Shanghai (original email)

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Nihau (Hello).



Well, we’re back with a new update from the most bustling city in all of China. Here’s an account of what got us here.



Our last update was from Beijing where we pretty much did nothing but sit around and drink for the latter half of our week there. We ate at our favourite local restaurant once or twice per day and had fun ordering from our own menu (provided by the faithful Lonely Planet). The food here (both at this restaurant and all over the country) is absolutely fantastic. After exiting from Mongolia (where the food is … hmmm … crap) it was even more enjoyable to have such culinary delights as Sechuan Chicken, Stir Fried Vegetables and Beijing Duck. I swear Eric is making up form Mongolia by eating twice as much here.



(It’s me now, so I’ll dispense with the obvious ‘here’s an account of’ etc stuff that Gerry likes to throw in) …



One night in Beijing, after eating dinner, we got to the backpacker drinking spot. It wasn’t very busy, we figured maybe because of the cold. At midnight, after a few beers, we went into the hotel lobby near the bar (it’s warmer there) and found out where the smarter warmer people had been drinking most of the night. Then we had a big conversation with a couple people about the ‘is’ which I can’t describe fully here, partly cause we’re paying by the hour, partly cause I don’t understand it sober. So, at about 4:00 ish we decided to head back to our hotel. There we met another bunch of drinking travellers (mostly from Sweden … there’s a lot of Scandinavians here, go figure), but we were in want of a beer. Then, out of nowhere two beers appeared. Apparently, another person who was leaving on a morning train had just got up, and not wanting to carry the extra weight, gave us the beers. We traded travel talk for a while, it was an odd mix of permagrin people who were still up drinking beer and others who had just awoke and where drinking coffee. At 7:00 ish, we decided to call it a night, but as we were brushing our teeth in the open air bathroom, and were amazed to discover the sun was up. Someone had a radio so we sat down in the garden and sang Oasis tunes. Gerry decided to crash. Hoping not to wake anyone else (we were in a dorm of 8) he was very quiet, unfortunately it didn’t matter cause he was the first person in our room to make it to bed. I made it to bed around 8:00, I think the last guy got in at 1:30 the next afternoon. This was probably the extreme of our days in Beijing, but you get the idea. Back to you, Gerry….



(Now you probably understand why I like to use all those connector words and phrases … me like use more words in sentence than Eric)



Onto Xi’An. We arrived there after spending the night in a hard seat (the Lonely Planet describes this as hard-seat-hell). I gave up at some point and crashed out on the train floor using my jacket as a pillow. I probably fared best out of the 4 gringos in our party. Upon arrival we met the most ‘get-things-done-quickly’ person we’ve met yet. Naiomi worked for one of the restaurants near the hostel we went to and typically both restaurants sent touts to the station to bring people back in hopes that they’d be rewarded with increased business. Within the space of 90 minutes we’d met Naiomi, bought our onward train tickets, got to the hostel and booked in, bought fake Chinese student cards, showered and cleaned up (improving our outward appearance by at least 200%!)(MISSING) and were ordering lunch at Dad’s Home Cooking restaurant (where Naiomi worked). The competition next door is called Mums Home Cooking … the competition is ‘fierce’ … I don’t think the staff at Mums liked us very much because we kept running into people we’d met in Beijing and inviting them to our table for food and drinks. I believe the folks at Dads were genuinely impressed with our attempt tto learn as much Chinese as possible (and they liked our flashy homemade character flash cards). They taught us lots and lots more (including lots of unrepeatable stuff like what to say to someone when he’s ripping you off). We’re up probably over 100 characters and phrases by now … not bad for a couple drunken Jainada Ren (Canada People). After dinner we had a few drinks again of course. We discovered that the beer price had risen 150%!a(MISSING)nd we were so distraught we got drunk again (for $1.50 US each instead of $1 each for the whole night) … oh, the perils of travel. I suppose I should mention that we were in Xi’An to see the famed Terracotta Warriors which were definitely not (as the Chinese described) the 8^th wonder of the world (the postcards were better than the actual site).



Next night another hard-seat-hell trip to KaiFeng where we got the 2^nd most expensive room in the hotel for 18 Yuan each (about $2.25). The palce was a dump though. We ordered food from a restaurant here on our own without the BYO menu!



Onto Shanghai where we got in late and had to settle for an expensive double ($20 each). But whoa … quelle surprise … running water, hot!, guest towels (unheard of), little hotel soaps, toothpaste, toothbrushes, etc, a bathtub actually clean enough to bathe in, and a sit-down toilet with a seat and toilet paper! This was just too much to take in all at once and we didn’t know what to do first. There was even a TV with over 10 channels and some in English … even CNN. This is just sheer crazy talk. We’re back to dorm rooms now (for about 1/3 the price) after living the high-life for one glorious night.



Local Customs (China) … lotsa juicy stuff here.



~Getting Around: Driving, cycling, walking, etc around is absolutely crazy. The streets are best described as a children’s soccer game where all the kids cluster around the ball (but without the ball) and some of the kids are riding bikes and others big buses and others cars and about 20 games are all going on simultaneously on the same field. (Eric’s reading a Thomas Hardy book now … can you tell?). It’s tough (well, impossible really) to catch all this in a photo.



~Bus Boarding: People go absolutely mad and charge at the doors of the buses and trains in an attempt to be the first one aboard (cuz they get the seats). This wouldn’t be so bad except that 40-50 people are attempting this at the same time. We usually just wait until the pandemonium dies down and casually stroll aboard happy to stand for the 20-minute ride and avoid the bruises.



~Spitting: Everywhere, even where CityTV won’t go.



~Transporting Goods: This is crazy too. All over the place you see these 3 wheeled bicycles with huge cargos being carted all over town. People are transporting bricks, coal, food, everything and all with just people power. They’ve gotta have some huge legs.



~Farming: (city folks can skip this one) Everything is done completely by hand. And they leave no space of land unused so there’s crops growing around peoples houses, along roadsides, everywhere.







Toilet Update:



We’ve seen some hideous toilets in some of the smaller cities. Generally, outside the bigger centres everything is squat toilets but I simply cannot describe the condition of some of them … it’s scary. Toilet paper is virtually always BYO (except last night’s hotel) but at least it’s relatively soft on the bum



BMC Research:



It costs 19.40 Yuan for a BMC. About $2.37 US. (About, as to two decimal places). This puts it near the top, approaching San Salvador. We have heard that a BMC in HongKong is the same numeric price but the HKD is worth less … stay tuned. However, to Eric’s huge disappointment, the universal phrase ‘BigMacCombowithCoke’ was not understood for the first time in his travels.



Can someone (or everyone) please give us a baseball playoff update … we have no idea and this’ll give you and excuse to write. The Messier and Princess Di updates proved to be highly entertaining. BTW … we heard that Princess Di was on the radio last week … and on the dash and the glove compartment too.







Personals:



An*: In our studies we’ve learned that the character which sounds like ‘AN’ means peace (as in TianAnMen square … literally Heaven-Peace-Gate) … cool, huh.



!Marisa!: Bought Colgate toothpast the other day, it’was onlyY3.90 versus Y15.00 for the leading competition …



Bobby: Are you and Verny planning a hostile takeover of her company … if so, I’m in.



Viv: ashfinktersayswha … ash finkter sayswha …



Dan: We liked your Princess Di joke we had to plagiarize it (but what happened between you and the Danish dive master?)



ZXK: Liked the Barcelona hotel story … we were pretty much in awe about having a bathtub clean enough to actually bathe in (and hot water to fill it with).



Dave, Kimmy, Brad: No, I wasn’t drunk when I wrote that first not but I did get pretty looped a few hours later. Sorry again … won’t happen anymore.



Kirsty/Eileen: We’re planning to go to Hong Kong, Macau, Yangshuo, Chengdu, Lhasa and then Kathmandu (by mid-October?) … saw some nody? In the store yesterday … now we’ve got our own stash.



Viv: A sphincter says WHAT? (he he he)



PGers: I’m now using a heretofore unheard of P&G shampoo called REJOICE (I think it’s just alternatively marketed PERT) and Eric managed to find a bar of SAFEGUARD (Jimmy’ll probably get a call about a blip in SafeGuard sales in DailyView). Also, this is definitely unheard of, but we are using (better sit down for this one) LBMS on this trip !!! Couldn’t have gotten across the TransSiberian without it. Well, we are only using the LBMS mug and Eric didn’t actually take the course but picked up an extra mug from the training room (ahh, the benefits of working on the 4^th floor west).







Zaijian (Good-bye)



Love,



Gerry & Eric (or Eric & Gerry)

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