Our New Office

Saturday, October 25th, 2008. Today Sara and I ventured back into downtown Shanghai to visit the history museum, and the cab ride downtown was downright uncomfortable. Full-throttle accelerations – followed by panic stops – and fast lane-change maneuvers are unnerving and unfortunately the norm. Still, taxi rides in China are always a good reminder of the “frontier” spirit and mentality here (not to mention very inexpensive).

Shanghai Bowuguan is arguably the best museum in China (perhaps except for the museum in Xian that was closed), but we’re not able to challenge that opinion.

The Shanghai History museum is excellent. The collection is vast and spans thousands of years of history, all within a fairly small 4-story building. You can get through it in about 2 hours if you’re in a hurry. You’ll see ancient artwork and calligraphy painted on scrolls, amazing pottery (some dating back 4000 years), a fine collection of jade (everything from amulets to decorative weapons and armor), and a large assortment of ancient coins. The museum only has one negative – many of the exhibits lack anything more than a basic English translation. Still, it’s a must-see if you visit Shanghai.

This scary looking beast served as a tomb guardian during the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD).

Next, we went to Shanghai’s “Urban Development Museum.” Our guidebook listed this museum as “much more exciting than it sounds,” and that is a correct description. We saw some old photos of Shanghai through the years, a decent explanation of Shanghai’s growth, and some interactive exhibits that illustrate how Shanghai is preparing for the 2010 World Expo. The truly amazing part of the museum is the scale model of the future vision of Shanghai in 2020. It’s hard to comprehend, but imagine a city with the size of Los Angeles and the population density of New York, and you’ve got an idea of how big Shanghai will become. Some estimate that 23 million people will call Shanghai home within the next 10 years, and the city plan seems to reflect that belief. It’s mind-boggling.

While we enjoyed our visit to Shanghai, the city feels as if it lacks heart. Beijing is the showpiece for all of China, and for good reason. The range of historic attractions is envious for any city, and Beijing was by far my favorite stop so far. Xian does a nice job of preserving it’s old-world character as well as offering the sensation of a small city (despite the fact that 8 million people live there). Combined with the quaint attitudes towards Westerners, Xian is not without charms. Shanghai is overwhelming in both it’s tremendous size and it’s very Western qualities.

The Chinese people feel that Shanghai’s Western character and history make it unique, but my opinion (as a Westerner) is that the presence of some art-deco and neo-classical architecture, as well as the obvious influence of the West, is entirely too normal to me. Perhaps if I spent more time in Shanghai (and China in general), I would recognize and appreciate Shanghai’s psuedo-Western qualities. Despite all I’ve said here, it’s an amazing place (much like everywhere we’ve been on this trip – aren’t we lucky). If you have a chance to visit, go to Shanghai – don’t think twice about it.

No visit to Shanghai would be complete without exploring Yu Yuan Garden – or at least that’s what we’ve been told! The garden shares many of the same qualities as some of the gardens we visited in Beijing – beautiful water features and rockeries – but what makes this garden stand out is designer’s use of the small space. Unlike the gardens we’ve visited in Beijing, Yu Yuan is quite small – only 5 acres. While not as beautiful as the garden at Prince Gong’s Mansion or the gardens at the Forbidden City, it is still quite nice.

The Yu Yuan Garden.

While walking from the Bund to the Yu Yuan garden, we passed in front of quite a few buildings constructed during Shanghai’s colonial days. Originally constructed as office buildings, many of them now house important banks and ultra-premium stores. In front of one of these buildings (an expensive-looking jewelry store) we saw an obviously poor man selling roasted chestnuts off of a street cart. Just after we passed him by, I heard shouting and a loud snapping sound. I turned around to see two men wearing suits yelling at the street vendor and hitting his street cart with a large stick. The two men continued to harass the street vendor, and when it was clear these two men in suits meant real business, the street vendor tried to push his cart and run away. Alas, he was stopped by a police officer, and the look on his face was one of sheer terror. Busted.

Earlier that same day, we noticed a little old woman begging on the Bund. She might have been 5 feet tall, she was quite old, and while she was persistent (and a little rude), it was easy enough to ignore her. As she was approaching Sara and I to hassle us for some money, a street cop grabbed her arm, yelled at her, and pushed her towards the main road (and away from the Bund). This woman also looked to be quite poor.

I have mixed feelings.

On the one hand, I understand the perspective of the jewelry store. They’re not paying top-dollar for property so that they can have some shabby-looking man selling chestnuts in front of their store. They have every right to chase him off. On the other hand, I wonder how much it damages their image to allow this man to work in front of the store. After all, he’s just trying to earn a living.

Here’s a small sampling of the constant pestering that tourists get from street vendors. It got to the point that any Chinese person who approached us was told “No” before they could open their mouths. Shame on us, huh?

The same goes for the old woman begging tourists for cash. The areas that we’ve been in China are amazingly devoid of beggars in tourist areas – Beijing especially – and it’s very nice. In Denver, I couldn’t walk down 16th Mall without being hassled by half-a-dozen bums looking for a handout. While I got used to it when I was living in Denver, I noticed that many visiting tourists (and locals from the suburbs) were uncomfortable and uneasy with this nuisance. China has obviously decided that removing beggars from the public eye will help the country’s image and tourism, and I wish that Denver would follow suit.

But the fact is the old woman was begging because it was her best option. The same goes for the street vendor. What should China do about the poor? This question confronts the USA as well, and the answer still seems to be unknown.

Friday, October 24th, 2008. After taking a “mental health day” at the hotel, it was time to get out and see the sights of Shanghai. Our guidebook doesn’t recommend much here besides expensive hotels and restaurants, except for the Shaanxi Musuem (arguably China’s finest museum, but likely a close second to the museum we didn’t get to see in Xian) and the Bund.

Jason standing before the skyscrapers along the Huangpu River. This area is known as “The Bund.”

Shanghai, if you’ll recall, was once a “treaty port.” Somehow the Chinese government was “convinced” to “share” their market with the major western powers of the time – the French, English, and Americans. Shanghai’s city center was basically handed over to the French, British, and Americans (among others), and businesses from each of these countries used Shanghai to access the rest of China. Up until shortly before the Japanese invasion that is, when Shanghai’s development ground to a halt because of corruption and poor governance.

The history of Shanghai is a mixed bag – one of China’s most important port cities for the past 400 years (or so), it has been known the world over as the “Paris of the East.” It’s also been the scene of Japanese war crimes and, likely, mass executions immediately following the Communist revolution. In short, Shanghai has been at the center of a lot of events in world history.

Thus, much of Shanghai shows signs of western influence. The Bund, a section of the Huangpu river, has colonial and art-deco buildings on one side and modern Chinese skyscrapers on the other. As much a tourist trap as an historical site, the Bund is a great place to observe the meeting of East and West. Westerners, many of whom are on business, are everywhere, yet this is still a huge Chinese city with many of the same customs and characteristics of mainland China.

Shanghai is in many ways a repeat of much of what we’ve seen. However, it is more of a metropolis than Beijing as well as being tremendous in size. The city is more dense than Beijing as well – there are more skyscrapers and it’s much more “vertical” – and the automobile traffic is much worse than Beijing too. Still, there’s an energy here that is hard to explain.

We managed to fall into a tourist trap today. Known as the Bund “sight-seeing tunnel,” it costs 40 yuan per person and it’s billed as an amazing underground experience. I would say it could be more accurately described as the fastest way to get across the river, with the tag line “Get in a glorified, slow-moving subway car with lots of lights and cheesy music in the tunnel.” If you’re in Shanghai, skip The Bund sightseeing tunnel.

Footage of the underwhelming Bund Sightseeting Tunnel.

Returning to our hotel, we visited a large shopping mall just down the street known as “Wanda” (pronounced wond-ah) with lots of western restauraunts. While none of the staff at the Wan-da is terribly helpful (they seemed a little irritated by our presence, in fact), the prices are reasonable and the food is decent. We’re getting awfully tired of visiting shopping malls here in China, but the fact is they usually have a good collection of clean restaurants. If only shopping malls weren’t so crowded and over-the-top commercialized…

The Wanda Shopping Plaza is amazing, but it’s also a little over the top. We’ve been spending too much time at malls while traveling in China, but it’s sort of unavoidable. The food options are best here.

We’ve had very few challenges or dilemmas arise since being in China. Knock, knock, knock (That’s the sound of me knocking on wood). Although there have been a few interesting moments.

1. While visiting the history museum in Shanghai we had to run our bags through a security scan. After picking them up on the other side of the metal detector, the security guard said: “Drink some. Drink some.”

Standing there looking curious it finally became clear that he wanted us to drink the water from the bottles in our bag. I guess if we drank some then he would know it wasn’t an explosive. Sort of like how the old emperors would make the concubines taste the food first to see if its been poisoned. Okay, I guess its not really anything like that, but that is what came to my mind.

This is us outside the Shanghai History Museum. Two really nice teenage boys stopped to talk to us and take our picture. Unfortunately, we thought they were going to try and sell us something so we didn’t stick around to talk to them longer.

2. We’ve been shopping a bit while here in China, or at least walking through the markets to look at the same crap over and over and over again. I’ve been too timid to haggle with anyone because it was just too much pressure, until suddenly one day the courage just came from no where. I helped Jason buy a gift for 25 yuan less than he negotiated and then I managed to get 330 yuan off of something for myself. The sad part is that we still probably got ripped off. Oh well, it was fun playing.

3. We had a woman in her 50s follow us for a half block begging for money. I’m used to being asked for money, but I’ve not been followed for any significant distance before.

She was holding a baby in her arms and managed to keep close enough to us so that the baby was resting her hand on Jason’s chest. The woman kept saying: “Hello. Money. Please. Thank You. Nie Hao. Xie Xie. Money.”

The thought occurred to me that we should run and see if we could shake her, but then I thought that would be cruel. It didn’t matter anyway because she did eventually give up to set the baby down. I guess her arms got tired.

4. We watched part of a Chinese opera singing contest at a mall. The singing is always in the mall and there are malls everywhere.

5. Don’t worry, we’ve managed to find the coffee shops here. There are a huge number in Shanghai including a few hundred Starbucks (I made that number up. I don’t actually know how many Starbucks there are, but I’m sure its a lot.).

One Sunday afternoon we took our laptops to a nearby Starbucks and cozied up with about 80 other coffee drinkers. The only seats available were two seats in the corner wedged up against a glass wall. On the other side of the glass wall was the entrance to a four-story grocery store. Hundreds of people were milling in and out of the building and it only took a few minutes to realize that most of those people had to stop and stare at us as they did.

I felt like I was on TV and everyone was so amazed that they had to stop and watch. Babies pounded on the glass, old men stopped and watched, couples stopped and walked around so they could look at our screens, women pointed us out to their friends.

6. It’s possible that those folks were staring at Jason’s newly bald head. Yeah, we shaved it in the bathroom of our hotel.

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008. We had sort of a bad morning leaving Xian.

First, we had to get a ride to the airport. A little bit of laziness on my part (I didn’t want to walk around on the street trying to hail a cab with my bags) and a mis-understanding with the concierge led to us over-paying about 40 yuan for the cab ride to the airport. While it was convenient, I didn’t start off my morning as well as I would have liked to.

Next, we got to the airport, and after checking in and making our way through security, we found a nice comfortable looking coffee shop. Coffee is considered a luxury in China (very often purchased by visiting westerners), and it is therefore very expensive. We’ve never found a cup of coffee for less than $2 (even just a simple cup), and it’s not uncommon to pay $6 – $8 here for a latte. Obviously, we’ve tried not to drink coffee very much, but Sara and I were craving coffee today. We sat down and ordered a latte, an espresso (same price for both, go figure), a ham and egg sandwich, and french toast. Total cost – $22. Granted, this is the airport, and when you compare it to the U.S. it’s OK, but in China it’s ridiculous.

French toast, cinnamon toast, and ketchup?!

My ham and egg sandwich was nothing special. It was a fried egg and a small piece of ham on four slices of bread with some cucumber slices. The addition of cucumber was unusual to me, but acceptable. Sara’s french toast was completely screwed up. Two small pieces with a big dab of ketchup right in the center! Ketchup on french toast isn’t *bad*, but it isn’t good either – I tried it. Sara was very perturbed (understandably). We left feeling ripped off and a little hungry.

Fortunately, our luck changed. For some mysterious reason we again flew first class (twice in one trip)! I hope that this continues, but there’s a good chance this will be my last first-class flight for a long time. Once the novelty wears off, it’s still an airplane ride. I certainly wouldn’t pay twice as much to enjoy it (at least not until I’m filthy rich). There was also some incredible turbulence during the flight. My laptop almost flew out of my hands a couple of times.

When we arrived in Shanghai, all we wanted to do was crash. Neither one of us was feeling very well, and our hotel, The Crowne Plaza Fudan Shanghai, was simply too comfortable not to enjoy. We upgraded our room to include access to the Club level – free drinks during happy hour, a “free flow of juice, tea, coffee, and water” all day long, snacks, free wireless internet (HUGE), and free breakfast for 200 yuan a day. It was a steal. As expensive as this hotel is, it’s still inexpensive compared to the hotels in Shanghai’s city center (we’re about a 40 minute cab ride away from the Bund, essentially the center of the city).

Because we’re feeling poorly, and because we’ve been touring at what has seemed to be a non-stop pace, we made a pact to take tomorrow off and enjoy our evening.