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.
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