Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Shanghai

(Actually published March 7th, 2008)

Hey everyone. It's been a while, but I do have something to tell you all about. A month ago I was in Shanghai for Chinese New Years. I went with my friends from Japan Laurence and Lindsay. We arrived in China on February 6th (New Year's Eve) and returned to Korea on the 10th.

The flight was uneventful, and we had some directions to get the hostel. We took the bus, and I got my first introduction to China. On the bus, no one spoke English except for the woman who was selling tickets. There was an old man singing in a Chinese language, and it was actually quite interesting. His pitch kept on changing, which makes sense given that the Chinese languages are tonal, but it was very different to hear it.

Driving into Shanghai, I was surprised to see that the city itself is actually quite green. There's a lot of green space and it was impressive.

Once we got closer to downtown Shanghai, there were fireworks going off. It was still night, so I didn't get a good look at Shanghai at that point. We eventually got to the train station, and took the subway to our hostel.

Shanghai has an awesome subway system. It's fast, cheap and not crowded (by Asian city standards). We got a little lost looking for the hostel, but found it eventually.

We met some people at the hostel, and wanted to look for a bar. Unfortunately, everything near our hostel was closed and there were no taxi cabs in sight. We walked around for a while looking for a place to eat and drink. Meanwhile, fireworks were going off everywhere, non-stop. We stopped by a street vendor, and bought some fireworks from them.

We walked around for a long time, and then we met up with two Dutch guys and an American that were staying at our hostel. They were learning Mandarin in Beijing and could communicate with some people, which was a huge help. We went from bar to bar in Shanghai. Fireworks were still going off constantly in the background.

We ended up going to a bar called Babyface, and arrived at midnight. When we arrived, the bouncers started to get people away from the entrance of the dance club. They were setting off fireworks in probably the largest display of fireworks I've ever seen. It went off for 5 minutes. There were, of course, other fireworks going off nearby.

Inside was fun. We kept on buying full vodka bottles, and I met a Japanese guy and started using my Japanese skills on him. He was a nice guy, and I gave him my Japanese cell phone number. When we left the bar at 4 am, there were still fireworks. That night we got up several times to the sound of fireworks. That is to say, there were a lot of fireworks.

The next day we hit up downtown Shanghai. It was fun. The first thing to note about Shanghai is that it's so futuristic it will make Japan look like a third world country. We also went in a tunnel that went under the river in Shanghai. It was really trippy. Worth doing, even though it was a complete rip off.

We went to bed early that second day because we had big plans for the third day. We went to a river village. Basically, it's a traditional Chinese village. It's described as China's Venice. It was really beautiful. It has boats with people paddling it themselves and some Chinese buildings. It was quite the tourist trap, but the best shop was far from the tourist shops. It was a tiny house with a woman painting inside. She had beautiful pictures posted on the wall. I took a look around and decided to buy something. I now have authentic Chinese art, and it's awesome.

We went back home and drank in our hostel that night. Played some drinking games and learned probably the greatest new rules for Kings. You will all have to wait until you play with me before you learned the awesomeness of the new rules (Viking is my favorite).

So the next day, our last full day in Shanghai, we hit up places around Shanghai. We saw a part called Old Town, which was fantastic. It was packed, and once again, a tourist trap, but it had Chinese lanterns overhead and beautiful architecture. We walked around, and I bought my very own Mao clock! That's right everyone, my very own made in China clock. Now, this may come as a surprise to a lot of you, but it's actually a piece of shit. I would never have equated made in China with cheap crap! It doesn't even keep time accurately.

While leaving Old Town, we got lost. We wound up in a poor part of Shanghai and it was interesting to walk around there. Houses looked really bad on the outside, but one thing I noticed was that there was air conditioning units in some of the windows... definetely a stranger sight of China.

We then went to Qibao. The place was awesome! It was another ancient part of Shanghai. There were small shops, it was packed, and we ate weird Chinese food. Everything was packed. Not so much of a touristy spot, although there were still shops here and there. Definitely worth seeing if you're in Shanghai.

Our last night, we went drinking again. I made a new friend from Hong Kong, and got his e-mail address, so I might drop him a line when I go to visit. The next morning, I got up early and saw a Chinese Buddhist temple. It's been interesting to see how different they are in Japan, Korea and China. I think the Chinese temples were the most beautiful.

We left China later that day. Shanghai was awesome. A nice city, with nice people, cheap food, and gorgeous women. Definitely worth a visit at least once, and definitely a good place to live (if you can live under a dictatorship that suppresses speech).

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