Planes, Trains, Boats, Magnetic Levitation, Buses...all in 24 hours

03122016

Woke up early for a complicated route to the next step of our trip. We packed up and checked out of the hotel, swiping all the complimentary tea, coffee and toothpaste we could on the way out.

We headed to Hangzhou East railway station, which is not the one we came in through. We had to take the subway there, and given that we were leaving mainland china we wanted to use up all of our CNY. We took a "slow train" to Shanghai rather than the highspeed rails, it was cheaper, so we could spend more money on the route from the train station to the airport.

The slow trains are the older trains, the seats are described as "hard seats", "hard sleeper" and "soft sleeper" we went with the hard seats. The train station appeared as many of the Chinese stations do, very new and modern, the train was older, still in working order, but clearly worn, the passengers were more authentic Chinese. These were the Chinese citizens that paid 4USD to get to Shanghai fr the weekend, rather than 24USD.

There were a few smelly passengers (overall hygiene standards everywhere we were in China met with what we were used to, but it was clear that there are some areas of China that are either unable to meet "western" standards, or unawares all together), we were fortunate enough to get put in one of the last of the cars (there were atleast 16).

Being that these train cars were 20 or more years old, they reeked of cigarettes, no one was actively smoking on the train (i think it is prohibited) but it smelled very heavily of it.

The train got is into Shanghai a little early, I guess there werent many passengers getting on/off at intermediate stops. We took to subway to the MAGLEV to get to the airport.

The MAGLEV was a little pricey, but it got us there in 8 minutes 40 seconds. And more importantly we had seats, which is never a sure thing on the subway. It was really cool, we travelled at 300km/h, apparently the thing is capable of commercial speeds of over 400km/h.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Maglev_Train

The Shanghai Pudong Airport is also huge, on par with Seoul Incheon. We were checking in, and our flight was getting delayed, so they bumped us to an earlier flight (eventually our originally ticketed flight was cancelled). We are travelling with only backpacks, to expedite travel, so we neednt check bags. The ticket agent asked if we had any luggage, nope, just our backpack we responded. She then asked us to wiegh the bags...they were over twice the "limit" for carryons.

We were not ready to part with our bags, we had cash stashed away, our electronics, our books for airplane reading. They were not going to let us on the plane with our bags. So we gathered what we could, taking extra care to ensure we had the phone numbers for our Travel Insurance...

Later on, when we got on the plane i could not help but notice all of the people with their HARD SIDE ROLL-ON SUITCASES. When I saw this, i started crafting my complaint for the airlines.

Before boarding we stopped at another one of the Priority Pass Lounges, they didnt have food as nice as the one in Seoul, but they did have beer. And we drank beer, and ate instant noodles. I ate no less than 3 cups of Shin Ramyun cuo noodles, and we had a good 4 Heinekens in the hour we waited for our flight.

We did board our flight, and promptly fell asleep.

Waking up in the Special Economic Zone that is Hong Kong, we exited our flight, and entered customs without issue, and claimed our bags. Everything seemed to be fine (and now a day later, still have not noticed anything awry).

We hopped a bus right outside the airport, that basically took us to our hotel, checked in, enjoyed the full blown google-included internet and discovered a cell phone in the room waiting for us.

The hotel provides a cellphone for its guests. This phone has internet, mapping, and preloaded important numbers; the hotel; the police; consumer protection, tourist info, some other good numbers, it has some applications to help you shop. Also it has ads, but it is really great having an ACTIVE phone while oot-n-aboot.

We found a diner-esque restaurant nearby. Ate a bunch of greasy Asian food, and wandered around the neighborhood. Turns out there is a major university in this area, and on this particular saturday, a christmas bar crawl. So the bars were slammed with people, many of them in costume.

after wandering about, we got a little lost on the way home, but obviously found it (cause we didnt sleep under a freeway overpass) i updated the blog, took a shower and went to sleep.

Some cultural nuances I will never understand

02122016

Another late start, damn those 5 star beds.

Laura identified activities for the day, taking a boat up the canal, and exploring a historical/tourist area in the North of Hangzhou.

We made our way to the ferry terminal via subway. the little terminal is essentially a bus stop, but on the water, the ride was 3CNY, which is much better than the 25CNY the tourist boat charges for the same route. On the boat you get to see a different view of the city, as well as its many bridges, and barges.

The canal is old, and long, infact its one of the oldest and longest in the world. It has been linking the political/administrative hubs of China in the North, with the food producing South for like 1400 years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China)

At first i didnt believe that the canal went ALL THE WAY to Beijing, but it does, at least the series of interconnecting canals and rivers do. It like 1100 miles, and it has had locks installed since like the Xth century, its pretty great.

The boat dumped us off just beyond that bridge, where the Hangzhou city government and Chinese government built up a large cultural heritage area. There are old-timey (in look not authenticity, this like much of China's "historical areas" have been torn down and rebuilt to be more "authentic"). There are a few museums around there, all free, so we hit as many as we could.

Our first stop was the museum about the canal itself. There was very little english, but plenty of displays. The museum went over the history of the canal and China at large, the construction methods, the way the neighborhoods and industry developed at key points and times of the canal. It also had models of the varous craft used to ply the waterways.

Pictured below is the outline of the canal on a world map

After this museum we were quite hungry, we got some meat pie things from a street vender for very little monies, and continued accross the bridge to the cultural heritage area.

This area had a number of museums, and craft workshops. I think in high season they would have artisans making things that would eventually go on sale in the shops and musuems in the immediate area. The first museum we went to was the fan museum. Which was pretty cool. Fans have been in China for a very long time, and been a part of the culture for almost as long.

This is one of the few instances where China adopted something from Japan; the Folding Fan. Prior to the Japanese introducing the folding fan (think of the asian fan you are probably already thinking of, this is a Japanese folding fan), the Chinese used round fans, made of paper or silk stretched over a bamboo frame.

After the fan musuem we went to the sword, knife and scissor museum. This one was also pretty cool, and I found more interesting than the fans. It went through the history of sharp things in China, which is pretty much the beginning of using sharp things as Humans. The Chinese developed their own bronze age independant of the west, and came to many of the same conclusions in metal working that the west did.



The Chinese were using swords as late as the Anti-Japanese War.

After the museums we wandered the cultural heritage area, got some more snacks, and headed home via ferry.

We got back to our hotel to chill out for a little while and get off our feet before going back out for dinner. We decided to try the Steam Young place. A place that specialized in steamed stuff.

We thought it would be steambuns and dumplings, and we were sorely mistaken.

Walking up the stairs to the restaurant we got a whiff of the smells that so far in China, has only been fleeting wafts of foetid odors, not entirely identifiable. Early on in less metropolitan China, it was just a quick sniff, enough to think "maybe it was just that manhole cover?" or "there was probably just a rotting animal carcass in that bush" but then in Hangzhou we got cought behind people who seemed to be exhuding this abhorrent stench.

They were eating it.

Stinky Tofu

That name doesnt do it justice. It smells like someones teeth are rotting out of their head, like drysocket, but all of them, and food stuff that got stuck in there, and not irrigated.

It is horrendous.

Anyways this place, as we went up the stairs we got a whiff, "oh shit, they serve that here?"

we order some things on the menu, Glutenous Rice with pork, Sausage, Meatballs with rice noodles, Cabbage, and Spicy Shrimp with Tofu.

Sound like reasonable things a westerner can probably eat right?

nonono

the waitress even asked us if we were sure we wanted to eat the Shrimp and Tofu, i thought she was warning us about the spice, she was not.

it hit the table and was very unpleasant, i thought "if people eat it, it has to not be that awful right? something has got to be up"

the moment i split the skin of the tofu cube the stench hit me in the face.

I have handled some pretty awful shit, mind you not burning-shit-pond in kandahar bad, but bad. Go back a few entries in my blog and you can read about the day i spent squeegee-ing sickly dog shit off ice in dump, this smell was worse.

NEVER have i had a food product that i couldnt even be around, having it at the table ruined the rest of the food. The residual smell on my chopsticks rendered the rest of the food a very sharp reminder that China is fucking wild.

We ate what we could, and got outta there. Tried to walk it off, but the smell literally and figuratively haunted us. We thought we smelled it around every corner, and some corners some local was eating it, and we really did smell it.

We found a fancy juice place, cleared our palettes with heavily gingered juice and headed home to pack and ready for leaving mainland China in the morning.

Another Mountaintop Temple, and unexpected tea field tour

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First full day of Hangzhou, enjoyed our fancy hotel bed, and set off.

Laura did some research, identified a Pagoda on a hill, a restaurant, and temple to see. So we set off.

We walked around more of the lake in the day time.

and found our way to the pagoda ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baochu_Pagoda ). As we were approaching the approach to the pagoda, we realized we were hungry, so before climbing a mountain, we turned around and retraced our steps looking for restaurants.

Unfortunately our hunger led us astray once again. We chose a restaurant that looked ok at a cursory glance, but it turned out to be lackluster. We got a chicken dish, which was 30% bones (i didnt even realize chickens had that many bones), and a cabbage and pork dish, that had a flavor niether of us really liked. The best part of the meal was the 2CNY bowl of rice, and the drink. We got a jug o pawpaw milk, because we had no idea what it is. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba ) turns out this fruit is actually native to North and South America. We thought we were eating something exotic…

Also this lunch was 150CNY, which is all the more disappointing.

Full of chicken bones and unpleasant pork, we set up the hill to pagoda.


the Pagoda itself was neat, and an engineering marvel, given that it is on top of a hill, but ultimately it was something to draw us to the mountaintop. the paths around the pagoda are literally carved out of the rocks which was really cool, we wandered around more, found a Taoist Temple.

and surrounding the temple is the rock sculptures we have seen elsewhere, but honestly the top-of-a-mountain thing made these more impressive.

We then made our way back down to the lake and began walking around to the temple and restaurant.

unfortunately the trek was furthur and i anticipated, and it didnt seem we were going to make it to the temple before it closes, so we decided on just dinner. The restaurant (link here) appears on the Apple maps, AND the tourist map we snagged from the hotel, so we are sure it existed.

we walked down the street it was allegedly on, and could not find it, so we turned back cut in one of the side roads, that seemingly took us ONTO the lake. This road wound around, and we say many men in hard hats coming the other way, we turned down one street, and a little old lady immediately waved us away. Clearly she knew there was nothing back there for westerners. We walked around, and found ourselves in the middle of a Tea field.

this was pretty cool, and all of the workers were as enthralled by us walking through there as we were to see the tea fields.

we walked around some more, seeing where all these workers were coming from (seemingly collecting the apples they get at the end of the day, maybe their wages too) and found the back end of the restaurant we were looking for.

Turns out, the cut in the foliage that would have brought us to the front of the restaurant was about 25m further down the road that we turned around on 30 minutes before.

The restaurant was really cool

we came in, the staff was very friendly, and showed us to a table, then as we sat down, another staff member got us up and walked us to the door. we thought we were getting kicked out for a second, but then realized we were supposed to point at the pictures on the wall to order, because they knew we werent going to navigate the menu sheet by ourselves.

We saw on the menu, under the pork we really wanted was 400 and some characters that we obviously couldnt read...holyshit we just walked into a fantastically expensive restaurant, or we are ordering half a pig…

perusing more of the menu, we saw some more agreeable numbers. we thought maybe the credit card can get us through (we got a good high limit on that fancy travel card), no luck, they dont take card…

i looked a little harder, and tried to google translate it, grams…

that is HOW much food we get not the price, the price is on the menu sheet. i ask to see the menu sheet, and see very acceptable prices.

so we go ahead and order the pork, a lamb shank, a green bean dish, a fruity drink and a flower tea.

everything was superb. The pork was great, had a nice crusty spiced skin, and plenty of fat. The beans were sauteed with garlic and ground pork and chili peppers. and the lamb was great, a huge leg of lamb

pictured above

had all kinds of spices and lamby flavor. The fruity drink was papaya and pomegranate, and the tea was chrysanthemum, and laura said it was nice, i think it tasted mostly like burnt water, but i guess i just lack a refined palette.

To finish the dinner we got an order of the peanut ice we had the other week, and this time it was even better than that, and it was pretty great the first time.

This whole dinner came out to 168CNY, so completely made up for the shitty lunch.

We hopped the bus right outside the restaurant back to the downtown area. Following the lake back home we stumbled onto a large crowd of people (even by Chinese standards a big crowd) gaggling around.

Turns out they were waiting for a watershow. The watershow was pretty neat.

Another point i forgot to make earlier, China, China gives no fucks, they have no railings around the lake, there were no railing up or down the mountain we climbed. Despite the gaggling, the lack of safety, and the general inability of the average Chinese citizen to queue properly, no one was pushed in the lake while watching the show.

we then made our way home, had a soak in the fancy tub, finished the last of the beer we got in Suzhou, and turned in for the night.

Almost the very wrong city...

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Woke up wayy to early, hangover was starting to set in, and i was desperately thirsty. But we cant drink right from the tap, so i had to boil water, and then cool it enough to drink. I got through a few cycles of this before Laura also woke up not feelin so hot.

We drank some water, and then actually went back to sleep for a few hours.

When we woke up for the day in actuality, we packed up quick and headed back to the train station. I had a chance to look up train schedules, there was a train that went direct from Suzhou, to Hangzhou going through a few cities including Shanghai.

We went to the train station, and asked the ticket agent for the ticket to Hangzhou, she said something, we smiled and nodded, and then she started clicking away. A guy behind us spoke up asking where we were going, we said Hangzhou, and showed him the Characters, and he asked the agent if she got that. She didnt, she was going to send us to some other city that phonetically sounds like hanzhou. The guy helped us get it straghtened out, we paid our money, and went to the terminal to wait.

The train was only stopping for 10 minutes, so everyone piled in quick, and took their seats.

The children on the train were fascinated by us, i take it they dont see westerners very frequently.

We checked into our hotel, which is very nice. I dont know if i mentioned this earlier (and i no longer have full blown internets so i cannot check) but we got a “bump” to a nicer hotel. One of the first nights of our trip, while in Japan, I got an email from hotels.com saying the hotel we booked in Hangzhou could no longer honor our booking, and we needed to call them ASAP.

We let it go for about 2 weeks, and finally called. The hotels.com customer service rep apologized that it didnt work out, and got on his system looking for a new room, he asked what our reasoning for choosing that hotel was; i explained it is for leisure, and we chose that hotel because it was close to the things to see in Hangzhou. He said the only hotel he could find was about 1 mile away, but it was a 5 star hotel, (we booked a 3 star), and asked if it would be ok if we moved there.

I asked if that would change the price, as we had a budget, he assured me hotels.com would pick up the difference.

of course we took it.

So here we are at a nice 5 star hotel, within walking distance of all the things to see in Hangzhou.

After checking in we decided to check out the local Grandmas place (see earlier post), as it sounded like this was the first one. It was as good as the other one, but we got caught up when paying (ill get to that)

The walk to the restaurant took us around some of the West Lake (the whole reason people come to Hangzhou) and it was pretty beautiful.

They refused to take our Visa card, we had 2 other Chinese patrons saying its a Visa, and it should work, but they refused to swipe it. We didnt have enough cash, so laura had to leave me as collateral and go get more monies.

Dinner wasnt expensive, we just ran out of Yuan, and figured we’d be ok cause the other place took our card.

We then went home, Laura soaked in the 5 star tub, and we went to sleep.

Finally, craft beer

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Laziest day so far. We slept in and laid around until it was too late for us to get lunch in the hotel.

I did a bunch of transportation research, trying to figure out how to get to a craft Taphouse we spotted on the Internets when we first got here.

It required a train transfer and a bus. The buses are pretty easily navigable, And cost all of 1CNY.

Birdland https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g297442-d10456389-Reviews-Birdland_Craft_Beer-Suzhou_Jiangsu.html

This place was great, the beer was so fantastic, finally getting good beer in us was wonderful. We each had 4 Chinese beers, split a plate teriyaki chicken and rice, and a 12" pizza. And then on the way out we bought a bunch of Chinese beers for a sort of Pick-six. All for 600CNY.

The bus and trains took us home, we stopped for snacks, got back to the room eating the snacks and drinking some of the beers before passing out.

The Chinese upper crust, really liked their gardens

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Woke up to a beautiful day in Suzhou, 50F, sunny, limited smog, good day. We decided to walk to one of the very nice gardens, eat lunch, and hit up another garden.

The walk to the Lion Grove Garden took about 45 minutes, and introduced us to a different part of the city. The various canals make navigating without GPS pretty easy, as they are pretty significant landmarks.

This garden is nearly 700 years old, one of the very few that have survived the centuries. The signage in the garden claims the garden was "donated" to the Chinese government in 1949 by the family that had owned it for the previous decades, which is the same year that all private property was nationalized...

It is mostly a rock garden, similar to the rock seen in the Beijing gardens. These rocks are said to have looked like a lion, whch is where the garden gets its name. The garden was gorgeous, and very large. There were indoor reception areas, and tea drinking spots, and then all kinds of nooks and crannies outside, little man made caves and mountains, made of rocks stacked together and cemented together.

There were various informational points explaining that this spot was used for meditating, and this for observing nature.

After wandering around this garden we were ready for lunch.

I had spotted a place while we had the full google suite back in the hotel. This place was between the two gardens we intended to hit. When we found the place it was closed, more than closed for lunch, they were closed for business. BUT at the same time we were turning away, a Chinese couple was jut as surprised/disappointed as us, though they could read the sign... the place was no longer in business.

So we ate some street food. We had flaky meat pockets from a little storefront restaurant. We asked for meat, the kid behind the counter pointed at one, we asked for 2, he asked for 10CNY, and we went on our way. We think they were pork, but they were heavily seasoned with sesame, and they were pretty dry, the would however go very well with a beer, though we dont know what the open container laws are here, and Im not tryna be on locked up abroad ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banged_Up_Abroad ) for something as petty as drinking a beer on the street.

We made our way to the next garden, The Humble Administrator's Garden. This is a UNESCO heritage site, occupying over 50,000 square meters. The area has been a site of a garden of some kind or another since the 1150s, though it didnt become what we see today until the 16th century.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_Administrator%27s_Garden

This garden is what the architects of the Summer Palace in Beijing was emulating. It was pretty spectacular, a maze of paths and waterways, with more reception halls and minor residences throughout. They even had a bonsai garden that was very extensive.

At one point there was a gaggle of elderly Chinese tourists that were very excitedly taking pictures of a thing on top of a mini rock mountain. We saw them piling up to take pictures at the base, so obviously we took a picture ourselves. And then we walked around, and up the mini mountain to incpect more thuroughly. And there was nothing remarkable, no data plate telling us why poeple would take pictures of it. I think the key was in the tourguides...telling some anecdotal story that would mean alot to Chinese culture/history aficionados.

After this, we made the trek home, found a hotpot place, and ate. This was one of the moments where being a very obviously lost tourists is a benefit. The staff was super helpful, voluntarily busting out their phone to translate their Chinese, and help us along, while we had our phones out to translate our english to ask questions. We got a 1.5L beer, which came in a little table-tap, that tasted a little off. Turns out the Chinese cheat with their cheap beer like we do, but instead of using High Fructose Corn Syrup like we do in our PBRs and Milwaukee's Best, they use a rice mash in their Tsingtao and Snow beers.

We got a hotpot of bone soup, for extra flavor, then went to choose our ingredients. We went to the cooler/refrigerator (configured much like the egg/dairy section of a grocery store) to select vegetables and meats to throw in our pot. Everything comes on skewers to make it easier to cook, and to keep tab, as they charge straight up by number of skewers. After we ate some, one of the staff came over and offered to help us select what to eat.

Laura went with him to choose foods, and warned them that I cannot eat fish (i can eat fish, we just prefer to keep fishballs and other heavily fishy foods out of the hot pot, because the instant you toss a fishball into the broth, EVERYTHING now tastes like fish, pork belly now tastes like fish, cabbage; fish, fine sliced beef sirloin...fish).

The spread brought back was great, and the guy kept coming around and pointing out which stuff was done and ready to eat.

After clearing our hotpot, and our beer, we closed the tab, 105CNY, so $15 bucks, for 1.5L of beer and plenty of foods.

Not quite satisfied, we ordered cheap room service, partly because we have never done that before, inhaled the noodles that were delivered by the staff, and settled in to watch a movie.

Venice of the East

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Woke up late, packed up and checked out at the last possible moment before the train to Suzhou.

We took the subway to the Shanghai Rail Station, and made our way to the ticket office. We stood in line, and some guy just stepped right in front of us, i guess queues dont matter here. We realize the next window over has an english speaking agent, but not enough, the first question we asked (when is the next train?) he just waved his hands and pointed us one over.

This lady was able to help us, she said the next train was 1316, it was 1247. Given how difficult wandering around the Beijing trainstation was, we elected to take the 1400 train. Unnecessary, this station was much smaller, and security was much quicker, we made the rounds checking the food options, settling on a fried chicken place. I had a wrap and laura had a sandwich, both were pretty good, I honestly cannot remember the last time i had KFC or Churches or Popeye’s so i have no reference for good fastfood chicken. I was satisfied with the 4USD we spent on lunch.

We boarded the train, and 25 minutes later disembarked in Suzhou.

Suzhou is not a small town ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou ) metro area is over 10 million people. And when we got out of the station, it was even more “stereotypical asia” than anywhere we have been so far. there were scooters everywhere, ignoring traffic lights, laws, and safety. It was crazy, we saw some pedestrians come within 2 feet of getting hit by a bus.

We got to our hotel, a Holiday Inn, and it is pretty good. we got a high floor room with a view of the city, and the room is enormous. by far the largest room we have had in asia, and probably the largest non-suite hotel room i have ever stayed in.

We did some research and rolled out for a sweet pork place.

Maps are terrible here, whatever mapping company that has the ok from the PRC to map this area really needs to get its shit together.

We headed to the location the internet claimed this restaurant was at. It required us to walk a good two miles, some of which down a rather dark road parallelling one of the canals (yeah Suzhou was described as The Venice of the East). We didnt feel unsafe, like we were at risk of being a victim of crime, just at risk of walking into the canal or getting hit by a scooter.

when the pork place was NOT on the map, we resolved to go back to a noodle place we walked past on the way.

We walked in, and clearly couldnt read the menu, we asked for the hostess/waitress/co-owners recommendation, and she wiped out an english map. I had a beef and noodles thing, and laura had a rice noodle and beef thing.

Both were excellent, there were little round things in mine, that laura said we mushrooms, i ate one, noted the deliciousness and gave one to her, then ate another, and realized there is no way mushrooms would taste like this; this is beef intestines. I happily ate the beef intestines, and noodles, laura ate her glass noodles, contented, we resolved to hit one of the pastry shops we saw on the way here.

We picked up some sweets, and headed the 2 miles back home.

I got a blueberry sweet bread, it was a sort of french toast bread, with blueberry jam inside, i will make every effort to eat this every day in Suzhou.

Full of spicy noodles and sweet breads, we went home to watch TV and go to sleep.

The Most Great, Victorious, Honorable, Progressive Peoples Republic of China

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Big activity for the day was attending the propaganda poster museum. This place was really neat, very much like the KGB museum in Prague, (see post from summer summer 2012).

It is in the basement of an apartment complex, luckily the security guys know that there is really no other reason a pair of Westerners would be here, so he handed us a business card with a lil map on it.

The place was set up in chronological order, starting with the anti-Japanese propaganda from the time Japan occupied China (wikilink here), and the Anti-Japanese War (which is what the modern communist chinese cal the period of 1937-1945, what we call the Second World War, and the Japanese call the Pacific War). The exhibit continues through to the Korean war era, the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Vietnam War, and more modern thawing of tensions with the US, and the commercial vitalization of the 1980s and 90s.

All of the posters had little cards with the english translation of major text, and a few placards around detailing what period these fall in. The end of the museum had older ads from the turn of the century, which was really cool. These ads were very cool because they predate the communists in China, and show how hard the West was pushing into China, specifically in Shanghai, all of these were for western products, some of them i recognized as in production today.

There were no pictures allowed so all i can do is link to their site. http://www.shanghaipropagandaart.com

I would recommend anyone in Shanghai visit this museum, especially if you have an interest in history/international relations/China/Communism/pop-art.

After this we were pretty hungry, and made a bad decsion, going to a shitty restaurant. They had honestly forgettable food, it took laura and i a few minutes to recall what it was. I had a beef and noodle dish, laura had a noodle soup, both were not that great.

Unsatisfied, we decided to try and find one of the pedestrian streets ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xintiandi ) we had been looking for before. We did ultimately find it, it wasnt as easy to find as the concierge made it seem. It was another very high-end shopping area, with neat restaurants that were very very expensive.

At this point we determined that Shanghai isnt for us. Its cool to visit, but it is a city of extremes. Either you go to ultra-swanky skyline bars and pay 25USD for a cocktail, and 55USD a plate at dinner, or you go to a basement restaurant where a couple can eat and drink for less than 10USD.

We certainly appreciate the inexpensive, but sometimes, we want a midgrade restaurant, a place where we get to sit on more than a stool under an umbrella, but less than a table with a special purse stool.

we did snipe the wifi at this mall to find a western style restaurant. It had prices much like prices we would pay in Chicago, I got a goat cheese torttellini, laura got a braised lamb shank, the lamb was all off the bone delicious, my tortellini was pretty good not spectacular, but pretty good. We also got desserts, two scoops of gelato, salted caramel, and baklava. The baklava tasted exactly like baklava, i dunno how they did it, but it was so accurate. the other desert we got was honey-ginger bread on a bed of poached pears. THIS was spectacular, the bread wa something i fully intend to emulate, so those of you reading this that have the occasion to meet me, look forward to eating my test-breads on this quest.

We also got a bottle of wine, this ent up being a 150USD dinner, mostly because laura messed up the math and that bottle of wine was 75USD, so it was expensive, but it was a very worthy meal.

Dont worry though, on the way home we picked up a <10usd bottle of wine from 7-11. It was chosen from the 7-11 Select Reserve, and was pretty good, way better than any quickmart wine has any right to be. so this helps to average our the wine spending...

We hopped a train, and unfortunately could not get all the way home, the subway shuts down relatvely early in Shanghai, so we had to walk the last 2 miles home.

When we got home we watched some TV and drank the wine. First we watched some Sumo with english announcers, which was pretty good, helping us understand what exactly was going on. I watched a 115kg guy go up against a 164kg guy, that is a 100lb diference, and he didnt lose immediately.

We also found a show that was basically “Japan why you do that?” It was a room of 50 non-Japanese people that posed explanations for why the Japanese do certain things, like not filling the coffee cup all the way, or why they sleep with their children for so late into their childs lives.

Watching this in China made it all the more bizzare.

We eventually fell asleep, for our last night in Shanghai.

Highs and Lows

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Another late start, I guess the downside of having a really nice hotel is how hard it is to leave.

We walked over to the French Concession area, once again looking for the cool shit our concierge recommended. This time, we found it. It does have some neat shops and restaurants and bars, though in no where near the density we were expecting. When someone says “this area has alot of bars” im thinking of a street where every other storefront is a bar, not each block has 1 or 2 bars on it. This is probably why we didnt find it last time, we did find it we just didnt know it.

We did stumble on a little museum. It was the house of Zhang Leping ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Leping ), who was a comic artist of China, who was used by the Chinese government to produce anti-Japanese propaganda, and later Communist propaganda. This was a free musuem, tucked away in a back street of this neighborhood, we found it purely by accident. It had a walk through of his life, and the works of his life. Upstairs in the house left as it was when he was alive.

After walking around a bit we settled on a beef noodles place.

This was one of the places where they hand pull the noodles, right in front of us. We could see the guy pulling the noodles from the dough before tossing it in the boiling water that would eventually be our meal. I had a noodle dish with a sort of tapenade of finely diced olives, beef, onions and other unidentifiable vegetables. Laura had a noodle soup with beef bits in it. In both dishes Chinese fivespice was prevelant. It was very tasty, proving once again that the hole in the wall places are good choices when over here. And all told our bill ammounted to less than 5USD.

After this we made our way to the Nanjing Shopping street looking for new shoes.

This requires some preface; In the Army i wore my issue boots all day every day, most evenings and weekends i never left the house, and thusly never needed shoes. The civilian shoes i had were some old beat up skate shoes that would not work for two months in Asia, nor look nice enough to sneak into nicer restaurants. So before leaving I hit up a few stores and settled on Saucony running shoes. It had good reviews on Amazon, and various other sites, and i figured running shoes should last for 2 months of heavy walking right? Runners will easily put on 10-12 miles a week, and they dont expect to be replacing shoes every other month. Apparently the same “runners” that reviewed these shoes as tough and durable are the people that wear yoga pants to the grovery store thinking they are "active".

Would these shoes stand up to the rigors of being a nurse walking around marbled floors all day? Or the lifestyle of an carpet bound office worker? yes

An actual runner? not at all.

Within the first 2 weeks, i had worn the primary grip from the soles away, and the memory foam in-sole part was pil-ing pretty bad, after 3 weeks the pil-ing turned into complete wear, the pad of my foot had pulled up most of the memory foam. Essentially at this point the pad of my foot was less than half an inch from the pavement.

The only thing good about these shoes i would like to point out, is they make acceptable climbing shoes, the lack of traction and significant insole meant i was able to boulder/climb the frozen Great Wall of China pretty well. So if you need some climbing shoes that arent climbing shoes, these work.

for 65USD I am very disappointed in these shoes.

Fortunately I am in the land of knockoffs and cheap shit, i found some “outdoor athletic shoes” from a Chinese brand ANTA that will survive at least the last 4 weeks of this trip.

After switching shoes we went to the Bund ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bund ) to see the city all lit up. The Bund is full of western style buildings, this is where all the western countries that “opened up” china set up their trading houses. accross the river from here is the new Shanghai, the part with all the super high ultra modern buildings. these buildings and 1800 put on a sort of light show that is pretty neat. after seeing the light show we intended to catch a river tour. The ticket agents werent very helpful, and observing the boats, it looked like a very limited tour, we decided to walk around.

after feeling confident we saw all there was to see on this side of the river, we hopped a subway to go to the new Shanghai and try to see the city from a high vantage point.

Our concierge recommended the Park Hyatt Bar, as it is the highest bar in the city, providing great views. Unfortunately this is a VERY swanky place, and two people wearing multi-purpose wind breakers, with scarves, wearing clothes packed in a backpack for a 9 week trip, are not the normal clientele. While waiting for the elevator we had some unreasonably snooty people throw shade at us.

getting to the top we realized we were underdressed for the venue, though in all honesty, that lady was being unnecessarily cunt-y, for all she knew we could be Silicon Valley CEOs that just put up an IPO for 5mil and were bout to buy rounds for the bar. We got out of there most ricky-tick and wandered around a park, and various above ground walkways taking in the view before heading home to go to bed.

A Scale Model of the entire city? yes please

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Without any concrete plans we slept in a little bit, laura woke up and researched activities for the day.

On our way out of the hotel we spoke to the concierge, and he hooked us up with a map, and his personal notes on things to see, and things to avoid.

We went down the street to a popular dumpling place. They were only making 3 types of dumplings that day. Pork and Egg yoke, Pure Crab, and a Crab Roe dumpling. We went with the pork, and a beer. It was very very good, and again very inexpensive, a dozen pork dumplings, and a 600ml beer for 33CNY.

We then headed to the Shanghai Urban Planning Musuem. This museum was built in preperation for the 2010 World Expo ( wikilink) and was updated in 2014, so it was very up to date. The first section was an overview of the river, and all the of the things built up around it. The next part was a history of the city, going back to early days of the area when it was just an agricultural county within the chinese empire, through the colonial period when the West opened up the city, to the modern ultra-modern megalopolis of today.

It had a 1:500 scale of the main city on one floor that was spectacular. I love scale models of things, so this walk around model was awesome.

The next section was the pre-human history of Shanghai, talking about the geological processes that gave the city its current landscape. Another section covered transportation, the growth of the metro, and proliferation of buses, traffic control and infrastructure development. And then the last section discussed the plans and current projects in Shanghai.

It was a very good musuem, informational, and visual, there was alot of stuff to read, and even more to look at. Our inability to read Mandarin did not limit our experience in any appreciable way.

We then wandered through parts of the French Concession (remember when i said the West opened up Shanghai )
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_French_Concession

We spotted the US Consulate, not as overt security as i would have expected, but certainly not a friendly welcoming place.

This whole neighborhood has been taken over by foreigners for 150 years, and it was apparant in the architecture and some of the businesses, to include hooters.

pic here

We hopped the metro back to our neighnborhood to research what to do for dinner, and was once againt almost mildly kidnapped.

As we exited the train station a young couple asked if we could take their picture, we obliged, they then engaged us, asking where we were from, and complimenting our English (i think it is wierd that they will ask us where we are from, and when we say the US, they compliment our english, buddy, thats the language spoken here, i dont compliment your Mandarin when you speak to me). They asked us where we were going, and what else we had seen. At first they seemed just really friendly, i was immediately suspicious, cause no one in the world is that friendly, but then they started talking about how they were planning on going to a tea house, and invited us to come with them. We were friendly and cordial, I wanted to see how much of their time we could waste without putting ourselves in danger. Ultimately the engagement lasted at least 5 minutes, only for them to walk away empty handed, and us with a good story.

We then made our way to dinner, a noodle place. I got a dry noodle dish, and laura got a tomato-sauce, and beef rib dish. My food was great, the noodles were tossed in a vegetable oil, and had a side of that same green relish that we have been unable to identify, and lauras beef was delicious, the soup the noodles were in was just ok. satsfied with dinner, we walked back through the market area we navigated to get here,

this place had meat, im guessing halal, because there were alot of lambs and no pigs.

I

it was interesting, not that i have any way to cook these things, but the meat looked good. One of the shops had little puppies that were eating scraps, and presumably keep the vermin away, laura was very excited.

We stopped at a grocery store to snag some sweets, and bought some bananas at a fruit vendor down the street.

We went home for an early night, so we can start the next day a little early.

Knock off highspeed trains, and GDP buffs

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Packed our bags to say goodbye to Beijing. The subway got us to the train station, it is near the airport, so it was the reverse of our journey a few days before.

The Beijing train station is huge, easily the size of a midsize US airport. There were at least 24 tracks, and the tracks were 2-3 levels above ground.

The engineering that went into this place was pretty astounding.

We got some pastry snacks for the train ride in the station, we noticed the fresh made stuff is DRASTICALLY less expensive than pre-packaged, the pastries were between 6-12CNY, but when you went accross the way to the packaged snacks area suddenly you were paying 28CNY for the mass-market version.

When going through security we showed our ticket to the guard, asking where to go, and he pointed up. We went up, walked around, and went back down thinking we were supposed to go around a certain point. unfortunately going down meant we left the secure area, so we went back through, and the guards laughed a little.

We eventually found our train, and our seat. These high speed trains are pretty great, definately on par with the high speed trains of Japan. The train, and line was designed to handle 380km/hr, but they decided 300km/h was fast enough, and actually more efficient. It is over 750 miles, and took about 6 hours. There were attendants walking around with snacks, as well as trays of food for purchase. There were toilets, trash, and a hot water dispenser in every car.

It was pretty swanky, we got the 2nd class tickets and the seats were slightly larger than US domestic flights, and all the other passengers were normal people, some kids, but no tantrums or crying children it was an easy trip.

The views outside were pretty interesting. Much of the route looked alot like middle america, big flat areas, with farmland as far as you can see in either direction. But unlike middle america, threa are random assortments of monstrously large apartment buildings sprouting out of no where. And I mean middle of no where, its like, if Manhattan, KS or Baraboo WI had 5, Fifteen Story apartment buildings in it. These tiny towns didnt appear to have enough jobs to support the 10,000 people that would be living in these complexes. On top of that, it appeared as though many of them were empty, entire buildings with no lights on, no shades down, no laundry hangng. It was eerie.

The Shanghai station is a little out of town so we didnt really see much on the way in via subway. When we popped up out of the subway near our hotel, we saw that Shanghai is indeed a modern metropolis. We got to our hotel, and we were greeted with a cup of tea. They also saw that i left a note in the hotels.com remarks section, asking for a high floor, so they gave us a room on the top floor.

This place is pretty great, here is the view from our room.

We did some research, and found a Szechuan place. This place had a similar menu to the Grandmas place, a big book with pictures, and a checksheet you order on. We had crushed spicy cucumber again, a dish of noodles, a basket of fried mushrooms, and a pork dish on a bed of pumpkin and millet. It was all pretty good, The pork meal was very interesting, the pumpkin calmed alot of the heat that is inherent in Szechuan food.

We wandered home and I passed out very quickly, while laura watched whatever was on HBO.

Ugly Americans, and ancient splendor

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Another early morning to make the bus to the tour.

Our tour guide picked us up from the hotel lobby, and walked us to another bigger hotel, with other tourists and the bus.

Our tourguide spoke very good english, and was very knowledgable about all of the sites, and Chinese history in general.

Our first stop was the Forbidden City ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City ). It is the old imperial palace and administrative capital of the Chinese empire. It was started in 1406 and was considered finished in 1420. It was so called the Forbidden City, because the common folk were forbidden from entering, and the royal family concubines (of which there were many) were forbidden from leaving. This was the colloquial name, it was referred to as the Imperial Palace. We saw the various courtyards and throne rooms.


the courtyards were barren because the emperors were afraid trees or flowers would afford assassins cover.


The throne room was where the emperor recieved offical guests, and administered over the various religious functions.

The building behind that is where the actual meetings with the foreign representatives and high level imperial officials. This is where the actual running of the empire took place.

Behind this are various chambers with various functions.

We then saw the actual residences of the emperor.

he had multiple entrances, the official front door, and two side doors, from which his concubines would enter, it was unclear whether he had to choose one or the other, or if the doors were a matter of convinience.

We then went to the womens area of the Palace grounds, which was behind an extra wall, as no one but the ladies and of course the emperor was allowed back there. Well, the eunuchs were allowed back there too. This area of the palace was rather large and entirely managed by the Empress.

I neglected to mention that it was freezing, literally freezing. it was unusually cold for this time of year, hovering around 20F, and then wind chill making it bone chilling. So we kinda hurried through everything, i snapped pictures, and we moved along.

(apologies the pictures might not be in order, i am uploading this late because China doesnt like google stuff, so i am throwing this up later, enjoy the pictures)

Hopping back on to the bus, we got a feel for the other people on the tour; there was a mother/daughter duo from the interior of China, a husband and wife from Korea, a quartet of 20-something girls from the Phillipines, a husband and wife with two daughters from the San Francisco area (henceforth the Bay Area) and a husband wife with a 19 yr old, 17 yr old daughter, an adopted 9 yr old chinese daughter, and a 13 yr old son.

I will comment on them after i run through the historical shit we saw.

The bus took us to a Tea house, as one of their sales pitches. We were presented with a “tea ceremony” it was really a mildly educational sales pitch. The attendant made 5 different teas for us to try, and extolled the virtues of each “this one helps with liver and eyes, and this one makes you sleepy” etc

She then released us into the shop. The one tea i was impressed with was the Black tea, which is very much like whiskey, it is aged, has a taste that needs getting used to, and gets real expensive real quick. It tastes a little smokey, and very earthy, it usually comes in these big pucks that you break pieces off of. They had 8 inch x 1 inch disks of this stuff ranging in price from 300CNY to 36,000CNY, thats a $5000 dollar brick of tea leaves…

Piled back on the bus to get to the Temple of Heaven. Again given the cold we didnt stick around long. The temple of heaven (wikilink here) is in the middle of a very large park, which we wandered around a little bit, it costs money to enter the park, and actually requires another ticket to get onto the temple grounds, given the cold we neglected to do this.

The temple was built originally by the same guy that commissioned the Forbidden City, Yongle Emperor doin work.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Heaven

The tour had arranged for golf cart-vans to take us through the park some and bring us to the lunch site. It was a restaurant in the park, and they served us another very generic, mundane chinese meal, again things obviously akin to what we can find in the US.

The carts then took us back to the bus, which took us to the second sales piitch of the trip; The Pearl Market.

This was pitched as being relevant, because the Dragon Lady (a certain queen i have yet to find the wiki page for) loved pearls, and it was she that did all the rehab on the forbidden palace and the Summer Palace.

It was a terrible sales pitch, the sales lady walked in and asked people if they were families and if they were students. We think this was to determine how much they could sell us. Laura admitted we were not students…

She told us a little about freshwater pearls vs ocean pearls, how to spot fake pearls, and then very abruptly stopped, and took us out to the sales floor. I think she may have been frustrated by the Bay Area family’s many questions (ill get to this). At the floor she told us of the deals and specials they were running, and handed us off to the actual sales people.

Laura and i very disinterestedly wandered around until we ran into our guide who said the bus was open. We immediately left for the bus, to sit in the back, and talk shit about the other Americans on the trip (this is coming up, just wait)

The last bus ride was a little longer, as the summer palace was on the outskirts of the city. Originally it was a little ways away from the city, so the royals could escape the city, but close enough that they could return within the day, and administrators could come and go with relative ease.

The summer palace was beautiful ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Palace ), and actually is a preview of our coming time in Suzhou and Hangzhou. Apparently one of the emperors was so enthralled with the Westlake in Hangzhou that he had his architects emulate it when digging up the lake in the Summer Palace grounds. He was also enamored with a certian bridge in Suzhou, so he had his architects emulate it here as well.

We were unable to enter the actual administrative portions of the palace grounds, it was mostly a big park, with example royal residences from the 1860s.

this was about the time i started asking my own questions of the tour guide, trying to figure the timeline that this Dragon Lady was leading through, and she kept making reference to the “eight nations” which i later determined was all the gunboat diplomacy the french and british and russians and germans and americans were exercising in China at the time. By now it was warming up and we enjoyed ourselves a little more, however, this was essentially the end of the tour.

we piled back on the bus, and were taken back to our respective hotels.

The dinner we got was forgettable, we were looking for the DanDan noodles i had fallen in love with in Tokyo, and found them. Unfortunately the mall food courts here, arent as universally awesome as they are in Japan. The food was not very good, while wandering the mall we found another food court, that had examples of cuisine from all over China. We think this would have beem the place to taste a bunch of different stuff. Our mistake.

We then made our way home, and got to sleep early, making up for all the lost sleep with travel and early tours.

Those of you unwiilling to read my disparaging fellow americans should log off now…

Ho-lee shit these people on this tour is why people hate american tourists, these are Ugly Americans.

First experience with the Bay Area family, listening to the father quiz the daughter on vocabulary words. This family was Indian American, pretty clearly second gen, thuroughly americanized. I have been on vacation as an elementary student, i have done homework on vacation, but never forced, and certainly not in a manner as obstructive to those around me as a verbal quiz on vocab words. Listening to the girls responses, it was pretty clear she didnt actually have a grasp on these words, she would regurgitate an answer, that was certainly right, but it was pretty clear she didnt actually appreciate how the word was used and what it meant. Also, as she checked out the father continued to throw words at her, and remind her she had to learn these words by next year (as in next calendar year? or next school year?). It didnt seem as though these words were actually generated by a school, we got the idea that this was the parents trying to “give her an advantage” in school.

The other portion of their childrens learning upset me. The father asked a number of questions, many of which were unnecessary as the answer was given in context moments before. We got the feeling that he wasnt asking for his own benefit, but for that of his daughters, which again, is cool. but if you actually valued the knowledge, you would have been paying attention in the first place. I got the feeling that they were accumulating knowledge, or rather, forcibly pouring knowledge on their kids for the sake of knowing more, rather than understanding more.

But the real thing that got both laura and i, was their dietary choices. They are in China, they flew from the Bay Area to Beijing, China, only 3 days prior, and had already eaten at Subway, McDonalds, and hit Starbucks a number of times. They expressed excitement at going to Subway that evening. They neglected to eat just about everything on the very americanized chinese lunch.

Stay home, use google maps to visit the sites, thats all you want anyways, no one wants you here, and it seems like you dont really want to be here either. you make us (all Americans) look bad.

The big family was worse. They were from Atlanta area. And our first taste of them was discussing whether they would have Pizza Hut or McDonalds for dinner that night. It only got worse from there.

The 13 yr old son threw a tantrum at one point on the bus because his mother didnt buy him a souviner panda hat (that nearly all the gypsy ladies sell here). the 17 and 19 yr old daughters got into a pissing match about how smart they are, using reading level in 5th grade as the metric. the mother and father actively called their other kid (an older kid not present) “the bad one”. they ate almost none of the food at lunch, with the father and son commenting on how “wierd” the food was (as the phillipino girls, the korean couple, and me/laura ate it). The younger son and adopted daughter were running around the temple and generally being unruly.

they were just an all around shitty group of people.

If we had had another stop on this tour, i probably would have laid into the kid…

It was embarrasing, not only was the family embarrsing itself, and me adn laura, but embarrasing on behalf of the entire United States. These people (Chinese) do not see many Americans, when you come over here, and refuse to eat the basic food, throw tantrums over bullshit, and disrespect their fucking history, you make us ALL look bad.

If you cant handle being outside your comfort zone, dont fucking leave it. Go to Chinatown in your city, fuckit go to Panda Express, you dont deserve “exotic” food, i dont want to run into you in Chinatown when im looking for good food.

/endrant