More walkin round Shanghai.
Woke up about 745AM this morning. Got prepared because Wen said he would be there about 900AM to go out with us. He was late in getting there. He texted me that he would be late by a couple minutes. It was around 915AM that I called him to see about his location and length of time. Right as the fone rang, he walked thru the door. Kool. We were gonna head out and have breakfast, but Wen said he already ate, so Yumi and I said, ok, we can hold over for awhile. Neither of us was too hungry. Today was the day we were going to museums.
First we went to the Natural History Museum which had a few a dinosaur bones and a mastadon. It also had a couple chinese mummies and a bunch of stuffed animals. It was actually quite lame. A friend said that it was UNBELIEVABLE, but he mistook it for the Shanghai History/Art Museum. We were there for awhile, which I guess was good. The amazing thing about this place is that the inside of this building looked just as old as the fossils inside. The place was falling apart. View the pictures to understand what I am talking about. There was a thick layer of dust covering the dinosaur bones. It was disgusting. And the placement of some of the bones for the displays were out of order. (For years I wanted to be a palientologist and i took scientific illustration classes in college...so I know about dinosaurs and museum stuff) The way they had them displayed was if they had done so about 20 years ago and never updated them with new evidence. It was obvious they didnt care from the way they treated the building and the things inside. Disgusting.
Afterwards, we searched for the subway station because we wanted to head over to XinTianDi. First of all, we were on the main West to East road of the city, YanAn Lu. We had to walk about 4-5 blocks north to Nanjing Lu before we found the subway entrance. Right away I realized that I disliked this subway. And continuously throughout the week, it kept reaffirming itself. Don't believe the hype. The Shanghai Subway system is very inconvenient. All the station stops are far off from anything that you want to see, except for People's Square and the Pearl Tower. But those stops are so packed its a crap shoot to grab a train. It was thru my experience on the subway in Shanghai in which I just couldn't let go of the chinese way of doing things and tried to explain courtesy. I tried. I tried my hardest. I basically told them and used motions to explain to the people that you let people off first and then come in on the sides. You don't run head on into them all at once like a battle.
Subways that a fantastic: Toronto and Hong Kong. Bad subways: Shanghai....and, well, I can't really remember San Fran's subway system well, or France's, or even Washington DC's, but i do remember the stop, "Foggy Bottom".
Crossing the street on Nanjing Lu, and anywhere of importance in Shanghai, on a beautiful sunny afternoon during holiday season is like the battle scenes from Bravehart, without all the killing and weapons. A mass of people charging headlong into another opposing mass of people and not carrying what type of infliction they cause. Its profound. Really. Nowhere have I seen this before...i mean, not out of China.
We got to XinTianDi and again, I was very disappointed. It was just a bunch of highscale shops that sold overpriced junk. The bars and eateries there were all severly overpriced foreign styled with no Chinese eateries in site. I am in friggin' Shanghai and I can't find Chinese food! AAAARGGGH!!! A bottle of beer that I can get in Xiaolan for 5 RMB costs 60+RMB. !!!!!!!!! We walked around and left quickly and we checked out this block of buildings that surrounded the area. Apparently it has a style of architecture only found in Shanghai. We ate a small bite at one of the cafes there. It was ok. The bread was good. That was it.
We then hit up the Site of the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). I went out of curiosity. "Know your enemy". I wonder how much of the information and history located in this place has been whitewashed and changed. It was also interesting reading about the Koumingtang since this is during the same time as the Taiwanese KMT Head is visiting the Mainland. First major meetings in 60 years. I felt gross watching that stuff on TV. I can bet you any money, if Gabriel was still alive and strong enuff, he would put his hand thru the TV. He must be rolling over in his grave. If you dont know, Gabe was in Cheng Kai-Shek's KMT army during the fight against the CCP. I was reading all this stuff about treachery among members of the CCP and the KMT in regards to the Chinese people. Really interesting.
Afterwards we headed over to Haui Hai Lu to checked out this walking street. It was ok. Not like Nanjing Lu. Not as expensive either. It was pretty. We walked down the street and then walked over to the Shanghai Museum. We got to the museum and, to let you know, I love museums. Toronto's is great, Ann Arbor's, and many others that I have been too have been great. I could go to them a bunch of times. I think they are great. The Shanghai Museum has sooooo much potential, but frankly, I was bored with alot of it. I don't really care to go back. I mean, I hate to say it, but all I saw was pots made out of clay, porcelian, and metal. They paintings they had on display weren't all that good and they weren't preserved very well. The look of the place was great, but the material was the same thing over and over. It got to the point where I was like, "Oh, look, another pot. fantastic." totally sarcastic. I took pictures of interesting things that I found. Thats what you will see. There is not much else I found very interseting there. The most interseting room was the Ethnic Minority room. That was kool.
Afterwards, we walked out onto People's Square. It was big and sunny and blue in the sky. The sun shone off all the silver and glass buildings surrounding the square. Very nice. It had picked up wind and people were flying kites all over the place. So, I took some fotos and video. A couple kites collided and fell to the ground and got their strings tied all up. Awesome. While I was shooting some video, a girl came over to me looking all him and was like, "Hey, you want Rolex?" And said it a couple times and showed it to me and I just looked at her briefly like, "Whats wrong with you?" and went back to doing my stuff. She was about to continue but some cops walked by so she just pretended to sit pretty. Then she just watched me.
After this, we went to the Subway stop. Its really funny when I know where to go when the person living in Shanghai doesn't. It makes me feel powerful for some reason. ;-) Just kidding. Wen took us down a wrong turn. And since it was construction season during the holiday season, it was a long detour. We took the subway to the Hong Qiao bus station. Well, the stop closest to the station. It was during this subway time that I yelled at some chinese people because they didn't know how to get on the subway. But I yelled at them in Chinese, which surprised the hell out of them. THe great thing was...it worked!!! They waited for those too get off and then we got on. It ruled! Once we got to the stop, we had to walk about 6 blocks to get to the station. We bought our tickets for Hangzhou tomorrow for 8AM. We tried for 7, but they were all sold out. I hope its nice. Hopefully all the people will come to Shanghai for Chinese May Day.
This area of Shanghai, right as we emerged from the subway station, I realized that I liked this part of Shanghai. This part was really China. Like all of Hong Kong feels HongKong/China and not so much western. Just like Beijing too. Beijing felt like China. THe part of Shanghai we spent most of our time in felt like America or something wiht chinese writing. The building that the subway was under was holding the 48th Ping Pong Championships. They really made it look ornate.
On the way back to the mall next to the station, we stopped for some Dim Sum dinner. OH MAN, WAS IT GOOD! I loved it! This area was kool and so was the food. Too bad we aint in this area. The KFC was a killer though. We chatted alot during this dinner and I got to speak a lot of chinese with the waiters n stuff. It was fun. Still not great, but getting better. If I could just remember everything I have been taught.
We went into the mall and there was nothing that i needed. The sony store had stuff I wanted, but it was expensive and I didn't need it. A DVD shop had the entire boxset of The Transformers, but I was reluctant to purchase it because the lady wouldn't let me check it to see if it was legit. Damn you! Yumi had seperated from us to look at stuff so we went off on our own. We then met up later and we spent about 6 minutes watching this little baby girl dressed in a Tigger outfit play and bounce on the dirty floor. Oh man. So cute, but so sad to see her playing in the filth. Well, we headed out after that and went to the subway and headed back to the hotel.
Yumi and I got foot massages and they were really good. I had my contacts off and there was this little girl, the head lady's daughter, but the kid was short, chubby, with a short boy bowl cut and wearing a black and white shirt. She was really shy and the lady said she is afraid of foreigners. So i told her in Chinese while she was hiding behind the bar, "I'm a nice foreigner!" Throughout the massage we had about a 3 minute game of peek-a-boo going. She then just stared at me and when I called her over, I still thought that she was a boy so I called her "Xiao Di" little brother. And her mom was like, no......xiao mei (little sister). But I thought she said Xiao Bei so I was confused, then I realized 10 minutes later when I saw the frills on her shirt that she said xiao mei and that this boy was a girl. Don't I feel like a jackass. Well, I am mush right now. Good nite.