China Trip Notes, Chapter 1: Shanghai (05.20-21.2008)

Shanghai. The very word conjures up hopelessly exotic associations in the western mind: sailors press-ganged onto trading ships; Jackie Chan movies; James Bond-esque high speed car chases; neon lights; hot sweaty markets. The Shanghai we saw was an exotic juxtaposition of modern architecture next to age-old market streets and creaky domiciles, high-tech business buildings next to funky looking foot-massage parlors and street-side food vendors of debatable hygiene selling Mysterious Things That Mostly Smelled Good. The heat is stifling, the pollution asphyxiating, the traffic an insane circus of cars, bikes, giant tricycles, scooters, and pedestrians. Twenty-three million souls live here, the 4th most populous city on the globe.

Our first sight of China was Shanghai Pudong airport, a modern mega-structure of mind-boggling size. Our traveling companion Coop, being a facilities manager, was especially intrigued, since he knows far more that we two about what’s involved in running such a humongous facility. I don’t know what the others were expecting, but I certainly hadn’t pictured this shining futuristic extravaganza: Beam me up, Scotty!

Customs was surprisingly easy; after the usual formalities of having passport, visa, and entry card scrutinized, we just strolled in. We were met by the tour’s organizer and guide and the UK saxophone/jazz professor, who was already in Asia on tour and joining the UK group at that point. Since the UK group had been delayed by an entire day, it had been arranged that the four of us would stay at a hotel in Shanghai and hang out in the city until the rest of the band got there the next day. We broke into two groups to drive to the hotel, and so off we flew down the freeways through Shanghai’s insane traffic, and arrived at the hotel.

The very thought "I am standing on the street in Shanghai" was mind-boggling. I borrowed Coyotebanjo's phone, called my mother, got her answering machine, told her where we were and that we were safe, and just held the phone up to the deafening traffic.

The hotel room was tiny but perfectly serviceable, with two small twin beds. There was momentary darkness and confusion until we discovered that in Chinese hotels, the electrical power in the room is turned on by inserting your room key into a little device on the wall just inside the door. All the hotel beds on the trip had very nice pillows and comfortable quilt-type covers, but all of the beds were also incredibly hard – and the ones in Shanghai were truly rock-like. Fortunately, the shower was great and the AC blasted satisfactorily when turned up. I welcomed the chance to stand there stupefied in the shower while the water washed off the 25-hour trip: Two hours from shuttle to Dallas plane; four hours from Dallas to SF; 4 hours at the SFO airport, 14 hours from SFO to Shanghai with the initial delay, and another hour or so between plane-landing and hotel. On top of that, we had crossed the International Date Line; so we had left Dallas on Monday morning, and arrived in Shanghai on Tuesday night.

The tour organizer took us to a nearby restaurant. In China, meals are communal, and the idea of ordering your own meal or eating by yourself is considered quite odd. As a result, restaurants in China tend to have round tables with a revolving glass disc on the top. The food is placed on the glass, and then passed from one diner to another by pushing the glass disc around the table. People take food from these communal plates with their chopsticks. If you don’t know how to use chopsticks, You Learn Fast. If you are squeamish about germs from other peoples chopsticks, your only options are starve or Get Over It.

Our tour organizer clearly wanted to be a good host and offer us the local cuisine. The menu itself proved to be relatively terrifying for those of us who are iffy about organ-meat and crustaceans. To our relief, he ordered for us, whereupon I volunteered that I was a vegetarian, but hastened to add that I was not strict and tried to be flexible when traveling. He ordered great food, and included some vegetarian dishes for my benefit, which was very kind of him: a very tasty eggplant dish, a great tofu dish, and a plate of very good vegetables that tasted a bit like small, lightly stir-fried cucumbers. We also ordered beer, and chose Tsingdao, since we’d all had it in the States. Imagine our surprise to discover that Chinese Tsingdao is incredibly light - kind of like beer-flavored soda-pop. It transpired that most Chinese beer (pijiu) was like soda-pop, and most Chinese liquor (baijiu) was gut-wrenching white stuff that you could use to clean hubcaps – but more on that later.

After dinner, we went for a walk, a couple of blocks in each direction. The hotel was near a large overpass that had a walkway from one side of the street to the other. There were street vendors; lots of little stores, most still open; bars, hotels, restaurants, and still a respectable amount of traffic. On top of the walkway was a guy playing an ocarina, which incredibly could be heard over the traffic. The heat had subsided, mercifully, although the air remains tropically moist even at night. On our return back to the hotel, the guys had another drink at the hotel bar; then we went back to the lobby, checked our e-mail at the internet station (glacially slow), and went to bed. At first, I had trouble sleeping, between the adrenaline, the rocklike bed, and the chattering girls in the next room. Fortunately, they were chattering in Chinese, and since I don’t understand a word, it eventually just became background noise.

Wednesday morning in Shanghai began with breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Like many of the hotel restaurants we encountered, this consisted of a buffet with mostly Chinese dishes (tripe for breakfast, yum) and a few dishes aimed at western visitors (the occasional scrambled or hard-boiled eggs, bread or toast, some sweets, and carafes of instant coffee, Nescafe being a favorite – my kingdom for a Starbucks!). The Chinese food was on the whole quite good, though a lot of it was unfamiliar and sometimes a little challenging. Also, the Chinese use lard when they cook and seem to drown everything in oil of various kinds -- even the stir-fried stuff is done with much more oil than we’re used to. Let’s just say this: it’s a damned good thing that tea supposedly lowers cholesterol.

We had several hours to play with before we had to go meet the rest of the group at the airport, so we decided to do some exploring. We thought we’d check out the riverfront promenade, or the “Bund,” which is in the Old City, and possibly the Yuyuan garden and the nearby market.

The cab at our hotel cab stand wasn’t interested in taking us, for reasons we couldn’t figure out (he kept gesturing for us to cross the street – several lanes of chaos on each side, and a harder task than you might think). We walked to the next hotel and hailed a cab there; he drove for quite awhile and then evicted us.

We soon figured out that this paragon of navigation had dumped us off at least a half-mile from our destination. After a long and sweaty walk, some of which was spent heading in the wrong direction (my fault), we found the Yuyuan market area. We were still relatively far from the promenade by the river, so we bagged that idea and spent the rest of our time cruising around in the mob of humanity at the market. We were soaked with sweat – it was probably only 88 or 89 degrees, but the humidity is oppressive; the air is soaked with moisture, and the pollution and smog so thick that the city sits in a brown haze that makes your eyes water and your nose clog. Not to be deterred, we had quite a nice time at the market, playing tourist.

All too soon we had to head back to the hotel, since we had to go out to the airport to meet the rest of the group. On the way home in the taxi, I saw my favorite sign translation of the trip, written under a bunch of Chinese characters on the back of the cabbie’s seat:


"Psychos and drunkards without guardian
not allowed to ride in taxicab."


When we arrived at Shanghai Pudong Airport to meet the group, we discovered that their flight was 2 hours late – they had one hellish trip, having been delayed an entire day on one end and several more hours on the other. So we walked around a bit, looking for a place to sit down and relax and have a beer and a snack.

Miraculously, our group finally arrived. Once all 60-something people were through customs and we’d had a chance to greet everyone, we piled onto two large buses headed for the city of Suzhou...and onto chapter 2.