There are far too many chinese..
in this country and city. I woke up to Liu Ci-Wen's text messages. "Are you up yet? When do want to meet?" We be up now, Fool! We were both hungry and it was 945AM. I thought we would sleep until 11 but no! it looks gorgeous outside. The sun is shining bright and hopefully it stays. I wonder what website Yumi looked at for the weather.
While gettin ready, I clogged the toilet which proceeded to clog the pipes or something and the water from the tub couldn't drain properly after I showered. Thankfully, Yumi went first and we were out of this room in about 20 minutes. By the time we were ready to do anything it was 1130am. Ci-wen was at lunch and then he said he was gonna be on his way here. We went down to the front desk to change our room and pay for the rest of the week. Its really funny when a businesses own practices confuse them. They lady dealing with us was unaware of why we put a deposit down. It took them awhile to figure it out and then they did. The room they finally gave us was the room right next door to the one we were in last nite. Pretty funny. Its not nearly as big or nice. Just one room with a bathroom.
We then went down to find some lunch/breakfast. We went across the alleyway, thru an additional hotel, thru another hotel section that had the white paint falling off the black walls. Then we walked thru another marble area where a security guard sat and then thru glass doors to the resturant. It felt like the scene in "Goodfellas" where the guys were walking all through the kitchen. The resturant was very pretty and the food wasn't really expensive, and on top of that, it was really good.
Almost immediately I was spotted by a little boy and his mother on the second floor balcony which is the way towards the private rooms. So I waved and he got all excited and pointeed at me much more. Yumi and I were in the process of ordering food when I noticed he was still looking and his mom was encouraging him to stare, then I noticed the father was videotaping me. Geez! Its like you've never seen a white person before. About 5 minutes later the boy wanted to come down to meet me. He came down with his mom and his videotaping father. I asked him some questions and he couldn't answer them. He was all shy and stuff. His mom was trying to help him a little, but it wasn't really working. So spoke to him in some chinese. "What's your name?" He got all excited and stood on one leg and held his hands in a superhero pose and shouted, "I am Ultraman!" It was SOOOOOO FRIGGGIN CUTE!!!! I wish I had video of it. He did it like three times and he got even more excited with each time. I got a foto taken with him and I taught him the High-5. He went back upstairs for a birthday lunch or something.
After our wonderful and tasty lunch, I went up to say goodbye to the little kid. I took my video cam to maybe get some video of him saying that he is Ultraman, but when I got there, they were all busy with their family and meal. I just waved to the kid and he waved back and said "Bye Bye". It was so wonderful. What a great way to start the day. You may think I find this annoying. I don't bother being stared at my curious kids, because its in their nature. Now, if it were grown ups doing this, I would think otherwise.
All during lunch I was texting Wen to find out where he was. He was coming to the hotel so we waited for him in the lobby. While waiting, I asked the staff just milling around for help on locating places in Shanghai. This map I bought last nite at the front desk doesn't really tell you where everything is very well. You have to ask someone to find specific places that it mentions on the side of the map. It took three guys to help find some things. Its really funny and sometimes frustrating when people who live in a tourist town don't know where the sites are. Wen showed up around 1pm and we went to our room to make a plan of things to do today.
1st: Take a taxi to Yu Yuan Gardens.
2nd: Walk up to Nanjing Lu for shopping and then walk along the Bund at nite.
More or less thats what we did today. We hailed a taxi and hopped in. I said, Yu Yuan Gong Yuan and the driver didnt understand it. Wen said it, and the driver didn't understand it. He then said it agian and then a whole conversation endured and fingerpointing was involved. Then once we finally moved off, after he turned left, he got stuck in traffic. There were tons of people. "Ren tai duo" - too many people.
I said we should just get out and walk and Wen said no. Then about 5 minutes later and only 100 meters covered, the driver said that we should get out and walk. He maneuvered around some cars and almost hit a few people on his way to the sidewalk. It would have taken about 30 minutes to get there on foot, and we prolly travelled the distance of 10 walking minutes by being stuck in traffic for 15 minutes. Do you understand that. On my way out of the taxi, I smashed my sore knee in the door. That hurt. The walk there was nice and I took lots of fotos. Before the actual place, there was this little shopping mall that we walked thru. On the way to the entrance there was alot of old school architecture and it was very pretty and very crowded. When we got to the entrance of Yu Yuan, there was more shopping areas and much more people. You couldn't walk with out smashing into them. I don't know if this is better or worse than the tour groups in the Forbidden City. You couldn't move without bumping into someone. Of course, the chinese add insult to injury...literally by smashing into people and not saying excuse me or being polite. We were all very careful about our personal property as well. I swear I felt my butt pockets we being violated more than 1- times. Thugs, thieves, and chinese. It was like moving around in a mosh pit at a concert. So many people pushing and shoving. I sear I thought I would see someone body surfing by with long hair, no shirt, tongue hanging out, devil horns blazing, while shouting REO Speedwagon Friggin' Rules!!!
Throughout the whole trip to Yu Yuan, I visited about four sword shops. There were some gorgeous high quality specimens. I wanted them all. No spring steel or flexible metal here. Heavy metal blades that lack sharp edges. I wanted them all! They were so gorgeous, hte scabbards and all. Before I leave I may come back to purchase one as a gift for Sifu. I picked one up that was 150000RMB!!! The guy immediately said I couldn't afford it. I think Wen misplaced a zero, but still,thats expensive. Why he even bothered to let folks touch it or try to sell it is beyond me. At other shops I found some nice ones but they wanted like 2300RMB for a nice one. I couldn't believe the prices. Thats way too much. I hope I can find a better deal.
There was a kool wishing tree in the center of the shopping area. I like the one in the Foshan Zu Miao better. They also had some Puppet shows going on. Also as we walked by shops, people would come up and ask me to see art exhibits. Its prolly the only English they know. We got to the temple and I just wanted to take fotos. Didn't want to go in since it was uber crowded. It was still a gorgeous day. We walked around alot and ran into alot of people.
We went to this other area which has a bridge over a nice green pond. This bridge was packed with people, I saw no movement. This bridge led to the actual garden area. Yumi and I were like, lets not even bother. We will come back sometime. So we headed out. Hagen Daas is all over this city.
We walked out of there after trying to get back and we then went over to Guchen Park. They had a bamboo forest that they were trying to control its growth here. They also had little pools for kids to catch goldfish in. There was also a gorgeous view of the Pearl Tower and surrounding buildings. From there we decided to walk over to the Bund and towards Nanjing Gonglu. We got to the southern Bund area and started heading norht to Nanjing Lu. There were lots of people and i took lots of fotos. I at times stood on railings to get above the crowd to get better shots.
We then walked along Yan An street away from the Bund to right by our hotel and then we took Sichuan Zhong lu up to Nanjing Lu. I was kinda wondering why we just didn't go up the Bund to Nanjing Lu, but then we were able to get a view of the area surrounding the hotel. Which was good. We finally got to Nanjing Lu and boy was it lame. Overcrowded, overrated, overpriced, and devoid of anything chinese. It was all foreign shops n stuff. It actually disgusted me. If I wanted this, then I would go back home. then I realized that, most chinese come here because its western and they want a taste of it. Which is good and all, but i just didn't like it. It was hella crowded and there was a McDonald's, KFC, Subway, and Pizzahut almost every 200 meters. There was no chinese resturants at all. We ended up at Subway. Ugh. Subway was in the basement and the bathroom was on the 4th floor.
Nanjing Lu is a very long street. We went to this place called Itokin, an overpriced Japanese shop that offers clothes that Yumi loves. She doesn't like Chinese clothes so she gets her hands on all the MK Klien she can get.
Ci Wen helped me plan for tomorrow and Hangzhou and Suzhou.
As we left Itokin, it had gotten dark. And Nanjing Lu's beauty comes out at nite. The lites were wonderful. All over the place. We walked along the street and got Hagen Daas. As you walk along Nanjing Lu, you get asked all these were questions, "Do you want some shoes?" "Do you want some rolex?" etc. I would constantly have people coming up to me with broken english trying to ask me stuff. At one point i spoke to the guy in Chinese and said, "I don't speak English." Wen started laffing and so did Yumi as the guy started speaking to me in Chinese and I had no idea what he said. It was great. There was this one guy that I swear I heard say "Butt Naked" as he was pointing to Yumi. It was wierd.
After that, around 9pm, Wen took off to go home and left us alone. So Yumi and I walked to the North part of the Bund and took beautiful nite shots. It was gorgeous. Superly overcrowded hurting the experience a little. I ran into a couple where the father could speak a bit of english. He wanted to take a foto of his son with me.
On the way back to the hotel, I found a foto shop that was able to transfer my pictures to a CD-R. 130 Fotos. It took the guy like 25 minutes. He was like a turtle. I so wanted to punch him and do it myself. I don't understand why it seems like the guys that run these shops don't know how to use their own technology. I could get this done in less than five minutes. We walked to the hotel and we were super tired. Goodnite.