Day 13: May 5th - So What DOES Xuzhou Have?

We went out, primarily to find out if we could get train tickets back to Wuxi, which was interesting on its own. You can't get return tickets in China, apparently. You have to arrive at your destination, and then buy tickets back to your starting point from there, and hopefully it will be sometime around convenient o'clock.

In our case, there were no tickets back to Wuxi at any time, let alone convenient times, so we got tickets to Nanjing, which is about halfway. The best part is this: They're standing tickets. At 9:30 PM. It was likely going to keep us up all night through, all while standing. We shrugged it off, and checked out of the hotel. We now only had 7 hours until the train left, so we decided on picking one attraction, and going there. Turns out Chris had a convenient list, written in Pinyin (Roman letter equivalents of Chinese characters), and in Mandarin. Thank God he had done his homework.

We took a cab ride to the museum (see: Billions of pictures), and the cab driver was really cool. He was uber chatty, and actually pointed out to us that three of our four attractions were in the same area, so that was handy to know. He also never stopped talking, trying to teach us more Mandarin along the way. Really friendly guy, and he showed us where all the locations were, too. Another bonus was that since Xuzhou is a “small town” with a mere 1.5 million, the cab was cheap too. I didn't think things could get much cheaper than Wuxi had them, but there was a big difference. In Wuxi, cabs start at 8 yuan, and in Xuzhou, they start at 5 yuan. Also, in Xuzhou, ice cream, drinks, meals, are all about half as much as in Wuxi. It makes me wonder what kind of markup they really have in Wuxi. Regardless, Wuxi is still really cheap compared to back home (it's only 3 yuan for a bottle of beer, about twice the size of one back home!).

Anyway, we went into the museum, and I took pictures of just about everything, as did Chris. Some stuff got repetitive, but there were some cool displays, like pillows made out of jade, and jade armor-like mail that the corpses wore. But if I see another random pot on display with more restorative plaster than actual historical pot, I'm going to lose it. It was funny, some of the pots would consist largely of plaster, and just have a few pieces of the actual pot in it, but they'd reconstruct in the plaster certain designs. How they knew the designs were there, when it was entirely plaster, is either a Chinese secret, or some form of piracy I don't know of.

Day 12: May 4th - Xuzhou

So much for quiet Wuxi life... I forgot we bought tickets to go out to Xuzhou. Chris bought the tickets for the hell of it, since his friends at the Kindergarten he works in used to live there. Every Chinese person we've mentioned it to keeps telling us not to go there, that there's nothing to see... We'll see. Chris is convinced there are terracotta warriors there, but I'm not so sure.

The train ride there took 10 fucking hours, despite it only being a 4 hour trip. We apparently caught a cheap train, which will pull over and stop every time another train is coming. My knees were killing me by the time we got off the train, but along the way, I finished Rant, which was excellent, and we made some friends who spoke surprisingly good English. I also managed to get everyone else excited about Rant, so they're passing the book around.

We arrived in Xuzhou at 1:30 AM. Our new friends helped us not only get a hotel room, but took us to the rooms, and made sure we got in OK. Score one for Chinese hospitality! They went way over the top, and we were very thankful.

The key for the hotel rooms deserves a paragraph of its own. The key was just a flat metal slab with a ball bearing near the base. It was rectangular, with curved corners, and there were no distinguishable marks on it. How each key was unique, I have no idea. Our key was stubborn as all's hell, and every time we needed into our room, someone had to come help us. They never had much of an issue, but never revealed the secret of opening the door to us. Even our nice train friends didn't know how to open it, so it couldn't have been a stupid foreigner moment.

Day 11: May 3rd - Locked Out

The wakeup call and train ride back to Wuxi was all fine, and it turned out we had soft seats (like a higher class ticket, with more comfortable train cars). Getting back to Wuxi, we actually got here early, and Jessica led us to McDonalds, because she wanted a real breakfast. Chinese breakfasts suck. Since they like to cook with a lot of oil, and bread a lot of stuff, it's often very heavy, and/or tastes like shit. Once Jessica was satiated, and I finished my coffee, we split up. Since I was so engrossed in my Palahniuk book, I volunteered to go sit by the apartment and wait for the landlady. She and Alex went off to Hylite to see if they could get Internet. I don't think they ever did, but they were gone for about 2 or 3 hours. Also, no landlady showed up. We did discover we had new neighbours, however, and they let us sit in their apartment and they interpreted (or spoke for us, rather) over the phone, since even Jessica's Chinese is broken, at best.

Finally, the landlady and her son showed up, and said we had TWO keys. This was flat out wrong, so we insisted we only had one key, and her son called the locksmith. The locksmith had the door open in under 2 minutes, which was relieving. The landlord was busy paying attention to the new neighbours and nagging them, so the son paid the locksmith (it was either 20 or 70 yuan, we couldn't tell) before she noticed. When she realized he paid, despite my not knowing Chinese, the context was clear. It went something like this:

Landlady: "Did you pay for it?!"
Son: "Yes."
Landlady: "Why would you do that?! The stupid foreigners should have to pay!"
Son: "Shush, mother."

It's clear she hates us, and her body language tells me everything, but the son is reasonable, and I prefer him, despite his lack of handy-man-ness. She is constantly clucking on about something, and stresses everyone out. Anyway, he eventually took our key, and had a bunch of copies made. Now each of us have a key, and we'll be giving another copy to the school (Hylite).

We cleaned up the apartment, again. This place accumulates dust so fucking fast, I can't believe it. Alex and I went out for lunch, Jessica still being full from her McD's breakfast. We found an Internet Cafe, and ate at a Muslim restaurant. It's back to quiet Wuxi life, and I'm thankful for it, since Shanghai was both expensive, and somewhat stressful. It's too bad we can't bring the Shanghai night life here though, that was a lot of fun.

Day 10: May 2nd - Day 2 in Shanghai

Heading home at dawn was a new phenomenon, considering how relatively early Canadian bars close (Last call typically at 1 AM). Again, just by approaching a cab, beggars came a-running. One guy kept knocking on the window and yelling for cash, but I thought was hilarious, because he kept smiling and giving us the thumbs up. He was begging for money, but at the same time, just happy to see foreigners. We got back to the hotel and crashed until about 2 PM.

We had a (very) late breakfast, and around the time the sun went down (around 6PM), we headed out to the Bund. It's a waterfront area, with a few sights to see. We went at night because it's prettier, basically. This was crazy busy, again because of the holiday, and the sidewalks were so full, people were walking out on the street. Taking a car anywhere was useless because of all the people walking. We got to the waterfront, and took a look around the area. Some deaf Chinese people approached me and asked if they could have a picture with me and Jessica. I took the opportunity to get my picture taken with them as well, and try to sign to them. I don't think they understood much, but I got a lot of what they said. The more I stay, the more I notice that Chinese people suck at Charades. Acting anything out, or using body language is often useless.

Eventually, we ventured back to the hotel, and stopped for barbeque. Jessica also ordered what she thought was going to be one fruit smoothie, and it turned out they made a smoothie for each fruit she ordered. Seems the Chinese don't like to mix their fruits together. We just drank a little bit of each of the three, and it still turned out quite good. We turned in, and prepared for the 5 AM wakeup call the next morning, since our train headed back to Wuxi at 7 AM.

Day 9: May 1st - The Bar Scene in Shanghai

Holy shit, the beggars there were determined. Before we even got out of the cab, someone was at the window, asking for cash. These beggars get more clever by the day. When I first got to China, I only had to deal with beggars along the train station. They just sat there, or at worst, stood by me asking for cash for a few minutes, then left. These bar beggars KNOW I have cash, because I'm getting out of a cab, they see the change exchange hands, and they know I'm entering a bar, which obviously requires money. They'd follow you up and down the street, literally blocks away, and grab at you and pull at you to get you to look at them. They had kids chasing you yelling "Money! Money!" in crap English. I couldn't believe how persistent these people were. The Shanghai subway trains have the same thing. On the train itself, there's beggars, again with kids to evoke pity, demanding change. There's nowhere to run on a frigging train, and again, because of the nature of a subway, they know you have change.

Anyway, we decided we didn't like any of the bars there, so Angie took us to another area where her preferred bar was. So Angie, Jessica, Alex, Chris and I (and our band of beggars) all walked down to the bar, to the soundtrack of "Money! Money!" and "Buy this flower! Buy this flower!". The bar was called Windows, and was actually pretty sweet. It had a dance floor, platform, as well as a pool table, tv's, so whether you wanted to dance, or sit and chat, it was a good place. I liked the balance. Even further, there were tons of foreigners there, so I met people from all over the world. I met one guy from England, who lives in Japan. I met three guys from Nepal, one of which was trashed, and kept slurring loudly into my ear, and seemed to have the notion that I could get him into Canada with citizenship for 300 000 bucks. I also met another guy who decided he was drunk enough to give me a massage and tell me he loves me, both in English and Chinese. I got a picture of that guy.

It was an impressive mix between really smashed people, and people who could handle their drink, but surprisingly, very few problems. For a bar with no last call (we left at dawn), it wasn't sloppy. I didn't see anyone puke, and there was one mild fight, but the guy picking it would've been doomed if the other guy decided to fight back, as he was drunk off his ass. I and a few other foreigners (and eventually, a big black guy who I assume is a bouncer) broke up the fight. The angry drunk threw a few punches, and one of them missed and got me in the shoulder, and I gotta say... he would've gotten his ass whupped. I've had friends slap me in the arm harder when they're joking around.

Day 9: May 1st - Success... Sweet, Stressful Success!

Fortunately, we caught this one. I started reading Rant (Chuck Palahniuk's latest book), which has so far been awesome. I made quite a dent in it, because for no apparent reason at all, the train stopped just outside of Shanghai for two hours. Jessica's original explanation was that they were waiting for the express trains to go by, but there were no trains for at least 30 minutes at some times, and the train station was only about 10 minutes away. It sucked. No wonder everyone prefers express trains over the regular ones. Two fucking hours for no apparent reason.

We got there way behind schedule, and had only 30 minutes to get to the hotel room that we booked before we lost our reservation. This was a problem, because we didn't really know where the hotel was, and because it is the holiday, hotel rooms run out fast. It took Jessica's friend over 30 minutes of phone calls to find us this room, and she's not even a foreigner. So Jessica and I booted it through the subway as quickly as we could, but even as fast as we were going, 8 PM hit before we even exited the subway. We were getting stressed. Now it was possible we could find this hotel, and not even have a room.

Jessica wasn't even sure where the hotel was, and we had two possible stops where the hotel might be. We got off the second one, and just started asking directions to the road the hotel was supposed to be on. Turns out we did indeed get off at the right stop, and we found the street. Presented with a choice of left or right, I said right, she said left. We ended up going left, which lead absolutely no where. She then led us even further off track by taking a side street away from the street we were supposed to be on, because she was uncomfortable with how dark it was. We ended up stopping at a Kude, buying a map, and getting directions from two clueless women (who couldn't even find where they were), a drunk guy, and eventually a cab driver. The cab driver knew where it was, and drove us there. Lo and behold, my sense of direction wins again, it was literally about a 2 minute walk to the right of our original left/right choice. Oh well.

Turns out they still honoured our reservation, thankfully, and we booked our two rooms, and I slapped down the 700 yuan deposit. Eventually, we got Chris and Alex to catch up and join us at the hotel (although we had to walk them from the subway due to a mix of bad directions and them not listening to the directions in the first place). We all dropped off our stuff, and got something to eat. Finally, we were ready to catch up with Jessica's friend, Angie. Angie was the one who made the reservations in the first place. We met Angie at a row of bars (literally, just a street lined with one after another) around 1 AM.

Day 9: May 1st - Attempt One for Shanghai

I'm actually writing this the night before. This is because at 8:30 tomorrow, I'll be on a train to Shanghai. Just after getting coffee at McDonalds, we went to the train station and bought tickets to Shanghai. We'll be there for at least a day, likely two or three, and will be shopping and barhopping. It'll be sweet, but I'll have to keep an eye out for beggars/pickpockets. I'll summarize the trip when I get back.



[ Next Day... ]



Well, we missed the train. Even better, we locked ourselves out of the apartment, so we had nothing to do for the day. We reschedules our tickets for 4:30 that afternoon, since it was the earliest we could leave for Shanghai, then set off to figure out what to do for the day. We sat at the train station outside and made fun of people walking by, for about 2 hours. It was actually fairly entertaining. Games like "Find the worst dressed child" and "Find the Asian version of a celebrity". Eventually, I started noting Chinglish on T-shirts, and started a list. Within an hour, I decided I was going to have to be pickier, since my list was growing fast.

Later, we went out for lunch at some multicultural (mostly Japanese) restaurant. I saw deaf people there, which was exciting for me. Jessica kept telling me to approach them, but I didn't want to be the weird foreigner, and as I observed them more, I realized their sign language was considerably different from mine. Still fun to watch though, and I picked up a few signs.

Afterwards, we went to Starbucks, and basically sat around doing crosswords and chilling. I was getting a bit perturbed there, however, since people walking by outside were doing their typical staring and pointing at the white people. The reason it bothered me here was because the windows/walls of Starbucks were giving a fish tank experience. I felt like I was one of the attractions at the zoo, and it was irritating.

At some point, I went out for ice cream, which was in itself boring, but along the way I walked past what I originally thought was an energy drink display. Here, almost every day holds a new giant promotion of some product. As of the day of this writing (May 3rd), it's the Sony Ericcson, a cell phone. May 1st was this drink, which turned out to be a cold green tea (go figure) canned drink. They had stands beside stands along the entire sidewalk, and girls in short skirts giving away free samples. It was quite visually stimulating, but the best part was the music. They were playing Devo's "Whip it" in Chinese. It sounded hilarious.

On the way back from ice cream was the other cool Chinese promotion thing. I spotted a wading pool filled with water, and giant bubbles on it. I got a video of it on my camera, because this was the sweetest thing ever, and I wish they had it when I was a kid. Kids would get into the bubbles, which were leashed to the edge of the pool, and could run around inside the bubbles, or crawl, and the ball would roll. It was near impossible to walk, since it was in water, and nearly frictionless. The whole thing was so simple, but so fun. These kids kept faceplanting inside the bubble, and trying to move around, without much success. Any time a kid falls on their face is a good time to laugh, so this was awesome.

Finally, we killed enough time to go back to the train station. Getting a cab was damn near impossible at this time, as the streets were crammed full of people (thanks to the holiday). There were lines of people in uniforms looking like they were picketing, but it was actually an advertisement for a cellphone. Alex got a picture of part of one of the signs, showing that the cell phone ran Linux, which excited me as a geek. Finally, we caught a cab and made our way to the train station.