Scenes of Shanghai

I’ve blogged from many different places, but never from above the clouds. As I write, I am flying from Shanghai to Beijing, where orientation for our Harbin language program is taking place. We unfortunately were too late in attempting to make an overnight train reservation to Beijing, so we were forced to spend a night in an apartment a few friends are renting for the summer and fly this morning. Though stressful (such as when someone at check-in told me “sir, your flight is tomorrow, what would you like to do?” then realized he was wrong – I almost had a heart attack), we are on our way (and it even gave us a chance to ride the 267mph Shanghai Maglev – why do we not have one in the U.S.?). Less than an hour until landing.

Anyway, we had an all-around great week in Shanghai. We experienced a bit of everything: the Expo, the jam-packed tourist sites of Shanghai, a day trip to the nearby canal city of Suzhou, and even a couple trips to ex-pat sports bars to watch the World Cup. As I mentioned before, one of the things that amazed me most about the city was the tremendous differences between different neighborhoods. Words (at least mine) can’t completely describe how one experiences a place, but I’ll do my best to illustrate our various excursions.

Breakfast near the hotel: One morning, Dom and I woke up and had a couple of hours to kill, so we decided to walk around our hotel’s neighborhood and look for a place to eat. Unintentionally, we wandered into one of the most crowded, boisterous streets I’ve ever been on. Bikes swerving in and out of masses of people. Endless rows of tiny shops and restaurants lining either side of the narrow street, their owners calling out “Hello! You want shopping? Eat here!” whenever you walked by. We walked up to several restaurants, only to find every single one absolutely packed with only Chinese people, no empty seats. We finally stumbled upon one where the owner said “Lai! Liang wei? Zuo ba!” (“Come! Two seats? Sit down!”) With maybe 15 Chinese people staring at us, apparently never having seen a foreigner in this hole-in-the-wall restaurant, we decided to give it a shot. After being informed that they only had one dish, I found myself with a giant bowl of soup, noodles, tofu, vegetables, congealed blood, some raw meat that I couldn’t recognize, and a bunch of other oddly shaped things that I didn’t want to know what they were. I stuck to the vegetarian parts. We paid and left, back out into the unending throngs of people.

Windows Scoreboard: The England vs. U.S. World Cup match was on, beginning at 2:30 AM Shanghai time. Windows Scoreboard is on the 11^th floor of a mall. Along with cheap beer, the bar serves hamburgers for $1.50, buffalo wings, fries, and anything else you might imagine at an American sports bar. The bar is packed with foreigners. American flags, British flag, chants of “England sucks!” or “U.S.A! U.S.A.!” fill the room. One guy in an England jersey is blowing one of those annoying and loud horns that people claim are ruining the World Cup (the flight attendant made me put my computer away, so I’m no longer writing from the plane). A complete madhouse.

Fuxing Gongyuan (Fuxing Park): A rare open green space in the middle of the city. We walk in and see people scattered along the paths, some practicing tai-chi, others meditating, some just standing next to trees and hitting them. Nearly all are elderly. We continue to walk and find a badminton match, dozens of people dancing to upbeat music blasting over a radio. We continue through the park. Some sort of dance performance. A few men and women with some sort of spinning device that they spun around them on a long string. Men gathered around tables of card games. A massive crowd of people all shaking maracas in unison to music (Rondo ala Turca). Crowds of people standing in front of a chart with song lyrics singing. Everyone seemed thrilled to be there.

Cotton Club: Dom is a huge jazz fan (we’re in a band at Yale together), and we had heard Shanghai has a fairly good jazz reputation. So we decided to check out the Cotton Club, supposedly one of the most famous jazz clubs in Shanghai (apparently Winton Marsalis once played there). We walk in to a dark bar, some foreigners, some Chinese. The band is playing Aretha Franklin songs (kind of unfortunate because I don’t really like singing in jazz). An old white guy is standing alone at the bar, bouncing to the rhythm, apparently mesmerized by the not so good music. Dom gets angry that they put us in the back and doesn’t like the music, so we walk out.

There were more, but hopefully these give something of an idea what our week was like. There were several times we walked into restaurants to a crowd of customers all staring at us, clearly shocked to see foreigners eating with them. Then there were times where there were hardly any other Chinese people around at all. It was certainly an interesting experience.

I am actually in Harbin now. I haven’t had time to finish up this post for a bit. But I’ll save writing about the start of my program for the next post. For now, hope you enjoy more pictures from Shanghai.

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