Leaving China

I’m on the plane now headed back to London. Shanghai was incredible. The people, the culture, the food, all so different from anywhere I’ve lived or travelled. I don’t know that I could ever live in China, but I see why Querston likes it.

Thanks to her, Omar and Sly, I’ve now been on three continents in this world! Hopefully we can meet up again in London or even in a more exotic beach town... Lord knows we all need the sun!

Jade Temple

After considering walking around yet another Chinese temple, clueless to the significance of what we were seeing, hearing and smelling, Querston and I did the smartest thing we’ve done yet, I think... we asked for a tour guide! Welcome to finally understanding what the hell is going on.

I even took notes on the whole thing. I really wanted to remember everything that we were doing. Since this was a Buddhist Temple, many people were praying to the statues, bowing on the pillow stools, lighting incense, etc. It was hard to know when we were being respectful or disrespectful, what was a good god for them, what each statue meant. The temple was fabulous, so many bright colors, things to see and the history was incredible.

the temple was also the unraveling of my good sense. Heretofore I had done well, spending very little about $130 or £65. Not bad. But all that good bargaining was lost nearly at the door of the temple. I noticed that lots of the tourists (anyone with a white face - I call them Gringos in my head for some reason on this trip) had these little gift shop type bags. I was instantly intrigued because it was about the first time that we’d seen such a thing. 

Then, as helpful as our tour guide was, he was a salesman. He took us to an upstairs jade room where I spent $150 on a jade bracelet. Now, I don’t ever wear bracelets. I’m not that into jewelry, I’ve never been a jade connoisseur. But, again, my good sense left me at the happy buddha downstairs. 

The bracelet would probably have been ok, if that was my last purchase. My friend Samira had me intrigued about this eastern tea she buys in London that is supposed to clear you out and help you lose weight. So we go for a tea tasting... $150 later ($50 for me, $100 for Samira) I have some marigold flowers that the monks grew out back in my possession. What in the world made me buy $50 worth of TEA, no actually herbs, for myself. I don’t even drink tea that often and I certainly don’t go the rigamarole that this stuff takes. 

I tell you what, my four-month supply of tea better... well I better look about like Eva Longoria by time October rolls around...

I can’t ever come back to China with money again! Someone remind me to never buy anything at the temples. They have it at the fake market, they have it at the fake market.

Click here to see the gorgeous pictures from the temple!

Confucius Temple

My handy guidebook says that Shanghai’s Confucius Temple is in the southwest quarter of Old Town. It was restored and reopened in 1999. But the most important detail is that the ground are tranquil and seldom crowded...

Well they weren’t kidding. In the most overpopulated country in the world, Querston and I were two of only 15 maybe 20 tourists at the Confucius Temple (hence the above photo). 

The Temple is beautiful, but again, Querston and I were aliens in a world we’d seen from afar but really knew nothing about. We were great at taking pictures, but as you’ll see in the captions, we weren’t really sure what we were looking at. 

The gardens were very quiet and peaceful, but we wish that there would have been more placards to give us some of the history. Sadly, my guidebook only offers about a paragraph for each general site, so it was no help either. 

That has been a bit of the theme on this trip, but we are learning from it. No more strollers on outings, taking pictures is good, now let’s see about learning some history at the temples. The saga continues...

Click here to see the pictures from our Chinese lunch and Confucius Temple.

Chinese Lunch

Oh gosh, how to describe our traditional Shanganese lunch... Querston’s Mandarin teacher was gracious enough to take us for lunch. Querston and I knew that we were very likely to be in trouble, but I had no idea just how hard it would be. 

The food here is simply nothing like I’ve ever eaten. Anyone who knows me well, knows that I’m a picky eater, but it wasn’t even so much of a taste thing as it was a preparation issue. 

We started off with what I like to call clammy chicken. It was set down on the table cut into pieces with the head cut off, but still on the plate. The waitresses, undoubtedly seeing the distress in our faces, quickly removed the head, giggling a bit to one another as they did it. 

Side note: I was pretty sure they were laughing at us the entire time, but Yvonne assured us that they weren’t. 

The chicken still had it’s blood, bones and skin, which wasn’t so much the issue as was the cold, uncooked sort of texture and taste the chicken had. We determined it must not have been cooked in an oven, rather steamed or something. It didn’t go down very easy, two bites tops.

Next was the soup round. It was a crab tofu soup and was the most edible thing besides the vegetable that we ordered. It was hot and good, but there were some small bones or scales or something that I was constantly picking out of my mouth.

Steamed dumplings were next. Thankfully, I got a pass on these as they were pork, which I don’t eat. Querston suffered through one, but it wasn’t to her delight, I’m sure. Asparagus was next and it was good. Although they gave us the bottom part instead of the top, comparatively, it was what we ate the most of.

Lastly came our actual meals that we’d ordered. Querston got sweet and sour pork and I wanted the same thing with chicken, but no go, so I got it with fish. Let me back up and qualify how the Chinese serve your fish. First they brought the fish out to our table in a big bucket. I wasn’t quite ready for it, so my reaction probably didn’t match decorum. Then it’s chock full of bones. Although it didn’t taste bad, I’m just not accustomed enough to eating around the bones. Three bites, that’s it, can’t take the bones.

My strategy was to simply talk throughout the meal to avoid eating too much and looking rude for not doing so. Querston suffered more than I did, I’m positive of that. All in all, the food actually didn’t taste too bad, it was just prepared very differently.

Click here to see pictures from lunch as well as Confucius Temple.

Haungpu River

Why do I ever forget to save? I’m writing this blog again because I forgot to!

So Querston, Omar, Sly and me went down to the Bund today and walked around and we went on a cruise down the Haungpu River. We had a huge boat and it gave us the opportunity to see both sides of the city. Shanghai is split by the river into the Puxi side and the Pudong side. Since Querston lives on the Puxi side, it was nice to see the Pudong side. 

I took a ton of pictures and we even met another group of people from Indiana. This makes our second in four days. So I have officially met more Hoosiers in China than in London. 

Sly seemed to love the boat and I’m pretty sure that we went all the way to the mouth of the Yangtze River. Again, the tour guide aspect isn’t that great with my little Berlitz book that I bought, but it gets me by!

Click here to look at the photos!

Yu Yuan Park

So, Querston and I decided that we would go to Yu Yuan Garden. Everyone suggested seeing it and we thought it would be fun to see the flowers. We decided we could bring Sly because it was outdoors, so if he got upset, it wouldn’t really matter since we weren’t inside...

Our first mistake was deciding not to bring the Baby Bjorn. We decided instead to tote around Sly in his stroller. Well, it would be an understatement to say that China isn’t exactly stroller-friendly. We spent more time in the park determining how exactly we’d get through crevices and down walkways than we did actually learning anything about the park. 

So mostly, we’re pretty sure we missed the historically significant things, but we did take some cool photos! Click here to check them out!

China

Oh to actually understand what day it is?!? I think I’m actually writing this on May 25, but I can’t actually tell with the time difference here... It’s 5 a.m. and jet lag has me sleepy really early and this morning, up really early as well. It gave me a chance to see why it’s dark here in China at 7 p.m. in May! It’s 5 a.m. and it has been light for over 30 minutes!!! You’d need to be up and going at like 7 a.m. to get the maximum impact of the day. Just a muse, don’t think I could handle that. Thank God for 9 p.m. sunsets in London.

Ok, so having safely landed and entered Shanghai, I have entered an alternative universe where the driving is INSANE, the people are wonderful and the food has been American (is it bad that I’ve had Papa John’s on three different continents now?)

Seriously, I have never in so many near-miss car crashes as I have here in Shanghai! We have almost hit cabs, other vans, people on mopeds, people on bikes, we’ve even nearly maimed a few pedestrians, although it didn’t seem to phase them. I almost got hit by a cab while standing out in front of Querston’s apartments. And no I wasn’t in the middle of the street, I was in the entranceway! 

So far I’ve seen the Pearl TV Tower, but I didn’t take pictures as we were simply driving by it and I’ve seen the people. It isn’t quite the mass of people I was expecting, but there are a ton of people here for sure.

Today we are going to the Yu Yuan Garden and I am so excited. The guidebook said it would be fun and Rick suggested it too, so hopefully I will love it. Of course I will post pics as well.

I also went to the fabric market here in Puxi where Q lives. I got three suits made, a linen skirt and five dress shirts for 1540 RNB. That shakes out to $198.45. I’m hoping that they will all fit and not fall apart and that I like them, but if I really get all that for under $200, well I’m a happy camper. Going back on Monday to check out the results.

Also plan to go on a river cruise and see the Bund and hopefully the museum with the replica of Shanghai that Linda mentioned. Also plan to go for drinks at the tallest hotel in the world, Grand Hyatt. Will write all about it later!