(The Great Wall)
The Good:
- Sites - I travelled to Beijing my second weekend with my brother (on vacation) and SI, to see all the amazing historical sites - the Great Wall, Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Of course there is far more, and my brother, having arrived a few days before me and SI was also able to see the Summer Palace and a few other places, but I only had a weekend! The Great Wall was by far the highlight of the entire trip and we trekked along the Mutianyu section, which is less touristy and crowded than the more popular Badaling section. It was very cold (my feet froze in my Chuck Taylors), but we walked along for HOURS until hitting parts that were unrestored, where I managed to hit my head not once but 3 times. Things that made me laugh - a woman reading a guidebook for Tokyo (good luck finding the Wall in there lady!) and some dude running past us like a maniac, trying to get off the Wall as quickly as humanly possible. "The Mongols are coming!" my brother yelled after him. Try to resist purchasing the hideous panda hats and "I heart BJ" t-shirts sold by the nearby vendors. We also snuck in some sightseeing in Shanghai (what a cool and cosmopolitan city), including the markets, Jing'An Temple, Shanghai World Financial Centre (3rd tallest building in the world) and colorful Pudong skyline, The Bund and the French Concession area. Unfortunately, I did not get to see Yuyuan Garden, which was around the corner from the hotel, but perhaps another time.
(Shanghaiese Dumplings from Din Tai Fung)
- Food - I had excitedly asked a coworker who had been to Shanghai the year before about her experiences there prior to my trip to which she responded "Well first of all I hate Chinese food!" Awesome. But while there was some stuff that looked more like a Fear Factor challenge (see the ugly) than dinner, I had some delicious meals with my favorite being the mouth-watering, steamed Shanghaiese dumplings at Din Tai Fung - a famous chain and a must visit in Asia (we went twice). Other favorites were Shanghaiese food at Crystal Jade and Taiwanese food at Bellagio, both located in the Xintiandi neighborhood; Indian food at Tandoor in the French Concession; as well as our last dinner at the upscale Stiller's Restaurant on The Bund, which had a fantastic view of the skyline. In Beijing, we had a yummy hot pot dinner at Ding Ding Xiang (Hot Pot Paradise) that warmed our bones after our day on the Wall and a hearty breakfast at Grandma's Kitchen, which serves a large selection of American diner favorites (the skillets were very popular with the guys).
(Fabric Market and a bizarre Mandarin to English translation)
- Shopping - Shanghai is a shopper's paradise from high-end malls to markets and cheap custom tailoring. I spent most of my yuan at the 580 Nanjing Road Souvenir and Fake Market. I bypassed all of the fake Tiffany silver, belts, shoes and handbags for items made of beautiful Chinese silks, pashminas and other fun Asian inspired accessories! I did also purchase a couple bootleg Rosetta Stone sets in French and Spanish. The key is to bargain hard as the initial prices quoted by the vendors are eye-rollingly ridiculous. State your bottom line and walk out as you can find the same stuff elsewhere among the 3 floors of stuff. Oftentimes, the vendor will run after you, grab your arm and give you the price you want.
(Fortune Cookie from Hong Kong Airlines and a very special message)
- Air Travel - The first weekend I headed to Hong Kong with GQ, GTL and SI to visit friends and for some good food and nightlife. I booked the cheapest flight available on Hong Kong Airlines, a separate flight from the guys who booked later but somehow managed to get the same price. However, while their flight was on time, my flight was horribly delayed going there and coming back - leading to some highly inconvenient and uncomfortable situations. Just as the distribution of fortune cookies is a possible indication of a subpar Chinese restaurant, this should apply to airlines too (see photo above - love the fortune though)! The second weekend to Beijing, we flew China Eastern Air, boarded on time only to sit on the plane for 4 hours!! They even served us dinner while still on the ground! Passengers grew restless, with several screaming at crew members and storming off the plane. The Brazilian dude across the aisle from me sang out loud to his iPod, which provided some welcome comic relief. By some miracle, the flight back to Shanghai was on time!
- Cutting In Line - This seems to happen everywhere in Asia! In the airport, getting off planes, really anywhere a line exists - either get some backbone or get run over (this would also apply to crossing the street)! I was trying to get a taxi to go to the airport when some a**hole literally pushed me aside to get to the cab I had flagged down. I stood, infuriated and yelled "Motherf***er!", which caught the attention of the man who turned and looked at me with a shocked expression, but he still snaked my taxi. Days later we were standing outside the office in the freezing cold trying to get a taxi back to the hotel for a LONG time when some girl started running to get ahead of our group. I got my "hells no b**ch" attitude on and started running to the corner in heels and a pencil skirt with Mals not far behind me. When I got to the corner, I stood practically in the middle of the intersection and managed to wave down a taxi. But he didn't stop directly in front of me, rolling to a stop just past me and I saw another girl in the corner try and leap in. "Get in the cab" I screamed at Mals. She ducked into back seat the taxi seconds before the girl, who tried to get into the front seat. I ran towards the taxi and also hopped in the back and the girl was saying that she was there first. "Sorry!" Mals said abruptly and the girl conceded, shot some expletive our way as she exited and we instructed the driver to pick up Frenchie and Leesha. Not my finest moment, but no way was someone snaking my taxi twice!!
(M1NT Club, the site of our last night in Shanghai festivities)
- Lounge Singer - After a long and aggravating day at work, me, Frenchie, Mals and Leesha sat in the lounge of our hotel (The Renaissance Yu Garden) to grab some quick eats and a much needed drink! As we picked at fries, pizza, nachos and an assortment of other fried foods, the lounge singer and the piano player/back up singer wailed and chortled songs in both Mandarin and English - which did nothing to calm our already frayed nerves. Her voice, though not the absolute worst I've ever heard, was not really worthy of well - being paid. In addition, she managed to transform Sade's "Smooth Operator" into "Smooth Separator" and stumbled through a particularly painful rendition of "It's So Eady To Fall In Love", though I am willing to overlook this since I'm sure that if I were to try and sing ANYTHING in Mandarin it would get me executed in China for causing a public nuisance. Anyways, Frenchie loudly voiced her displeasure with the screechy serenade throughout dinner and I was afraid that Mals was going to throw things at the woman.
(Leftover pigeon heads from the roasted pigeon ordered by Slim and Skippy for lunch)
- Food - Team 1, who were in rural Shanghai had an awful time trying to find a lunch spot acceptable to all team members. The restaurants were VERY local and contained menu items that translated into slaughterhouse specials such as "pig tail surprise" as well as other delightful combinations of guts and organs that may be delicious to those raised on this cuisine but terrifying for dudes like GQ and GTL who were likely dreaming of the day they return home to mama's pasta. Bindi, a vegetarian - well, you can guess how she felt. No part of an animal is tossed out, but I guess with a population of over a billion people you need to get resourceful in order to feed everyone! Sake, used to consuming these types of delicacies, often ate separate from the rest of the team, while the others stuck to rice bowls at one particular restaurant. Team 2 and 3, located in the city did not encounter the same lunchtime challenges, with the "ickiest" thing encountered being the roasted pigeon. Apparently it tastes like chicken, but I could never eat the dirty birds that perch and poop on my window sill. Food safety is also something that should not be ignored by foreigners and in our attempt to be careful at the shady looking airport diner, we ended up ordering fried stuff and vegetarian club sandwiches, layered with white bread. When I complained about the lack of nutrition of our meal Mals declared "If the lack of nutrition was the ONLY thing wrong with that meal then we were lucky!"
- Hygiene - The public nose picking, ear digging, noisy bunching of phlegm and spitting was one of the more unpleasant and unavoidable aspects of China, but I began to be desensitized over the 3 weeks to these culturally accepted behaviors (and just to be clear, it's not everyone doing this). In an extreme case, in a taxi on our way to dinner, me and my brother had a driver that may be a leftover from the SARS epidemic of 2003. We sat aghast in the back seat as he coughed, hacked, spat and shot snot rockets out the window. I freaked out and turned to my brother and said "There is no way I am taking that receipt" I was not about to store a potential biohazard in my purse to be reimbursed $2! "Do you have exact change!" I yelled to my bro, who was thoroughly amused by my horror, as I plotted to toss the money into the front seat and escape the petri dish of a vehicle, where the germs of passengers were probably co-mingling and mutating to form the next great super bacteria!! We escaped with our lives - just barely!
- Bar Bathroom in Beijing - I still can't talk about this. But I would have never made it back to the hotel!
And then there's the weird:
Mals found this article in a Korean paper on our flight from Seoul to Shanghai, which cracked us up. We all survived the trip without requiring the services of Dr. Park and I would someday like to go back and see the sites I missed (Xian and the Terra Cotta Warriors) as well as some of the natural beauty of some of the other provinces. What an unforgettable trip and a great end to my time in audit.
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