A Bloody Long Day (Part Two)

Saturday 1 October 2005 (Part Two)

A continuation of that overlong, over-tiring first day in Shanghai.




Wedding dresses in the breeze outside a bridal wear shop

Yuyuan (豫園) is an area which holds a collection of (supposedly) traditional knick-knack stores, tourist souvenir crap and lots of food stalls and restaurants, all done up in "authentic ye olde Chinese style". In other words, it's a tourist trap. And since it was the Golden Week in China, as previously mentioned, it was also packed. Well, basically every tourist attraction in the whole of fucking China was packed, as you'll see. It didn't help that some of the streets were ridiculously narrow and street cleaners were also trying to shove through with their metal carts piled with garbage. I applaud their spirit, but do they really have to work so enthusiastically when there's hardly enough space to even breathe?




Starbucks' global conquest is almost complete


冰糖葫蘆, basically sugar-glazed haw (fruit of a hawthorn) on a stick (this one had tangerines on it too)

I wasn't particularly enthusiastic about Yuyuan, but the temple I wanted to visit, Chenghuang Temple (城隍廟) was in there. It's supposed to be really, really old, but I just found out online that it'd been completely destroyed in the Cultural Revolution (more like Cultural Decimation) and was only rebuilt in 1981. So much for old "historical relics", eh?











There's a whole bunch of information in the temple regarding its history and stuff which I glanced through and cannot for the life of me remember a single word of now. There's also a Wishing Tree at the entrance, where people write down their wishes on yellow or red paper and toss them into the branches. It all looks rather tacky, like a sad-looking tree in the fall with deformed leaves.

For some reason we thought it'd be a good idea to head over to the Textile Market at Dongjiadu (董家渡) via walking. That turned out to be rather interesting as our improvised route took us past some of the poorer areas in Shanghai. We seemed to walk for hours, though I'm sure it was shorter than that.



Shanghai's rapid development in the last couple of years meant that in a great many areas, the poor are thrown right up next to the richer folk. And of course the great strain in the social fabric of a country that comes with breakneck expansion cannot be underestimated.

The Textile Market is a pretty interesting place, with tons of tailors of every description grouped together under one roof. You can basically tailor-make any damn piece of clothing under the sun here, but it's recommended that you have a reference picture or something for them to copy from - their imaginations can be somewhat limited.

I was so tired out at this point that I kept nodding off while I was walking, so we had to take a short break at a little hole-in-the-wall food place nearby.



We had the best snack in the world there - Pan-fried buns (煎包). These were basically little meat buns fried in a pan such that they're golden-brown only on the top. The beauty of them though, is that each bun contains a small amount of soup. You're supposed to nibble a hole in the bun, then suck out the soup as you bite. When they've just made a fresh batch, the soup inside is scalding-hot, so you gotta be careful. Delicious, and only RMB$2 for four. That's about S$0.40, or US$0.25.



After that much-needed recharge, we decided to head to the Bund (外灘, or the 上海灘 of the 1970's Hong Kong drama), which was supposedly very lovely when lit up at night.


China is a land of bicycles - they even have their own lanes on the streets

We had to get off the bus before the right stop, because they'd shut the streets. Xuanfei had heard rumors of there being fireworks along the Bund later in the evening, which sounded fun. So we thought, fuck it, let's walk there and find a nice spot for the show.

It was fun walking down the middle of the street with no traffic. Makes you feel anarchic in a certain way, which is kinda ironical in China.



The crowds got heavier and heavier the closer we got to the Bund. When we actually got there, it was pretty insane, close to the madness at Yuyuan in the afternoon. I was told that a good portion of the crowd were actually tourists from other parts of China, which makes sense, considering many of them were wide-eyed at sights that'd be familiar to a local.



We ended up in Captain's Bar, on top of a youth hostel, downing Tsingtao Beer and waiting for the fireworks. The view of the buildings across the Huangpu River (黃浦江) was wonderful, considering we were only on the sixth floor.



The tower with the balls is the Oriental Pearl Radio & TV Tower (東方明珠電視塔), which makes me think: What the fuck is up with Chinese people? "Pearl" again?

I have a later picture in which it looks even more phallic, so save your sniggering for another day.



The crowd was mostly made up of Caucasian backpackers, and we shared a table with a bunch of them. I kept on trying to figure out what language they were speaking, but couldn't for the life of me do it. Finally I caved and asked. Turns out they were Swedish. Bah.

We waited. And waited. And waited some more.



Finally we gave up at 9 pm. By this time we'd been there for over three hours. The Swedes had long gone and were replaced by an American from San Francisco (yay Cameron!).

The fireworks never came that night.

We walked along the streets and pushed and shoved our way through the crowd, looking for the subway. Apparently that's how one is expected to behave in China.





We headed down Nanjing Road (南京路), which is a major shopping area. Its heyday was decades ago though, and now the shops that line the streets there look rather blah, in the sense that its target demographic is probably someone in their forties.

Alas, the subway station was closed. In fact, they closed quite a few stations that day due to the ridiculous size of the crowd. Probably a good idea, to avoid people being crushed to death underground. But still, that really sucked for us. After a tiring day of walking, we were faced with (a lot) more walking to do.

So what else could we do? We walked.

Down by People's Square (人民廣場), nationalist slogans were flashed on huge screens, screaming out their messages against the communist red background.


May the Great, the Glorious, and the Correct (?!) Chinese Communist Party live ten thousand years!


Chilling at People's Square

For a while, it seemed that Pepsi had bought over the entire stretch of street.



But Coke was quick to retaliate.



Ah, the beauty of crass commercialism. Do the Chinese like Coke more because the logo's so fucking red? Do they, in actual fact, like it more? How the fuck should I know?

Anyway, besides the omnipresent soda kings, I also found traces of other American franchises blossoming in Shanghai, some of which aren't even found in Singapore. McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut (no Taco Bell though), Burger King - the usual fast food suspects found pretty much everywhere in the world. There's the West Coast franchise Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf (less of these than Starbuck's though). Then there's Howard Johnson (good ol' Hojo's) and even (get ready for this, NU kiddies) Papa John's pizza! If you're from NU and get a craving for that perennial Northwestern favorite (and I mean this with only the barest hint of sarcasm), you can get it right here in Shanghai. Is that amazing or what?



Finally we managed to find an open subway station and dragged ourselves down into its depths, embracing its fluorescent innards with relief.

And that was Day One. Only Day One. Jesus fuckin' Christ.