Monthly Archive for May, 2006

Today we are going to Hangzhou, a two hour train ride south of Shanghai. Sabrina booked us rooms at the Marco Polo hotel, which coincidentally my China guide book says is one of the nicer hotels.

The train station in Shanghai was very much under construction, and really looked like a war zone. Crowded, definitely a place to keep a tight grip on laptop and camera bags. The train itself is comfortable and spacious. I think I saw a bar with expensive cognacs by the door on the way in!

Sabrina just asked me the population of Waterloo. 90000 or so. Hangzhou, the “small town’ we’re going to is 6.6 million. Kinda puts things in perspective.

Finished Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons on the train ride. Even moreso than The Da Vinci Code, I think this would make a great movie. A bit less dry exposition, more action, and even a place for some cool visual effects.

The suburbs around Shanghai are a big surprise to me. I expected to see striking poverty. To be sure, there is some of that. Hovels beside the train tracks, with roofs of plastic sheets held down by bricks or old tires. But then there also large numbers of what look like modern subdivisions. The houses look new, nice, spacious and clean. The streets clean. There is industry, fairly modern looking, so they’re not all scratching a meager existence from the land as I thought. Sabrina says the the country people built these houses themselves. I’ve even seen houses here with solar water heating systems!

These people, many of them anyway, seem to be living the future to me. I can’t imagine why they would leave this place to peddle counterfeit watches on the Bund. I must be missing something.

In Hangzhou, the usual nerve-wracking taxi ride takes us to the hotel, which is indeed pretty nice. One of the nicest I’ve seen in any country, and including a few little things I’ve never seen before. A flashlight is mounted under one of the desks, that’s new to me. Perhaps to discourage theft, the only way to turn it off is to return it to its permanetly-affixed cradle, which drives a plastic wedge between the two batteries, breaking the circuit. A somewhat disturbing discovery was a gas mask in the closet. Apparently this is how they expect us to escape in a fire.

The bathroom is provided with all the usual amenities, including some only seen at higher end establishments (toothbrushes, combs). Plus some surpises: a blister pack containing a new Gillette razor, blades and cream (which you do have to pay for.) And, somewhat risque, a pack of condoms. Studded condoms, no less. ‘Jissbonn’ brand condoms. The jokes just write themselves…

After settling in to the room, we walked down to the shore of West Lake. Took some photos. Started walk to restaurant, but found a gondola-style boat to carry us instead, after some haggling. Photography was difficult with swaying of the gondola, and misty day.

Arrived at restaurant: LouWaiLou, apparently very famous. Definitely veru large and busy. The restaurant has been operating for over 150 years. We are in lofty company in this place. Emperors have eaten here. But none recently.

The menu was very large, and somewhat challenging for a squeamish Westerner who doesn’t much care for seafood. But for a connoisseur of Chinese cuisine, I’m sure it must be a dream.

We had a hot and sour fish soup (song sao yu geng, Aunt Song’s fish soup), which I was surprised to find I really enjoyed. The fish taste was very subtle. Fried bean curd, and a preserved cabbage dish that is one of Sabrina’s favourites. Some kind of chopped herb (sort of like parsley) with peanuts and pinenuts. And, for the main course, a braised fish head with peppers (duo jiao yu tou). All of it very good. Being the gentleman that I am, I left most of the fish head for Sabrina, and had to content myself with some of the flesh from further down.

Continuing my policy of drinking local beers as much I can when travelling (when else will I get the chance), we had the local “Cheerday” beer. A very pale yellow lager, brewed with water from nearby Qiandao Lake. They make a point of saying the water is untreated, it’s supposedly clear to a depth of 9 metres and clean enough to drink right out of the lake. The beer is only 2.3% alcohol by volume. Sadly, I found it slightly skunky. The bottle is clear glass, which is generally a bad idea, because UV light makes the hop oils break down and develop a skunk-like character.

Walked home slowly along the lake shore. Now dark, but all the buildings along the lake and many boats are spectacularly lit. Behind us, a steep slope ascends with houses casting light on the slope above them, making a very cool scene. I took some photos, but without a tripod, I was not going to get much.

The shoes I brought to Hangzhou are not very comfortable for long walking. I only brought them because my other shoes were still wet from the typhoon in Shanghai yesterday. We decided to stop and by me a pair of sandals. Tomorrow I’ll give them a try.

Time now to sleep.

Slept quite late today. Got up and took subway to Peoples’ Square. From there, started the walk down Nanjing Rd, one of the more famous shopping areas in Shanghai. NanjingLu is closed to vehicle traffic, so you can be pretty carefree, except for some little tourist trains that drive up and down all the time.

I suspect it would look very amazing at night. We’ll have to get back there for a night walk down Nanjing and the Bund.

Lots of expensive watches (real), and cheap watches (counterfeit). Lots of jewellry stores, which always draw Sabrina like a magnet.

Saw some very impressive jade carvings. I admire those, though I don’t really understand jade. I can’t understand why some jade is so expensive. One store, kind of a supply house for artists, had rough jade rocks for over $1000. It looks like any ordinary rock to me. Some jade is fantistically expensive, and some cheap, but it all looks the same to me.

Another store had tons of gold jewellry. And strangely some gold bars too. I’m not sure why anybody would buy gold bars. Saw a 1kg gold bar. Hate to imagine the price of that.

Another store sold Chinese traditional medicines. I saw some Ginseng roots that were priced at over $10000. It’s very weird-looking alien stuff.

Stopped for lunch at a Japanese noodle house. I had spicy beef noodles, and Sabrina had curry noodles. And a small bottle of sake to share. It was all delicious. This restaurant makes you pay ¥1 for napkins, but at least they come in a small plastic pack of 20 or so, convenient to tuck into a purse and take with you.

Walked from there down to the Bund, the west bank of the YangPu river. Took a bunch of photos here, including a couple hand-held attempts at panoramae to stich together later. Beggars and hawkers congregate here. Decided to take a boat tour, then head over to the Oriental Pearl tower revolving restaurant for dinner.

Getting tickets was easy enough, but then had quite a struggle to find the boat. And constantly being harrassed by people hawking counterfeit watches, postcards, plastic models of the Oriental Pearl, and especially some cheesy lighted wheels to clamp on to shoes, which were being peddled by hundreds of people. If I didn’t buy the stupid wheels from the first 50 people, I am not going to buy them from you! Somewhere in Shanghai, there’s some factory cranking these things out by the millions. I’d like to find that place, and burn it down.

There was also a pair of young children busking with a contortionist trick to creepy to describe. I felt sorry for them, suspect they are probably forced to do this.

Eventually we found the boat. It was very large. Had some richly-appointed rooms on the middle decks that I guess could be reserved for weddings and things like that. We went to the top deck. It was mostly an open deck with a few deck chairs around the edges that were all full. There was also a small roped off area at the side with tables and snacks, that you could get into for a small extra fee. We went there.

After we were aboard, seemed like hundreds more came aboard after us. The middle open area of the deck was packed by the end, with a lot of people who had no chance of a view of anything but the backs of other peoples’ heads, and probably wondering what the hell they were paying for.

Naturally, there was not a single lifeboat anywhere.

The boat got underway a little after dusk. Sailed up the YangPu on one bank, and then back down the other, taking about an hour. With all the lights on in Shanghai, it was quite a nice view. Hard to photograph, though, in the dark. I had better luck with my fast 50mm/f1.4, but at an effective 80mm length, my options for framing shots were quite limited. I need a wider fast lens.

The Pudong (east of the river) side is where all the really big buildings and lights are. And the Oriental Pearl TV tower, which looks either like a 50′s-era conception of a rocket ship, or a gigantic syringe. It’s unbelievable that in 1990, the Pudong area was mostly wet farmland.

Coke cans here still use the old-style pull-off tabs that we haven’t had in Canada since the late 70s.. But Coke tastes just the same.

After the boat docked, we headed to the Oriental Pearl tower for dinner. It was on the Pudong side of the river. I had read about a tourist train that goes through an underwater tunnel. Sabrina had never taken it, so we decided to give it a try. It was pretty silly, really. The whole tunnel is lined with a fancy laser light show, all flashy, but without meaning. Not much photography here, the dim light making it pretty futile.

On the other side, we found our way to the base of the Oriental Pearl a short walk away. Turned out the restaurant was closed for the day. So we decided to return to the Pearl another time. Instead we would make our way to the Jinmao building, the tallest buidling in China, fourth tallest in the world. I had read there was a bar or cafe or something on the 87th floor. It affords views almost as good as the observation deck one floor up, but you can get drinks or food instead of just admission alone.

It looked very close, but we were going to take a taxi anyway, because distances to large buildings can be deceptive. But we found the police appeared to have closed off the roads in the area for some reason. There was hardly any traffic at all, and no taxis to be had, so we had to walk.

It turned out to be a pretty short walk after all, but when we got there we were on the wrong side of a major busy road with no pedestrian crossings in sight. We ended up continuing to walk another 20 minutes before we found the necessary combination of pedestrian crossings to get us across all the roads. That was all very frustrating.

Taking the elevator up is an ear-popping experience. You pass through a hotel on the upper floors, which must have some spectacular views, and probably rates to match (starting at US$250/night according to my guidebook). Have to take three different elevators to get to the top.

We waited a short while for a table with a nice view. There were no meals available, but some very nice snacks. We had a combination platter of satay beef skewers, lamb, chicken wings, and some kind of roll I couldn’t identify. Drinks were expensive, at about CDN$10. I had a dry martini (shaken, stirred… whatever). Sabrina had a Shiraz. No good photo ops here, really.

Taxi home, sleep.

Up at 4am to leave for Toronto to catch our flight.

Flight delayed for an hour after we were all inside. There was an old guy behind us who refused to move to his assigned seat, because of his heart condition. Announcement came on saying there was a delay because of some maintenance paperwork screwup. But it was finally resolved just about the same time that old guy was taken care of. Coincidence?

Flight otherwise uneventful. But not more than a wink of sleep. God, I hate economy class. Read half of Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons.

After arrival in Shanghai, long wait for immigration. Signs very confusing. Only one lane labelled for “Foreigners”, with a huge line behind it. But some woman kept grabbing bunches of foreigners and moving them to other lanes. The signs were clearly completely meaningless. After 24 hours without sleep, I wasn’t much in the mood for it.

Took bus downtown. Every building in Shanhai is positively festooned with window-mounted air-conditioners. Seems like some kind of central air-conditioning system would be more efficient.

We were met by Sabrina’s family for dinner. Parents, sister, brother-in-law and neice. Restaurant was in an old historic train station. If you were lucky, you could get a table in an old dining car (we didn’t). Food was Chinese, but very unlike what we see in restaurants in Canada. Many different appetizers, and main courses of pork and a steamed fish.

Sabrina’s brother-in-law Stephen speaks good English. He works for Freescale (semiconductor spin-off from Motorola) in distribution.

Sabrina’s young neice, after some convincing, recited a simple story in English. The story was about a prince who finds various thing while walking in a forest. Eventually he meets a girl in the forest, marries her, and they live happily ever after. The story was not very good, lacking character development or plot. But it was well read. I then demonstrated my astonishing command of Mandarin by counting to ten.

After dinner, we were delivered by taxi to one of the two family residences in Shanghai, one which is currently empty, but well-equipped and comfortable. No elevator, I carried my fairly heavy suitcase up six floors. Had a desperately needed shower, marred by very low water pressure and an on-demand water heater that liked to shut off spontaneously. But still very welcome.

About 32 hours after waking up, got some desperately needed sleep.