Thoughts on China

Well, it’s been a couple of days since I posted. I’m starting my first night in Hangzhou, but I want to go back a couple of days to talk about touring Shanghai…� First, though, here is the link to the rest of the pictures from this day.

My friend and colleague, Zhang Wenjin, was afraid her parents and I might have problems, since they don’t speak English and I’ve studied Mandarin for only a year. While did have a few problems communicating, I think we did a great job of understanding each other. For most things, I knew enough to get across what I wanted to say, even if I really mangled the grammar… Also, as with almost all the people I see here, a smile is a great communicator!

ASIDE…There are not many people that I’ve seen here in China that won’t return a genuine, honest smile. There are a few, but most people who at first look at me with curiosity or even what looks like distrust quickly break into a broad smile when I smile and say 你好 (Nǐ hǎo, which means “hello”). It’s nice, because in big cities in the US (for example, New York City), if you smile or otherwise try to communicate with anyone, you’re immediately branded as either crazy, or a threat, or both! To be fair, in New York City, if you do that you probably are crazy, a threat, or both, and it’s not like everyone there looks alike and the strange looking foreigner pops up and says “Hello!” in English…but it’s true, nonetheless, that people here are very quick to smile…

Zhang Wenjin’s parents first took me to the Jade Buddha temple. There are “no photo” signs in the jade Buddha room, but I have to say that is the most serene sculpture of the Buddha I have seen yet. I don’t think that serenity would have been conveyed to an electronic image, even if pictures were allowed. I’m really glad we went there.

Next, we went to Yu Gardens, which was basically an old style shopping district that had more tourist bus flags and foreigners (like me) taking pictures than any other place in town.

Every time I think about complaining about tourists, etc., I always have to look in the mirror and remember that I’m there, too. It doesn’t really change the fact that it takes away from the cool atmosphere, but it does mellow me right out!

While we were at Yu Gardens, we basically ate our way through the place. I don’t know how Chinese stay so skinny, since they all seem to be able to out eat me! In any case, I didn’t want to eat anything until I was full, because then I wouldn’t want the next thing that came along that I “had to try”. To give you a brief list, I had most of a package of dofu (a snack), smelly dofu which did not smell that bad to me and did taste very good (that must have been a very strong derivative to have people on a plane throwing up after a package came unsealed, which was a news story I had found upon first hearing of “smelly dofu”).

Well, we had a famous place’s dumplings, which are made in Shanghai so you nibble off a corner, drink the soup which is inside the shell, then eat the shell with the pork stuffing.

I had a whole order of these, so I was starting to get full…we then went to another place where we had two types of steamed buns, one with a sweet red bean paste mixture and another a salty pork mixture inside. They were very good, but I had a hard time finishing them. We then went to a tea house on the top floor of one of the buildings. It was a sizeable place (it would seat about 400, I imagine) with all rosewood furniture and a stage where it appears they put on some type of Chinese opera show. We were the only ones there and had tea for about 20 or 30 minutes.

Then, it was on the road again. To this point, while we walked through the temple and Yu Gardens, we had mostly been riding. Now we started walking more. We walked through a shopping district or two, where I got to practice my “Bu yao XXX” to my heart’s content and then a LOT more…

ASIDE…Shanghai has, by far, the most (in number and obnoxiousness) people trying to sell you watches, DVDs, T-shirts, etc. I’m glad the two girls in Beijing (remember them?) taught me 不要,谢谢你(Bù yào, xièxie nǐ, or “I don’t want it, thanks…”)! There, people stopped after I said it one, two, or occasionally three times. In Shanghai, however, they weren’t one product vendors. If you said no to the watches, they’d switch to asking about the next product. After saying 不要 about 5 times, they’d ask what you do want. Normally, before it got to that, I’d say…我不要。 你明白吗? (Wǒ bù yào. Nǐ míngbai ma?, or “I don’t want it, do you understand?”) To my surprise and relief, they would always say yes and back down when I used this line. I guess they were testing to see if I was parroting the 不要 phrase, and were surprised that I could follow up with something else, but they always said they understood and then backed off. I was waiting for the mutation that would act like I was speaking Chinese badly and continue to hassle me, but it never came…

Next Wenjin’s parents and I walked along the Bund…

ASIDE…the Bund is a group of buildings on one side of the HuangPu River that were built around 1900. I have to admit, I don’t like seeing these foreign buildings here, because they are only here because the Western powers were jerks and, after unjustly declaring war against China, forced it to open up “treaty ports”. These were areas that the other nations were ceded and where the foreigners’ laws applied. In fact, in Shanghai, there were signs that said “no Chinese or dogs allowed” in front of some of these areas. I can’t imagine how these people, who invented gunpowder, felt at having it turned into superior weapons and used against them. In fact, every time I hear the US government talking about the “war on drugs”, I just think to myself they have no idea what they’re talking about. It was actually China that fought a real war against drug imports by Great Britain (called “the Opium Wars”) and lost…the British then took control of Hong Kong and forced the Chinese to import massive quantities of opium, which naturally destroyed a good number of people’s lives. Sorry to recount such things, but it makes me ill thinking about what has been done to the Chinese people by foreigners (in addition to other Chinese) over the last 150 years, or so. I’m glad to see they are finally looking forward to a bright future!

We then went on the regular train under the river to Pudong, which is where the Pearl Tower, that building that looks like it’s right out of a 50’s science fiction flick, is.

We rode the very fast elevator up and then a second one, eventually getting to the height of 350 meters.

The characters that compose “Shànghǎi”, 上海, literally mean “above (or over) the sea”. At 350 meters (1150 ft), we were now, literally “Shànghǎi”!

We did a lot of walking around town after this, seeing where the Shanghai version of Tiananmen Square will be, complete with multiple halls for different types of arts…it looks like it will be very beautiful, indeed.

Finally, we ate dinner at a table where we were seated with another couple. The gentleman, who introduced himself to me as “Frank”, spoke some English, so we were able to communicate fairly well, even with the limited knowledge of each other’s languages. We ate chicken, which was simply chopped up with a cleaver, cooked and then served cold, a dish of mushrooms, and a container of fish that was cubed, breaded with spices. After we had finished some of this, each of us got a big bowl of veggy wonton soup (wonton soup where the wontons have vegetable filling). I could not eat everything, as I was too full!

We made our way to the train station, then to a taxi. Wenjin’s parents dropped me off at the hotel and continued in the taxi to their apartment. What a great, but exhausting day!