7/25
Foot mat towel.
In the morning I was again surprised at the hotel's quality. The room was of decent size, everything was clean, the TV and the small fridge worked. The bathroom supplied all the toiletries: soap, shampoo, tooth brush/paste, etc. Getting ready for a shower I noticed what I'd missed last night: some backwash from the tub drain left a small deposit of hair and ... stuff. Ok, I cleaned it up with TP and then discovered the reason for the mess: the tub drains too slowly. I adjusted the water flow to a minimum practical level and took a quick shower. The body towel was strange: short and very thick. The thickness made up for the shortness, though, and it worked just fine. Then I noticed that the other body towels were a much more reasonable size. My conclusion: I dried myself with the foot mat.
Then I opened up the windows, did some stretching and took some pictures. Then I sat down and wrote what you just read. In the meantime I'd missed the free breakfast, for which I'd gotten a ticket when checking in last night. The breakfast ticket had a no-nonsense refund policy: "Not to be reissued if lost" and "Invalid after in the specified date."
1st tour of Shanghai.
Annie showed up about 11:30 instead of 10, as agreed. Then it turned out my watch was wrong, she was right. We got a taxi outside the hotel (it's almost always easy to get a taxi in Shanghai, or Beijing or Jinan, for that matter) and went sightseeing. I was in Shanghai with a beautiful girl who spoke English for a guide! So we drove down the #1 shopping street. It was Saturday, and therefore crowded, and I got my first taste of Shanghai traffic. The sightseeing was fun. We had lunch at some restaurant, where the waitress told us she had a pretty good idea of what a foreigner may like. I liked the pureed crab meat sauteed with garlic. The soup was thick, milky, interesting but good. We also had some kind of shrimp dish and some kind of vegetable dish. Then the main course arrived: a whole fish, chopped up into chunks and broiled with a glaze. Head included. It looked so good, I took a picture. I also asked, for the first time, a question I would ask repeatedly while in China: "Why so much food?" I mean, this lunch was big enough for a big dinner. Anyway, about 6.3 seconds later my stomach said "Ugh... Uhhhh, ug." The main course remained uneaten. We went outside and headed through the crowds to a "garden".
Tourist trap.
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Famous Tea House |
We walked into a Chinese version of a "tourist trap." There were many shops. There was a large pond with a zig-zag boardwalk crossing it. In the middle of the lake sat a pretty house. "This is a famous Tea House", Annie explained. We navigated the crowd towards the entrance to the "garden" at the other end of the boardwalk across the lake. People took pictures of each other in front of the Tea House. People stared at us. I estimate that 85% of the people that came towards us stared at us, and 100% of the people we passed stared at us, for a total estimate of 99%.
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Annie |
The Garden was a restored mansion of some rich guy from a long time ago. There was traditional Chinese architecture and furniture and many courtyards held small gardens and ponds and rock formations. There was also a small shop of authentic souvenirs. Inside we browsed a smaller room on the side, which had various carvings of jade, bone, stone and wood. All kinds of stuff. A nice old man joined us to tell us about the things we were looking at. He was nice, I kinda liked him. Although at the end, he did try to sell us something. But I still liked him. I didn’t buy anything.
A little more "Chinese"?
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A little sidewalk action |
After the garden we walked down the #2 shopping street. This was distinctly more "Chinese": narrower streets and sidewalks, narrow alleys where people lived, people doing stuff on the sidewalk (like playing dominos or cards, or fixing mopeds and bycicles, or cooking, or selling little dogs or just sitting around eating watermelon, staring at us). A lot of people stared at me and Annie. Usually, they'd first look at me (what's that?), then look at Annie (what's so special about her?). We found a Chinese-English dictionary in a book store. It was hot and humid, and after maybe 1/2 hour of walking we took a taxi back to the hotel. All the taxis are air-conditioned. The air-conditioned taxi air usually smells like stale cigarettes. However, the driver rarely smokes when there are passengers inside.
The real me.
Back at the hotel I shaved the beard. The skin of my face tingled. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror without cracking a stupid grin. Annie liked it, "Now, this is the real you." "Yeah? And if I shave all the hair off my head, will it be even more me?" "No!"
Dim Sum snakes.
I asked Annie about Dim Sum: "What's Dim Sum?" She's never heard of it. After some explanation she said that was a Hong Kong term, which should really be pronounced 'Dim Sun' and it means "snakes". I was pretty surprised to hear this. I theorized that maybe in Hong Kong snakes figure so prominently on the Dim Sum menu, that they called it 'Snakes'. So, I theorized further, it made sense that the Chinese restaurants in the US would call it Dim Sum, instead of the correct Dim Sun. Because this way, if curious American asks "What's Dim Sum?", they don't have to say "Snakes", they just say "It's a very tasty food. Come in and have some!" I said for dinner I want some 'Snakes', Annie said she knew a good place.
In the evening, about 8pm, we went for some Dim Sun. While getting a taxi, just a few yards away from the hotel, we were approached by a beggar. This guy looked really pitiful: his hands were stumps without fingers. These stumps he stretched towards us to make us understand his situation. There was a little girl with him, her face was dirtied. She had a cheap plastic bowl, which she repeatedly poked into my stomach. I hate high pressure sales tactics. In fact, there were a couple of hotels nearby and Seagull often hosted foreigners. So it had its share of 'local' beggars. Anyway, the taxi driver yelled at them to leave us alone and we got into the taxi.
We drove to a very busy street. It was dark now, with plenty of neon from the store fronts which lined the street. There was a lot of traffic and it was crowded. As usual, it was hot and it was humid. I wanted a cold beer. We first went into a department store which had something like a food court on the sixth floor. It was quite large, but every single seat was taken. So we went to a restaurant next door. We ordered snakes. We got beer and dim sum. "Where are the snakes?" She pointed at the bowl of dumplings, "These snakes are very popular." "Really?" I opened up the dumpling; there was something like a ball of cooked pork inside. "Isn't that ... pork?" "Yes, I think you're right." "So where's the snake?" The question perplexed her, at least she got a perplexed expression on her face. Then she laughed and opened the dictionary. Ten seconds later the mistery was explained: "Snacks! I meant that Dim Sun means 'snacks', not 'snakes'!"
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