Shanghai, China

With friends like this...

The next world super-power notwithstanding, the main reason I chose to visit China (Shanghai, in particular) was to see my old friends Eddie and James, whom I met while teaching English in Japan, lo those many years ago.

Eddie

They took care of me then, made me feel at home, when home was on the other side of the world. A sliver of familiarity in a time when I felt foreign, even in my own company. I was looking forward to catching up and seeing how they were doing.

So we got in touch a few weeks before my departure and arranged everything. Eddie was good enough to email me a few tips about getting around in Shanghai.

Hey Brian,

Checked out your schedule and it looks pretty good. It should be nice and relaxed and totally not ready to work again after this trip.

The easiest way is to catch a cab. They can take you straight to my place from the airport in about 45mins (the airport is pretty far away). This costs about 150rmb, which is about $20 Canadian.

You can take the Maglev, which is the magnetic levitation train which hits over 400 kph. Do you really want to go over 400kph in a Chinese machine? Sure it was made by the Europeans but the Chinese have been maintaining it (or not maintaining it) for the last few years.

Last option for the broke and patient, the bus. It will take 1.5-2hours and cost 20rmb or so.

Let me know which you prefer and I will give you more detailed instructions.

On the topic of Chinese, your hillbilly Toishan dialect won't get you very far around here. I have some invaluable, local expressions that you should start memorising:

Hello = Ni hao.
Yes = zao ni ma
No = zao ni de xing
Thank you = xie xie
I don't speak Chinese = wo shi tongxinglian
I don't understand = ha wo de bang
Sorry = chou bi

It's a good way to build rapport with cabbies etc... and they will be less inclined to rip you off.

Eddie

Nice, right?

I didn't bother with the rest. So these were more likely to get me beaten by a cabbie than build a rapport, I was impressed that he was devious enough to mix in some legit Mandarin with the fake stuff. That's something I would have done to increase the credibility of my lie. I suppose this is why we are friends.

Magnetic levitation

So when it finally came time to go, Eddie actually advised me to take the Maglev. It's a little scary, going on something that goes about half the speed of a train and maintained by the communists. Know what 400+ km/h looks like? Not that fast, actually. I took a small clip of it (see below).

It's choppy because I have shakey hands (never could have been a surgeon), but should give you an idea of what it's like to be on this deathtrap.

Globetrotter's caveat

This probably should have gone up at the top somewhere, but you're reading it anyway, so shut up.

In my extensive experience circumnavigating the globe, I have found there to be an inverse relationship between the amount of fun one is having versus the number of photos one takes and the detail of notes one records. Suffice to say that I had a great time in China, so the post-trip travelogue suffers.

I don't have a whole lot of photos, nor do I have a lot of stories. My parents probably won't approve of this, but most of my days in Shanghai followed this itinerary:

1. Wake up at about 2pm.
2. Curse the fact that the restaurants close from 3pm-6pm here.
3. Wander around for a few hours, looking for an open restaurant. Eat, gossip about boys we think are cute, complain about hangovers and the locals.
4. Go to a bar or karaoke or some variation thereof.
5. Return to top.

Since I'd been to Shanghai before, there wasn't much that I wanted to see in the way of sightseeing. I just came to hang out and live for a few days without responsibility or worry. This goes for the rest of my vacation as well.

Ok, now that this somber note is out of the way and your expectations are correctly low, let's continue with the rest of Day 1.

1001 Nights

Eddie came to pick me up at the Maglev terminus. His younger brother had just arrived yesterday from Osaka and unfortunately, had experience some troubles making his way to Eddie's place. In order to avoid another such scene, he decided to do a little handholding.

We had a chance to catch up on the last few months (he came to Toronto in the summer) while taking the subway. Got back to his place, got reacquainted with James and met his brother. Handshakes all around and out we went to dinner. They took me to an Mediterranean place called A Thousand and One Nights.

I didn't know why they wanted to take me here, instead of a Chinese place, but 20 minutes in, I understood. Live bellydancing. Not normally something that would pique my interest, but the dancers were from the northwestern part of China, near the Gobi desert.

Stupidly, I decided not to bring my camera. When the first goddess walked out, I regretted my decision immediately. All I had on me was my cell phone (which worked in China! Not looking forward to getting my phone bill though...), hence the horrible photos.

A bar with hostesses, but not a hostess bar

After the third dance, we decided to check out some of the local drinking establishments. I wasn't feeling up to anything too wild, since I had just come off an 18 hour flight, so we ended up at a nearby bar where the waitresses were young, cute and wore pink outfits with these little skirt deals. We bought a bottle of vodka and a few beers and started on the drinking games.

A waitress by the name of Lisa stood at our table the entire night, ready to fill any half-empty glass and fetch us peanuts when our supply got too low. She even stood in for me, while I tried to recover from the vodka (I suck at drinking games). As I was trying to shake off my two shots (not much of drinker, can't hold my liquor), I looked around the place and suddenly it struck me how seedy it was.

Filled with foreigners, most of them with their arms around one of the waitresses. I turned back to the game and Lisa was replaced with another girl. Presumably, the patrons get tired of just one girl for the entire night, so there seemed to be some sort of rotation policy in play.

I felt a small pang of guilt for having so much fun while these girls were subject to the advances of slimy drunks. Unfortunately, this guilt would soon leave me, as being in this city (country) began to play with my sense of ethics. Eddie later reminded me that though we oughtn't lose our morals outright, we have to remember that Shanghai is not the west. As I would come to learn, things are done differently here. The local values are not our own, and really, who am I to judge?

Our table, of course, was relatively well-behaved and after the vodka and beers had been drained from their containers, we paid and went home.