Thoughts on China

Well, this will be noticeably shorter than yesterday’s marathon. I didn’t do near as much and what I did do, I did rather haphazardly. Here’s a link to all of today’s pictures.

First, I woke up late after all the walking (and food) the day before! There was a lady (who turned out to be a music student in Shanghai from Singapore) that had helped me out with my travel plans on the Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree (Australian) site. We went to lunch and she gave me some more advice on my remaining time here in China. I was kind of disappointed, though, as I wanted to eat at some cool, Chinese restaurant…but her throat was sore and she said the last thing she needed at that time was Chinese food. So, we ate American food, of sorts. I had something that resembled a Greek Gyro and she had a sandwich that had the meats of and Italian sub with cheese melted on top, and lettuce and tomato underneath (sorry Allwyn, no pix of the food). It was an interesting conversation. When it was time for her class, we said goodbye.

Don’t buy Traveler’s Cheques for use in China

I walked around for about two or three hours. This included stopping by the Bank of China to change a lot of traveler’s cheques…traveler’s cheques are a horrible idea if you’re going to China, by the way. First, I paid 2% for them. Then, you can only change them at the Bank of China (there are a lot of different banks here, all of which seem to be named by the industry that they serve: Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank, etc.). Anyway, except for the first time, it has taken a minimum of 30 minutes after taking a number to be waited on. This is especially irritating when there is an ATM that takes American cards, but I bought so many traveler’s cheques, I wanted to use some of them.

By now, it was about 3:30, and I hadn’t done anything to speak of…I was not being very good at this self guided tour stuff. In fact, I hadn’t looked at any of the tour guides I brought with me to see what I wanted to do before going into the city. (NOTE: I learned my lesson and have looked at them for Hangzhou and for the rest of the trip). Anyway, I had to try the “tourist tunnel” to Pudong, because I saw some wild videos of what it looked like on YouTube. I took a few videos (which I can’t get to upload to Picasa and YouTube is blocked here, so I’m not going to bother with…just search for Shanghai Tourist Tunnel or something like that on YouTube and you’ll see videos of it). It was pretty cool, but it was also pretty cheezy. Some of the effects were really neat, others looked like a high school haunted house display. I also got the add on tickets to two displays: a deep sea display which was completely forgettable and a display of artifacts about sex from China’s history. This was completely interesting to me, since I’ve really never seen anything like these pieces anywhere else in my studies about China. There were Buddha’s having intercourse (apparently a sect of Buddhism is dedicated to using desire to free yourself from desire). The exhibit kind of reminded me of the erotic art of Pompeii, that we never saw going through the exhibit in Italy when I was 8 years old. It is a part of culture that seems to be taboo to discuss, but here it was as one of the add on attractions for a cool/cheesy tunnel ride to Pudong…

I walked around for a short time, taking more pictures of the Pearl Tower, which I think looks cool. The Lonely Planet writer, thinks it looks cheesy, but I think it looks cool. Maybe he rode the tourist tunnel back right before he wrote his essay…

Well, after that, I walked around Nanjing Liu (Road) and looked for a place to eat. I ended up eating some spicy chicken. I’m glad I hung around until after the sun went down, because at night, the street is lit up like a cross between Times Square and Vegas.

After I got tired of the hucksters, I found a place to buy a train ticket for the following morning, went back to the hotel, and slept…