Episode 6: Shanghai Days, Shanghai Nights

     As my time here in Shanghai is starting to wind down, I just wanted to write a post describing some of the random little things that we have done over the past 1.5 months here in Shanghai.


All you can eat teppanyaki:

     For dinner one night, a friend of ours suggested that all of us meet up at a teppanyaki restaurant called "Tairyo". This was no ordinary teppanyaki however, as for 160 RMB ($23.62 USD) all of your food and drink was included. Considering the high price of teppanyaki, a chance to gorge ourselves on the delicious food and drink served there seemed like an excellant idea. We were all seated around a large grill, and the food began to trickle in. We were first served with several types of sashimi and sushi, before rice was served. We then moved on to the staples of chicken and steak. Everything was delicious, and another round of sake bombs was only a call to the waiter for another beer and another bottle of sake away. For dessert, I tried an absolutely divine fried banana, which was sugary and just perfect. The restaurant manager gifted us with a coffe mug each, but mysteriously only Justin's managed to survive the night. We eventually found ourselves completely full, and had to head out to the clubs in order to dance the food away.

World Cup 2010:

     With Shanghai being such an international city, with many foreigners living here, the World Cup is a very big deal. We were all interested in watching the games, and luckily one of the local channels provided 24/7 coverage, including replays of all of the important games, and highlights of the less-than-important ones. Watching a game in the hotel is fine for most games, but for some, such as America's games, the only real way to watch was to head out. Our destination of choice was Windows, a sports bar in Shanghai that was filled with screens on which we could watch the game. Beer was cheap, at 50 RMB for a pitcher, and shots are just 10 RMB each. Their  Flaming B-52 is especially delicious. The food served there was also really good, and very fairly priced.
     The highlight of our times at Windows was the USA at Algeria game. Half of the screens in the bar were showing the America game, while the other half showed the England game. This led to a very tense moment as the English fans cheered at their country's win, but we were finally rewarded at the end.

      The next game that we watched at Windows was the America at Ghana game. While the previous game had been at 10pm, this game started at 2:30am. While we would have been much happier to win the game, an interesting thing that we learned from this experience was that the sun rises extremely early here in Shanghai. The first rays of light could be seen at 4:00am, and by the time we got home it was as though the day was already well underway. Shanghai at this hour is definitely an experience.

Nightlife:

     Every weekend, we de stress from the long week of classes and internships by heading out to the bars and clubs in force. A few of the bars and clubs have special promotions on Friday and Saturday nights, whereby 100 RMB ($14 USD) will get you as many drinks as you can handle (and then some). Sometimes we will head out to these first for a bit of social lubricant before heading to the clubs, while other weekends we have simply started with and ended with clubs.

     The club scene in Shanghai is quite spectacular. While everything seems expensive at first, when prices are converted into USD, we find that, at least compared to clubs at home, everything is actually really cheap. A Red Bull and Vodka can be found for $5 USD, which is great when compared to prices found in Miami. Everything here is relative. Tables are almost required however, unless all of your time is spent on the dance floor. As a word of caution, DJs don't really like it when you decide to try your hand on playing with their records...

Rock Climbing:

     One of the surprises that Shanghai threw at me was rock climbing. Situated inside of the Hongkou Indoor Stadium, a small rock climbing gym awaits anybody who cares to give it a go. The price, including rental of shoes and a harness, is about 45 RMB for the entire day, which is not bad at all. There are all kinds of routes, ranging from a beginner wall, to a practice wall littered with hundreds of hand holds of every shape and size, as well as a realistic looking rock face and a route that takes you upside down along the roof of the building. It is a really cool place, and it was a lot of fun when we went.

Walmart:

     One of the biggest shocks for us to see was Walmart. In China. It was inside of a mall, and offered 4 different floors, each one with a separate department. It was absolutely huge, and as always the prices were low, even by China standards. And here I thought that I would miss the comforts of home...

Beer Pong:

     For entertainment one Sunday afternoon, Justin, Nakul, James, and I decided to play a game of beer pong. We went out and managed to find cups as well as ping pong balls, and set up our bedside tables in each others doorways. It was actually really hard to play, as the cups were so much lower than normal, and the two sides were a lot farther apart than usual. The crosswinds from the hall also made for interesting strategies. In the end, Justin and I ended up losing by one cup. We'll get them on the rematch though...

Well, that's all I have for now. Next weekend I'm off to Beijing, so I'll be sure to take lots of pictures and write an in-depth report.

Episode 5: Trip to Wuzhen

A while back, we woke up an an ungodly hour and got onto a bus so that Zoe could take us to the historic water city of Wuzhen. We all imagined a picturesque little town resembling the city of Venice, with people dressed in traditional Chinese clothing guiding us around the wonderful city. When we got there however, we realized that we were mistaken. While Wuzhen is an admittedly beautiful city, the one thing keeping it from being picturesque are the crowds. I'm not sure exactly how many people were there that day, but it reminded me of Expo, which is not something pleasant on narrow roads winding through the buildings of the city.

While I would love to tell the story of Wuzhen, when it came about, why it is so famous and such, our tour guide only spoke Chinese, so we missed out on everything that she said. This wasn't actually that big of an issue, as we quickly lost the rest of our tour group in the first mob of people that we ran into. We wandered throughout the city, and found that it actually is quite an interesting place. We were able to walk through an old pawn shop, a children's school, as well as the many shops that lined the streets. Most of them were not selling the usual tourist-trap items, but were either selling something made by hand such as a wood carving or painting on a scroll, or were selling Chinese antiques, including a samurai sword that I spotted in one shop.

Another highlight of the day was the temple. Situated in the middle of the city, it was not as crowded as the outside and offered a very interesting insight into the religious side of Wuzhen and China itself. Down a narrow pathway inside the temple was an area with buildings that were completely devoid of people. In here, various artifacts were on display, including items owned by famous residents of Wuzhen as well as ancient furniture. This was my favorite part of the city by far.

So although the trip was certainly tarnished by the multitude of people that we had to battle through, it was worthwhile to get a glimpse into a simpler side of China than anything that we have yet to see in Shanghai proper. Hopefully we will get to see more of this during our trip to Beijing.

Episode 4: Expo!

I know it has been quite some time since my last update, but I promise to try and churn these out at a faster pace in the future.

After I had already decided to come to Shanghai for the summer, I discovered that the city would play host to Expo 2010. Having never been to a world expo before, I was excited by the prospect of being able to see what they were all about. I didn't have to wait long to go however, as on the first Sunday that I was here, the 13th of June, Justin, Kelly, Vic, Ariel, and I set off for the Expo early in the morning.

First impressions of the expo were of awe at the magnitude of the whole thing. It takes nothing more than a glance at the numbers to get an idea of the scale of the whole affair. $48 billion USD was spent preparing the city, 18,000 families and 270 factories were relocated from the ground that would become the expo site. Six brand new subway lines were built, 4,000 taxis were added to the fleet. Clearly, Shanghai felt that this expo would bring big business.

After getting off of the aforementioned new subway, we headed over to the ticket counters. The scene reminded me of theentrance to Disneyland, with barricades crisscrossing a vast expanse of asphalt, directing crowds to the ticket windows. Luckily, we got there early enough to miss the majority of the crowd, so we were shown the way directly through to the ticket windows. Tickets are normally 160 RMB each ($23.50 USD), but students get a special discount rate of 100 RMB, provided a student ID is shown. Lucky for me a CT drivers license looks an awful lot like a college ID to the counter workers. After passing through a security check that was remarkably similar to the type of checks that are seen in airports these days, metal detectors, x-rays and all. Water bottles were also confiscated at this point.

The expo was not quite what I was expecting. It is a sprawling affair, covering 2.6 kmsq, and once inside you get a sense of how big it all is. There are roads all over the place, and there is a bus system in place. It's really a small city within the city of Shanghai. After a quick stop at KFC for lunch (we were hungry and it was the first place we saw), we headed out to see the sights.

If anybody who wishes to go to Expo has a fear of large crowds, they should stay far, far away and visit the online version. Crowds are everywhere, and lines are absolutely insane. Everywhere you turn, there are throngs of people, either making their way to an exhibit or standing in line for one. This brings up the second problem with the expo. Lines. Every single exhibit, save Africa, had a line stretching from the entrance to eternity. We considered getting into line for the Chinese exhibit, the largest exhibit by far, but were told that there was no chance of us getting in that day. Keep in mind, this was 12 hours before the expo was scheduled to close. Saudi Arabia's line was 8 hours, Japan's 4. Even lowly Kazakhstan had a wait time of 2 hours, and they didn't even bring Borat with them!

The African pavilion was interesting as it was basically a giant warehouse with every African country save South Africa, who had their own Nelson Mandela-branded pavilion, group together, each having their own floor space to show off the wonders of their country. After Africa, we wandered around, desperately trying to find a country without a 5 hour wait. We settled upon Israel, as it had quite a short line. The architecture of the building was very interesting, and soon we were ushered into a circular room filled with glowing orbs and TV screens, where we were treated to a short video about all of the innovations Israel credited itself with.

We finally broke down and had to see what was inside of Japan's pavilion, clearly the weirdest building at the expo, looking
something like a Pokemon. We waited in line for a solid 4 hours before getting inside, where we wandered through passageways, experiencing both new and old Japan. We were then ushered into a room where we witnessed a rather long and cheesy story about the crested ibis' return to Japan, in which new technologies such as a wall-sized screen that responded to gestures, were showcased. A humanoid robot also performed a concert for us on a violin. Then it was off to a theater, where an only-in-Japan opera was performed, with the subject being the crested ibis, once again. I personally thought that the high-tech wheelchair dance was a little much.

These were the only three exhibits we would venture into, as all of the others had lines that were far too long. From the outside however, we were still impressed by the creativity on display. The UK, Luxembourg, Korea, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, China, and Spain all stand out in my mind as truly being works of art. A notably strange corner was one at the far end of the park, where North Korea and Iraq had pavilions side by side, both lacking any sort of creativity or flair, We dubbed this the enemies of America corner. Overall, it was a fairly good experience, but the sheer number of people attending the expo marred it somewhat. Hopefully we can find a time to come back when the crowds are thinner.

Episode 3: Night(s) on the Town

This one's going to be a long one, and I apologize in advance. It does however get better as it goes along, so it's definitely worth reading it through to the end!

To celebrate getting through our first week of work, we decided to head out to Xintiandi, a tourist area in Shanghai that is filled with various shops, restaurants, and bars on Thursday night. It caters to foreigners, thus everything was pricy by Shanghai standards,though anything above $6 for a meal can be considered pricy in Shanghai. We started off with dinner at a very nice little restaurant situated at the far end of the walking area. The food was good, if pricy, and it turned out that it was happy hour, and the beer was buy one get one free. I decided to go with the steak and mashed potatoes, which was an extremely welcome bit of familiar cuisine. After dinner, we meandered over to a small bar which had live music. The drinks were pricy in here as well, but we all had fun, and even met an awesome couple who were from Madagascar. Overall it was quite a fun night, and it was interesting to see so many non-Chinese faces at one time.

On Friday night, we decided to head over to Stampede, a bar that also happens to have an underground go kart track in it for entertainment purposes. Yes, a bar, with its own go kart track. Awesome. Since everyone in China had to work on Saturday due to the Dragon Boat Festival, the place was not nearly as busy as we had expected, and the four of us who went snagged a table and got down to business. Stampede is entirely underground, with the bar area raised up and overlooking the pit straight of the track below. On the central support wall in the middle of the track, there was a 20 foot projector screen that was showing the South Africa and Mexico match.

After several beers, we decided it was time to hit the track. It was a ton of fun, with the track being very slippery and thus perfect for drifting. It was a short track and the karts went pretty fast (around 30mph), so the lap times were in the mid-40 second range. An 8 minute run cost 85 RMB ($12.5 USD), so it was a good value for the money. After our first go, we went back to the bar and had several more beers, along with shots of tequila. It was at this point that I got to talking to the owner of the bar, and he challenged me to a race. We raced, but due to moving roadblocks (the other drivers were terrible) he managed to pull out a win on a technicality, thus we lost out on a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and I had to buy everyone a beer.

We drank some more and then raced again, with my lap times getting faster each time, interestingly enough. At this point it was fairly late and two of us had to work the next morning, so we called it a night and headed back to the hotel, with Kelly yelling about Mexicans the whole way...

Saturday night was fairly tame, as we simply went out to dinner in People's Square and went to bed fairly early as we were planning on heading over to the Expo on Sunday morning (I'll talk about that in my next update).

I didn't think it was possible, but Sunday night actually turned out to be even crazier than Friday night. The four of us who had gone out to Stampede again headed out, this time to the French Concession. We went into a sake bar, but the establishment was far too expensive for our budget, so we headed back out and found another bar. We had a few beers there, then headed to the bar next door so that Kelly could get a girly drink.Everywhere we went was pretty dead, so we were fairly disappointed. However, one of Justin's friends from work called him and told him to come over to a nightclub called JJ's that he was at.

We hopped in a taxi and headed over. Inside of the club, they had a couple of DJs and were absolutely blasting the music. There were lights all over the place, and a fog machine mixing in with the cigarette smoke (no laws against that in China). There were people dancing all over the place, and it had a great vibe about it. We met up with Justin's friend and ordered ourselves a bottle of Johnny Walker Black, which was served to us by one of the club employees. He mixed it with Coke and was constantly refilling our glasses. We danced and drank, and went through the bottle fairly quickly. Kelly and I managed to get invited over to drink at another table, which we happily did. Here they were mixing the Johnny with green tea, which was very refreshing. We stayed until 2:30, dancing on the stage and listening to a girl singing American music such as "I will Survive". It was a great night, but waking up was harder than usual the next morning...

So all in all, my first weekend in Shanghai was far better than anything I could have expected. I just hope the rest of my weekends here can live up to this one.

Episode 2: Welcome to Shanghai

Yesterday was a long day. It all began Saturday afternoon, when I boarded a 747 in New York. A rather short flight later, I found myself in Tokyo-Narita International. After sampling some of the localdrinks, including the appetizingly named "Pocari Sweat" and some sake, which was packaged inside of a juicebox, I then boarded a plane once again, this time for Shanghai. I arrived in Shanghai at 10pm on Sunday. Taking the 2 hour time difference into account, my total travel time was 23 hours.

First impressions upon arriving in Shanghai: the city, or at least the

airport and Bund area, are extremely modern and developed. The city skyline is very colorful at night, with light shows being played out on bridges and buildings. The area closer to the hotel that I am staying reminds me a lot of New York City, especially in the way that it smells.

In fact, the more that I saw of the city, the more it reminded me of New York, just a lot less organized. There are familiar sights to see everywhere you go, from Pizza Hut and KFC to Starbucks and Haagen Daz stores everywhere that you go. They are also quite

different from their American counterparts. For instance, Pizza Hut, pictured at the left, is a sit down style restaurant, with silverware on the table and everything.

Monday morning was spent on the subway system, as several of us were led around to find out where exactly our internships were located, and how to get their. The subway system is extremely clean and organized, and is very easy to get around on. Everything is in both Chinese and English, which is very helpful. It is also very reasonable, as 3 RMB (a little less than $.50) will get you into the subway system. From there, you can transfer to all of the lines in the system and get to pretty much anywhere in the city. During busy times, the trains can fill up, and people try to cram themselves in to every available spot, and then some. It is much safer than walking though, as crossing a street is always an adventure. Cars and scooters don't seem to follow any set laws and never seem to go out of their way to try and avoid pedestrians.

In the afternoon, I taveled to The Bund in order to see the famous Shanghai sk

yline as well as make a visit to an underground knock-off market. The Bund was bustling with people everywhere, but it was very cool to finally see the Pearl Tower and other buildings that I had only ever seen in pictures before. This area bears a striking resemblance to New York City, both in the architecture (save the Pearl Tower) as well as the huge amount of people and tour groups. The underground market was also very interesting, as it was a sprawling affair,

selling everything from iPhones to belts and watches. The salespeople are very pushy, and always trying to assure you that the price they are giving you is their "friend price". Haggling with them is a must however, as their starting prices are always at least double wha

t they will finally accept. I managed to pick up a very nice "Tag Heuer" for around $20 usd.

China is a great place for people on a budget, as almost everything is very reasonable,

if not downright cheap. A bottle of water may look expensive at ¥2, but once converted to USD it is actually 30 cents for something that would cost at least 5 times that much back in the States. Food is also cheap if you are willing to step away from McDonalds and try something local, though even a meal at McDonalds will come out to less than $5.

So far, Shanghai has been an awesome experience. The people I've met so far have been great, the city has tons of stuff to do, and my lack of Chinese has not really been that big of a hindrance. My internship starts tomorrow morning, so it will just be a matter of trying to make sure that I make all of the right transfers in order to get there. Until next time, zaijian!

Episode 1: Phantom Passport

Prior to my departure to Shanghai for the summer, I needed to send my passport away in order to get my visa. When it was sent back to me, it arrived at my school address the day after I left. It was later forwarded to my home address, and shortly thereafter arrived in my hometown on the Thursday before I was scheduled to head to Shanghai (my flight was on June 2nd). However, the Post Office decided that this just wouldn't do, so they decided to send it back down to Miami for no apparent reason. I was told it would be delivered back to school in Miami on June 1st, so I decided that the only way to ensure that I had it was to fly down and spend the night in Mimi in the hopes that I could retrieve it and fly back the next day. I changed my ticket to Thursday and headed to Miami.

Once in Miami however, I spent the day searching to no avail, and came home empty-handed, as the passport

had left the Miami post office and was headed back out to some unknown destination. Numerous calls to customer service later, I still did not know where my passport would end up, or even if it would turn up at all. At the rate this was going, I decided to just cancel the ticket to

Shanghai for the time and try to get a new passport, with the earliest available appointment time being June 7th). However, it again popped up on the tracking website, and was again in Wallingford. I still did not know when or if it would be delivered, but it was finally delivered on June 4th. This allowed me to book a ticket to Shanghai for Saturday, the 5th, which would get me in 3 days after I was originally scheduled to arrive, but at least I was finally heading out to Shanghai!