Shanghai
From Cairns Kar, Sara and I caught a 5:45am flight to Sydney. The flight was pretty uneventful for the most part, which is how I prefer them. There was one moment just after take off when the attendants were just starting to move about where the captain came on the speaker and said, “All flight attendants be seated and buckle in immediately.” He said it sharply as if there wasn’t a spare second so I thought something must be wrong, but it turned out to only be turbulence. Needless to say I spent the rest of the flight listening to the engines and trying to gauge if the plane was level.
We arrived in Sydney with no problems and from there caught our next flight to Shanghai. We flew Qantas which I really recommend for International flights. Each seat has its own television built into the seat back which plays movies, television, music, and radio. On demand. It made the flight almost pleasant. If anything it was a good introduction to being a minority. At least the flight attendants spoke english, they would be just about the last english speakers we would hear in China. For the most part we can just act things out and point to maps and they understand us pretty well.
We arrived in Shanghai around 7 pm and were surprised to find that the Shanghai airport has no Customs. It made getting out of the airport very fast. From there we took a cab into the city which took about an hour to get to our hotel. Taxis are definately the best way to travel here because they are very cheap and they are direct. Our hour cab ride only cost 150 yuan which is about $20. And that is an expensive taxi here. Most of our rides within cities are about 9 yuan which is less than a dollar. After spending a low key evening in the hotel to get some sleep we only had one full day to explore Shanghai. We started by heading to Nanjing Street which is full of shops. Most of them were high class department stores but there were lots of side alleys with cool shops. It was at these that we discovered two things. The first is that people will try anything to get you into their shop. Most people standing in a street are actually working for someone and they’ll try to talk to you and point you to their shop. If you make the mistake of walking too close to a shop the workers will come out and yell hello and then ask, “Watch? Suitcase?” It’s hard to get them to stop but if you shake your head, smile and keep walking they eventually stop and look for the next white person. We are definately targets and people also stare at us. It’s strange to suddenly be the minority. It’s very humbling. The second was that you have to barter for the prices, which I had forgotten about, and you have to barter hard. My strategy has been to counter their first offer with a very low one, then bring it up a little and if they don’t accept just shake my head and start to walk away. They usually hand me the calculator which acts as translator and then I raise my offer just a little more. This is usually accepted. It can be fun bartering. The hard part is figuring out if you barter in certain places. Some have prices that are set but sometimes it’s not clear.
We ended our day in Shanghai by walking along the main river, which I can’t name, but the modern downtown sits along it and it is very beautiful. We were trying to get back to the downtown but there are no bridges to get across it that we could see so we eventually found a tourist tunnel that crosses under the river and takes you to the tv tower. We ended up going up it and it was very cool. The only thing was that it was raining and very foggy so our view was limited. But the fog made the view we did have that much better.
The next morning we hired a taxi to the train station, which one we weren’t sure, but we got lucky on our first guess. From there two men came and grabbed our bags. Apparently we had just hired them because they demanded money 50 feet later. It worked out pretty well though because they bought our tickets for us which was easier than trying to figure that out. Then it was a quick KFC lunch, also an adventure, and then our train ride.
The trains were very clean, efficient and orderly. This last part we didn’t know. As soon as the train came in and they opened the gate to get to the platform people rushed the door so we assumed it was first come first serve. Once on the train we figured out that there were assigned seats. That meant we had to quick dash up to our cabin which was at least 5 cars up. We made it, but just barely. The scenery along the train ride was interesting. I’m not going to use the word beautiful. It was interesting. At times it was sad and depressing, but all the while interesting. First of all, everything was grey. The sky, the buildings, the landscape, even the people seemed to just be different shades of grey. Within this grey landscape very little seemed to be maintained. I’m not sure if it’s the result of demolition or just disrepair but the majority of structures we saw were slowly turning into piles of rubble. A lot of these piles had some scattered people doing random jobs. We couldn’t figure out what they were doing. Two hours after leaving Shanghai we pulled into Nanjing.
I have to go for now, but I want to wish a happy birthday, in China time, to James and Jill. Once again you’ve managed to catch back up to Brad and me. Enjoy it while it lasts. Happy 23.