7/26
Hueng Pu Riverfront Park.
This morning we cruised (walked) the Hueng Pu 'boardwalk', which is a popular hang out spot for the locals. This little walk was another lesson in crowd navigation. We suffered the usual barrage of stares and it was here that I came upon the idea of using sunglasses to deal with that. Also, I understood why foreigners (way back when I was living in Moscow) often seemed rude: they never acknowledged the people around them, always looked above the crowd or right through it. When everybody stares at you, how can you look back? Also, when eye contact is continuos, it becomes tiresome (and even obnoxious) rather quickly. So be cool, man, just put on some shades and chill. I tried it, it worked.
We made our way through the crowds to a building at the other end of the Hueng Pu Riverfront Park. It was time for lunch, and there was a nice restaurant on the second floor. By now I had figured out the crowd walk: don't be timid and don't be too polite; don't wait for the ladies - such politeness is not returned (also, everybody else will follow the ladies and cut you off). Same principle is used for street traffic: if you get there first, you've got the right-of-way. The practice of cutting-off is not rudeness, that's just the way it's done, so don't be slow (no need to be pushy, just don't be slow).
The restaurant on the second floor had a nice view of the river, was clean, airy and roomy – very nice. Annie ordered dim sum, including some snake. The goose, which she explained was preferable to duck in the summer ("less hot"), looked and tasted like duck without the fat. The snake was deep-fried in batter; thin pieces with very little meat over the bones. The meat is scraped off the bones with teeth and lips. Dim Sum is called "early tea". No beer is served with early tea.
The Zoo
Annie brought a photo album to show me. Some of the pictures were taken at a zoo, her posing with animals out of a cage. A cute bear and a cute little tiger. Of course, I wanted to go there and pose for a picture with an elephant or something.
Annie'd made friends with one of the taxi drivers who hung around the hotel. She bargained a price of Y200 for a ride to and from the zoo, which was about 1 hour away, on a far edge of town. He'd wait for us while we were there.
Part of the zoo was a safary: we rode a bus from one fenced-in area to the next. At first we rode through the areas containing tame animals - herbivores, elephants, camels. The children squeeled and screamed. The adults shouted and pointed. I didnt jump or point, so they asked Annie whether the American was enjoying the show. All animals ignored us almost completely, especially the lions and the tigers. They had sun shelters, strategically placed next to the road. There they lay, some sleeping, while others didn't even throw a glance our way. I was surprised that the kid's squeeling didn't arouse their hunter-prey instincts. But then, I guess, antelopes don't squeel.
"Feed doritos to the bears" (Dead Kennedys – "Winnibego Warrior")
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Bear begs for food |
The bears, on the other hand, were very glad to see us. They have learned to beg for bread. Most visitors buy a few bags of bread and nuts at the zoo's entrance, and it was now time to put it to good use. The bears got pelted with bits of bread, thrown through half open windows. One bear had very short hair and way too much skin on the face. I called him the Sharpei Bear.
After the safary we walked through the rest of the zoo. There were many areas with birds, lemures and monkeys. All animals had houses, which sat in either grassy lots or mud fields full of puddles. I got a (very)warm beer from one of the stands before we went into the Lemure Pavillion. The lemures seemed to live in family units, one house per family. Each house sat in a grassy area, which was under a pyramid-like cocoon of strong netting. The holes in the netting were uncomfortably small for the lemures, but perfect for a particular kind of small monkey, who ran free through the pavillion.
The Beer Monkey.
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| Beer monkey |
As we watched a lemure mother and baby, one of these monkeys ran up to me on the rail and grabbed the beer can with both hands. Well, I still wasn't done with the beer, so I held on. The monkey pulled, I pulled. I won. It didn't get discouraged though and kept trying to grab it again. Then it noticed something else way across the pavillion and raced off that way. One of the people looking at the lemures had a very large and noisy bug in his hand. He tossed it to the lemures. They stared at it for a bit, then moved away. The bug lay on the ground and made a hellacious buzzing racket. Very loud. The monkey came back and grabbed it and took it to the roof of lemure's house. There it rolled it against the hard roof. The screeching stopped. The monkey bit its head off and something trailed back to the body. Something yellow. Women made quiet noises of disgust. We all watched. The monkey made a good show of eating the bug ( biting off little pieces, chewing them thoughtfully, casually looking around and poking in the bug's insides with a finger) after which the crowd broke up and we moved on.
While we were there, the lemures got fed - an attendant walked from house to house, dispensing trays of cut-up vegetables and fruit. I think. As we watched them eat, the beer monkey came back for another try. There was just a bit left, so I obliged by tilting the can so it could drink the bit that spilled out onto the rim. It tried the beer, but didn't seem to like it. I don't blame it, luke-warm backwash is all it was by now. The monkey kept trying to see what else was in the can. It tried the beer a couple more times, but just couldn't get into it. I kept the empty can.
Caged tiger.
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The toothless tiger |
Another "interesting exhibit" (which actually happened before the beer monkey) was the toothless tiger. Inside a cage there was a large, flat rock. On it lay a fully-grown tiger, oblivious to the world and chained to the same rock by way of a large iron chain and a large iron collar. Several men, tiger's "attendants", sat crouched around the rock. One held a short, hollow iron pipe. For Y5 you could take a picture of the tiger from up-close. For Y15 you could have a friend or a dear one pose next to it. Annie and I went inside. The handler banged the pipe on the rock and pulled up on the collar. The tiger lifted its head lazily. I stepped in front of the beast and snapped one. Then he yawned. He had no teeth.
It was a good thing that we saw the beer monkey after seeing this tiger. The animal's indignant situation upset me a lot more than I expected (which I hid from Annie), but the monkey did a very good job of improving my attitude. And so it goes, a noble animal's plight touches my heart, but here comes the beer monkey to set things right. And what the hell could I have done, anyway? Upon some reflection I decided the toothless tiger didn't have it so bad. He looked well fed, but not fat. He had very good shade, the handlers chased away the flies and, basically, he lay around all day long. What's so bad about that? I kept wandering what happened to his teeth, though.
Drive back to Seagull hotel.
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Shanghai cabby |
On the way back we talked with the driver a bit, and it turned out that he owns the cab. The taxi company takes an even Y2600/month for license and insurance. I suggested he learn to speak some basic English and then put a sign on the cab: "Driver speaks English." Nope, if he could speak English, he wouldn't be driving a cab. Then how about getting a map of Shanghai in English and a sign: "Got map in English"? Nope, most foreigners at Seagull Hotel speak Chinese, anyway. I was determined to help this enterprenuer somehow, "I take picture of you in front of the hotel and put it on the Web!" "OK". And so we did. And the other drivers were jealous (in a good-natured way).
Drinking from the soup bowl.
For dinner we had several dishes, as usual, and one of them was a "very healthy soup" of chicken and fish. It was primarily this particular fish which made it healthy. It tasted excellent. After eating half of it I asked Annie if drinking the rest right from the bowl would be bad manners. By way of demonstration of my intentions I grabbed the bowl to pick it up and spilled the contents all over the center of the table. Our server, who'd been diligently monitoring the progress of our dining experience from about five feet away, sprang into instant action and in no time flat we had a brand new cloth napkin covering up the spill. Well, it turns out that drinking right from the bowl (my favorite way) would not have been rude, but would have been strange.
7/27
Annie’s at work during the day. I slept in late, stayed at the hotel, did Tai Chi and took pictures of Hueng Pu boat traffic from the window. Observation: I like the sounds of the Hueng Pu river-front. The rackety noise of the small river barges, the rambling diesels and horn blasts of the big ships, echoing from shore to shore, the honking and traffic noise of the Hueng Pu road. If you imagine them all at the same time, then that's the sound.
7/28
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Big Red Dicksi |
Annie’s at work during the day. I slept in late. Then I started working on the computer project I brought with me. During one of the breaks I saw a big red ship on the river. I snapped a picture, thinking "Big Red Boat" for the title. Then I saw its name on the stern: "Dicksi". Ok, then, "Big Red Dicksi". Notice that the river is quite wide and deep and handles a lot of traffic.
back || next - 7/29