Getting around in Shanghai has been interesting. As the most modern city in China, apparently the subway system is a little older. Apparently it also shuts down a little earlier too. Yesterday I tried to meet a friend of mine. As always, the maps belie true distance. Her hotel was a good 40km from mine. Seven stops away from the one near her hotel (this place was faaaaar) all of the sudden the lights on the train started blinking. Then they shut off. When they came back on an announcement was made in Chinese and all of the sudden everyone ran off the train. It was pretty freaky. But everyone seemed to be waiting on another train, so I waited as well. The next one came and two stops later, it happened again. This time everyone was leaving the station. Shanghai is a city of neon skyscrapers by night, but where this let me off was dark and run down looking. There were a ton of people on scooters and in vans running unlicensed taxi operations. The whole thing threw me through a loop. According to my GPS I was still about 20km away. The whole operation was a little unsettling as well. It's difficult to say why, but intuition was telling me that something about this wasn't entirely above board (I've been around a good bit of stuff that was decidedly under board).
Obviously none of these guys spoke English, so I was forced to show them the translation of the directions on my Google phone. It doesn't worry me so much letting licensed cab drivers hold the thing when I'm sitting right next to them, but despite a firm grasp, the six or seven sheisty Chinese dudes huddled around me could easily have swiped it. Beyond the fact that the thing is ridiculously expensive it's been priceless in getting me around. To lose it would make the trip vastly more difficult. To make things even more sticky, at the moment I was under the impression that there was a problem with my bank card which left me with only a modest amount of money, and Chinese hotels require a passport to check in so there's no way I could have utilized a credit card if worse came to worse. The situation was untenable and required more analysis to avoid making a stupid decision. Surrounded by people having a price war over how much they would charge to take me (it went from 100 yuan to 18) I fought my way back to the subway station to try and figure out what was going on.
There were four possibilities. The first was that there were technical difficulties. Immediately after the light outage this is what I had assumed. The second was that the maps were wrong and the line didn't go that far. Subway construction outpaces maps here and there was a sign which led me to believe that to be the case, so why not? The third was that the subway stopped running altogether at 9pm. The fourth was that it hopefully stopped running only in that direction. When I had left the platform there were still people standing on the side going the other direction. After regrouping my theory was that it was probably the last one. Eventually I found someone that spoke a modest amount of English and it turned out that I was right. So I chalked it up to a loss, called Jenny and headed back. It was a pretty scary thirty seconds and fairly worrying five minutes though.
Tonight on the way back to my hotel... it happened again. This time I was prepared for it mentally and simply went upstairs hailed a cab and ate the 16 yuan cab fare. My entire day was aimless traveling anyway which probably cost me 150-200 yuan so whatever. The day itself was interesting if not tedious at times. I tagged along with this girl from the trip to supposedly hang out in Suzhou and Haungzhou. Really, she had left stuff at some of her friends houses in those two places, wanted to get it and didn't have a firm grasp on the timing of the whole thing. But her friend in Suzhou hooked us up an insane lunch as a ridiculously sick hotel, I got to ride in a Ford and I got to see how upper middle class Chinese people live
Obviously none of these guys spoke English, so I was forced to show them the translation of the directions on my Google phone. It doesn't worry me so much letting licensed cab drivers hold the thing when I'm sitting right next to them, but despite a firm grasp, the six or seven sheisty Chinese dudes huddled around me could easily have swiped it. Beyond the fact that the thing is ridiculously expensive it's been priceless in getting me around. To lose it would make the trip vastly more difficult. To make things even more sticky, at the moment I was under the impression that there was a problem with my bank card which left me with only a modest amount of money, and Chinese hotels require a passport to check in so there's no way I could have utilized a credit card if worse came to worse. The situation was untenable and required more analysis to avoid making a stupid decision. Surrounded by people having a price war over how much they would charge to take me (it went from 100 yuan to 18) I fought my way back to the subway station to try and figure out what was going on.
There were four possibilities. The first was that there were technical difficulties. Immediately after the light outage this is what I had assumed. The second was that the maps were wrong and the line didn't go that far. Subway construction outpaces maps here and there was a sign which led me to believe that to be the case, so why not? The third was that the subway stopped running altogether at 9pm. The fourth was that it hopefully stopped running only in that direction. When I had left the platform there were still people standing on the side going the other direction. After regrouping my theory was that it was probably the last one. Eventually I found someone that spoke a modest amount of English and it turned out that I was right. So I chalked it up to a loss, called Jenny and headed back. It was a pretty scary thirty seconds and fairly worrying five minutes though.
Tonight on the way back to my hotel... it happened again. This time I was prepared for it mentally and simply went upstairs hailed a cab and ate the 16 yuan cab fare. My entire day was aimless traveling anyway which probably cost me 150-200 yuan so whatever. The day itself was interesting if not tedious at times. I tagged along with this girl from the trip to supposedly hang out in Suzhou and Haungzhou. Really, she had left stuff at some of her friends houses in those two places, wanted to get it and didn't have a firm grasp on the timing of the whole thing. But her friend in Suzhou hooked us up an insane lunch as a ridiculously sick hotel, I got to ride in a Ford and I got to see how upper middle class Chinese people live
View of Shanghai from the street on which I found some really good Chinese fast food. Wonton, but I'm thinking they'll do Jiaozi too and I just have to figure out how to ask. It's 24 hours, so it's my next stop in a minute.
Bamboo scaffolding. Unless it's a pretty big project they usually use bamboo for this.
The lobby of Jenny's friend's apartment building. It's reasonably nice but a little rough around the edges by American standards. The place is locked up security wise though. If you don't live there or don't have an invitation, you ain't getting in. It seems like there's a pretty firm divide between the lower class and middle/upper class. What also interesting is that these buildings look like projects from afar.
The desert I snagged at the ridiculous buffet lunch in Suzhou. Real tiramasu, not frozen stuff. That fruit tart was off the chain too. Wish I had snagged all of them. They were closing it down in five minutes so we did it up.
Oh, I got an ice cream cone too. They don't really do cones here.
Oh, I got an ice cream cone too. They don't really do cones here.
What was weird was wondering about the living situation of the people who worked there and their families. I'm sure they can eat alright, but obviously never like this and it's not a huge leap to assume that some of the people working out of sight might have family that would kill to eat what we threw away. After the garbage I've been eating though, I tried not to think about it.
View of Shanghai from outside my hotel. Better pictures when I explore more.
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