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Published: November 20th 2005
Sleeping on the job
A nice place for a rest.Including her brave encounters with:
Aeroplane food,
Drug runners,
Chinese immigration officials,
Taxi drivers,
Squat Toilets,
Beggars,
Street sellers,
Chinese currency,
Fighting crickets,
Acrobats,
Market stall-holders,
Chinese masseuses
and various culinary delights,
among other things....
Read on if you dare.
The plane trip over to China on Thursday was pretty uneventful. I ate my meals (no problems at all - I love aeroplane food), tried unsuccessfully to sleep (even after only 3 hours' worth the night before) and watched some movies. For those Dale Kerrigans out there, I saw "Look Both Ways," "Must Love Dogs" and "Touching the Void," and "Must Love Dogs" was first. About halfway through the flight I started stressing, because I was carrying a bag of vitamins over for a Chinese friend of my parents', and when reading my booklet on China, I saw that it was illegal to carry any kind of drug out of the country without a doctor's certificate and the medicine being for your own use. I had declared them at Adelaide airport on the way and the guy there saw no problem with it, but I was worried that when I got to China there would be a problem, and
Good Old Qantas
I still call Australia home... there was nothing I could do about it now that I was in the air. After a few hours of imagining myself locked up in an Asian jail, Schapelle Corby style, the Chinese-Australian lady next to me asked me to get down her bag from the overhead locker for her. Inside was about double the amount of the same antioxidants and vitamins that I had, and she started using them right there on the plane, so all the worry was for nothing. All of the Qantas staff and passengers around me were really friendly and helpful and were in awe of the fact that I was travelling by myself and that no one was picking me up from the airport.
Shanghai airport was a nighmare but also quite entertaining. There were two 'Foreigner' lines at Immigration as well as around eight 'Chinese Passport Holder' Lines. The foreigner lines were gridlocked with nothing moving, so one of the officials came over and told about thirty of us to go to the Chinese lines. We waited there for about 20 minutes, and then a Chinese man in the next line pushed in from the back of the line to about 8
The Bund
Some of that neon spots from the front. Well, another Chinese man from the middle wasn't having any of that. The two of them started a full-on screaming match in the middle of the airport. All of the other foreigners in my line thought it was hilarious, because we couldn't understand a thing they were saying but they were so angry that their arms were waving about and their faces were turning bright red. An airport official came over, and the first guy started pointing at the foreigner a few places behind him and then up at the "Chinese Passport Holders Only" sign and yelling, so the next thing you know, the poor foreigner was sent back to the foreign line, and the rest of us were counting ourselves lucky and trying to look inconspicuous (not that easy, especially for the 7 foot+ Swedish guy behind me). Anyway, we got to three places from the front of the line, and then we were kicked out too. We told the guy over and over that we'd been told to go there, and all of the Chinese around us were also trying to explain, but he wouldn't have any of it. We then went over to
Good morning, Shanghai
View from my hotel window. Check out the sexy slippers. the guy who'd originally told us to move, and he pretended he'd done nothing of the sort, so it was pretty annoying! By that time, another planeload of foreigners had arrived, so we were further back than our original spots, after waiting for over an hour. Luckily, about 10 minutes later, the Chinese people had all been through, so we took our chances, ran over to their lines and got through straight away.
The taxi to the hotel was pretty crazy. I absolutely love Chinese traffic. It seems like everyone is out on the streets, all the time, in cars, on bikes and scooters, walking or running. The taxis have no seatbelts, the bikes and scooters have no lights, and everyone just beeps their horns and rings their bells and somehow manages to avoid each other, mostly by driving on the wrong side of the road. They all know exactly what's going on, and sometimes when I had no idea what the driver was beeping about, someone would come out of nowhere.
That night I went out with Mum and Dad to the Bund, an area along the riverbank. The Huang Po River divides Shanghai into old and
Go Warney!
Cricket trainers prepare their bugs. new, and we spent all of the time on the old side this weekend. The new side was lit up at night and was gorgeous. Apparently Shanghai has more neon lights than all of Australia put together, which I don't find hard to believe. That night, I also had my first encounter with the beggars of Shanghai, which can be divided into a number of categories, as follows:
1) Walkers. Generally women. Walk along next to you as far as they can, bent over and holding out their hands, saying "Xie xie" (thank you), over and over again.
2) Headbangers. I haven't seen these ones personally, but Mum tells me that they kneel on the pavement with a cup or bowl beside them and repeatedly hit their heads on the sidewalk. Don't ask me to explain it.
3) Women with children. The first one we saw in this category was sitting there with a child draped over her knees, who was either dead or asleep. It was extremely difficult to tell. The second was carrying her 1 year old son, who she had trained to grab onto foreigners' clothes and not let go.
4) The crippled. These beggars have various
Mmm... Chinese
Dad and his $2.50 lunch. physical disabilities, and usually manage to exaggerate them to the maximum degree by sprawling on the sidewalk and dragging themselves into the path of oncoming pedestrians and bicycles.
Thus far, (3) and (4) appear to have the advantage in terms of monetary gain.
As well as beggars, there are a number of street sellers who put a blanket on the ground or walk around, and generally have some sort of talent and a good sense of humour. My favourites so far have been a man with dancing mouse toys, who we saw at the Bund that night, and a portrait artist in the People's Park the next morning. The portrait artist was lovely. He came up to us and asked where we were from, then once he saw me and figured out we were from Australia he tried all the English he knew: "You Australia. Kangaroo. Very tall lady. Basketball? Yao Ming. Very beautiful," over and over again. I ended up having my picture drawn in charcoal for 10RMB ($A1.60), and he was so proud of it, asking me to take a photo of us together and talking and smiling with the crowd that gathered around to watch us.
My new friends
With the little McDonald's girl and her Mum. The Chinese currency has been pretty easy to figure out. One yuan (RMB) is worth about 16c Australian, and everything is super-cheap over here. We had an all you can eat buffet breakfast for $1.60 each on the first morning, bottles of water are 16c and taxis for rides up to 20 minutes long in local Shanghai have been no more than $A5. Markets are also quite cheap, and I've bought a couple of tops for $5. Mum and Dad have also had a few interesting buys, including some Chinese war medals, a complete set of Chairman Mao stamps (around 60) for $3 and some silver "American Trade Dollars" for $1 each. Dad's quite excited by the trade dollars because he looked them up on the net and the originals go for up to a million dollars! Not that they're going to be originals, but apparently replicas can be worth $100+ as well, so they could turn out to be bargain buys.
After the antique markets, we went to the nearby pet market, where all sorts of interesting pets were for sale, including birds, fish, turtles (tortoises?) and lots of little bugs in boxes with food containers ranging
KBC
Black chicken, anyone? from 16c up to $4 or $5. I couldn't work out why anyone would want to buy a bug, until we got around the corner and came across a group of men all tightly packed into a circle and looking at whatever was in the centre. I stuck my head in for a look, and there were two crickets in a glass box fighting each other! The whole thing is completely serious. I assume they take bets for the fights, but each man has his own group of insects and riles them up by poking a stick in their jars. When it's time for the fight, they get out their miniature electric scales and WEIGH the bugs to make sure they're fighting someone their own size, then put them in the glass box, which has a divider in the middle to keep them separated until the fight starts. It's completely cool, and I have no idea how they tell who wins, but everyone gets pretty excited about it.
Friday night we went to see an acrobatic show called Era at Shanghai Circus. It was unbelievable. The show was in a big domed building like a concrete circus tent, and
Shanghai Fashion
Good to see what clothes will do for you these days... every trick you've ever seen, they did better. There were over 40 performers, plus a band and an orchestra, and too many tricks to name. One man kept stacking bowls on his foot, first one, then two (one facing up, one facing down), then three, then four, all alternating in the way they were stacked. He then kicked his leg and the bowls all landed upright, balanced on his head in a stack, the right way up. Not only that, he did it all while balancing on a stack of four planks of wood, on glasses, on a rolling barrel! There were also men flipping backwards through hoops about 7 metres off the ground (wish they were basketballers, cos they'd all be able to slam dunk), a woman holding herself up on one arm for over 5 minutes while twisting herself into the most unbelievable positions, and much more.
After the show, all of the Chinese stores and restaurants were shut (most of them start and finish the day with the sun, doing tai chi and exercises in the park in the morning and going to bed when it gets dark), so we went to McDonald's (oh, the shame)!
In the streets of Shanghai
One of the shopping malls. It ended up being a lot of fun though, because we met a little Chinese girl, who made about 7 attempts to come and talk to us before finally overcoming her shyness, and we had a written English conversation, including such gems as "Do you like hamburger or pineapple pie?" We had our photo taken together and we'll send her a copy.
Everyone here is really friendly, and they all smile or say hello. We've had some pretty interesting conversations, including one with a stall holder at the markets on Saturday. We were waiting for his friend to bring us back some different sized garments from another stall, and a beggar came up to us (a Walker). The stall owner said "You no give him money, he bad man. Many bad man in Shanghai, take your money," so Dad jokingly said to him (after we'd been bargaining for a better price on some shoes), "No, there's only one bad man in Shanghai, you. You tried to rip us off," and the guy came back with "No, no, only bad man in Shanghai, George Bush. He in China now." Not a bad joke, and it was so unexpected that we all found it hilarious.
Mum and I then went to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in English with Chinese subtitles, and it was a pretty modern, upmarket theatre. While checking out another theatre (at which HP4 was sold out), we came across the Australian Film Festival, which had about ten movies playing over the weekend, including such gems as "Mullet."
Last night we met up with some of the other foreign teachers from Mum and Dad's town (there are 7 in all, including Mum and Dad, and they are the only foreigners in the whole city of 1 million). Glen and Lily from Australia were heading out for dinner with some other friends, so Julia (England) and we went out for dinner, and then decided to treat ourselves to a Chinese massage. "Treat" isn't exactly the word for it. Everyone else had shoulder massages, but I went for the full body, and I'm still in pain. The "massage" involved a woman cracking every one of my bones, digging into every bit of skin possible, slapping and punching me, poking her fingers into my eye sockets, and worst of all, sticking her fingers into my ears and twirling them around. Not the most relaxing way to spend an evening.
Anyway, I know that was long and horrible, but I've had a pretty unbelievable and eventful three days. Yes, all that was only three days' worth. Stay tuned for episode two... 😊
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Siansan
non-member comment
teaching
Kirsty! that sounds fantastic I'm soooo jealous! My mum just mentioned to me that my uncle's sister is over in China teaching English but I'm not sure what town. Her name is Andrea anyway if that rings a bell - if not, oh well. Ahoy Shanghai!