One quick addition to my last post. At some point on Sunday, I was approached by a white guy with an eastern European accent. He asks me if I speak English and once I say yes, he asks me if I know how to get to some place. I tell him no, he says oh I'm going to this place and he hands me a paper. I start reading, and I'm completely confused, he handed me an e-mail scam. Like one of those Nigerian scams except for China. And then from my confused look he assumed that either I was not interested in his scam or perhaps I couldn't help him get to where he wanted to go. I don't think he was falling for the scam I think he was trying to scam people because after I blew him off, he went to sit in a lawn chair. I don't know many lost tourist who have their own lawn chairs.
So back to the adventure, we've just arrived in Shanghai train station. We try to get a cab, but this cop type guy keeps shooing the cabs away, apparently we weren't in the correct place to grab a cab. Maybe it was because we were in the intersection. Anyways, we hop into a cab, and tell the cabby where we want to go. He says, sorry I don't go there and kicks us out. So we try to flag another cab down. We manage to get one, and it's this woman, first woman cab driver of my adventure. Her cab is clean, smells nice and has crazy air conditioning. It was actually cool in the cab even though it was 35 degrees out. So off we go. She was the most polite driver we've ever come across, she let people cut in front of her without honking or threatening to drive into their car. She didn't cut anyone off, she stopped for red lights, etc, etc. Unfortunately, polite driving means slow driving. It took us a good 40 minutes to get to the hotel. But who cares how slow the ride is when you're in a clean, nice smelling, air conditioned cab? We didn't.
So, at this point George is heading to Beijing for some road testing. Jorge and I agree to meet at 7pm to head for supper. I take a shower and a quick nap, in my icy cold 20 degree room! Hurray for AC! I got bored of waiting around and I decided to do a couple social experiments. Why not? My first task was to see how dedicated the Nanjing road annoying merchants were.
So I walk to Nanjing road and start my test. I have a pretty long stride compared to most Chinese people. So I start walking very fast down the street. People try to cut me off but most people give up really fast, I hear a lot of people yellow "Hullo! Hullo!" but only a few catch up to me, and they stop immediately when I say no. One guy even stopped 15 feet away, he opened his menu, I gave the no thanks wave and he never said a word. Of all the people there, only two were remarkable.
The first was a shop guy, he was pretty tall and could keep up with me, "bagwatch, t-shirt big size, dvd?" "No thanks" "Ok my friend you tell me what you need" holy crow, this guy's English is good compared to the general population. I tell him "Nothing" and in a high pitched incredulous voice that only Chinese men can pull off he says "Nooooothing?! You must need something! Shoes, pants, come see my shop." I say "Sorry, I'm very busy" and so he gives up.
The second was a very beautiful woman. She was not tall, she was pretty much jogging in high heels to keep up with me. "Hello my friend" "Hello" "Where are you from?" "Canada" "Oh, Janada, very nice" like she's ever been there. "Wait a minute, slow down" ok, impressive English. "Sorry I'm very busy" "Not busy, you have time for bar" "Sorry" then she slapped my back. I guess she was tired of running after me. "Buy me a drink!" "Sorry, no time" and then she pinched me. WTF is wrong with these people. So she probably swore at me in Chinese and stopped chasing after me.
Test phase two. I go and buy a sprite (all that walking made me thirsty) and 3 oranges (they look better than they taste sadly). So I walk around drinking sprite and holding 3 oranges in a clear plastic bag. Now the street vendors come up and say "bagwatch" or whatever I say no thanks. Then they think they have a new plan. They'll offer me what I'm shopping for, so they look at my bag. 3 oranges. You should have seen the look on their faces, I should have been walking around with my camera in hand to capture the look. It translated to "WTF! This tourist has 3 oranges in a bag! My head will explode!" or something to that effect. But they were so stunned that they stopped in their tracks, giving me time to escape.
I get back to the hotel, and sit around in the cool 20 degree AC. 7 rolls around and I head down to meet Jorge. We're trying to come up with someplace to eat. Jorge remembers that we never ate dumplings in YuYuen gardens. So we grab a cab and head for food. The cabby was one of those guys that always speaks like he's completely stunned by what you just said. "YuYuen" says Jorge, "YuuuuuuYueeeeen!!!" in OMG California girl style says the cabby. Then he rattles off that he thinks it's closed. Jorge says stuff, he repeats stuff in his incredulous tone. It's so freaken funny to listen to. Finally we decide we'll go to YuYuen and try our luck. The place is crazy busy, busier than last time. So we head off to get dumplings. We eat six dumplings and a little soup each, but we're still hungry. Unfortunately the dumplings weren't as awesome as advertised, so we decide to try something else.
We go to what was described as tapas style food. Really it's a cafeteria. You grab a tray, and load your tray with whatever dishes you want, they you pay and go sit. Self serve to the max. You even get your own utensils and there are no napkins anywhere. We selected the following, veggies wrapped in tofu skin (not bad), quail (ok), a giant dumpling with soup in it and a straw sticking out of it (I had to get it, the soup was pretty good), chicken feet (very good), pork skewers (ok), fish sticks (not bad), battered and fried crab (awesome), funky meat dumplings (good). All this food for 150 rmb. Good times. We found a place to wash our hands and then walked around.
"bagwatch" was again the theme of the evening, so we decided to head someplace else. We hitched a ride to the hotel and decided to hunt around for a bar. As we're walking around the bund, Jorge gets accosted by a guy who offers him a lady bar/massage, apparently Jorge looks lecherous because he's always getting this kind of offer. After ditching the guy by pretending only to speak french (I kinda saved Jorge with that one, he just spouted out a bit of nonsense and laughed a lot). We were on our way. As we get to a corner, one of those little bike taxis stops right in front of us, and a tourist steps out followed by the girl that pinched me earlier. "It's this way she says" pointing to some direction. She spots me, and I smile, she ushers her guy off so that I don't have a chance to say anything.
We never did find a bar, but we had a god walk. We headed back to the hotel and called it a night. This morning I got up at 8ish, ate at the hotel breakfast, Jorge, Autumn and Robert all happened to show up around the same time. Wrote some blog, did some work, downloaded files for an hour. The interwebs hates me, even when it's map data that I'm downloading. Then I invited ZiPing to lunch. She extended the invitation to Candy, and Autumn came along too.
We had Shanghai hairy crab, it's called hairy because it actually has hair on its claws. It's pretty cool and very very tasty. The body seems to have a lot more meat than your typical crab. They're tiny, like the body is the size of two eggs. ZiPing and Candy are so dainty... they asked for gloves so that we didn't get crab sauce all over our hands. So girly, lol. We ate other stuff too, but the crab was really the best dish, the garlic spare ribs were a distant second. The crab is out of season, apparently it's fattier and has better flavour during July and August. That's when the locals eat them.
Now we're all caught up. My adventures continue, as does the heat. It's about 30-33 out there today, and I lost my awesome window cube. Now I'm in the kitchen. The view is ok, I'm not by the window, but the entire wall is a window so it's ok. But it's much cooler here. The only problem is that even on the 4th floor the cigarette smoke wafts in through the window.
No plans for tonight. Eventually I'll have to go to the LauWei market "City Super Store" and I also need to get knives for Emily. And maybe some brushes for Trish and my dad. I saw some brushes last night at YuYuen but they were cheaply made and she was asking too much for them. The price dropped drastically as we walked away from the stand. Each step was a 10 rmb discount. But she gave me too much time to think about it, she shoulda sold them to me when I said that I wouldn't spend more than 120 rmb on em. Instead she dropped the price to 110 and I still walked away. Why spend $18 on cheap brushes, I can probably find some good ones for less.
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