China, day 14: home

Our last day in China was actually very short and consisted mostly of getting on our flight home. However, I will use my “one post per day” policy to share some insights and tips.

The subways are surprisingly organized. I was warned about the congestion, the lack of personal space and the disregard for lines, but it turns out that a few markings on the floor, showing passengers exactly where to stand before boarding the train can make a difference.

The stares that you get as a white person travelling in China can make you feel uncomfortable. It helps to travel with someone who speaks the language and can tell you what they’re saying about you behind your back. We were on the subway one day when a group of construction workers boarded. They just stood there and looked at me. And at Julia (“because I’m with a Chinese woman traveling with a white man, they probably think I’m a whore”). I was already prepared, so I yelled “ni kan sheng ma?” (Chinese: what are you looking at?!), but that only made them laugh. They said that my pronounciation wasn’t terrible and asked me where I was from, a question which I can actually answer (“Wo shi yiselie ren”, Chinese for “I am Israeli”).

The food is amazing. You should eat everything, all the time. Next time we’re in China, we plan to do a “food on a stick” day. It’s gonna be awesome! My only regret is that I wasn’t brave enough to try the fried duck head, or the duck neck, that they sell in every corner of every street. Gross.

As a tourist in China, you should have your passport easily accessible at all times. You’ll need it for buying train tickets, checking in at hotels, and pretty much everything else.

If you don’t speak Chinese or you’re not traveling with a Chinese speaker, then, well, good luck. Generally speaking, Chinese people don’t speak English. If you decide to go ahead with it anyway, the most useful phrase in Chinese to learn is “bu yao” (pronounce: “boo ya-oo”), which translates to “I don’t want it”, and is to be used on the swarms of people jumping on you in every touristy site with brochures, food, souvenirs or whatever.

There’s always buyer’s remorse in China. Avoid buying in the first place you find something. Make yourself visible as you scan stores and stands. The second time you come around, prices will be lower. As a non-Chinese person, the prices stated to you are probably higher. When haggling, remember that just walking away does not work. Stay at the stand and insist on a lower price for a while. Then raise it a little bit. That’s when the negotiation starts. (This is what I have learned. It is far from being a perfected method. First, I figured it out pretty late, and second, I’m pretty bad at haggling in the first place).

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the ride. I would like to give special thanks to Julia for proofreading, contributing pictures, translating, taking me to China and being my girlfriend. And I hope y'all join me for the next installment of 

Person

On

The

Road

(tun, tun, tuuuuuunnnnnnnnn!)

China, day 13: Shanghai

We had to get up early to meet Phil at the electronics components mall. It was chilly and smoggy and we did not have time for breakfast, so we got a red bean and soy drink, hopped on a cab and went on our way.

Once again, this is a 6-stories-tall building packed with shit. This time, the shit is any kind of electronics component you can imagine: there is one store selling only heat shrink tubes. Another store sells only stepper motors. Most of the stands in the first two floor, however, sell a variety of stuff.

Phil got the stuff he came for, we said our goodbyes, and Julia and I were left alone surrounded by electronics components. What was intended to be a one hour visit became a three hour frenzy, leaving with a loot of tools, motors, ribbon cable, LED strips, and big ass emergancy switches. Great success.

We took a taxi to the fabric district to pick up Julia’s new jacket and had a late lunch in an adjacent Muslim restaurant. Next, we found a post office and sent the SIM card we’ve been using in Julia’s phone back to her grandmother in Hainan.

We went back to the hotel to rest, and then took a cab to meet Michael at Cheng Long Hang Crab Palace. This is a fancy place, where they serve you mostly, emm, crab. The flagship dish is the hairy crab. 

The muddy-looking spots on its claws are actually hair. It’s a delicious creature, however, hard to manage. For this reason, a young waiter is usually present in the room to come to your rescue whenever you and your crab don’t get along. The waiter will then shake his head, roll his eyes, and smile to himself. Promptly after, he will approach you and show you, for instance, how to get the meat out of a leg using another leg, and generally make you feel completely incompetant.

We walked towards People’s square, which turned out to be where we walked on our first night in China. We passed by some street karaoke:

And an indoor food market:

And some stands that sold clothes. We were looking for a scarf to get as a present for Julia’s mom, so I took my new haggling skills on a final test. Julia started by asking how much a scarf costs.

- “Jiu shi jiu” (“ninty nine”) the lady responded.

- “pfffff”, I said. “wu shi!” (“fifty!”)

She said something to Julia, who was distracted, and started mumbling. I waved in front of the lady’s face to attract her attention back to me, then pointed at Julia and told the lady: “Ta de zhongwen bu hao…” (“her Chinese is not good…”) 

She looked at julia and getrured, as if writing on her own hand the figure nine. I cut her off.

- “Wo zhidao jiu shi jiu. Wu shi!” (“I know <what you mean by> ninety nine. Fifty!”

- “Jiu shi jiu!” (“ninty nine!”)

- “Liu shi!” (“Sixty!”) and I added my signature pat on the back and “good price for you!”

- “Ba shi!” (“Eighty!”)

- “Qi shi!” (“Seventy!”) 

- “Qi shi wu!” (“Seventy five!”)

and we had ourselves a deal.

We took a taxi to Tian Zi Fang, a maze of tiny alleys that is home to craft stores, coffee shops, and bars. We sat at Kaiba, yet another ex-pat bar, had a last drink in China, and went to the hotel to pack.

China, day 12: Shanghai

We started the day late and headed to the Shanghai Google office, where Julia has set for us some lunch plans. The office is located at the 60th and 61st floors of the “bottle opener building”.

We first met Michael, a friend of Julia’s product manager at the Mountain View office. Michael is really nice, and he said he’ll show us around whenever we want during our stay in Shanghai. After lunch with him we had desserts with the shopping team. We discussed mostly the air pollution that was breaking new records. This was the view from the cafe:

After Chris, one of the shopping team engineers, took us for a tour in the offices, we left to explore the Pudong area, and from there we left to Chenghung Miao, the Temple of the Town Gods area. The area is very touristy, with all your expected stores selling decorated chopsticks and shit. There was a guy selling steampunkish pocket watches. There were 20 Yuan a pop. We got him to sell us 3 for 50. However, when we walked on, there were other people selling the same watches, sometimes for 15 a pop. As Julia said - you always feel buyer’s remorse when you’re in China. I decided, however, to stop being such a wuss and start bargaining with these people.

Many merchants were selling Chinese good luck knots, so we asked several of them if they know where to get the thread. Only one of them knew - she was actually making these knots in her stand. She told us how to get to the raw materials mall, and also, after some persuading, agreed to sell us all the thread she had left. Finally, mission accomplished. We decided to go to the raw materials mall anyway. 

The mall, like the fabric district, is a 6-stories-tall building packed with small stores selling all the raw materials that are used for making all the shit that you can buy in China.

We found a guy selling the string. I haggled with him a little bit (“Liang ge, wu shi”, Chinese for “two for fifty”. I added a pat on the back and “good price for you!” in English) and we decided not to buy yet and look for more options. In the basement floor there are mostly toys for wholesale. Piles and piles of them.

We were getting yelled at by store owners - this is not a place for tourists, but for retailers to get their stock. Also, stores were starting to close, so we ran back to the ground floor, got a big ball of red string from one stand, three smaller bundles of other colors from the first stand, and left the building with a smile of victory.

In the street there was a guy frying and selling squids on a stick. We asked for two, and he put three on the griddle. Julia told him we only want two, and the guy said “well, it’s 3 for 5, and he (pointing at me) is going to eat two anyway”. As soon as Julia translated for me, I nodded - he made an excellent point, and to be fair, the squids were delicious.

We walked towards the Bund, which is the the waterfront area to the west of Huangpu river. On the way we stopped at a knockoff mall. I was getting fond of bargaining - I was learning new techinques, practicing some chinese, and generally having a blast at the same time. We didn’t buy anything though.

The view at the Bund at night is supposed to be beautiful, but with the thick smog and the dying-dinosaur-like sounds coming from a crane on the other bank, the atmosphere was very apocalyptic.

From there we started walking towards the Old Millfun, which we were told is worth a visit. We walked by a small market and bought a weird green vegetable for my vegetable gallery. I also chatted a bit (mostly through Julia) with a lady selling live chicken and pigeons. Well, she kills them before selling them.

The Old Millfun is known for its interesting architecture. Today, it’s a strange mall, with closed shops, high-end restaurants and a performance center. We walked around for a bit and left.

For dinner, we stopped at a small restauraunt that had all the main courses still alive in a set of plastic containers laid out in the middle of the street. We were feeling brave and adventurous, so we pointed at some random things. The waiter told us how he recommends them being cooked, and took us to a table.

One dish was squids - that’s an easy one. The next was Haichang, also known as Penis Fish. Why, you ask? Well, because when still alive and well in the ocean, or in a plastic container in the middle of the street, they look like this:

After being cooked in chives, and feeling less happy, they look like this:

and they actually taste pretty good.

The third dish turned out to be silkworm chrysalis. 

They pop in your mouth, releasing creamy, weird tasting substance. The shell is to be spit out. This one is not for the faint-hearted. Or for Julia.

We took a taxi to the hotel to get a little bit of rest, and then went to meet Michael, his friend Mike, and Phil, at a whiskey bar called Constellation 3. We had some whiskey to start the evening, departed from Mike, and were taken by Phil and Mike to KTV.

KTV is a chain of karaoke places, in which your party rents its own room. You can select from several packages that differ in the number of hours and the number of beer bottles. The rooms are equipped with a karoke system that allows you to control key, tempo, balance between the playback and your microphone, and even the room lighting (lasers included!). There were also dice, and Michael taught us how to play a local gambling game.

Michael had to go, so Phil took us to “88”. It’s a steampunky club where even in what Phil described as a slow night, people seemed to be partying pretty hard. It feels to me like Shangahi is living as if the world will end tomorrow. The smog might have biased my perception, though.

We left the club at around 3AM, got a variety of things on a stick from a dude in the street corner, and took a taxi home.

China, day 11: Shanghai

One of my favorite ways to explore new cities is to define tasks that need to be accomplished. The more random these tasks are, so i discovered, the bigger the chance of having a cool adventure.

Our first task for the day was to try to find some red string. You know these Chinese good-luck knots kinda thing? So we want to make one in the shape of a Chamsa, which is (kind of) a Jewish good-luck kinda thing. I know, we’re disgusting. Anyway, we need red string. We went to the fabric district, which is mostly this three-stories tall building packed with tiny fabric and clothes stores.

Everybody was yelling at me, of course. “Halo! Come in! Look-Look (which is a weird translation for the common Chinese expression "kan-kan”)“. Most would say "scarf!”, which for some reason they seem to think I need one. Some of them would hold in their hand some gloves as they yelled “scarf”, and, when I declined, took a scarf and yelled “gloves!”

We didn’t find any string. However we did find me a really smooth black, Chinese-style jacket, and a nice light jacket for Julia, which they had to make for her. We declared our task to find string as a temporary failure, and we moved on for our next task - finding the Chabad House of Pudong.

Chabad, in case you don’t know, is a movement in Judaism. They are known for having centers all over the world that help travellers and Jewish locals with their religious needs. I have never actually been to one, but I was told by friends who travelled that attending a holiday meal is a memorable experience. It was the last night of Chanuka, so we decided to go. We didn’t know what to expect, so we defined the task as lighting Chanuka candles.

It took us a long time to find the place - a taxi dropped us off pretty far from the address we had, so we walked for a while, and when we finally got to the approximate location we realized that I had the wrong address the whole time. We corrected the address on my phone’s google maps and followed the directions, and when we got there we realized that this time the phone was wrong. We walked even more, and just as I was about to give up - we found it.

It was a house in the middle of a “nice” neighborhood - the entire neighborhood was surrounded with a fence and had a guard at the gate. The door was open, and the Chinese housekeeper let us in. Nobody else was in sight, although we could clearly hear children. After a few minutes of waiting, Julia asked the housekeeper if she could call somebody.

Rabbi Greenberg and his wife were super nice to us. It turns out it wasn’t that kind of a Chabad house. Theirs is more focused on the local Jewish community. Rabbi Greenberg’s brother is running another Chabad house closer to the center of the city, which is more dedicated to helping travellers. Regardless, they sat to talk to us, gave us sufganiot (doughnuts, a traditional food for Chanuka. It’s not all about latkes, you know) and gave me candles to light. Mission accomplished.

We left after a short time because we didn’t want to be in their way as they prepared for dinner, and went on our way to meet Phil.

Phil is colleague of ours from our days in the Media Lab, and is now working in Shanghai as a design technologist for Frog Design. Accompanied by Eva, his German co-worker, he met us near his work and took us to “Mr. X”.

Mr. X is a complex of rooms which you can book. Your party is locked in the room, and in order to get out you must solve a series of puzzles. This was so much fun! The room Phil booked for us was called “The Book of Isaiah”, and had interleaved Jewish and satanic motifs, so I would describe the experience as being ignorantly, harmlessly, and amusingly anti-Semitic. Otherwise, it was fucking awesome. The puzzles were hard and challenging, the execution was very good, and the atomsphere was actually a little scary, which was perfect. Solving the last puzzle (we actually used a hint for that) helped us open a chain that locked a door in a tube in the middle of the room. Inside it was a ladder, and when we climbed it we found ourselves on the builidng’s rooftop - we won!

Good taste is not Mr.X’s strongest point.This, for example, is in the waiting room/bar:

and more research revealed that there used to be another room called “concentration camp”. If you don’t care too much about these things, I strongly advise you go. They are a chain and can be found in several other cities in China.

To celerate our victory, Phil took us to a speakeasy. The elevator drops you in a room that has nothing but stacked bookshelves and a telephone. Eva picked up the phone, talked to someone, and one of the shelves turned out to be a secret door. We went in, had a drink, departed from Eva who had to wake up early, and continued following Phil around.

First, he took us to the Bomb Shelter. A club that is designed as, well, a shelter from bombs. The space is very cool, but was also very empty. We continued to the Apartment, another bar where local girls come to hunt for ex-pat men. We had one drink and left.

Outside, some beggers were trying to get us to give them money. One of them continued to follow us as we walked away. In front of my very eyes, Julia transformed into an old, mean, Chinese woman. "Fan si le!“ (Chinese: annoying me to death) she yelled at the begger, who finally left us alone, and I swear, it took about five whole minutes until Julia’s hair turned back from grey to black.

China, day 10: Shanghai

We decided to leave for Shanghai that night, rather than the next morning, so we checked out of our hotel, left our bags in the luggage room and went out for a last day of adventures in Nanjing. We went to explore Zhongshan - a huge park at the eastern end of the city.

We took a metro and got to Nanjing’s outskirts where we got some breakfast and went to a quick walk inside a local market.

Between the long stands selling vegetables there were a couple that had live chickens in cages. The one next to it was the butcher’s stand. How convenient. 

The most common form of transportation vehicle in China is electric bikes. The are quiet and fast, which is nice if you’re riding one, but terrible if you’re a pedestrian about to be hit by one. Common practices with an electric bike is yanking out the original pedals (if one looks closely, one can still see the axis rotating as the bike is running), and completely disregarding traffic laws and common sense. I’m telling you all this now because right before entering the park we came across this wonderful specimen:

Zhongshan consists of a chain of hills, and the easiest way to get up is to take a bus from the parking lot at the entrance. After being dropped off we had to walk a little to get to the stairway that leads to Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum. 

At the top there’s a room with the big statue of the dude, but unfortunately the tomb itself is kept closed. Bummer.

From there we walked to the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, where the Hungwu Emperor, founder of the Ming dynasty, is buried. All Ming dynasty emperors built one of these for himself, and they are scattered all over China. However, some of them do come in clusters. Again, our attempts to see the actual grave were thwarted, as we were told by the guy at the gift shop that the the actual grave is closed for the season. We walked towards it anyway, and found ourselves wandering through a walled forest known as Lone Dragon Hill.

We walked along the entire wall and found ourselves back at the starting point. We still don’t know where the grave is. What does a guy need to do to see a Chinese ruler’s grave these days?!

We had to leave - we still had a train to Shanghai to catch. That did not stop us getting distracted by the ruins of another Mausoleum:

What we thought was the purple river but was probably just a small pond (these are sausages at the top left corner):

and a calligraphy garden:

We finally got to an actual road where we managed to get a taxi to take us to the hotel. Taxi drivers in China are very specific, and you can’t be wrong when you talk to them. Julia gave the address to the taxi driver and told him it’s in the southern part of the street, which resulted in this very typical conversation:

- “That’s not south at all!”

- “Well, it doesn’t matter, just take us to that address.”

- “You really should know your way around”

- “We’re not from here. We’ve been here for three days and we’re leaving tonight.”

- “Still, you shouldn’t say south if it’s not south!”

We picked up our stuff from the hotel’s luggage room and took the metro to the train station. The hardest part of getting train tickets is blocking people from cutting you in line. This is usually achieved by clever placement of a traveling bag right in front of the offender.

When we got to our room in Shanghai, we were already too tired to do anything, so we stayed in our rooms, ate a lot of cakes, and collapsed. Success.

China, day 9: Nanjing

Our first destination was the Confucian temple. It turns out this was right next to where we had the little crabs the day before. We had brunch in one of the food standד and walked in. The temple is very, how shall I say it - Confucian. I’m kidding, it’s very nice, but there’s not much I can say. Here’s a couple of pictures. That must be worth around two thousand words these days.

After the temple we continued to wander around. The area around the temple is very touristy, with tons of shops selling pretty much the same Chinese souvenir things, like jade jewelry, chopsticks and good-luck Chinese knots (about which we shall talk more in a few days). Julia found hats that used to be worn by Chinese officials. She and her sister have been wanting these since childhood, so we bought two. Black ones, not hideous red like this one:

We then found something I have never seen before - a leatherman-like multi-tool that has a hammer. I just had to get it. Now I am the proud owner of this strange contraption:

We then went to the presidential palace, which has a rich history that includes being the place where Sun Yat-sen, first president of the Republic of China, was sworn.

We explored the grounds for quite a while, until we were kicked out at closing time. Then we left to the hotel to chill for a bit, had dinner, and went back to the bar next to the university to see the show. The show itself was o.k. - there was a house band, which was pretty good and three singers rotated to perform mostly Chinese, but some American covers. The real attraction was, of course, the crowd. Right at the center of the bar, a group of some 15 people were definitely celebrating something. It was easy to tell because they were all drinking way beyond their capacity while taking turns to pass out on the couch or run to the bathroom to throw up. Those capable of standing were either singing loudly along with the band, dancing ridiculously, or trying very hard to get each other laid.

China, day 8: Nanjing

We started the day by moving to another hotel - the Motel168 where we just spent the night just had bad qi. After settling in a room at a Jinjiang hotel, we went to see the Nanjing Massacre Memorial. It commemorates the killing of 300,000 of the city’s people by the Japanese forces in 1937. The most horrifying room is an actual excavation that exposed skeletons of people tortured and murdered by the Japanese soldiers.

Interestingly enough, there’s a wing that is dedicated to Auschwitz. I suppose it’s good for us all to remember that terrible things happened, and are still happening, not just to us.

However, the circumstances didn’t seem to affect the behavior of any of the visitors. One guy crossed a memorial room that had a big sign that said “solemn silence” as he was yelling loudly into his phone, people were eating baked yams that they bought outside the memorial hall, right above the excavated skeletons, and people were blatantly taking pictures, with flash, despite the signs clearly asking to refrain. The ushers don’t seem to care much either. God, I hate people.The peak was when we sat down to rest for a bit. After a few minutes, I realized that a dude sitting next to me was taking pictures of us - he was holding his phone, and on the screen were Julia and me as seen through the front camera with the face recognition square things framing our faces. I wonder what he was thinking - “OMG! a white guy! in the massacre memorial! Nobody is ever going to believe me!” Anyway ,to retaliate, I pulled out my phone, stuck it in front of his face and took some pictures of him. It was dark, and he was very ordinary looking, so I’ll spare you guys.

From there we continued to the brocade museum which we passed by on the way, not knowing what “brocade” even is. Now I can tell you that it refers to loom-woven decorative fabrics, and for me, that meant more looms. I love looms. I would like to have more looms in my life. And less people. Love looms, hate people. That’s just the way I am.

From there we took the metro to the Nanjing University, where Julia’s dad got his degree in physics. We took a picture of Julia at the university gate to show her dad, walked around just a little bit, because it was already dark, and went to a bar that we saw on the way. It was still a little early, so we were the only patrons, and the stage that was fully equipped for a band was empty. The staff told us that there’s a show every night at 9:30pm, so we decided to leave after a few drinks and come back tomorrow for the show.

Next we had to find dinner. We went to a more central part of town, where we saw a food stand that sold deep fried crabs. They have been deep fried for so long that you just eat them with their shell.

To make things easy for us, Julia picks the food, unless I have a craving for something. This time she messed up and accidentally ordered three dishes of soup. I made two resolutions at that meal: first, we can cut down on our soup consumption from now until the end of the trip. Second, I really need to speed up my learning of Chinese.