POST 2 of 3 – (last week)
When I said that I had gone to play capture the flag last Sunday, I actually meant two Sundays ago. I’ve been extremely busy with classwork and planning travel. The Friday before this past Friday, we had to write and perform a play instead of having a test. Ours, which I’d rather not discuss the topic of (J), was fairly good. I played a Chinese mother/owner of a brothel, and won the prize for best actor (as well as doing fairly well in the best actress category too). That evening, I headed to the train station with 6 of my friends (coincidentally all girls: Persephone, Cory, Alba, Rona, Mae, and Fei), for a self-determined long weekend trip to Shanghai. We arrived around 10am on Saturday morning, and headed to our hostel. I had booked the hostel (Koala International Youth Hostel) online, and it exceeded my expectations. Despite the fact that it was a cab ride away from most of the interesting places, the rooms were great, with private bathrooms (better than most Chinese hotel rooms I’ve stayed in).
While some of the girls went shopping, I went with two of my other friends exploring the touristy area near the river known as the Bund. Shanghai, in contrast to Beijing, is a western-style city, and it feels more like a city you’d find in the west than in China. We walked down a popular shopping and tourist street called Nanjing Lu, being called to from every direction by street salesmen holding small pictures of products that could be obtained after following them to another location, “Watch, T-shirt, DVD?!?” Then, on the recommendation of a friend, we took a “ride” called the sightseeing tunnel. Expecting it to be interesting, we were disappointed and a little upset to see that our ridiculous 40 kuai ticket had bought us no more than a light show and a way to the other side of the river. We ascended to street-level to find the Oriental Pearl Tower, the tallest tower in Asia and 3rd tallest tower in the world. After looking around for a while, we walked back down to river, and walked around a little before heading to the subway and back across the river to go to the Old Town. Later, we went back to our hostel to get dressed up before heading out for a nice dinner and night on the town. We went to a Morrocan/Middle-Eastern themed restaurant and bar in the park next to the Shanghai Museum, where we met up with my friend Persephone’s friend who is studying in Shanghai and 10 of her friends. The dinner was expensive, but that’s Shanghai. Then we walked down to the Bund to go to some clubs. The first club, which supposedly had a great view, also happened to have a really high cover for guys. So, my friends said they’d only go up for 10 minutes to check out the view while I went across the street with two of the other guys we were with for a beer. (Of course, I forgot that when girls say 10 minutes they actually mean an hour.) An hour later, they showed up at the bar, and we had a few more drinks before heading to a techno/house club on the other side of town, complete with lasers, glow sticks, and fairly sketchy dancers.
The next morning we headed back to the old town, ate local specialty foods and explored a park. Afterwards, we headed back to the other of the river. While some of the group, went up the Oriental Pearl Tower (I was dismayed by the 150 kuai ticket price), I went for a walk with my friend Alba to a large and upscale mall and then down by the river. The mall was filled to the brim with western stores and prices, as well as a skating park and side Olympic event for children. (I had a good time playing in Toys ‘R Us for a while.) Then we hopped the subway back towards the People’s Square to look for a market. After walking around for a pretty long time, we met up with the others for dinner. Once it got dark, we walked back to the river and bought tickets for a boat ride. Meanwhile, my camera had been acting up all day, and a lot of my pictures didn’t come out properly.
On Monday, while the others went to the Shanghai Urban Development Museum, Alba and I went over to the French Concession (a largely French-influenced area with parks and shopping). We walked around for a while and then headed back towards the museum area to meet the others at the Shanghai museum. Then, we all went down to the Bund and bought kites from street vendors, flying them for a while by the river before cabbing it back over to the hostel and then to the train station for our return to Beijing. The soft-sleeper cabin that we had on the way back was really nice, and we got into Beijing on Tuesday morning just in time to be slightly late for our 8am class.
With our Do-It-Yourself (DIY) weekend approaching, we spent Tuesday night making phone calls, reservations, and plans. On Wednesday, I went to Zhongguancun (a big technology area near my school), to try to get my camera fixed and to look at new ones. Since it was purchased in America, they wouldn’t fix it.
Whatever the case, they had pushed our weekly test to Thursday since we had off on Friday for the DIY weekend, and I needed to go back to school to study and pack.
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