of the food was blander and oilier than I'd like. Don't tell Sally (she'll never read this ;) but if there's one disappointing thing about China it's that GLORIOUS NATION HAS NO FLAWS in a hurry at a Japanese noodle place on Nanjing Road. I got a fried pork chop over rice and IT WAS INFERIOR because it actually had yellow onions!
I miss a lot of flavors you can get in the US, like non-scallion onions, more than any specific food - except Jimmy John's, of course. And even the scallions here are usually cooked into oblivion and barely discernable. I also miss the diversity of ethnic and ethnic-derived foods you can easily get in the U.S.
So next thing was our first full day in Nanjing! Sally and her brother had appointments to get glamour shots, a full day of hacky photoshooting in various outfits that results in a big book of hastily photoshopped tableaus with incorrect and totally unrelated English phrases marring them. I was originally not invited and planning to spend the day reading in a cafe or something (not much to do in Nanjing), but Sally suggested that I buy my own shoot! It sounded like such fun, and I realized I'd finally found a good souvenir for my mom, so I shelled out the $80 (one of the most expensive things we've done so far - only the cruise and Huangshan, which was clearly a total institutional-level racket start to finish, cost more). We had our faces caked with makeup and our hair coiffed with monsoon-like amounts of hair spray, until suddenly, miraculously...
...we looked like total models!!
If you didn't inspect our mascara or foundation too closely, anyway. But really, we looked gorgeous, wait til we get the pictures.
We posed from 9 AM until 4 PM. Four outfits were chosen, sometimes by the hairdressers against our will: one formal, one traditional Chinese, one glamorous and one casual/sexy. The glamorous one sounds weird but will probably turn out great: a lot of face and shoulder shots with us wearing white fur tube tops and posing at a mirrored table that was at the height of our armpits, so our faces and a little fur were reflected in it. The sexy one... well, they were really insistent on us wearing these early Britney Spears-like outfits. I barely managed to refuse a pair of knee-high, lace-up, black pleather boots with 4-inch heels. And then they called us prudes. It was bizarre, honestly. I guess Chinese people are more open about these things? Even though everyone usually dresses really modestly by US standards. I can't quite piece it all together.
Then I bought a dizi and an erhu for my brothers from a really enthusiastic older guy, a professional musician, at a Yamaha store. With Sally's aunt's help, I got decent instruments for good prices. They're cheap compared to Western instruments: about $40 each. Their higher-end ones went up to $200-$250. I also got an introductory lesson book for each of the instruments. Chinese musical notation is different- should be fun to decipher!
Today I let Sally have some time to bond with her little brother before they separate until God knows when (he's going back to Hangzhou tomorrow) - i.e., Steven wanted to go to an amusement park, and I thought that was as fine an excuse as any. In the end they never made it to that amusement park despite heading out at 8 AM (not sure why) ... while I slept in, found out that you aren't allowed to wear flip flops in the university library, got in anyway and used a computer to chat with Rafa, lunched on the best egg rolls I've ever eaten, got an hourlong head/neck/back massage at a little barbershop for $2 US, and am now sitting peacefully in an overpriced cafe. I had a decent coffee and a nice dinner for $4 each, and am still working on a delicious pot of rosehip tea that was $5. I'm using their internet and reading Shantaram and noticing the waitresses staring at my hair. It's great!
In an hour they'll pick me up for karaoke, tomorrow we'll see the sights in Nanjing - mainly of a historical nature - and probably the next day will involve more Tan clan bonding. Then back to Beijing to see the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, an acrobat show and the new, hip 798 art district!
Then I'll be home!
Love,
Beike
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