I left you last time with thoughts of heading out for some shopping. And I did. My old neighbour (whom I can't remember the name of... I mean all Chinese names sound the same really) we'll call him HuangHai, mostly because it sounds cool and his nameplate may or may not have looked something like HuangHai. Anyways, HuangHai wrote me a note that told the taxi driver that I wanted to go to the City Bank building in Pudong. The reason for this was that I discovered that there was a "City Shop" there and that City Shop stocks Expat gear.
Off I go, armed with HuangHai's note (yeah I'm gonna use the made up name as much as I can, because I'm cool like that). I see a white woman looking very lost walking around with her lonely planet book opened to a map. I followed her, since she was going the same way I was. She seemed a little less lost when she got to Nanjing road, so I never bothered to talk to her. I flagged a cab down and hopped in.
I handed my "HuangHai Note"(tm) to the driver and said Pudong. He pointed to where HuangHai told me he wrote the address and I said dui which means I agree or yes and it sonds like "dway" like "dwane", he seemed a little confused, pointed again, then I said dui dui and threw in a hao for good measure. That seemed to make him happy, and he handed me my "HuangHai Note" back. Off we went, in the wrong direction. Now this might worry some tourists, they tell the guy to go east and he heads off straight west after a very confusing explanation of where you want to go. But I knew better. We had to go west to hook up with the tunnel that goes under the river.
The drive was really quiet... normally the cabby is chatting with whoever speaks Chinese, seeing as nobody spoke Chinese except for him, he didn't say anything. When we were close to where we wanted to go, he asked me, in Chinese, where to let me out. But I didn't see the city bank building anywhere, so I told him city bank, and handed him the "HuangHai Note" and he quickly nodded and drove another block. I saw the City Bank building and said "hao hao" and I pointed to the building. He rattled something off and pointed to the curb so I said dui and he pulled over. I paid the man and headed into the building.
It looked more like an office building than a shopping mall, and there was a directory. City Shop was in room 105. Good, on the first floor. I go and walk all around the first floor. And then I do a second lap, maybe it's smaller than I thought. No dice. I walk back to the directory and the security guard that's hanging around gives me a funny look, this is the third or fourth time he's seen me walk by looking a little lost. So I walk up to the guy "Ni Hao" and then I point to the directory trying to make myself understood. The guy follows me to the directory and I point to City Shop, say "City Shop" and I was just about to say 105 in Chinese when the guy says "You want to go to City Shop?" LOL, this dude was watching me make an ass of myself when his English is more than adequate. Apparently it was complicated to get to, because he almost started giving me directions and then said "Follow me please".
The guard walks me through the first floor, yup, seen it twice, and then he walks out the door. WTF? It's outside!? So I follow him, and the he points back towards the building. Yup the shop can only be accessed from the outside, it's got it's own outside doors. I walk in, and it's like a small version of whole foods with really weird selection. This might be Americanized as far as China goes, but it's far from being anything like and American super market.
I walk down the isles, and look around. They have Italian style pasta, cheese and other dairy products. The toiletries isle is stocked with regular looking toothpaste, some Listerine, axe body wash and even some deodorant! The problem is you have your choice of spray deodorant or roll-on. For a country that produces 90% of the world's knickknacks, and probably half the stock of bar deodorant, you'd think they'd have some on their shelves. No bars of deodorant. I have a choice of Nivea spray or Fa roll-on. The Nivea spray is four times the price of the Fa roll-on so my choice is easy. I get the roll-on. I pay my 22 rmb and head out.
I decide to roam around Pudong, and check out the place. They have huge buildings, one of them is the pearl tower or something like that. It's a tall building with balls, I'll put a picture up. Anyways, when we were in cloud 9 I called it the ball building, and Jorge heard the bong building so now it's sticking, bong building it is. I walked by, way too many tourists. Everywhere you go in the world, there's always Chinese tourists. Nowhere is this more true that in China. There are something like 5 or 6 billion people in China, apparently, most of them are tourists.
I walked by the bong building, and found that there was an aquarium. I walked in, and found yet again that there were hordes of tourists crawling the building. I decided to hit the gift shop and head out because the map didn't show anything weird that I haven't seen before in an aquarium. The gift shop was a zoo, har har, not an aquarium... get it? Anyways, I found a couple of knickknacks that cost more than what most people spend in a day on food... $6. That's what the knickknacks cost, not the food. You can eat well in china on about $3 a day, and you don't even have to cook anything. If you're my parents though, food in China would cost you at least $15 a day. I don't seem my mom eating much from street vendor carts or tiny hole in the wall noodle shops. Not that I've been eating there (except to try em out) because Telenav is footing my food bill. I easily spend more in one meal than a whole Chinese family eats in a month. But then again I'm taking people out. And even then it's pretty hard to rack up an enormous bill.
Right, so back to my story. I left the aquarium, walked around some more, got bored of roaming and hopped on a cab. I handed him my hotel card, which says in Chinese take me to my hotel. They're always reluctant to drive us to the hotel because of all the construction. So I tell him Nanjing road. He points to the hotel. I gesture the length of Nanjing road on the tiny hotel card map and say "anywhere on Nanjing road". Obviously I didn't mean anywhere, I meant close by, but this got the cab moving. Kinda moving.
Traffic in Shanghai is crazy at best, and downright awful most of the time. But never have I tried to cross one of the tunnels during rush hour. Well, let me explain. Traffic doesn't really move along the tunnels during rush hour. The driver, not speaking any English therefore not trying to strike up some small talk with me decided to turn on the radio. Did you know that in the afternoon Chinese radio plays soap operas? No? Me neither! But they do! Now I know you're sitting there in your comfy chair thinking, this guy knows maybe two dozen Chinese words how could he possibly know that it's a Chinese soap opera? Well, prepare to be amazed! At first I thought it was a talk show, because it was just people talking. Then there was the sound of a phone ringing... call in talk show? Then there was some high pitched and animated talking. Then an OMG sounding part from a guy. Then a little dum dum dum tune. Then the sound of a Chinese ambulance. Then more talking. More little tunes. Clearly a soap opera. Plus thanks to Aurora I've been exposed to Chinese TV soap operas in the past.
Well, it took about 30 minutes to get back and the guy dropped me off on Nanjing road just like I asked, he dropped me off at the closest intersection to the tunnel exit. I guess he really did understand anywhere on Nanjing road. I was about 10 minutes walk from work. So I start walking, and of course "bagwatch". I want to invent a t-shirt that says in Chinese "I don't need a bag or a watch or anything else you're selling. And I already bought this T-shirt." So I can just point to my shirt whenever they ask me. Plus you could wear it in the US and it would just look cool. Just like the people hear wear English shirts without knowing what's written on them. Like one guy wearing a baseball cap saying "Beauty Hunter" and his girlfriend wearing a matching cap saying "Adult Model". Ok... well.
So after the first bagwatch guy, I took out my camera and started taking a few pictures here and there. I don't know if it was the camera or the slight rain, but no more bagwatch people bugged me for the rest of the walk. It was kinda spooky, but enjoyable. I got back to the hotel a little wet yet still sweaty. I took a quick shower and tried my new deodorant. Yep roll-on still feels like something is licking your armpit. Didn't this stuff get banned or something. Why are the Chinese still in the 1980's of the deodorant world? Anyways, now I smell a little like I put aftershave in my armpits, but it's better than nothing. I think.
Off to supper with Autumn, we grab FanFan and Lu Ye, and some other guy which I don't remember the name of. Unfortunately for the other guy, I've exceeded my daily limit of made up Chinese names after HuangHai, so no name for him. The 5 of us took to subway to go to supper. The subway in China is awesome, and busy. The train is wide open on the inside, no doors between cars. You could skateboard from one end of the train to the other if the train was empty. Unfortunately, that's never the case. The train is probably 500 meters long (if not longer) and full of people. It runs by every 8 minutes too. Apparently when we went it wasn't busy at all, you could even get a seat. During rush hour I'm told that you have to push yourself into the train and hope the door doesn't squish you.
The restaurant was HuBe style, FanFan is from the HuBe province so he ordered some stuff. He asked if it was ok to order the house special fish soup. 188 rmb per 500g of fish, and we'd need 1kg to feed the 4 of us (Autumn doesn't really eat fish). 400 rmb for 1 soup... uh, no. So we got the less expensive but very similar 160 rmb/kg soup. less than half the price for a similar tasting soup... but not the best. After the soup was done they gave us a dish of tofu skins and shrimp paste, and we had to boil the tofu and shrimp paste into the fish soup. The tofu tasted a bit like cumin, and they made shrimp balls out of the shrimp paste. The shrimp balls put every other shrimp ball I've ever had to shame. These were the highlight of my meal.
Back to the hotel... right, so where did we come from? Here's a little tidbit about China, they either build really small or really big. Houses are really small. Malls are really big. My hotel room is about 15 feet by 15 feet. This mall has 200 foot wide hallways and is 7 stories high with 3-5 stories under the ground. It took us about 8 minutes to walk the loop around one floor of the mall. We had gone the wrong way out of the elevator so we walked the entire floor before we got to the restaurant. So, how do you get back to the subway. We roamed, got lost, got more lost, found ourselves, or so we thought, got lost again, and then found again, and then we got to the subway. We paid our 4 rmb for the ride, the machine didn't want coins, it spat those out real fast but then when I gave it a bill is sucked it up really fast! Then spat out coins for my change. You know the US machines that take your bills take the really slow. The Chinese machines suck them up like a vacuum almost, it's crazy.
Anyways, one short subway ride later and we're back on Nanjing road walking to the hotel. I get to my room, shower and head to sleep. Wake up, shower again, my room got to 25 degrees again overnight... it cools off to 20 during the day and then heats up to 25 at night... screwed up world. The street cart where I normally get my breakfast had individually wrapped hot dogs in a can. Now this following conversation was mostly gestures, me speaking in English, and him speaking in Chinese, neither of us having any clue what the other person said save for the gestures. "What are these hot dogs?" "1 rmb" hmm, that's cheap but I still have no idea what they are "Do you cook them on the grill?" "Yeah, on the grill" ok "I'll take 1" I actually know that one in Chinese, it's YiGa sounds like iga and it means "one of". So he cooks my hot dog plus my regular sandwich. Then shoves the hot dog in my sandwich with some extra brown sauce. It was delicious, and it was exactly what you'd expect a hot dog to taste like.
At the office, work is boring, I talk to people, and head to lunch with Chu WenJiang, we had to talk about navstar. He's got an L1 visa so he's moving to the states. We went to a Korean BBQ place, I wanted to try dog, but they didn't have any. Oh well, better luck next time. The BBQ was awesome and they had some unagi style eel to go with it. Delicious stuff really.
Now I'm back at the office, Autumn and Robert are off to Beijing and George is back from Beijing. It's Wednesday so it's China office afternoon tea day. I got a cool bun with some jam and custard on it and an ice tea. Nestea Ice Rush with extra cooling action. Sounds like a deodorant. Anyways, the ice rush is like dentine ice except in drink form. It's got a bad menthol aftertaste. This afternoon I think I'm gonna go roam. Maybe find someplace fun to eat. Who knows, I may find dog after all.
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