Macau Wow!

I don’t care what anybody says, Macau rules. Just avoid the gambler’s gutter and the Macau Tower (world’s 10th tallest tower? Who gives a ****?) type attractions.
For me, I didn’t really know that Macau was a famous gambling mecca, Asia’s Vegas or Monte Carlo even. For me, I just knew it as this old port city formerly governed by the Portuguese. That’s why I went there, and that’s what I loved about it!

Macau is only about an hour away from Hong Kong by high speed ferry, so that’s what I took, buying a set of return tickets in advance as I was told, by Lonely Planet once again, that I would only need a day in Macau. The ferry ride was uneventful, though a little rocky and I would have liked to have had an open deck where I could have gotten at least some fresh air, but oh well, I’d get plenty once I reached my destination.

Walking through the old part of the city of Macau, you can still see the old colonial structures, including churches, forts, and marketplaces, all donned with signs in Chinese and Portuguese giving you the impression you’ve stepped into Chinatown Rio De Janiero. The churches here are beautiful, the squares are beautiful, hell even the Macau Museum is beautiful (its built into one of the fort ruins). Possibly one of the best Museums I’ve been too, it used 3 languages (English, Portuguese, and Chinese) to compare Western and Eastern history throughout the legacy of the world’s favourite Freeport from it’s birth in piracy, to the Portuguese period of power, to the final hand-back to the “motherland” of China (like Hong Kong, I’m not exactly sure if the Macanese actually voted to rejoin China, or if Portugal just wasn’t interested in them anymore).

After the Old Part of town, I headed out for some Portuguese food for lunch, eating something called a feijoada, which is a tasty mix of potatoes, pork knuckles, and various vegetables and Portuguese flavourings. The restaurant had a nice décor to it, and I took a picture of it, unaware of the once-in-a-lifetime experience that awaited me on the Macanese islands.

So next I went to the Macanese islands of Coloane and Taipa, which thanks to a landbridge are now the same island. First I went to Coloane, to enjoy its small village atmosphere and Sino-Latin American feel (I also went to a village in Hong Kong’s New Territories that was supposed to be surrounded by a wall and whatnot, but it didn’t have so much charm as just dilapidation and piles of garbage, though it did have an interesting pizza restaurant that was clearly ripping of Papa John’s, calling itself Papa’s John pizza, and a traditional Hakka woman who let me take her picture, after asking for 20 Hong Kong bucks).

I soon managed to walk out of the village and found myself walking along the ocean, seeing marvelous cliffviews and secluded beaches, but I didn’t really fancy taking a dip in frigid foreign waters unless there was some reason to believe Captain Undertow was not a regular.

So instead I hiked along until I found the public beach, covered in brown and “naturally” black sand (they were adamant that it was not polluted), and after dipping my toes in the water there, I decided it was time to head to Taipa, the other village, for supper.

However, by this point I was not sure how I was going to get a bus, and the sign said that there was a bus-stop at the opposite end of this trail through the mountains, so I figured, despite it getting dark, that I could surely make it right?

Wrong! Ah the pleasures of traveling alone, you don’t have that rational, usually female, voice of reason beside you to say, no, trying to reach a bus-stop by climbing an unknown mountain covered in jungle is a stupid idea. But no, that person wasn’t there, so instead I celebrated, to quote the Cynical Traveller from http://www.cynicaltravel.com/blog/ the “triumph of determination and sense of adventure over common sense.”

So here I am, alone somewhere high up in the mountain jungles of Coloane, in the dark and without a clue as to where that damn bus-stop is, and what that thing I feel crawling on my leg is, when I behold a white flash in the trees. Is it a ghost, an albino tiger? NO! It is a Frenchman.

The Frenchman wonders what the hell I’m doing, but suggests if I’m still idiotic enough to go on in the dark, I should take a right up ahead. Apparently, the Frenchman, had a sense of humour, because taking a route effectively set me on THE longest hiking trail the mountain had to offer (in the dark or at any other time). Fortunately, through the power of squinting at signs, I was able to determine that I was not going the right way, that my bus-stop was likely at the end of the trail that went straight at the last cross-roads, but that it was too damn dark and that I should just go back the way I came.

So back I went, crawling out of the trail to encounter a pack of dogs and an elderly Portuguese gentleman who smiles at me and greets me in his native language. Speaking no Portuguese, but assuming its just the same thing as Spanish, I say “Hola!” and he nods, somewhat confused. It soon becomes clear his English is about as strong as my Portuguese, and so we engage in a patchwork of Spanish, French, and body language learned from games of Charades and Taboo, in order to communicate. He realizes I’m lost, and suggests I follow him back to his bar where I can catch a bus. Normally I’d be a little suspicious of strange old men in the middle of nowhere, but as I was in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t much else in terms of options.

So I followed him back. It turns out he owned, or at least frequented, a little restaurant on the beach called Fernando’s which I later realized had been recommended by the Lonely Planet. The dogs disappeared, but either they weren’t actually his or he wasn’t overly concerned with them. We sat at the bar hidden in the back, with some Macanese waitresses who greeted him with a familiar smile, almost like unto a grandfather and gave him his usual. I opted for some Portuguese wine. With the waves flapping the shore nearby, we shot the shit, talking about life, women, the possibilities of youth, and wisdom of old age, all with our broken method of communication. Apparently, at least I gathered, he had some health problems and some tragedy back in Portugal, like his wife died or something, and had moved to Macau to retire, living out the rest of this days in this sleepy but picture-esque village. He was a nice fellow, and after drinking with him for a while, bid him a fond farewell, caught a bus to Taipa.

Taipa is a lot more developed than Coloane, probably owing it to its being just across the straight from Macau’s core and connected by a bridge or three. Still it has its old quarter, including an famous restaurant district reknown for its Macanese food and its character. Based on the recommendations of the Lonely Planet, I became hellbent on finding some Macanese specialty called gahlina Africana (African chicken), but after finding trouble finding an actual Macanese restaurant somebody referred me to a side alley where in the distance flickered a small sign that read “Café Amagao.”

Getting pretty hungry at this point, I entered, deciding to eat there whether they had this famous Chicken or not.

They didn’t have the African Chicken. They DID however have the Portuguese Chicken, which ironically can only be found in Macau, and was just as Macanese as the African Chicken which probably cannot be found in Africa (or even Macau for that matter).

Because it was a small family restaurant they had me seated with a Macanese family, two members of which where young men who just returned from studying in Canada of all places (and thus spoke strong Canadian English). One of them even came from one of the universities I had applied to for grad school and he gave the institution a glowing review. Soon however, the father was feeding sample after sample of Macanese food that they had ordered and all of it was quite delicious, kinda hard to explain though. Its seasoned with something that has the consistency of a bread crumb, but not quite, and tasted a little spicy but in some respects reminds me of my Grandma’s cooking. While most of it was seafood, and I can never seem to be a fan of seafood, I did enjoy what I ate, and really enjoyed the comraderie and friendship of the family and the store-owner/cook who came and chatted me up in perfect English about his restaurant, his family (that ran it), his Macanese background in culture (he said his bloodline was mixed with Chinese, African, Portuguese, Malay, you name-it, he’s descended from it, which gave an interesting set of a features, though I wouldn’t think he’d have too much trouble getting the ladies even at his age—except for his being married and whatnot, but hey I’ve heard that that can sometimes improves a guy’s chances)

At the end of the evening the father and the store-owner headed upstairs to play some Mah Jongg and I asked how I was to pay my bill (I had a ferry to catch back to Hong Kong you see, I was only in Hong Kong for the day) and the family told me I needed worry about it, the dinner was on them. Surprised by my dumb luck of stumbling on a free meal, I offered to pay again, but then graciously accepted their kindness.

Going home on the ferry that night, I figured, all in all, I couldn’t have had a better day in Macau.

And I didn’t go to the casino once!

Hongy Kongy

Ah Hong Kong, that bastion of economic and aquatic prowess, where British and Chinese movers-and-shakers sit down together for a cup of afternoon tea, where Chinese-quality merchandise meets Japanese-size prices, where the up-and-coming Bird Flu swaps mitochondria with the last remnants of the SARS epidemic. (Hong Kong, incidentally, is also called the SAR [Special Administrative Region] occasionally followed by an S as “in the SAR’s government”). Speaking of Bird Flu, I was supposed to report any cases of ill-health within the last 10 days since my return to Taiwan, but since I haven’t experienced any coughing up of feathers, any unwarranted flapping of arms, or unplanned laying of eggs, I think I am pretty much in the clear.

To return to Taiwan I had to first pass through another country, or at least a place that acts like another country even if China says it isn’t. While they do have some direct flights now during the New Year’s season, as many people have seen in the news, what they fail to mention is that you basically have to have a cousin in China, have the capacity to plan 2 years in advance, or—as with most things in the world—just be rich enough to get one. For me though, I had no problems having to stop in Hong Kong, or Macau, which were both places I was interested in seeing, so away I went.

Coming from mainland China, Hong Kong seems very clean, but very expensive. It also seems to be the birthplace of every Chinese stereotype in English-speaking societies. Pity the poor Cantonese speaker who proudly declares to be from the neighbourhood of Mong Kok, or staying at the Fat Wang hostel, without realizing he has just uttered a string of English euphemisms for penis. Hell, even the name “Hong Kong” evokes images of a certain giant monkey.

Just to prove my point about Chinese stereotypes stemming from Hong Kong, name a famous present-day Chinese person. If your answer was “Jackie Chan,” well this representative of Chinese culture, and their supposed to tendency to get into massive street brawls in old warehouses, is also a Hong Kong ren. In fact, if you go to Kowloon, it basically feels like you’re in an old Jackie Chan movie, with the crumbling tenements, plethora of street signs, and the occasional fruit stand that could theoretically break you fall should you need to make a dramatic escape from the 5th floor of your hotel room (I can’t say for certain, as I was not about to try it).

Both of my hotel room, costing 3 times what I paid in Shanghai, were about the same size as a bathroom in my house back home. I switched from a hotel to a hostel to get a better location, but it proved to be marginally different. Yes, I did indeed end up staying at the Fat Wang Hostel, which basically consisted of 2 separated floors of closets called rooms, in an unmarked building down a side street of Causeway Bay (Hong Kong is also filled with quaint, usually martime-themed, British neighbourhood names like Causeway Bay, Repulse Bay, Admiralty, and the ever-original Central). I mainly was interested in it, because it was recommended by Lonely Planet, though I don’t really know why, and it was cheap (well compared to the hotel in Kowloon) and had a great location. The place was a little funky though, especially since the elevator had to go the ground floor before it could go to any other problematic if you wanted to go between the lobby, which was on the 3rd floor, and your room, which was on the 6th floor, competing with the people who lived in the apartment building on the way down and around. Also problematic was a ridiculous door-gate thingie, that all the doors in the building had which were, I suppose, some sort of security measure (kinda unnecessary considering the presence of 2 locked doors before you reached your bed as well as a security guard at the front door of the building, and how easily the stupid gates were opened) that you were to open by pressing a hidden button under the handle. While I can appreciate they perhaps had a reason for the silly contraption, I would have appreciated it if they told me about the button the first day, before I got locked inside on my first day there. Having lost my credit card to a crooked ATM (Hong Kong apparently is rampant with ATM fraud, ie sabotage devices on ATM machines designed to steal your stuff, though perhaps I just forgot it there and it got stolen) and struggling to get any amount of currency in my hand (Hong Kong still uses Hong Kong Dollars, which are like Canadian dollars, in appearance not in value, expect their 2 dollar coin has got some pretty wicked waves to it, and their 10 dollar bill is about the most funky awesome legal tender I’ve ever encountered. Oh yeah, and the Macanese pataca is cool also in its own way), I was not in the best of moods to start things off with. Now here, I was locked up in the Fat Wang hostel, literally behind the bars of this stupid gate thing, beseeching the only passerby in the hallway, an old lady who lived in the apartment next to the hostel, who mumbled something to me in Cantonese, laughed, and then went on her merry way.

Of course, by then, I had already phoned the front desk to plead my case for freedom, and they basically told me they were sending someone up. Unfortunately, you see, while the rest of China can’t really speak English that well, they don’t assume they do, whereas in Hong Kong, itself being a former British colony, they kinda assume their English is the best in China, and don’t realize that it actually still isn’t that hot. Not that my Cantonese is that good, mind you… or even existent.

Anyways, the hotel receptionist a tricky smilely devil who kept trying to up the price on me as if I had forgotten what we agreed upon, also told me yeah sure he’d send someone right up, and about half an hour later a maid came dottering up, jabbering away in Cantonese, to free me from my cell. She took her time, putting her finger into the hidden slot and popping the latch, smiling at me like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I grudgingly moved the door aside, thanked her, and made a point of leaving the damn thing ajar any time I left from that point on.

When I was not locked up in my hotel room, I spent my time wandering around Hong Kong’s many sights and wonderful wonderments (“wonderments,” incidentally, may or may not be a word). Following my trusty Lonely Planet guide to the tee, I did all the must see Stars that reminded of an objectives list in one of those old video games I used to play in High School. The first of these was a visit to Temple Street night market, which seemed a bit small compared to its Taiwan and Chinese cousins, and the only thing I really bought were a couple of AA batteries for my camera, I had purchased a cheap film one in Shanghai. I also took the historic Star Ferry ferry across the harbour from Kowloon, which provided a nice harbourview, but in reality was little different than your standard ferry ride, except that the boat rocked a ridiculous amount for never leaving the harbour.

Once in Hong Kong city proper, I went around to Hong Kong Park, famous for its aviary (like a bird zoo you walk through) now closed on account of bird flu (Hong Kong’s unfortunate tourism planners seem to have saddled every major park with one of these blessed aviaries which of course now have all been closed. First SARS and now this. Poor Hong Kong just can’t buy a break. (By the way, there’s actually a SARS memorial in Hong Kong, which I saw, which is quite unusual, but good, in that it celebrates and memorializes the sacrifice of doctors, nurses, and volunteers, rather than the usual war heroes and political martyrs you see elsewhere in Asia which was getting a tad overdone.
Not going to the aviary, I went instead to the oldest colonial building in Hong Kong, now transformed into that cultural aspect that Britain and China share so deeply, their love of tea! The Tea Museum is exactly as it names suggests, a museum about tea: How to make tea, Why to make tea, how to drink tea, how to make tea pots so you can make tea, and why you should never drink anything else ever again.

After the park and tea museum, I hitched a ride up the historic Peak Tram which takes you up to Victoria Peak, the mountaintop overlooking Hong Kong. Hong Kong is big on its old-school forms of locomotion (See: Star Ferry and wooden Double-Decker Trolleys which frick’n rock, both literally and figuratively). The Peak Tram was pretty cool, not only did it look more like the original than even the original in the photograph, but it had a bit of a roller coaster feel to it, as it went up like a 50 degree slope it seemed while people tried to stand up.

At the top itself, you can find your useful gift-shop, lookout, and mall for rich people—not to mention its share of attractions still under construction including a brand new one, not yet opened, that they’ve already taken the liberty of minting onto one of their Hong Kong dollar bills. There are also some hiking trails, lit at night but that could be also because they double as one lane streets complete with cars driving down them. I took one that went all the way around the main peak, though not up it unfortunately, but I still got to see plenty of trees, urbanite joggers, and even some wildlife, such as a spider I was sure hell not going to touch and a small furry mammal I believe to be a Chinese Ferrit Badger. It was kinda surreal actually, hiking at night through bamboo groves, known for their nesting vipers I learned afterwards, and wild Indian rubber trees; completed surrounded in bush, hearing birds call, while Hong Kong shown brightly and honking below. While Lonely Planet didn’t give it a star, I’ve giving that little hike one.

After taking a wild ride on the Peak Tram back to the city, I headed over to the Hong Kong Botanical Gardens which were near the final station. Understandably most of it was closed, especially the aviary once again, but I didn’t care. I just had my sights on a Bahinia Blakeana, the tree that is to Hong Kong what the maple tree is to Canada, a symbol of its national heritage based on local vegetation (see the flower on the new flag of Hong Kong, that flower, yeah, its from this tree). I figured if any place in Hong Kong would have one of these trees, the botanical gardens would surely be it. And so they did, except it was not well marked and hard to find in the dark, especially since there turned out to be a bunch of bigger and perhaps more impressive foreign bahinias all in the “Bahinia” section. The Bahinia Blakeana was there and I did manage to find it, barely, as it was the smallest Bahinia of them all. Luckily for me, it was flowering and I got to touch and feel Hong Kong’s national (or if you’re Chinese, then “Special Administrative Regional”) symbol.

In my evenings in Hong Kong, I hung around places called Soho and Lang Kwai Fong, which are also known to have the greatest amounts of foreigners and clearly reak of being the type of place any sensible would avoid like the avian flu, but being a typical tourist, I was too lazy to seek out other places. Soho is effectively a bunch of somewhat pricey ethnic restaurants, like a Nepalese (which was the best and only Nepalese food I’ve ever had) or Brazillian for example, while Lan Kwai Fong is Hong Kong’s bar and pub district, the equivalent to St. John’s’ George Street. Obviously aimed towards expats, the place seems to be crawling with Canadians, with at least 3 Canadian restaurants, including one playing Hockey Night in Canada on the CBC and another one serving poutine. There’s even an inexplicable horse in the middle of the street, covered in Maple Leaf’s. Who exactly, back in 1997, did the British hand Hong Kong over to anyway?

I also, at one point, tried to try some real authentic Hong Kongese dim sum, from one of the older, popular, and tradition-establishing restaurants as recommended by Lonely Planet, but the place was not what I had expected or hoped for at all. While I was a little disappointed that they didn’t wheel the “dim sum” around on movable buffet carts as they had done at every dim sum restaurant back home (in fact, I had assumed that was what they meant by “dim sum”), I was more disappointed in the fact that the food I had in this highly acclaimed restaurant was some of the most wretchedly awful food I’d ever had anywhere in Asia. I tell it compares to that time I had a roach running my table at the hot pot in Danshui. I don’t know if it wasn’t cooked properly, or just seasoned funny, but I basically just gulped it down like a spoonful of Buckley’s cough syrup and quietly didn’t ask for seconds.

Also in Hong Kong’s urban environs, I visited a mosque in Kowloon (I wasn’t trying to visit a Mosque, but having come across one by accident, curiosity got the better of me, and frankly I was just itching to get a break from Buddhist temples). The Mosque was fairly new, but built in the traditional style, and filled with muslims of all shapes and colours, from the traditionally to the conventionally dressed. All had to walk around barefoot however, and like in Japan a cleansing ritual was required before entry could be permitted, but this was easily accomplished, and unlike in Japan, could be done in the luxury of a bathroom. I was basically give free reign of the whole mosque, while some of the congregation eyed me suspiciously none of them said “you should leave” although I befriended a couple of African Moslems who told me that non-muslims are technically not allowed, I should be okay as long as I didn’t make an ass of myself, and this time I think I managed to succeed.

After the mosque, I headed to the Hong Kong Museum of History, where I hoped to learn great heaps about colonial Hong Kong. Unfortunately for me, however I came under the impression that whole museum was just on the geological and Chinese history of Hong Kong (as I spent a ridiculous amount of time learning how Hong Kong emerged from a rock, not unlike the rest of the freak’n Earth). I finished the first floor leisurely, not realizing that the stuff I was actually more interested in, everything from the First Opium War to the present, was on the second floor, until 45 minutes before closing. So doing a mad dash from the video of the Opium Wars to the Depression Years to the Japanese Occupation, I tried to suck in as much history as I could for my buck before the security guards escorted me out and I promptly walked over the neighbouring Hong Kong Museum of Science which kept later hours.

Hong Kong Museum of Science had a bunch of trippy exhibits on optical illusions, some of which I could just not get to work for the life of me (like a result of my one lazy eye, and slightly impaired vision) like a magic-eye poster that holds its secrets for an eternity. The other exhibits, based on things like safety in the workplace, communication, and how your car works, were filled with a bunch of hands-on exhibits obviously designed for children, or at least smaller-bodied people, as I soon found out myself being physically stuck in the little racing car where you tested how well you could drive down the left side of the road (as the Hong Kongers still do) without speeding and plowing over pedestrians which I guarantee everyone tries at least once. Sensing I was basically the only one in the museum this late, I soon abandoned all hope at learning something educational and instead focused on playing with the morse code machine and the communications game where you try to save Hong Kong from natural disasters. Consequently, if I’m ever called upon to use morse code to save Hong Kong from a typhoon, that city is so screwed. On the brighter side, I did manage to get the third-best score of the day in the interactive soccer goalie game, where you are the goalie, so I’m giving myself an honorary bronze medal to help Canada’s medal count.

Outside of Hong Kong’s urban environs I spent most of my time trying to find the beach, which was never all that clean and no one would be swimming there because the water was freaking cold. In my searches for beaches though I did discover some neat little sea-side towns, took a ride on a sampan (not as exciting as it sounds, as it didn’t have sails but was a little motorized jalopy), climbed up to the world’s biggest, and relatively new, outdoor Buddha on Lantau Island, which takes one helluva a bus ride to get to and has the greatest ever religious explanation for why so many funds were spent on something seemingly ridiculous as a Giant Buddha as opposed to, oh I don’t know, the poor. The official explanation is that they are continuing the lost-standing tradition of building giant Buddhas from ancient times. The implied explanation is that they built the sucker to attract tourist dollars to their remote monastery, as you have to pay to go up to the Buddha and the previously serene mountain refuge is now daily flooded with the cash-yielding masses.

I did not however, go to Hong Kong’s Disneyland, for the same reason I didn’t go to Tokyo’s Disneyland. I went there twice as a kid. I’m done with that whole thing now. I also did not go to any casinos in Macau.

I did however go to Macau, and Macau is freak’n awesome!

Shanghai Nights (and Days)

Shanghai Baby! The Pearl of the Orient. The Whore of the East. New New York. That place beside the sea. The most populous city in the most populous country, Shanghai is a place of many names and many ideas and stories both good and bad. Most of the hostel westerners in Nanjing hightailed it to Shanghai for Chinese New Year’s and I hooked with some of them on the last night of it, which happened to be my first night in Shanghai.

My arrival was heralded with fireworks igniting all around me, just like in Nanjing, although with a more impressive skyline. Cruising through the city, you could see the chrysanthemum bursts down any block you looked, and loud bangs and flashes of light were never far. Like Nanjing the degree of explosions was so high that the city became filled with a thick smog, even more than usual (Actually, during Chinese New Year’s, was the only time I noticed smog). Unlike Nanjing though, the place I was staying was in an alley full of 1930s esque Western architecture, so with all the gunpowder noises and flashes coming from the alley, you could have believed that a Chinese triad gang war was taking place. Of course, though by now, after 4 days of non-stop fireworks day and night, we had grown accustomed to it, and were as nonchalant as the old smokers in Nanjing. Besides, you go to Hong Kong to see triad gang wars.

Like I said, Shanghai has a lot of 1930s Western Architecture, owing to the fact that the city had its boom period (or at least its first one) as a Western-Chinese-Japanese trading post during the early 20th century (this was all cut abruptly short by the Second World War). A lot of folk have romanticized Shanghai’s seedy but romantic past, also famous for the usual racial prejudice and mistreatment associated with colonialism (the park sign that says “Chinese and Dogs Not Allowed” is infamous). The region I was staying, the 1930s downtown core known as The Bund, is filled with tourists who come to seek its exotic (to them at least) architecture. Well I did like the architecture, especially one skyscraper that looked like a giant flower pot from the Roaring 20s, a lot of it was all too familiar for me, as my home province also experienced its boom in the early 20th century, before heading into decline in the latter, and thus has much of the style of architecture at a nice or even nicer level. Still though, it was a nice neighbourhood to be in, and especially to get the sense of Shanghai’s past.

Perhaps one of the most surreal experiences, conciding with Shanghai’s past or at least popular culture’s image of it, happened when one of the westerners at the hostel popped in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (no doubt a pirated copy or factory reject picked up from one of the dirt cheap vendors) where Indy starts his adventure in the far off and exotic city of—you guessed it—Shanghai! It’s the first time I’ve seen an Indiana Jones film and while actually being in the same place where Indy is having his adventure. Cool!

Not that I spent my whole time in Shanghai watching Indiana Jones movies, because that—my friends—would just be silly. No, I got out there and saw the city, that I did! The first place I went, because I was in it, was The Bund which is great for walking around, especially waterfront (if you don’t mind the torrent of hawkers you encounter throughout China). Across the harbour from The Bund is Pudong, Shanghai’s “District of Tomorrow” the current and emerging heart of the city with all the newest skyscrapers and the ever popular Oriental Pearl Tower which is supposed to be used for TV signals (and tourism of course! I’m using a lot of exclamation marks today) which looks like something out of a Jetson’s cartoon. Thinking I wanted to explore this distict in person, I looked around for away to cross the harbour, and the only thing forthcoming, as their were no bridges close and I still didn’t know anything about the subway, was something called The Bund Sight-seeing Tunnel. While it seemed a little over-priced (for Chinese standards), I figured it’d be worth it just to get to the other side. I didn’t expect much from the tunnel itself, as it went under was surely one of the dirtiest, if not the dirtiest, harbours in the world. I figured it be a concrete passage, perhaps with an advertisement or two. I definitely did not expect China’s most psychedelic adventure yet!

While I’m pretty sure I didn’t ingest any LSD before entering the tunnel, perhaps there was something in that Bubble Tea as I found myself in an egg-shaped capsule flying through spiraling lights and neon wavelengths why surreal music echoed in my ears and announcers in English and Chinese saying things like “Meteor Showers” and “Otherwordly Peace.” At one point, I found myself surrounded by fire and brimstone, while the announcer said “Welcome to Hell.” How’d I end up in Hell? I was just trying to cross a river, I thought it was the Yangtze not the Styx! But before I could beg God’s forgiveness, we had passed out of Hell and into a chamber of purgatory where ghostly clowns and children made out of kites, danced and waved in the wind while batting at the glass of my protective capsule. Then flashes of lightning, something like a discotheque, and the capsule came to a stop. I had reached the Pudong district. I swiped my card through the turn stile, heard the checker click as I walked through, and went on my way, trying vainly to make sense of the trippy madness I had just witnessed.

As for Pudong, it was effectively the same skyscrapers I had seen from across the harbour only bigger. It was too foggy to really bother going up the Oriental Tower, so instead walked along the streets looking for a restaurant which was surprising hard to find. Pudong might be the heart of Shanghai at its most cutting edge, but there’s precious little in the way of restaurants and services on the street level. I wandered for an hour or two, admiring the futuristic skyscrapers disappearing into the clouds, before I could work up the nerve to venture back through the trippy tunnel to The Bund.

Back at the Hostel, I met a girl from Suzhou named Phoenix, studying for an exam in English in Shanghai, who took me out shopping Nanjing Lu, a popular shopping street near the hostel. While my attempts to find a pair of shoes my size in China continued to be thwarted, Phoenix managed to find some clothes and we managed to eat some hot pot.

Later that night, I headed on my own to the French Connection, sorry Concession, but as far as I could tell the only thing French about it was the prices. The ice cream and coffee was all American, such as Haagen Daaz (which sounds Scandinavian, but was called so purposely by its American founder in the nineteenth century to give it an exotic appeal). Any rate, Haagen Daaz is definitely not French, although I managed to pick up a pile of DVDs for the equivalent of a buck a piece Canadian.

The next day I headed to the Shanghai Museum in People’s Park. What better way, I thought, to get a feel for the city than to go the city’s namesake museum? People’s Park, which ironically is mostly closed off to the public, is the supposed center of Shanghai and its surrounded by futuristic office facades that make you feel like your living in 21st century of science fiction novels rather than the one you are currently living in. The museum itself looked like it could transform, any moment, into a giant robot and go off to destroy Japan—which would have suited the Chinese just fine. You see a lot of this kinda stuff around Shanghai, especially around People’s Park and in Pudong, including a MagLev train I took to the airport, which although supposedly slower than the shinkansen I rode in Japan, did not give you that impression, especially as it raced through turns at a 45 degree angle at 400+ km/hr.

Inside the museum was a collection of photographs and virtual reality displays about Shanghai’s growth as a city and its “sure-to-be-awesome future.” To be frank, a lot of the stuff there kinda felt like an over-budget municipal promotion, but virtual reality room was nice. They also demonstrated the Chinese unhealthy obsession with numbers as they broke down each of Shanghai’s neighbourhoods one by one, listing the stats in terms of housing, commercial districts, and countless other areas of which I had no interest, but nothing in terms of neighbourhood “character.”

Nearby the Shanghai museum, in the old Depression-era racing track, was the Shanghai Museum of Art, which thanks to a lack of proper signage, I walked through and past about four times before I realized what it was. Thus I reached the museum just as it was closing, but luckily I was able to convince them to let me have a sneak peak, albeit a rushed one. The art there was impressive, especially the ceramic stuff which was done so well it could have been a photograph (perhaps these folks should consider going to work for the Chairman Mao Mausoleum in Beijing where they are always in dire need of realistic artwork), and the lady on staff that let me in was nice enough to guide me, although I could tell when I had overstayed my welcome as they shut the lights off.

After the Art Museum, I decided to go for supper, and being sick of Chinese food, decided to go for some Western staples. I saw a Pizza Hut, but since it had a half an hour wait to get inside, I decided to opt for the neighbouring Taco Bell instead. Taco Bells in China, however, are nothing like they are in Canada. Expecting to find a counter and Mexican-inspired menu board, I instead encountered a “Please Wait To Be Seated” notice and a doorman inquiring if I had a reservation. When I replied, that indeed I did not have a reservation for Taco Bell, he told me not to worry as there were still some tables available. I was lead to a candle-lit table, asked if I would like to see the wine list, gave me a free plate of nachos as an appetizer. The whole place reminded me of a McDonald’s I’d heard of in New York where they’d have a pianist seranating you on a grand piano while you chowed down on a Big Mac. This place wasn’t THAT class though, as the waiters and waitresses, who where all Chinese people by the way, wore flamboyant rainbow sombreros, which I must admit still looks strange even after that tunnel to Pudong.

The next day Phoenix and I went to a place called Yuyuan Gardens and Bazaar. The bazaar was as bizarre as any in China, and I still had problems bargaining successful for fake merchandise so I didn’t really buy anything, but the old mansion gardens we strolled through were quite pleasant except for the one section they had filled with tacky cartoon characters including a pirated, and poorly drawn, version of Mickey Mouse. The rest of it, with its feng shui waterfalls, zig-zaging bridges, and harmonious hallways, was very beautiful and soothing, and would be a great environment setting for a game of Counter Strike if they ever did a world tour version of the game.

That night, Phoenix, myself, and some of the Westerners, went out to a popular night club called Windows filled with Jamaican inspired imagery. Shanghai is known as a party city, even in Indiana Jones movies, but for the most part it just seemed like any other club I’d seen in Asia or North America. I had tried to go out the first night I was there, but unfortunately the two Western couples (one of which wasn’t a couple, but acted like one) I was with, started bickering after one drink and everyone went home in a huff. They were gone by this time, though, so it was more enjoyable, and had the added intrigue of being Phoenix’s first time in a night club and so I got the joy of watching the poor sheltered Chinese girl’s jaw drop in amazement of what actually goes on in such places. Ah, the mask of innocence eh?

The ladies of Nanjing

Nanjing,

I arrived in Nanjing via the midnight train from Beijing. In China they generally separate train seats into “hard-sleepers” and “soft-sleepers.” While the hard sleeper sounds like they put you on a wood board and call it a bed, like at the residence in Tamkang, it apparently isn’t really so bad. During Chinese New Year’s Season though, you’re lucky to get any seat you can, so I basically had to go for the more expensive soft-sleeper. Basically it was me and three elderly Chinese riding in a 4-bed cabin that was as cozy as you would expect in the most populous country on Earth.

Nanjing itself is a world different than Beijing. Here, the Soviet-inspired imagery here is limited to the museums and memorials, notably the Martyr’s Memorial. Nanjing seems to have been a part of China’s embrace of rampant capitalism (though don’t ever tell them that ;)). I stayed at a hostel in the Fuzimiao district; a district that was originally an enlarged temple complex but has now become a shopping extravaganza where you can buy Pepsi brand sneakers and glazing neon drinks that are as bright as the lights dancing atop the old-style roofs. The area is laced with canals, fed with water from the nearby Yangtze, and surrounded with the white-painted walls that give it the feel of the Mediterranean done Asian-style. On one section, there are two lit dragons, who dance to same Mando pop song that is played constantly by the fashion boutiques in the area, a song that ironically has become known as “miao ger” (temple song) in Nanjing, due to people hearing it here.

The hostel was on the top 3 floors of a 4-story building with a restaurant and art shop in the basement, the canal floating by immediately beside it. I never actually went down the canal on any of the boats for rent, but I saw a few people doing this. Some of my Chinese friends told me, when I brought up the subject of the canal, which I thought, looked cool, that they didn’t see what was so special about it, but it was a popular suicide spot. I guess Taiwan and China do have a lot in common.

My first days in Nanjing were spent getting used to being there and hooking up with Sharon, Alice, and their friends. Sharon and Alice, by the way, are two friends of mine that I knew from beforehand, Sharon being an exchange student to Canada a couple years back and Alice being an old friend of Sharon’s to whom Sharon gave my MSN. Most the friends they brought were coworkers including Sharon’s boyfriend who also happened to be her manager (can’t imagine how that is for office politics, hehe). I met up with them on Saturday and we went to a museum or two and poked around Nanjing University, their old alma mater. Nanjing U is in the center of the city, but still has a lot of green space and those elusive ivy covered halls, only with oriental trims. BU also has an exchange agreement with them, and I was quite torn between going to Nanjing or going to Tamkang, choosing Tamkang in the end because of its Communication department (which, as it turns out, I have no use for whatsoever because they actually don’t teach in English even though they say they do). Of course, before coming to China, I had no idea that Tamkang U would be a bit of a joke, while Nanjing U was actually something of a Chinese Harvard, known throughout the country as a great university (probably explaining why it wasn’t as desperate as Tamkang for a foreign student). Luck of the dice I guess.

After eating pizza with pie crust at a Hawaiian restaurant called Aloha, I headed back to the hostel where I hooked up with the Anglo-Saxon Global Community (i.e. the assortment of English speakers from the hostel) for a trip to the 1912 club district, though we ended up going to a teahouse on the advice of the charming hostess Summer (Chinese people always choose interesting English names) who came along and smiled in confusion as the Aussies, Americans, English, and Canadian (i.e. me) laughed at each other’s accents. The tea was nice though.

On Sunday, Sharon and Alice and friends took me to the Olympic stadium, so-named because of the national Chinese Olympics (a sort of “China Games,” if you will). The games were big enough to warrant the construction of a brand new stadium, complete with giant red arches you could almost use to walk across the stadium, and the newest, and cleanest, subway system I have ever laid eyes on (They even use poker chips for tokens, awesome!). While we were originally intending to go there for a jolly old game of badminton, the gym was closed so we headed for a nearby park shaped like all the provinces of China and complete with botanically accurate agricultural design and miniature monuments that only the Chinese would recognize. The Nanjing crew decided to rent some 2-person bicycles, ostensibly to calmly patrol the park in. We tried this for the first few minutes, while Sharon calmly introduced the features of the park, but then I remembered the old game we used to play at sailing camp with the 2 person boats. Thus “bicycle pirates” was begun, with a few new rules (i.e. snatching your opponent’s tuque rather than pushing them overboard). The park was definitely a lot less tranquil after that, but I haven’t had so much childhood fun in years.

During the week, the Nanjing crew had to go to work, so I spent more time hanging out with the folks from the hostel. I taught a few people to play Chinese Chess, and someone finally explained to me how to play Go properly. One British guy, a Cambridge graduate and a bit of an egotistical blowhard insulting my English pronunciation, gave me plenty of unasked for advice on pool and other games. In the end though, I beat him each and every time at each and everything we played, including Chinese Chess, Go, and even his beloved pool. Take that, Cambridge Wanker!

For sightseeing, I went to a place called purple mountain (Zhijishan) with a bunch of temples, Sun Yat-sen’s Mausoleum, and some earlier Ming Tombs. Nanjing after all, whose name means “Southern Capital” just like Beijing means “Northern Capital,” has been the capital of China on numerous occasions, including a time with the Ming, and another time during the reign of the ill-fated Republic of China founded by Sun Yat-sen and moved to Taiwan by Chiang Kai-shek. As a result of its capital heritage, its not surprising that there are a few sites hanging around, although a lot of things, like the Palace were leveled by the Japanese back in the 2nd world war. Still, on Purple Mountain there are few things worth seeing, like the pagoda that makes you so dizzy when you climb it that you get vertigo at the top next to the railings that were designed for the safety of a person half of your size. What’s not so great though, are the tacky amusements that they have here and at popular tourist attractions across the country, like a “Bridge park” and “Slide Park” that you’d have to pay to cross a 20 foot bit of water. You also have to pay to go to a park with islands that you can walk around, a lake. Like many places in China, this area seemed to have an unhealthy obsession with numbers, proudly displaying the metric circumference of a tree and its number of pine needles while neglecting to say why we should give a damn about the tree in the first place. They could at least tell one of those interesting historical tidbits, like some say the Emperor saw this tree in a dream and it inspired him to win the a battle or name a magical chicken to be his advisor or something.

The most notable places were the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Palace (the Taiping were a group of anti-foreigner rebels who took over the Southern half of China during the nineteenth century, picking Nanjing as their capital), the Martyr’s Memorial, and the Memorial to Nanjing Massacre. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Palace had plenty of the now-celebrated Taiping’s memorabilia, including rusty swords and flimsy rifles, as well pictures of the Allied western and Qing forces that ultimately crushed them. The Taiping Palace also had a nice tranquil oriental garden that you can walk through after you finish looking at the old style uniforms.

The Martyr’s memorial is a Washington-Soviet style monument hidden amidst a string of half-finished museums, which are clearly after-thoughts. If you actually manage to find the main memorial though, it it’s a pretty imposing sight. Big gates and flat plains, obviously meant to leave a lasting impression. Inside the main museum complex itself, an arching Maoist monolith, are biography after biography of young communists during the Nationalist era who were executed or massacred for speaking against the government during Chiang Kai-shek’s reign. Technically of course, this doesn’t necessarily make them martyrs, but they definitely did more by the age of 23 than I did, and clearly were to act as role models for today’s Chinese elementary schooler who no doubt field trip through the place in droves. Granted though, as with any museum painted with the brush of the Communist Party, whom like their Generalissimo adversary Kaishek have hardly been ones to shy at the brutal massacre of their political opponents, it makes you wonder how much is true, or whether these martyrs would like the route that the “realization of their socialist dreams” has taken. The Museum carried a lot of personal items, like So-and-so’s high school abacus.

The Memorial of the Nanjing Massacre though, where I went with Sharon, was the most touching monument that I have ever visited. As this tragic event is probably one of the first things Westerners at least think of, when they hear the word Nanjing, meaning any visit to Nanjing should be accompanied with a visit to Asia’s Auschwitz. The Memorial is on the site of one of the burial pits of the victims of the massacre, perpetrated by the invading Japanese Imperial armies during the 30s and 40s. The museum has an open-air square feel to it, as you walk around outside and around post-modern statues, including one of the American-Chinese author Iris Chang of The Rape Of Nanking. The burial pits themselves are surrounded by glass, and the skeletons are clearly marked. The piles of bones are like something you’d expect to see in a film but not in real life. After Kai-shek and his cronies fled Nanjing before the advancing Japanese, locking in all the capital’s residents behind him while telling them to fight until they’re “broken as jade,” the Japanese came in and raped and massacred over 300 000 people. Horrific to say the least, as anyone can tell from the bodies, some of which have railway ties in their skulls and bayonet wounds around their private areas. While many of the Westerners thought a Japanese tourist that showed up here would be fighting for their life, the building had everything translated into Japanese (as well as Chinese and English), so they must come occasionally. Actually, I was impressed with how much stuff they had gesturing to improve relations with Japan: including notes that the Japanese populace had no idea of the atrocities being committed by their government, coverage of the post-war tribunals and the statement that the main perpetrators had all been found guilty and hung in Tokyo, and a photograph of one the Japanese soldiers who committed the massacre but then repented his sins in a book and a donation to the memorial. At any rate, it is quite clear why Japan still has some trouble with relations with its Asian neighbours to this day.

To change to a happier note, my time in Nanjing also coincided with Chinese New Year’s itself, China’s most vibrant festival. While it is commonly visually associated with people dancing in dragon costumes, for me it was more about the fireworks. The Chinese invented fireworks, and to this day they still like to go freak’n nuts with them. Nanjing sounded like Iraq on the first night, with gunpowder going off all over the city, even from the balconies of apartment hi-rises. In the streets, people hold them in their hands and fire them over their neighbour’s houses. In one park we went to, there was literally a firecracker minefield, with people holding them in their hands and throwing them around baton, all while having a cigarette. Firecracker smoke filled the city, which during the day had been completely clear of smog, and even had bright blue skies. Alice, whom I spent the first day of Chinese New Year’s (aka Spring Festival) with along with her family, had a cousin who was a nurse and had to leave the supper early to work. I’m sure you can imagine why.

Alice and her family were great. There were about 16 people crammed into a tiny apartment, but enough food to feed 2000. Her grandfather seemed like quite the character, a ninety-year-old who remembered Shanghai from its, and his, colonial glory days before the war. He could only speak a little English though, and spent most of the evening trying to feed me tiny but juicy oranges, which I couldn’t peel for the life of me. Alice’s uncle proved to me that Chinese people, when they want to, do know how to drink. The leather-jacketed guzzler downed glass after glass of rice wine (at least 60% proof in case you’re wondering) to shouts of COM PEI!! laughing as I struggled with mine. This was of course, BEFORE, we went to go set off the fireworks. Alice and I then went back to the hostel, where they were having a party of their own, with people dancing on pool tables and shooting firecrackers around the lobby. The next day, I went to Sharon’s for a somewhat more sedate, as she lives on a military base, but equally large meal. Sharon’s father was away for New Years, and her mother left with a male friend to go play cards so Sharon and I shot firecrackers over supposedly abandoned warehouses. I have to admit to I felt a little foolhardy standing with a fire-cracker in my hand and firing gunpowder over PLA buildings, but it was the Chinese person’s idea not mine!

I should really take the time here to mention how absolutely insane Chinese people are with fireworks. Most people say you shouldn’t travel in China during Chinese New Year’s (because of all the people on the road, but then its not really a problem so long as you’re prepared to plan a little bit in advance), but I say you should travel through China during Chinese New Year’s just to see how completely and unequivocally loony the locals are when it comes to fireworks. It was really one of the wildest experiences of my life. Before dark, in the middle of the afternoon of Chinese New Year’s Opening Day, the gunpowder explosions began, as kids tossed firecrackers in the street and others launched fireballs from the windows of their apartment complexes, often at other apartment complexes. At first the sound of rat-tat-tat-tat and BOOOM! Might make you think the city was under attack, but no there’s no social revolution underway just a billion or so Chinese people, with matches or lighters in one hand and a considerably lethal amount of gunpowder in the other, celebrating their union in the conception of the Year of the Dog with screaming Roman Candles, showering Chrysanthemum bursts, and the occasional scorched limb. From crowded back alleys and idle construction sites to 75th floor apartments and wherever you happened to be sleeping, the exploding majesty continued. On this night in particular, Alice and her family took me to a place where a particularly fearless company of revelers had gathered. People stood by the side of the road while ongoing traffic, crazy on most days, added dodging flaming carbon balls to hazards of Chinese driving. While a Westerner would runaway from a firework when lit, the Chinese will literally hold it there hands or toss them back and forth like a form of kamikaze rhythmic gymnastics. One woman, with a roman candle on each finger, walked out into the middle of the street, firing at the swerving motorists like a deranged sorceress taking revenge on modern science. In a nearby construction site, where people formed a mass against one wall and fired into the pit like a poorly trained unit from the Napoleonic Wars. They had some police there with megaphones saying things, supposedly keeping order, though my ears were ringing so much that they’d have better luck communicating with me in Morse code. And in amidst the fireballs, in the center of the action with burning cardboard and sparking rockets shooting about all around them, stood a group of about six men on their own, casually having a smoke. Despite the hell breaking loose in the streets and sky around them, they were as relaxed as a beach in the Cayman Islands, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if they cranked out the Mah Jongg board, right then and there, and had a game.

For their part, that’s how the Chinese treated everything. To them, there was nothing completely insane about this New Year’s tradition of explosions and the odd dismemberment, despite my frequent exclamations of “Holy Shit! Chinese People are Fucking NUTS!!” For my part, I predicted Alice’s cousin, who was nurse, would be in great demand in the next few days, and with a greater accuracy than Nostradamus might prediction came true within an hour as she was called back to work. “Hmm, I wonder why?” I joked.

The next day, we were watching a News Recap of the New Year’s Events. (like Japan, the Chinese also have cultural shows on New Years, including a fascinating one with over 1000 performers and dancers, but its hard to watch TV when you have a city gone mad playing with fire right outside your door, at all hours of the night). But anyway we watched the recap on China’s only English television network, which is strange in its own way, and it was one of those shows where the anchorwoman with her trademark smile talks on happily about how festive and celebratory everything is and how much fun everyone is having, while switching on a dime to a face of mourning as she announces how many people have now been rushed to hospital as result of going a little too crazy with the festive celebrations (perhaps though, this is China’s latest population control measure). They had another interesting segment, as it was the beginning of the Year of the Dog, about the increasing number of pet owners in China, which they chose to title (and I kid you not) “Dogs – They’re not just for good eats anymore”

For my birthday (as it turns out I was practically born on Chinese New Year’s, so I can choose to be a Pig or a Dog depending on my mood), the Nanjing gang took me out clubbing in the 1912 district, first to a rather noisy dance bar with impressive flashing lights but surprisingly little in the way of a dance floor. The Chinese tend to prefer to come to these places to see and be seen sometimes more than dancing, and often play dice games while destroying their ability to hear. They eventually started dancing in the aisles, because there was nowhere else to shake it, but we moved on to another club with a more reasonable floor and got jiggy with it there. The evening was going great until one of Alice’s co-workers, in his drunken stupor took this opportunity to express his love for her, despite the fact that she showed no signs of returning the sentiment. Why he chose this moment, when he had months of time before to make the announcement, is anyone’s guess, perhaps he thought having a foreign guy on the scene was a bit of a threat, I’m not sure. As Alice wanted to leave, I escorted her out (Sharon had already left some time earlier), but he followed us until we were able to convince him to take a cab home. The guy had been a good friend of Alice and the announcement came as a bit of a shock to her, and his pushiness really made her worried about going back to work after the break, but hopefully the guy will realize what an idiot he was and apologize.
Alice and I still had a good time though. Having left the party, we went back to the hostel for a bit to join the festivities there, and all in all I had a very good birthday. Before going to Shanghai, Alice and Sharon and their friends (minus the drunken coworker) took me out for dinner, and even bought me a cake. They really went a long way to show me a great time, and I hope one day to be able to repay them. If you’re reading this, thanks for everything Sharon and Alice!