Shanghai - The Whore of the Orient (Marcus)

...or so they used to call it.

We loved it. It was exactly what we had hoped. It was big, it was glowy and it was full of cool stuff. All around you were interesting buildings, lane-ways, shops, things. We achingly wanted to explore it, but we were both already tired (we feel perpetually tired nowadays with this never-ending culture shock thing), Courtney was ill and well, we only had the better part of two days anyway.

We awoke early Saturday morning and had the luxury of being driven to the Wuxi Train station by the schools driver. Mr Pan was certain we would need assistance finding our way, and well, I am just glad as hell we took that option, as it was too cold, too early to deal with the bus crap. Double luckily about 10 seconds after I stepped out of our apartment, it started raining. In fact it didn't stop raining until late afternoon, and remained drizzly for most of the night - albeit much lighter.

The bullet train was awesome. The seats were large and spacious with so much leg room it didn't actually feel like we were on a train, but an aeroplane(not that aeroplanes are overly spacious). It was fast, but it didnt get anywhere near as high as we have seen it on documentaries - so i am not sure what the deal was there. We saw one on China - which was recent, where the bullet train from Shanghai airport to Shanghai was getting to like over 430 km/hour - our one didnt go higher than 230 or so. On the way home it looked and felt much faster, but the little overhead display didn't report our speed like it did on the initial trip. The train had nice clean toilets - similar to a plane, and the wash basin had this funky all in one - wash your hands, soap dispenser, then automatic hand dryer all built into the basin. Only issue here was the basin was clogged(everything in China is either broken, missing a lock or clogged - I don't think ive seen a single McDonald's basin unclogged yet - though admittedly I have only been in two McDonalds's bathrooms..so yeah), so when you used the hand dryer, it blew all the water back on you - which was fun! The train was also almost stifling hot inside - which was odd, as the rest of China seems content to have no heating and windows open when it's FCU@&#ING FREEZING OUTSIDE FOR GODS SAKE!!!!

So we arrived in Shanghai, expecting a miracle of change - kind of like the Emerald City in Wizard of Oz and were overjoyed to find...a pissing down slightly bigger version of ...WuXi. And I have noticed the students writing WuXi with a capital X, so I will start to do the same.

Quick history lesson - WuXi originally was named something that meant..With Tin or something, as it was the site of a Tin Mine. Like everything else in the country, it was sucked dry, so was renamed WuXi which means...*drum roll* Without Tin. I think that little story basically sums up how exciting the place really is.

Back to our story, our arrival was miserable. It was pissing down, Courtney had the only umbrella and it was smallish, people everywhere, blah. We managed to get into a cab after a few people just cut in front of the line at the taxi rank and grabbed them - Queues dont mean jack in China - thankfully we already knew this so werent phased - hey take em ya rude bastards - We told the driver Fuxing (foo-shing) Park, which our hotel was on the corner of, and he made his way there.

The whole trip I think Courtney and I were thinking...this place looks like a bigger version of Wuxi..where's the glam? Where's the glitter? Where's the fkng yellow brick road??! :(

We arrived at Fuxing Park as a number of cop cars were rushing up to a place called FunWorld or something very similar - and yes that's no joke on the name, you get used to ultra-crap names around here pretty quickly. I think it was a karaoke place or something. The cops all look like semi-special forces around here. God knows what was going on in there, we had already experienced one semi-brawl at the train station, as Courtney mentioned..lots of whistle blowing. Oh and don't worry, we've never felt anything but pretty much perfectly safe. A few people have mentioned how safe China feels, and we have to pretty much agree. Even though you can feel threatened by being stared at 24/7 in Wuxi itself, there's never any real threat or danger there, it's like we are painted blue and have just landed on Earth, or possibly because of my weathered good looks and remarkable resemblance to Brad Pitt.

So we arrived at around 10 am and whiled away an hour - trying to make 12 midday hurry the hell up. It didnt stop raining and i didnt have an umbrella. I had my ski jacket on but my back and worse, my only pair of shoes were starting to get soaked. We went around the corner to try and find a store to buy an umbrella and lo and behold an old woman comes walking by carrying an armful. I asked her how much and was suddenly the proud owner of a new umbrella. That's one thing about China, the people are hellishly resourceful. If it rains, out come people selling Umbrella's. If there was a sudden rat plague, I bet you anything out would come women selling large mallets. It's just that kind of country. There's just so many people, you can guarantee someone will sell something situationally because someone ALWAYS has something, including a guy at the train station who sold realistic looking wind up baby chickens, that you wound up and they bobbed around. Random..

So we whiled away some time in a coffee shop we found. The avenue out front of the hotel had market tents all along it, all setup for International Women's Day. It's a pretty big event over here, and acknowledged as a proper, large holiday. Not to the extent that we might celebrate Easter or something, but definitely something like Mothers Day or somesuch. At the end of the tents was a stage, and before it, in the rain and completely buried beneath ponchos was an american style marching band. They knew approximately one bar of music and just played this drum roll beat thing over and over with the occasional trumpet blast in between. This is the kind of thing I wish i could have recorded - so much of China is about the Chinese just not understanding western culture but doing whatever they can to adopt it. They would know marching bands from America - but the actual music..which is a big part of a band...well they just didn't, it sounded ridiculous. The fact they were all around 5 ft tall just added to the comedy. After the band, there were a few dance style routines on the stage, one including some women dressed in a sort of..coco kabana style..whatever you call it. Again, doing this ridiculous dance routine and the fact none of them have any curves and just look like pinsticks...there was just no sexy there, they just looked I don't know, they just looked silly and inappropriate. While we were in the coffee shop I threw the chance dice again and avoided cappuccinos after the last effort and thought i'd try a latte - it looked interesting. At least this one tasted like proper coffee.

We checked in, and as Courtney described the room was pure opulence. It was everything we could have wanted right then and more. The only regret is that we didnt spend more time in it. The bed...oh man the bed, it was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. After our rock hard cold cement bed back in the apartment, I think a bed of straw could be heavenly. But no, this bed was awesome. Right the way down to the high thread count sheets and that smooth starchy feeling of something that's really, really clean. Did i mention this place had a PILLOW MENU??? Yes...you could order custom pillows!! We didn't..but i was tempted to try the..no shit, Green Tea Pillow...man in hindsight why the HELL didn't i try that. The pillows we had though were great, dont you worry about that :)

As Courtney said, the shower followed suit. With a combined effort of the largest shower head I have ever seen(they call them rainfall showers - yeah it feels like rain it's that good) and the biggest bath tub, this room would have been deadset illegal to run in Victoria. Not only was the shower fantastic, but the overall design of the bathroom(and the whole room) was just stunning. This is the type of room you just cant help but appreciate someone's equisite design ability. The shower had no visible plug - it all fell onto a raised tile area which then I assume the drain was hidden beneath. The bath took about 30 minutes to fill for what was a 5 or 10 minute bath before we were risking falling asleep. The older I get i just cant take baths anymore.

We spent the afternoon shopping(the rain didnt leave us much else to do), then Courtney covered dinner. The next day was as said, the town planning museum a bit of a shop around then home to WuXi sweet WuXi.

Shanghai in the end turned out to be the Shanghai we wanted it to be. It certainly helped that we had an absolutely stupendously awesome room to base ourselves from - although as i mentioned, i actually wish that we had spent more time there, it was just that good.

It was big, it had some of the most awesome looking buildings I have ever seen, combined with streets and lanes that just oozed character. As we strolled back from dinner we passed some of the most cunningly modern designed shops I have ever seen. There's one thing you have to give to the Chinese, they certainly mesh with art and design. I think when the current generation grows up and China cleans its environment up, we'll be looking at an absolutely amazing country - assuming that all happens.

We didn't have nearly enough time to see everything we wanted to see, or buy what we wanted to buy. This was just an early exploratory mission. Hopefully, with it only being a mere one hour by Bullet train away, we'll see it a lot more. While the size and marvel of Shanghai is truly impressive, and being in one of the world's most famous and largest cities is certainly almost borderline surreal, it amazes me to think what's just outside it's glittering borders.

When we hopped back onto the train and made our way home, we were almost instantly plunged back into the world of gray. It's depressing, it really is. The countryside you see between Shanghai and WuXi is nothing short of alien. I find it hard to describe it in any way that truly reflects it. Shanghai is definitely China's polished diamond, it's absolute pinnacle of direction, and it's showcase for the rest of the country - but behind it, and what's making up the backbone of the rest of the country, is this grey world. I have tried to photograph it from the train in passing but it just doesnt capture it. Here you see rows and rows and rows of high rise apartment buildings..we're talking at least 20 stories high...and then nothing. Then there'll be a few acres of crops, then a factory. Then more of these apartments, then a shanty looking town. Then there'll be another few paddocks of crops, a row of older looking residences, each as cold and grim looking as the next, then more apartments. Who is living in these apartments? There's barely any lights in them. Why are they building them? They are absolutely everywhere. Everywhere you look there will be at least one set of them. They go from being covered in mesh and scaffold to suddenly being hey presto, all finished.

In between all of these things is water. There's so much water in these parts. Canals, small damn type things, channels, rice paddy fields, you name it. It's everywhere - mainly canals. While the shape of it changes and intersperses between everything, there's only one thing it has consistently everywhere; it's filthy. Absolutely filthy. I wouldn't swim in it or drink from it if you paid me. You see it beside Factories as an obvious easy way to get rid of byproducts, beside towns as the local rubbish tip. You see great hordes of it where smaller shanty town residences have obviously collected it up and sorted through it for things to sell or recycle. There's even these old boat things that have been converted into residences that lie docked in it. It's just unbelievable the levels of living that you see on this trip from Shanghai to WuXi. The best of the best are in Shanghai, then the best of the rest, then it's every man for himself and who can scratch out a living in the fields(if you could call them fields) beyond. Every spare patch of ground is used for crops - even a small diagonal slice between a road and a house that couldnt have been more than one metre wide at the largest part. When you see the level of smog in the air and the overwhelming greyness of the land - no doubt a result of so much time in the haze, you just have to wonder at the quality of the food we are eating over here.

So while Shanghai was amazing, just behind it is the other side of another planet and I just find that hard to deal with. I really want to find the picturesque China I have seen in photos and on travel documentaries, because right now, it feels like we live in the garbage dump portion. We can usually look on the funny side of most things we encounter here, but the bigger picture is often more than just a mouthful to bite off and think on for a while. I knew it would be like this to a degree - I had read about it, but I don't think I ever imagined it would be this bad. I don't know how they will ever clean this place up, if it's even the intention. Even if they shut down the factories and god knows what else for a year straight, I just couldnt imagine it changing. As I was saying to Courtney, I would kill to be able to look at this place in person, 2-300 years ago and see what it was truly like.

Now that being said, I have to finish with a special mention of the taxi rides we had firstly from the hotel back to Shanghai station, and then moreso from WuXi station to the school. God damn. I mean God DAMN. Sometimes I feel like the taxi drivers are pissy that they have to drive foreigners around. You feel that kind of angry vibe and you think you can feel it in their driving - like when someone is angry but silent, but you can feel the aggression in their driving. That's how it feels. It's probably not that way, as you see every other car out there driving basically the same way, but it is insane.

We have the photos Mr Pan took which have our name and the schools name and address on them. We ask in our crappy chinese if they can take us there and if they know it. They never give an ok, they wait for a few moments then almost annoyingly motion for us to get in the back as if wondering what the hell we're waiting for. Christ we don't know if they even know where to go - this is where we just throw caution to the wind and hope that they do - rather than drive around aimlessly at our expense trying to find it. So we get in, they drive, and we so far have always gotten to our destination no problemo. The problem is the drive itself.

The Shanghai drivers use noticeably less horn than the ones in WuXi. I suspect they have cracked down on it in Shanghai due to there being a lot more foreigners present. In WuXi, anything goes and the horns? Man do they go. They are constantly tooting at each other, and i mean constantly. Like ive said before, it's not an aggressive gesture, it's more of a 'HERE I AM I AM COMING THROUGH' type thing. But because they are driving ALL over the shop, cutting in and out of lanes, cutting each other off, ignoring red lights(no shit), they are always always tooting. It's total chaos theory at it's best. If the car we are in cuts in front of one to the right because he likes that lane better, the other car simply evades, cutting into the next lane which may or may require evasion from a third car. That is no kidding how it works. And it applies to everyone. When they turn corners, they just seem to turn corners, and at speed. I dread to think if someone was crossing the street without looking on a corner...so many times's we've turned corners and i have just been sucking in my breath thinking..someone's gonna die! We NEARLY hit this scooter on the WuXi station to School trip the other night - i swear to god it was so close, even the girl on the back of it(there's never single riders, it's always 2 people minimum) had her hand out as if bracing. We have seen minimal accidents, but with driving of this magnitude there would be bloody heaps across the country. On top of this the taxi's have these white seat coverings over their seats, conveniently keeping the seat belts buried and unusable. We prefer the inconvenience of the bus to the potential death of the taxi's. We will take them only if neccessary.

I was saying to Courtney the other day, joking how you become immune to crossing the street perils, and moreso, the driving after a few days. But after this latest Wuxi to home trip - pigs arse!! We were both white knuckled gripping the high mounted hand rail things in the back - my palms were sweating. You just do NOT know what's going to happen, they're freakin nutbags. The guy from Shanghai was cutting in and out of lanes and traffic. He'd suddenly cut someone off, or try and get passed them - at one stage having to break hard and stop just narrowly missing the wall on one of the raised highways.

Courtney goes, "It's like being in a computer game!!" and I go, "Yeah, but in a computer game you RESPAWN."

Apologies for the lengthy essay, I lose control of my fingers.

Cafe Latte - Shanghai Style

Coco-ca-goofy

Metta and Barb in a restaurant called Latina's - I actually had a real live burger here, with egg AND bacon, woot!!!!

The hotel had a fishy type theme to it's hallways and foyer. This was a great saltwater tank in between the lift and reception. Here you can see Courtney on one side, and Reception on the other. Very cool!

Every floor also had fishtanks like this dotted around them. This one was outside our door. For the fish buffs out there - ok I think I am the only one, it had Neon Tetra's in it (fish geek woot!)

An attempt to show just how big the shower head was.

Big buildings and lots of glow, this is what we wanted!

Some great looking light designs - the city was filled with this kind of thing.

Even Adidas cashes in on the Chinglish.

A banner displayed what we assume were the words to songs, whilst people took turns singing Opera style on the mic. The crowd all joined in. There was this kind of thing all over Fuxing Park. The ballroom dancing oldies kinda weirded me out a bit.

This was also in Fuxing Park. The whole area being in the old French Concession had a very European feel to it.

With this photo I tried to capture the multi-layer feeling of the city. We had a good view of it from our window. On ground level were buildings ranging from 2 to 4 stories. Around them were larger buildings again, and then you had the highway carving in above even them. Behind all of them was the backdrop of futuristic building design. When it was all in motion, it looked like it was out of some kind of movie. Multi-layered and exciting.

The building on the far left was our favourite. What a cooool design.

Buildings on a grand-scale that lit up in awesome completely pointless ways - this is was just what we wanted! Some buildings lit up, others lit up and changed colours, all animated and glowy. Such a waste of electricity, but soo cool.

An attempt at capturing the grey wasteland from the bullet train, but this doesn't really depict it. For some reason the photos always look more colourful. These white greenhouse type things is what I believe they grow their watermelons in. Watermelon is very popular around here. In the distance between the two poles you can see the vague silhouette of apartments.