The China Connection - Part Deux

Heading into my second blog about China, maybe only slightly more interesting for you than my first entry, is the recap of my first visit to China.

Hold on...100m breaststroke mens semi-finals....go Kitajima!

Yo! Kosuke is first in his semi-final heat. Word.

Okay, back to me (hee hee). The day after school finished for the summer, I hopped on a plane to jet off to Shanghai for a week. My friends, a married couple from Europe - Sabrina, from Germany, and Fredrik, from Sweden - moved to Shanghai last year (I'll get into how I know them and why they moved to China in my next blog). They came to visit me earlier this year, and of course I’d be remiss not to reciprocate! I really wanted to see what their life was like in Shanghai, and, of course, get my first taste of life in China first-hand. I actually didn't really go anywhere during the summer holiday last year (which makes for a long 5-weeks of hanging out at school when there are no classes), and I haven't traveled to any new countries since arriving in Japan in 2006, so going to visit Sabrina and Fredrik was a catharsis for me on many levels.

However, I have to admit that this was the weirdest trips I've ever taken to a foreign country conceptually, in that I didn't really have a plan, except to hang out with my friends. I read just enough about Shanghai in my "Lonely Planet" book beforehand to know that what Sabrina said about there not really being much in the way of site-seeing there to be true. So I figured I'd wing it, and didn't actually start reading more in depth about Shanghai OR China in general until I was on the plane. VERY strange feeling.

So anyway, Shanghai. Honestly, it's just like any other big city in the world (and I probably wouldn't have gone there under any other circumstances, to tell you the truth). It has its shiny, new skyscraper, top-line shopping and international chain areas,

and it has its older and run-down-looking areas.

When I say there isn't much to see in Shanghai, it's in comparison with other Chinese cities, like Beijing. Of course if you like big cities, Shanghai is a great big city to visit. Lots of museums, lots of shopping areas, many different "sections" to the city ("antique" market areas, the French Concession - where Sabrina and Fredrik live, the Bund - which is a built-up area along the major river in town), and Shanghai is famous for its culinary options. I happen to be the exact opposite of a big-city lover, so I kept myself busy with Sabrina's suggestions of parks, temples, and the Old Town area, the latter of which was by far my favorite.

Temples:

The Old Town was by far my favorite, preserved (or more likely, rebuilt) from Shanghai's more traditional days. There's a large, enclosed Chinese garden, called the Yuyuan Garden, in the Old Town that is quite famous. I ended up there twice. I'm sure you can see why.

Yuyuan Bazaar area

Yuyuan Gardens

Two absolutely adorable Chinese junior high school students, who were on summer vacation and randomly wandering around the bazaar area, overheard me speaking English to a shopkeeper, and outside the shop they approached me to try their English. After our first conversation and good-bye, they found me again to ask to take a photo together, so of course I grabbed a passing Australian study abroad student to get a photo with my camera too. :-) Kudos to the JHS girls for having the guts to try a conversation with a random foreigner! I hope they go back to school in September even just a little more excited for English class. ;-)

I arrived in Shanghai on a Saturday and left the following Friday. Sabrina and Fredrik were kind enough to hang out and do a little site-seeing on the Saturday and Sunday (which funnily enough always ended at 1 of 2 of their favorite massage/spa places....1/2 the price of what I would pay in the U.S. or Japan so how could you pass that up?!), but of course they had to work Monday - Friday. I met both of them separately on two days for lunch and to see where they work. And every night we tried our hand at Shanghai's famous restaurant scene. During the week, between lunches and dinners, I tried 3 different kinds of Chinese food (Shanghainese-mix, Cantonese and Yunnan), Thai, Mexican, Italian, a bit of Nepalese, and a lovely American-style brunch. :-) None of which I can get in my area in Japan (except for Italian....Japanese-style). Shanghai is a very international city, and pretty much has been throughout its history, from what I remember reading. I should have taken more photos of the different kinds of food, but that's one aspect of Japanese culture that I haven't quite adapted to yet (every time I look at photos of my Japanese friends' travels, at least half the pictures are of food). I did manage to get one photo of me, Sabrina and Fredrik at the Yunnan/Nepalese restaurant my last night in Shanghai, as well as the bar on the Bund over looking the river and "new town" (shiny skyscrapers and funky-designed TV tower, all brilliantly lit for enjoyable night-viewing) we visited to wrap up my week-long Shanghai experience.

Overall, an interesting trip, and it was great to catch up with Sabrina and Fredrik again. What's my impression of China? I think it's impossible to say, because I don't think big cities ever give you a good impression of the true face/culture of a country. Shanghai especially. I heard multiple times that Shanghai is very different to the other major cities in China, let alone the rest of China itself. One thing I do feel comfortable commenting on with great accuracy is that it's friggin' hot in the summer, at least on the East coast. I flew into China in front of a typhoon, so I got lucky my first couple days in that is was a bit cooler and quite a bit more breezy in the city than normal for summertime. But that didn't last long and the majority of my site-seeing was done in 36-40*C temperatures and over 80% humidity. Being in a city of 18 million with high air pollution didn't make the summer heat and humidity any more comfortable. ;-) I haven't been following the temperatures in Beijing too closely, but a couple of days before the Olympics started, one Japan newcaster was reporting from Beijing with an auto-temp reader that indicated 40*C and 86% humidity....and that was at 5:00pm. I'm really feeling for the athletes. Not cool to be in any outdoor sports at this Olympics, especially long-distance ones.

Also, based on my experience in Shanghai, I would have to say that at least city-folk in China are a bit more laid-back. Dress was a bit more relaxed....even to the point of middle-aged and older men wandering around in nothing but boxer shorts and flip-flops. But you can't blame them because it's so flipping hot...did I mention that already? ;-) Lots of people, usually only men, taking siestas in chairs on the sidewalks, in the entrance-ways of buildings, in the back of their bicycle carts, on benches and under ramadas in parks. Can't say if that's just a "in-the-heat-of-the-summer" thing or an all-year-round phenomenon though. Also, I only saw it once myself, but my friends say that they see people wandering around in their pajamas on the streets all the time, and not just to grab the paper or put out the trash. My pajamas-in-the-street experience was on the Las Vegas-type street I posted a few photos of at the beginning of the blog. She even had a camera and was snapping a few photos. :-)

There's a spitting culture too that kind of takes you aback....okay, disgusts you really. No one is immune from it either...men, women, children, anyone can be heard drawing as much as they can from the very deeps of their throat and nasal cavity to projectile onto the sidewalk or into the street. Of course it's not everyone all the time, and again, of course, you catch the middle-aged and older men doing it more. But it's regular enough to definitely be a noticeable part of daily life. I'm not sure what's up with it. I'm going to have to ask my Chinese friend here in Japan about it. She's from Suichan, so I'll be interested to hear if the same thing happens down/over there.

Capitalism is alive and well in China from what I saw, an impression I'm sure you gained quickly yourselves from looking at my photos. I asked Sabrina's Shanghai-born co-worker about how the economy has changed during her time. Unfortunately she was younger than I'd expected, so she couldn't really comment from a personal perspective. She said while the markets started opening up in the 1980's, it's really been in the past 10-years that international companies have been proliferating in China and that capitalism has fully gripped the country. I really wish I'd had a chance to visit China during the 1980's or 1990's to have a comparison for today's China. One thing's for sure - at least in Shanghai - everyone was trying to get into your pockets. You're pretty much a sitting duck if you can't muster the mettle to haggle on prices. You're also hard-pressed to find a moment of peace in areas frequented by tourists as hawkers are constantly approaching you to get you to come to their shops or show you brochures of their name-brand knock-offs. And they don't take no for an answer. There were many times I had to take a stab at speed-walking or completely change direction mid-step to get these people to leave me alone. But again, it wasn't everywhere I went in the city. Still annoying though. :-)

Although the upside to all that is that China is pretty safe crime-wise. You don't have to worry as much as you do in the States or in parts of Europe, for example, about pick-pocketing or other petty crimes. Some of you might be questioning the safety of foreigners, especially Americans, in China after the attack on the American tourists in Beijing. I never encountered any anti-American or anti-foreigner sentiment while I was there.....although people didn't seem too impressed when I told them that I currently lived in Japan....that's a whole other story though. My personal thoughts about the attack in Beijing is that you'll find disturbed individuals everywhere in the world and it's difficult to know how or when they might lash out. I think that type of incident is rare in China, and it might actually just be a coincidence that it happened during the Olympics and to American tourists.

I got pretty excited about the prospects China (outside the major cities....except for Beijing) holds for visitors during my readings about it. So hopefully this won't be my only travel entry on China!