China: New Year 2001 on the Shanghai Bund

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We celebrated New Year's on the Bund watching the fireworks over Pudong with Stefan and Markus, my fellow students at UIBE. As I described in the previous blog, these guys had been traveling all over China, as far as Tibet and we had agreed to meet up in Shanghai.

We came down on the double-stacked "soft sleeper" express train from Beijing, sleeping across from each other on the top bunks, a great improvement from the tripled-stacked "hard sleeper" I had taken in October to Inner Mongolia. Poor Jennifer was so sick and we had to share what I had come to view as luxury in China, but was clearly a little bit of a shock for the uninitiated.

We stayed at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music which had dorms that served as a hostel. Yet more discomfort, bathroom was common (as is typical of course), but when you are sick and in an unfamiliar environment, not pleasant . . . Jennifer was a total trooper though and did not once complain though she certainly could have deserved to.

Memorable from our celebrations on the Bund were the Chinese young men who decided to jump on my back and try to tackle me because they did not like that I was spraying Cheese Whiz or whatever that spray stuff is all over these blushing Chinese girls. Of course, ripping it out of their hands probably was a little bit of a provocation. Poor Markus decided to stay out late that night so that we found him deathly ill and puking his brains out the next day because he got hungry late at night as Markus will, and found what was probably the worst dive of a place where they fed him old food. Having the late night munchies comes at a price in Shanghai. Poor guy was sick all day.

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Photos

Oriental Pearl Tower
It's so immensely ugly, and yet they're so proud of it. The Jinmao Tower didn't fit in the frame (argh! I needed a wide angle lens!), so this is the best we could do.

New Year's on the Bund
On the Bund, either before or after some shrimpy Chinese guy tried to tackle him for spraying Chinese girls with string confetti. Jennifer and I with our partners in crime: Markus Luukonen and Stefan Leiderer.