Swinging Light, Engage: I finally got through the great firewall of China again

When I say today, I really mean yesterday.

Today we woke up pretty late, around 10ish, and received the plane tickets from Alex Vai’s mom who by sheer chance we ran into in a back alley in Shanghai.*

On the way out we passed a fruit vendor which was one of the few stores that happened to have pomelos in stock. A pomelo is a citrus fruit that can best be described as a mix between a grapefruit and an orange. It’s not nearly as bitter as a grapefruit but retains the zing of the orange. Our particular pomelo was greenish yellow – they normally have a yellowish rind. This is because the riping season for pomelos are typically after late summer. Nevertheless they are delicious.

Pomelo

Will also (foolishly) chose to buy a durian. Durians smell bad. I can best describe it as a stinking trash receptacle filled with rotting fruit with perhaps even a soggy leather boot topping the heap. They look spiky, hard, and dangerous from the outside but are yellowy and mushy on the inside. I decided not to eat any but the other three decided to delve further into the world of exotic fruits. The result, “it tastes like mashed potatoes and rotting flesh.” It looked gross enough from the outside. It’s a big fruit and they ate less than a quarter of it. It just wasn’t palatable. But it was rather humorous to watch Will dispose of it since the entire fruit was too big to be placed into the opening of the trash can. So he had to cut it into bits, much to the amazement of the rest of us and some other Shanghainese pedestrians.

Then we proceeded to walk around the city after realizing that we severely lacking in the fashionable aspect of life. We went to go shop for clothes in other words. Shanghai is superior to Hong Kong in the sense that it isn’t nearly as expensive, and it has a respectable selection to choose from.

We ate at a real restaurant this time, it was called Hangzhou Restaurant, we ordered a couple regional specialties, but I was a bit bummed when I learned that they were out of a particular dish that I was excited to order, mainly because it was one of the dishes on the menu that I actually knew how to order. Lunch was pretty good, and we left the restaurant satisfied and full.

On the way to dinner we passed another store that had some interesting shirts in them. I started smalltalking with the owner – a nice pleasant lady because I thought there was a chance that she would give us better deals. The prices were very reasonable to begin with anyways. She asked if we were foreign students studying at a local university (apparently there are a lot of those) and I said no, we were just Americans visiting the city. And then she asked me if I was born in China, and I said no, I was born in the states. And this is where I began lying. I told her that my mom was from Shanghai (in reality one of my grandmothers is from Shanghai). And then she started speaking in Shanghainese; I can only understand Mandarin. So I told her that I only understood Mandarin.

Speaking of Americans, the hawkers who plague the popular tourist attractions are unbelievably friendly. Sure they badger you into buying their fake Rolex watches or knockoff Prada handbags, but boy to they treat you like royalty if you tell them that you’re American. They will give you a thumbs up and say something like “I love Americans” That way you can walk off happy that they’ll give you a break, and both of you can walk off with a warm friendly feeling inside.

The way that hawkers great you is great, they spot you coming from 500 meters away, magically through a sea of people. Its almost as if they spot a long lost friend and they look you in the eye, might even point at you and say, “Hey friend, buy DVD, Rolex, shoes, watch?” Now there are a bunch of ways to try to shake them off and I’ll only offer two to you. One is that you ask them to sell you a bike. Who wouldn’t want something as practical as a bike in a big city like Shanghai.

Stacy, a fake name we made up for a hawker.

They’re pretty easy to store and get you around faster than walking. If you ever manage to get them to sell you a bike then hats off to you. Its really a win win situation. They sell you a product and you walk (or bike) off with something that might actually make your stay in Shanghai better. We tried to get them to sell us bikes but I don’t think they understood. The other way to get rid of hawkers is to buy dark sunglasses and a cane which are ridiculously easy to find in the roadside bazaars where hawkers lurk. You can just pretend to be blind, impervious to the things that the hawkers try to sell you. A foreign blind guy, preferably Italian, would be perfect, not knowing what they are saying in broken English nor being able to see what they have to offer.

We also went to the Pudong new area, travelling through the Shanghai MeTroRail, a freakishly clean subway system. The highlight there was definitely the observation deck on the Jingmao tower, the 5th tallest building in the world. In our travels we will also see the 1st tallest building in the world (the Taipei 101) and 2 other really tall buildings in Hong Kong.