China Chronicles: 8/14/2004

"The force at the core leading our cause is the Chinese Communist Party."

I'm writing this as I sit on my bed at the Hotel Equatorial, Yanan Road, Shanghai. Chinese TV is on, and on my

right is my copy of the little red book, "Quotations from Chairmain Mao Tse-Tung".

The day has been a blur. A very sweaty, hot, fragrant blur. Searching for metaphors, I've landed on this: If Chinatown took over New York and moved the whole city to Houston, Texas., you'd have Shanghai. Oh, and tell London to move in too. Shanghai is packed with people and is always moving. You literally can be run over if you stand still too long and our taxi rides were intermittently nail-biting as residents would step directly in the path of our speeding VW Santana

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But we made it alive. "Xie Xie!". (Thank you!)

After our plane arrived last night, we were too late to meet with friends. Restless, we went out for a drink and hit two great spots,

The Long Bar and

Malone's. Both spots are fairly foreigner friendly, with plenty of advertisements in english and plenty of english-speakers to read them. Actually, pretty good introductions for a couple of greenhorns like ourselves. The Long is semi-famous (great t-shirts) and a part of the Portman Ritz-Carlton (fastfact: say "Portaman" to any taxi driver and he'll take ya there") Moving on to Malone's, the party really started. There was the best cover band I have ever heard. Three chinese guys and two girls played every 80's cover song note-perfect, slam-bam after the other. Women were dancing on the table, and since the water in China is suspect...

"Tiger Pijou (Beer), Xie Xie!" So to the strains of "Oh! Tainted Luvve..." and "Come on Eileen", Angela and I danced our first night away in Shanghai.

We slept like logs and awoke around 8ish. Rick met us in the lobby with his friend Krista. (A note about Krista: She worked with Rick on Flatland and now is teaching English in Shanghai. She has acted as surrogate translator, sometime bargainer, and language teacher teacher for us. She ROCKS. )

Rick and Krista

Rick took the lead. Our search, a certain street vendor for breakfast. We passed many alleys and crossed many streets until we came to the place Rick remembered. It's one of those alleyways you always read about, but were glad you didn't encounter yourself. It was great, a slice of real china. people going about their business crowded together with clothes hanging overhead , bikes and mopeds roaring thru and the occasional auto and foreigner. We found the family and asked them to prepare the breakfast for us. The father took out a ball of dough that seemed to be made of rice, he spread some oil on his countertop and kneaded the dough into a log, then pinched off 4 small balls, one for each of us. He flattened the ball, added some chopped greens, pinched, and rolled again with a little more oil. He then turned the heat up on his charcoal kettle and added fresh oil to the griddle on top. Each ball went into the oil to fry and was flattened by an iron tool that spread the dumpling to a perfect circumference. After frying lightly on both sides, he cracked an egg into the oil, let it cook for a second, then moved the dumpling on top of the egg, pressed and finished cooking, removing the dumplings to a plate, where he dabbled on two kinds of sauce, folded and placed in plastic bags for us. the cost was 15c for a fresh meal. it was greasy, and goood.

Now the treasures of shanghai street food are not without their dangers. There are no department of health signs here, and cleanliness is often an option not exercised. I loved the food, and the people were sweet, but for the gorehounds, here you go: The street had vendors selling meat and fish outside, so that smell, along with various human effluvia haunted the senses (People would brush their teeth on the sidewalk, using the gutter as a spitoon- I can only imagine the rest). The workspace for our cook was a cart containing an iron round firebox and griddle, then a metal countertop with plastic. the oil was definitely not new and bits of old foodstuffs was scattered throughout the counter top. He took out various bowls and plates to work with that looked like only a quick wipe was applied to them. He wiped his hands on a rag before working and I'm not sure i felt better about that after seeing the condition of the rag. I'm convinced that the only reason i didn't get sick afterwards was that everything was fried, killing off anything that could be hitching a ride into my body, (I attribute my survival of the dumplings i purchased afterwards to an Act of God.) But this is only my western-fed stomach talking. We of the USA have been spoiled with the hygienic nature of our food, and our immune systems are unable to cope with the bacteriums present in foods around the world, (How many non-americans do you know who get Monteczuma's Revenge while traveling?) But overall, the breakfast was amazing, and is something I will try to recreate in my own kitchen. After I wash my hands of course, three times, with soap.

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"CD! DVD! WATCH!" say three times fast, repeat.

Sated, we took a taxi to our next destination: Xiangyang Market.

This is an open air conflagration of stalls and booths off the main drag. Even befiore we entered the market we were assaulted by hordes crying out "CDDVDWATCH!" and pushing laminated sheets of different watch brands or business cards under our noses. This is usually not a recommended avenue, as the goods are not only illegal, but almost always copies or bootlegs. We cruised the market and did a bangup job Xmas shopping. China has something I wish was more standard in America: Bargaining. After a shakey start, Angela and I have taken to this very well. The transaction would go something like this:

"You like? "

"Shi De, Duoshou qian? (Yes, how much?)

Then the proprietor would take out a calculator (standard equip for international trade) and type in the price. (China uses arabic numerals as well as chinese numerals, but the names and sign language are not the same). For example, the proprietor would type 200 ¥ (Yuan).

"No,no,no,no", I say. And i type 100¥

"Oooohhhhh!" They say, rolling eyes and having a consterned discussion to their friends. We go back in forth and setting on a price more than 100, but less than 200 and we're both happpy. Of course, I got taken more than a few times, but I was learning. (And that serves me right, stupid american!) Definitely look at this blog entry. He gets it right.

Over time, our bags got bigger and the heat got worse. I've been sweating like a stuck pig throught this trip and I hope to lose 10 lbs by the time I'm done. Rick takes us by the bar district

( I see a pattern beginning to form). We find a table at The Blue Frog .

We have a beer and lunch, mainly a western lunch because that's what the bar serves. The blug frog is cool though, they have a 100 shot challenge to get your name on the wall. Next time, perhaps.. Next we take a taxi to the treasure trove of the day, the Dongtai Road antique market.

Similar in structure to Xiangyang, here we have one long road with shops and carts in the street. It's very quiet and everywhere are vendors and residents playing checkers or majjhong. The houses are very old, and you start to get a sense of China before modernization. I'd rather have gone here first as they have stall after stall of amazing antiques and, of course, knockoffs. I realize knocks offs as I buy a chess set, that I discover exists in the next 10 stalls. Oh well, we got some amazing things though: Mao watches, Mao plates, and even my own copy of the famous "Little Red Book", and here, from which the quotation at the head of this blog came from.


Evidently the revolution can be bought, and at a good price too if you bargain well.

After browsing and shopping for most of the day, we went home to rest, utterly destroyed, before meeting two more of Ricks friends for dinner. Natalie and Marilyn showed up about an hour later to take us out for real Shanghaiese food.

We had eveything from jellyfish salads, to baby octopus to steamed Mandarin fish, and it was all amazing. The beer flowed well too. Later we walked to a chinese coffee house where a small dessert came out larger than we expected!

We were supposed to get caffeinated for the rest of the evening, but we were all wiped, so we went back to the hotel. All in all, an amazing intro to a great city.

Chinese Communist Political History

China Chronicles: 8/12-8/13