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Published: October 9th 2008
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Photo 1
the last "structure" seen driving out of Shanghai - a ferris wheel! After passing our 1 1/2 month marker of our time here in Shanghai, Ollie and I were really looking forward to getting out of Shanghai to experience a different part of China. We've definitely settled into life here now - we're comfortable with our surroundings and with our routines. We have our favourite restaurants, favourite things to do, and also have our least favourite things about life here too.
Happily Ollie has 2 friends living in China right now with whom he'd spent his elementary and high school years with. Eva, originally from Hong Kong, currently lives here in Shanghai and Alex moved from Toronto to Ningbo 4 years ago, a city 3 hours drive south of Shanghai in China's Zhejiang Province. As they're a couple too we planned a couple's holiday in Ningbo to stay with Alex for a few days during the Chinese National Holiday week.
Eva picked us up in the morning from our hotel and we began the 3 hour drive south of Shanghai. Other than a lot of rain the drive was uneventful, but I really enjoyed getting the chance to see some of China, albeit from a highway. Driving out of Shanghai the
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another view of the ferris wheel land suddenly becomes very flat, green fields in every direction. Housing developments are frequent and pop up anywhere, in no apparent order and near nothing in particular. After driving south for an hour and a half you hit the Hangzhou Bay, an inlet of the East China Sea. In May 2008 a bridge, the Hangzhou Bay Bridge, the second longest in the world, was completed across the bay to drastically shorten travel times from Shanghai to Zhejiang Province. The bridge at 36 km long across open ocean seems impressive at first but once you've been driving it for more than 20 minutes I started getting stir crazy. There's nothing as far as scenery to look at, no sparkling blue ocean - in fact the water is a mix of brownish-grey coloured water, the same colour as the smog filled sky, and the smog is so thick you can't see more than a km or so ahead. I started to feel like I was trapped on this never-ending bridge in a grey coloured world!
Happily, the bridge does eventually end and you end up back on dry land. Post bridge the land is much more hilly. Because it was raining
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on the road! leaving Shanghai the hills were shrouded in fog and mist, rather beautiful and evocative.
We finally arrived into the city of Ningbo. Although the city has the same population as the city of Toronto (3-4 million) it is incomparable to both Shanghai and Toronto. Shanghai dwarfs Ningbo when it comes to sheer amount of people and buildings, lights, restaurants, nightlife, stuff to do, and also, the foreign population. Alex tells us he thinks he must be one of a handful of foreigners living in the entire city. In fact in the 4 years since moving to Ningbo for his work he'd yet to see another foreigner! The people in his neighbourhood refer to him as "the Foreigner", and when he goes shopping locals peer at what he's buying, sometimes picking it up and saying "oh look what the foreigner's buying!". After all this time the feeling of isolation had certainly gotten to him, and he was jumping at the opportunity to have some fellow Canadians stay at his home. Even on the road into the city we almost got side-swipped by another vehicle (it happens often enough with the horrendous driving in Shanghai, but this one was REALLY close). The driver
had been just staring at us. Eva made a joke that he must've seen both me and Ollie in the passenger seats and been staring, hence almost driving right into us. I wondered if this was true......
Our 3 days spent with Alex and Eva were awesome. Truly relaxing, exactly what a holiday should be. We spent evenings preparing and eating scrumptious dinners, hot tubbed in Alex's retreat room into the wee hours of the night, drank a lot, lit off fireworks from the roof of Alex's house, watched movies, and played with both Minnie and Seven, Alex's dogs. Alex was a fantastic host and his house was really awesome - he'd obviously put a lot of time and effort into designing and outfitting the 3-floor modern condo.
The two afternoons we spent in Ningbo were interesting. The first we went for lunch at a restaurant frequented by Alex and Eva. At the sight of 4 young people walking in, 3 being non-chinese, the restaurant patrons stared at us, many with curious expressions on their faces. We were seated at a table in front of a large window and after a few minutes I noticed that outside
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driving onto the Hangzhou Bridge a little boy of about 4 had wandered up to the window and stood there, staring at us, his eyes taking in every part of us. Ollie waved at him and he scampered off, slightly scared.
Everywhere we went, whether to a nearby grocery or restaurant, or for a walk down near by the river, people stared at us, and we heard them say "so many foreigners" in chinese to each other. Now I'm used to being stared at by now (everyone in Shanghai stares at me - women check out what I'm wearing, how I look, my hair, etc, and men just stare.... often in a perverse way, some slightly aggressively). But this was different from the staring I receive in Shanghai. I can't really pinpoint exactly what was different about it, but I think there was more curiosity involved.
The afternoon before we were going to head back to Shanghai we went for a late lunch to a pub down by the Ningbo river again. Because it was during the week of the Chinese Holiday many locals were out with their family and friends, strolling alongside the boardwalk and surrounding restaurants. And they all had their
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handsome man in the backseat! cameras in tow. People would walk by us and take photos of us, sometimes blatantly standing in front of us and pointing the camera right at us, and other times trying to hide the fact that they were (but we knew they were anyway). A popular tactic would be strategically placing a person about 2 feet away from us and taking a picture of the person with us in the shot. One guy, with a huge professional camera knelt down in front of us to take a direct shot of us and Alex took his napkin and covered his face in protest, and the guy unhappily walked away. For goodness sake! This is what it must feel like for celebrities!!!! You can't even sit and eat a burger in peace! This group of 30 somethings sat at the table directly across from us, and when Ollie asked for the "mi dan" (the bill) from the waitress, you could hear them whispering ferociously (most likely commenting on the fact that the white guy spoke chinese). Alex said he sometimes gets shocked expressions when he starts to speak chinese to people, as if they don't expect him to be able to understand
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open water.... grey and murky, same colour as the sky or speak the language. But he always knows when people are talking about him and it happens all the time, from the second he leaves his house.
Our true celebrity status was reached when out of the blue this 50 something woman walked straight up to our table, and leaned against Ollie so her husband could snap a photo!!! We were in the middle of having lunch and she just walked right up to our table and leaned into him!!! All four of our jaws just dropped! But Ollie, being a good sport and seeing the humour in the situation put his arm around her (much to her immediate delight) and smiled for the camera. The couple was sooo happy, you should've seen them - as if they just met Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Bono at the same time!!
So this is what it feels like to be a celebrity...... paparazzied while having lunch!
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CCTV
just FYI, there are actually over 100 channels (CCTV has only 8 or 9 channels) available for the Chinese audiences. It is just another misconception that Chinese can only watch programs from the 'state-run' Medias. yes, most of the stations are owned either by the central government or provincial governments. But there are still a lot of stations/Medias that are privately owned. Especially in the south, say Guangdong province, ppl have unrestricted access to the free Hong Kong TV programs over the air.