Some Shanghai, but mostly Hangzhou
Here are a few paragraphs worth of details about Shanghai. I always forget details. These details are not necessarily going to be interesting for you. They are more for me. Sometimes it is nice to listen to somebody speak in another language even if you don't understand.
My hostel in Shanghai was one of the best in which I have ever stayed. It's called the Rock and Wood Hostel in Changning. It's down an alley off of a more major street called Wuyi Lu. Getting back I usually tell the cab drivers the intersection of Wuyi Lu and Kaixuan Lu.
The nearest subway stop is Zhongshan Gongyuan on line 2. Exit 7 is the one that dumps me closest to where I want to be. On the walk back to the hostel on Kaixuan Lu, there is this Xinjiang bread guy who sells the onion/sesame disks. I probably ate 6 or 7 of them during my stay. Also nearby is the Yan'an Xi Lu subway stop on lines 3 or 4. Walking there is nicer cause it's through a park but it makes the most sense when transferring to line 10 or line 9 which are south of here. In that case, it makes way more sense than going to Zhongshan Gongyuan, not just cause it is closer, but because transferring lines in a Shanghai subway station usually involves a lot of walking.
I spent a lot of time on line 2 which goes to the Jing An Si stop, the Renmin Guangchang stop, the Nanjing Lu stops, and the Lujiazui stops. I got off at all of these stations multiple times. I think I used line 10 the next most commonly, especially Shanxi Nan Lu I think to go to a few different Couchsurfer meetups and also a few different bars. I went to the CS meetups in Lujiazui in Pudong at a place called the O'Yamee Cafe. The Wednesday meetups were at a pub called Kangaroo bar. The Saturday language exchange meetups were near to Shanxi Nan Lu in the garden in front of the Hotel Okura Garden. One time it was rained out and we went to a nearby Starbucks instead. I went to a smattering of other random bars. A horrible, horrible place called Zapatas on Hengshan Lu, then a Ktv place called Shanghai Ge Cheng. Also one night a bar filled with foreigners called I Love Shanghai. Another night a "New York-style" place called the Apartment and a basement / converted bomb shelter with cool tunnels and ambience but very bad ambience and music. I went to that music place the Cotton Club one night which I wrote about I believe, which has the distinction of having the most expensive drinks of any of these places. As I recall the cheapest beer was about 10 USD.
That's probably enough details for now.
I have a few random thoughts to share from the last few days in Hangzhou pretty much beginning with my train ride from Shanghai.
I had to show my passport in order to buy that train ticket by the way, a 45 minute ride on an express to a neighboring city. Apparently it's a newish policy, but still, give me a break. Of course you have to show it to check into any hotel. Who knows how many photocopies of my passport are sitting around in Chinese filing cabinets somewhere. Having my own computer on this trip, I didn't go to internet cafes, but did I mention that in order to visit an internet cafe as a foreigner, one must also show one's passport? I assume Chinese must show their ID though I'm not 100% sure about that.
I forgot about the staring thing. In Hangzhou, kinda started to get to me. Also a lot more hellos here. Not the good kind of hello. The kind where they yell it at you repeatedly. Also the way they don't give a shit about anybody but themselves. I was thinking about this on the train when the girl to my right stretched way out into the aisle and spoke so loudly on the phone that even the older Chinese guy in front of her turned around and shook his head. Not that she noticed or cared. People don't really rebuke each other for behavior. Nobody ever says hey, you should just let me get off the train first and the whole of society will run more smoothly. Or hey, your elbow is in my face. Or hey, jesus fucking christ pay attention to where you're walking. Then, arriving at the Hangzhou train station, I waited on line for a cab. Now let me say, I'm pretty good at not getting agitated by this stuff. I really can laugh it off. That doesn't mean it doesn't continue to amaze me how people will brazenly just push and step in front of each other in any way possible to get ahead in a line, and nobody will actually acknowledge what is going on. If you try to acknowledge it, the response is as if you had spoken an alien language. So yeah, staring, and today, lots of picture taking. That is, people take my picture without acknowledging that I am a human being. I am more like a circus animal or an alien. Or Britney Spears.
While in a cab from the Hangzhou train station to my hotel, I had a business idea. Glamour shots for cab drivers. The pictures they have now look like the worst possible pictures known to man. I was going to say mug shots, but they're much worse than that. I'd say more like the pictures terrorists take of hostages to show that they are still alive. There's an opportunity here. Also, I find it strange that the picture hardly ever looks like the person driving. I'm pretty sure it's not just the western inability to distinguish between Asian people.
I love food on sticks. Specifically, that tofu (dou fu gan) but also the veggies like miscellaneous unnamed greens, lotus root, and almost anything vegetarian on that giant platter of sticks from which one can choose. Of all the food in China, there isn't much that I enjoy as consistently as I enjoy the sticks. I don't know what all that stuff is he puts on. I have been trying to figure out what makes it so magic. I'm sure Joy would interject here that it is the lard. I have asked before and I am confident that is not the case. There are different approaches. The guy here cooks the stuff on a griddle. "Big bean" oil is common here, though I have seen the big beans and I'm not sure what we'd call that. Of course I can't look it up because that would make me an enemy of the state for accessing restricted information on the internet. I can't even look up movie quotes here without a proxy. Yes, IMDB is blocked. Anyway, the spicy stuff that goes on towards the end is the real magic, but it's in an unlabeled container so I haven't been able to ascertain what the brand is or what makes it so magically delicious. In Guizhou it used to be fresh, dried chili. Here it is more of a powdered red chili of some kind. Oh, the guy tonight also threw in a bunch of onions when he cooked everything. Nice touch. These are my last few nights in China so I figured I'd indulge my love of stick food while I still can. They just don't make it like that in the US, at least nowhere I have ever seen.
I saw scorpions on sticks tonight. Also what I would describe as large maggots. Possibly locusts as well. I saw that in Cambodia before and heard of it in China, but this was the first time I actually saw it with my own eyes here. I saw some Chinese folks considering it but none partaking. Did I mention that I met a girl from Guangxi who told me they have an alcohol that is made from ants? Yes, ants. A girl from Yunnan said they have it there too. I asked my security guard friend from Anhui about it but he didn't believe me. It is for drinking and/or medicinal purposes apparently. I think by medicinal, my friend meant you can rub it on wounds to sterilize them. So that's handy.
The street food near where I'm staying is kind of sterilized in a way. All the stands look the same. I'm not sure but it seems like they all have the same corporate owner or something. In most real markets, I think the individuals own and operate their stand. Here there were multiple stands selling the same thing. It reminded me vaguely of the street fairs in NYC which have the same exact stands every time and every block or two, in case you realize a block later that you actually would like to eat a mozzarepa.
Every time I buy popcorn here, I am excited cause I like popcorn, and then I take the first bite and remember that it is sweet here. Edible sweet, but still sweet. I cannot seem to preserve that memory in my brain. I used to think it was because they put sugar on it, but it is actually a totally different looking popcorn kernel which must be inherently (and unfortunately for me) sweet. Sometimes peanuts are sweet too. Even the ones that you buy in the shell. That was a new one on me, though at least the salty ones exist too. I can't tell the difference from the packaging, but at least sometimes I get lucky.
The first day in Hangzhou it rained. I was out in defiance of the weather, but it was not good-mood-inducing. The second day was vastly superior. Sunny and hot, and I met up with a Couchsurfer for a long bike ride up into the hills around Hangzhou. We passed several villages and places where the famous local Longjing tea is grown. I have to go drink some tonight cause I still haven't since I've been here. I've gotten used to saying no thank you. I forgot that I actually would like to drink some of that tea, even if it is a touristy thing to do. Hard to know what a fair price is, I have to research that a bit. Anyway, beautiful bike ride although a very hot day. It was probably over 90 most of the time. Me and Tom from New Zealand who lives in Hangzhou and previously Harbin rode for maybe 3-5 hours and eventually stepped into a Taiwanese place I found on Dianping, the Chinese Yelp, so I could have a decent meal. Lunch had been Burger King. Tom has been here for a while and likes fast food. I had fries. Burger King in Hangzhou does not support the veggie burger. The waiter was extremely excited about us being there. He had a notebook filled with English phrases he was trying to learn as well as an English version of his life story. It said he was from a poor family in Jiangxi and his mother died when he was two months old. There were a bunch of things in there about life being hard but carrying on. I don't think he stopped smiling the entire time we were there. He asked us to sign his book. In two months, he'd accumulated about 30 small notes from foreigners who'd been in the restaurant. He said in last year's notebook he had over 500. I thought it was noteworthy and interesting that he had no fear about speaking English and making mistakes and was very anxious to speak, practice and improve. Pretty impressive actually. He was also helpful in making sure my food showed up without meat in it. Pretty good too.
Today I walked the circumference of West Lake, the famous tourist attraction everybody comes here to see. From what I can tell it is that and the tea, plus a smattering of gardens, pagodas, and temples. It's reputed to be a very naturally beautiful city and indeed is quite green in comparison with most other Chinese cities I have visited. Today was 92 degrees if the weather channel is to be believed and was quite sunny until 3 seconds before I walked in the door of my hostel when the skies opened the fuck up and it poured ridiculously for the last 10-15 minutes or so. Now it's petering off a tiny bit or maybe it just seems that way cause it was like a faucet had been turned on when it first started. Either way, impressive timing on my part. I was out walking from about 9:30am until 4 or so. It took quite a while to circumnavigate the lake, though I also stopped to check out the Leifang Pagoda which had a nice view of the lake, plus a vegetarian restaurant I stumbled upon which despite mediocre reviews on Dianping, I found to be decent enough.
I saw a lot of people empty their nostrils today. Possibly more than I have ever seen in one day in my life. I will not go into more detail. Around the lake, 80% of women carry umbrellas to protect their delicate complexions from the sun, lest they get a tan and people mistake them for low-class. They also often wear long sleeves, long pants, or if they wear short sleeves they have these arm covers from their wrists to their elbows. I guess to be fair, I'd rather use an umbrella than sunscreen. I also saw a lot of guys holding their girlfriends' purses. Also holding the umbrellas over the girlfriends while they walk. Also wearing pink shirts. What is up with the guys and the pink shirts? I know that's not exactly new, but I have seen it more here than ever before. I'm told Hangzhou is a popular romantic getaway for young Chinese couples. There certainly seem to be plenty here, although last night within the immediate vicinity of my hotel room, I heard two separate couples arguing and the girls crying. Sobbing even. Also whining like children. I'm not sure what that means, but hopefully I don't have to pay extra for it.
Tomorrow flying to Singapore. I could've stayed in Shanghai longer, but I'm about ready to get out of Hangzhou. There are no friendly, single guests with whom to socialize at this hostel and not much of a Couchsurfing scene with which to join up. Singapore should be better in that respect. Also, transportation is kind of difficult here. The city is large and spread out with no subway. They have this pretty cool system for renting bikes with a card you can get and then use to just grab bikes and go, but it seems like it's all better for people who live here. People who are tourists stick to the "old city" and pedestrian shopping areas plus the lake, which is nice, but I think it's enough. I'm ready for functional mass transportation again and actually variety of food. Also some company would be nice.
I will probably have more realizations and thoughts to add about China later, but there are probably too many words in this one already.
My hostel in Shanghai was one of the best in which I have ever stayed. It's called the Rock and Wood Hostel in Changning. It's down an alley off of a more major street called Wuyi Lu. Getting back I usually tell the cab drivers the intersection of Wuyi Lu and Kaixuan Lu.
The nearest subway stop is Zhongshan Gongyuan on line 2. Exit 7 is the one that dumps me closest to where I want to be. On the walk back to the hostel on Kaixuan Lu, there is this Xinjiang bread guy who sells the onion/sesame disks. I probably ate 6 or 7 of them during my stay. Also nearby is the Yan'an Xi Lu subway stop on lines 3 or 4. Walking there is nicer cause it's through a park but it makes the most sense when transferring to line 10 or line 9 which are south of here. In that case, it makes way more sense than going to Zhongshan Gongyuan, not just cause it is closer, but because transferring lines in a Shanghai subway station usually involves a lot of walking.
I spent a lot of time on line 2 which goes to the Jing An Si stop, the Renmin Guangchang stop, the Nanjing Lu stops, and the Lujiazui stops. I got off at all of these stations multiple times. I think I used line 10 the next most commonly, especially Shanxi Nan Lu I think to go to a few different Couchsurfer meetups and also a few different bars. I went to the CS meetups in Lujiazui in Pudong at a place called the O'Yamee Cafe. The Wednesday meetups were at a pub called Kangaroo bar. The Saturday language exchange meetups were near to Shanxi Nan Lu in the garden in front of the Hotel Okura Garden. One time it was rained out and we went to a nearby Starbucks instead. I went to a smattering of other random bars. A horrible, horrible place called Zapatas on Hengshan Lu, then a Ktv place called Shanghai Ge Cheng. Also one night a bar filled with foreigners called I Love Shanghai. Another night a "New York-style" place called the Apartment and a basement / converted bomb shelter with cool tunnels and ambience but very bad ambience and music. I went to that music place the Cotton Club one night which I wrote about I believe, which has the distinction of having the most expensive drinks of any of these places. As I recall the cheapest beer was about 10 USD.
That's probably enough details for now.
I have a few random thoughts to share from the last few days in Hangzhou pretty much beginning with my train ride from Shanghai.
I had to show my passport in order to buy that train ticket by the way, a 45 minute ride on an express to a neighboring city. Apparently it's a newish policy, but still, give me a break. Of course you have to show it to check into any hotel. Who knows how many photocopies of my passport are sitting around in Chinese filing cabinets somewhere. Having my own computer on this trip, I didn't go to internet cafes, but did I mention that in order to visit an internet cafe as a foreigner, one must also show one's passport? I assume Chinese must show their ID though I'm not 100% sure about that.
I forgot about the staring thing. In Hangzhou, kinda started to get to me. Also a lot more hellos here. Not the good kind of hello. The kind where they yell it at you repeatedly. Also the way they don't give a shit about anybody but themselves. I was thinking about this on the train when the girl to my right stretched way out into the aisle and spoke so loudly on the phone that even the older Chinese guy in front of her turned around and shook his head. Not that she noticed or cared. People don't really rebuke each other for behavior. Nobody ever says hey, you should just let me get off the train first and the whole of society will run more smoothly. Or hey, your elbow is in my face. Or hey, jesus fucking christ pay attention to where you're walking. Then, arriving at the Hangzhou train station, I waited on line for a cab. Now let me say, I'm pretty good at not getting agitated by this stuff. I really can laugh it off. That doesn't mean it doesn't continue to amaze me how people will brazenly just push and step in front of each other in any way possible to get ahead in a line, and nobody will actually acknowledge what is going on. If you try to acknowledge it, the response is as if you had spoken an alien language. So yeah, staring, and today, lots of picture taking. That is, people take my picture without acknowledging that I am a human being. I am more like a circus animal or an alien. Or Britney Spears.
While in a cab from the Hangzhou train station to my hotel, I had a business idea. Glamour shots for cab drivers. The pictures they have now look like the worst possible pictures known to man. I was going to say mug shots, but they're much worse than that. I'd say more like the pictures terrorists take of hostages to show that they are still alive. There's an opportunity here. Also, I find it strange that the picture hardly ever looks like the person driving. I'm pretty sure it's not just the western inability to distinguish between Asian people.
I love food on sticks. Specifically, that tofu (dou fu gan) but also the veggies like miscellaneous unnamed greens, lotus root, and almost anything vegetarian on that giant platter of sticks from which one can choose. Of all the food in China, there isn't much that I enjoy as consistently as I enjoy the sticks. I don't know what all that stuff is he puts on. I have been trying to figure out what makes it so magic. I'm sure Joy would interject here that it is the lard. I have asked before and I am confident that is not the case. There are different approaches. The guy here cooks the stuff on a griddle. "Big bean" oil is common here, though I have seen the big beans and I'm not sure what we'd call that. Of course I can't look it up because that would make me an enemy of the state for accessing restricted information on the internet. I can't even look up movie quotes here without a proxy. Yes, IMDB is blocked. Anyway, the spicy stuff that goes on towards the end is the real magic, but it's in an unlabeled container so I haven't been able to ascertain what the brand is or what makes it so magically delicious. In Guizhou it used to be fresh, dried chili. Here it is more of a powdered red chili of some kind. Oh, the guy tonight also threw in a bunch of onions when he cooked everything. Nice touch. These are my last few nights in China so I figured I'd indulge my love of stick food while I still can. They just don't make it like that in the US, at least nowhere I have ever seen.
I saw scorpions on sticks tonight. Also what I would describe as large maggots. Possibly locusts as well. I saw that in Cambodia before and heard of it in China, but this was the first time I actually saw it with my own eyes here. I saw some Chinese folks considering it but none partaking. Did I mention that I met a girl from Guangxi who told me they have an alcohol that is made from ants? Yes, ants. A girl from Yunnan said they have it there too. I asked my security guard friend from Anhui about it but he didn't believe me. It is for drinking and/or medicinal purposes apparently. I think by medicinal, my friend meant you can rub it on wounds to sterilize them. So that's handy.
The street food near where I'm staying is kind of sterilized in a way. All the stands look the same. I'm not sure but it seems like they all have the same corporate owner or something. In most real markets, I think the individuals own and operate their stand. Here there were multiple stands selling the same thing. It reminded me vaguely of the street fairs in NYC which have the same exact stands every time and every block or two, in case you realize a block later that you actually would like to eat a mozzarepa.
Every time I buy popcorn here, I am excited cause I like popcorn, and then I take the first bite and remember that it is sweet here. Edible sweet, but still sweet. I cannot seem to preserve that memory in my brain. I used to think it was because they put sugar on it, but it is actually a totally different looking popcorn kernel which must be inherently (and unfortunately for me) sweet. Sometimes peanuts are sweet too. Even the ones that you buy in the shell. That was a new one on me, though at least the salty ones exist too. I can't tell the difference from the packaging, but at least sometimes I get lucky.
The first day in Hangzhou it rained. I was out in defiance of the weather, but it was not good-mood-inducing. The second day was vastly superior. Sunny and hot, and I met up with a Couchsurfer for a long bike ride up into the hills around Hangzhou. We passed several villages and places where the famous local Longjing tea is grown. I have to go drink some tonight cause I still haven't since I've been here. I've gotten used to saying no thank you. I forgot that I actually would like to drink some of that tea, even if it is a touristy thing to do. Hard to know what a fair price is, I have to research that a bit. Anyway, beautiful bike ride although a very hot day. It was probably over 90 most of the time. Me and Tom from New Zealand who lives in Hangzhou and previously Harbin rode for maybe 3-5 hours and eventually stepped into a Taiwanese place I found on Dianping, the Chinese Yelp, so I could have a decent meal. Lunch had been Burger King. Tom has been here for a while and likes fast food. I had fries. Burger King in Hangzhou does not support the veggie burger. The waiter was extremely excited about us being there. He had a notebook filled with English phrases he was trying to learn as well as an English version of his life story. It said he was from a poor family in Jiangxi and his mother died when he was two months old. There were a bunch of things in there about life being hard but carrying on. I don't think he stopped smiling the entire time we were there. He asked us to sign his book. In two months, he'd accumulated about 30 small notes from foreigners who'd been in the restaurant. He said in last year's notebook he had over 500. I thought it was noteworthy and interesting that he had no fear about speaking English and making mistakes and was very anxious to speak, practice and improve. Pretty impressive actually. He was also helpful in making sure my food showed up without meat in it. Pretty good too.
Today I walked the circumference of West Lake, the famous tourist attraction everybody comes here to see. From what I can tell it is that and the tea, plus a smattering of gardens, pagodas, and temples. It's reputed to be a very naturally beautiful city and indeed is quite green in comparison with most other Chinese cities I have visited. Today was 92 degrees if the weather channel is to be believed and was quite sunny until 3 seconds before I walked in the door of my hostel when the skies opened the fuck up and it poured ridiculously for the last 10-15 minutes or so. Now it's petering off a tiny bit or maybe it just seems that way cause it was like a faucet had been turned on when it first started. Either way, impressive timing on my part. I was out walking from about 9:30am until 4 or so. It took quite a while to circumnavigate the lake, though I also stopped to check out the Leifang Pagoda which had a nice view of the lake, plus a vegetarian restaurant I stumbled upon which despite mediocre reviews on Dianping, I found to be decent enough.
I saw a lot of people empty their nostrils today. Possibly more than I have ever seen in one day in my life. I will not go into more detail. Around the lake, 80% of women carry umbrellas to protect their delicate complexions from the sun, lest they get a tan and people mistake them for low-class. They also often wear long sleeves, long pants, or if they wear short sleeves they have these arm covers from their wrists to their elbows. I guess to be fair, I'd rather use an umbrella than sunscreen. I also saw a lot of guys holding their girlfriends' purses. Also holding the umbrellas over the girlfriends while they walk. Also wearing pink shirts. What is up with the guys and the pink shirts? I know that's not exactly new, but I have seen it more here than ever before. I'm told Hangzhou is a popular romantic getaway for young Chinese couples. There certainly seem to be plenty here, although last night within the immediate vicinity of my hotel room, I heard two separate couples arguing and the girls crying. Sobbing even. Also whining like children. I'm not sure what that means, but hopefully I don't have to pay extra for it.
Tomorrow flying to Singapore. I could've stayed in Shanghai longer, but I'm about ready to get out of Hangzhou. There are no friendly, single guests with whom to socialize at this hostel and not much of a Couchsurfing scene with which to join up. Singapore should be better in that respect. Also, transportation is kind of difficult here. The city is large and spread out with no subway. They have this pretty cool system for renting bikes with a card you can get and then use to just grab bikes and go, but it seems like it's all better for people who live here. People who are tourists stick to the "old city" and pedestrian shopping areas plus the lake, which is nice, but I think it's enough. I'm ready for functional mass transportation again and actually variety of food. Also some company would be nice.
I will probably have more realizations and thoughts to add about China later, but there are probably too many words in this one already.
posted by Dan at 1:41 AM
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