My Journey To Shanghai China

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My Journey To Shanghai China

May 7, 2009

shanghai-night “You are Satan. I am Angel. Therefore, our story will be one of Satan and the Angel.”

From day 1, she had it all figured out. Flora, the impossibly cute Chinese girl who would be my guide for the next week in Shanghai, sized me up in an instant.

Looking back at her through my trademark big black avaitor sunglasses, curiosity struck.

“And why am I Satan?”

“Becaaause…” she paused, rocking back as if examining a painting, “…you looka like… a Satan.” she giggled, as most Chinese girls do, covering her mouth with her hand.

Fair enough.

Maybe it was the shades. Maybe it was the suit. It didn’t matter – this girl was bursting personality from the seams and had the looks to match.

In China, some of the older folks have a word for guys like me: gui lo, or… “white devil.”

A couple hours earlier my plane touched down in Communist China… home to over 1.3 billion souls, over 20 million in Shanghai alone. Uniqueness is an illusion. This is the kind of country where even if you’re a one in a million, it means there’s still 1,300 people just like you.

And after a 14 hour flight stretching 7,050 miles through negative 85 degree temperatures around the North Pole, down through the vast pointlessness of Siberia, over Japan, and finally west to China… I had no idea what to expect.

The differences of being on the other side of the world were apparent before I even got there.

On the plane, the sweet relief of night time never comes. You’re literally following the movement of the sun around Earth. No matter where you are, it’s always noon.

To help pass the time, I watched a Chinese movie called “Fit Lover” – it’s about an awesomely attractive Chinese girl visited by God who gives her a magical Toyota that teleports her to 12 guys who are supposedly the loves of her life, sent from The Big G Himself. She’s supposed to experience each guy in turn then make a decision as to who to spend the rest of eternity with among the stars in heaven.

…At least that’s what I think it was about.

Hunger struck early and often. Airline food jokes aside, the fact is when you’re starving at 38,000 feet you greet whatever they throw at you with ravenous eyes. Our choices on the last leg of the flight were pizza or some kind of noodley substance. Most of the Americans, including myself, took the pizza. Funny – American girls had their pizza with diet coke; like somehow the diet coke makes it “OK” to gorge whatever’s around. My decision to take the pizza wasn’t cultural; it was survival. When you’re not sure where or how your next meal is coming, calories are your best friend.

As we neared the Shanghai international airport, I opened my window to catch a glimpse of the landing. Such a thick haze enveloped the runway, you couldn’t see a thing until maybe a hundred feet off the ground. Suddenly the fog clears and you’re doing 150 mph down the tarmac struggling desperately to slow down.

And what’s this? Little spurts of grass poked out between the runway pavement cracks, and just over the fence appeared to be a… farm?

Yes. Actual crops thrived just beyond the airport gates in a field that seemed to stretch back to infinity, all set against an alien grey haze. What the hell am I doing here? I must be losing my mind.

Stepping off the plane into the gigantic Shanghai Pudong airport, I expected to get caught up in a chaotic rush of confused travelers scrambling to get wherever they were going because, like everyone else, they only had 5 minutes to get there or else life as they knew it would end. Think about that scene on “Home Alone” where the McAlister family runs through Chicago’s O’Hare airport and you’ve got a good idea of the thoughts weighing on my mind.

But once I got in there, their airport was the most calm, tranquil scene I could’ve possibly imagined. No rushing families. No crammed spaces. Hell, no noise. We just calmly walked down the cavernous fancy hallways and onward to customs.

Ah, customs. You’ve been through customs’ 7 circles of hell, haven’t you? Most of us here in the United States are all too familiar with this little experience.

In the Land of the Free, you’re x-rayed, stripped, searched, and questioned by a burly balding guy authorized to cuff and drag off anybody who even makes the wrong joke in his presence (we know this because there’s a sign posted clearly indicating so.) His first instinct is to assume you’re up to no good, eye you suspiciously, and not believe anything you say without documented proof.

And that’s if you’re a slender, white, gainfully employed, corn-fed midwesterner.

So I wasn’t sure what to expect here with Chinese customs. But it turns out…

In Communist China, they ask no questions.

In Communist China, they don’t make you take off your shoes and they believe you when you tell them there’s nothing important in your bag.

In Communist China, cute customs girls dressed in red and gold suits and high heels greet you with a smile and, after they stamp your passport, say “Hope you have good time!” with a big smile. A real smile.

“What is this place,” I wondered.

Flora met me just outside the international arrivals gate. Dressed in a small skirt, red coat, knee-high leather boots, and a little black sun hat, she was the very picture of cuteness.

“How long does it take to get to the hotel?” I asked her.

“Umm… 10 minutes.”

I asked about a few other things. She stared at me blankly.

“Did you understand what I said?”

She shook her head, smiling.

“Which words did you not understand?”

She considers for a moment. “All,” she giggles.

Maybe this wasn’t going to be so easy after all. Still, despite the language issue Flora was the perfect guide. Small and unassuming as she may be, she navigated us among the hordes of people as precisely as a computer and without fear.

As we left the airport, I could see a completely unobstructed landscape for the first time since St. Louis. Gazing up at the hazy yellow sky hanging over Shanghai I half-expected to see 2 suns, a la Star Wars. It was a different world. And the Maglev bullet train shot us through it at 300 miles per hour. Never before had I witnessed land move by so fast.

The train took us as far as it was gonna go. Then through a series of taxis and what had to be half an hour later we arrived at my hotel, Eversunshine Hotel in the Pudong financial district. (aside: That’s something I noticed a lot there in China – a hotel called Eversunshine, a bank called Everbright Bank – endless commercials with happy smiling people just like the customs girls who hoped I have a “good time.” Where were all the miserable people we here in the Land of the Free had been conditioned, er… “brought up” to believe?)

I unpacked and got settled as the sun set. Flora and I went out on the town that night to get a feel for the area.

The first thing I noticed was all the escalators, especially outdoors. I explained to Flora that in the states we mostly only have escalators indoors and only in large malls. She said, “Everybody is lazy here. All they want is to sit around and sleep all day. Nobody use the stair. Everybody use the escalator.”

Hmm, ok.

This was the first night time I’d seen in 24 hours and I was absolutely famished.

“Where can a guy get some good Chinese food around here?” I asked, all-proud-like of my cleverness.

The joke was lost on her. She took me to a great place near Shanghai’s version of New York’s Times Square. It’s a place where they sit you down next to other people, so right beside us sat another couple as if we all knew each other. A little strange at first, but they were some of the friendliest people I’d ever seen.

I browsed the menu. In between the entries for pig intestines and… “Jew’s ear”… I found my bliss in a little roast duck and a delicious soup. Flora threw around a bunch of Chinese at the waiter and before too long, plate after plate after plate of stuff kept arriving at our table.

“Geezus, what all did you order?!”

She giggles, and sounds out the words, “I am little eating machine.”

How a 5 foot girl weighing 92 pounds could be an “eating machine” seemed to me physically impossible. But there she was, polishing off no less than 5 plates of… whatever it was we ate. I say “we” because no matter what I ordered, it was her style to offer me a good chunk of what she ordered as well. God only knows what I was putting into my body, but thankfully most of it was good.

It didn’t stop there, either. Good food was almost everywhere I went in China. And unlike its American counterpart, none of it was greasy, oily, or had any of that soy aftertaste. No MSG. If it didn’t come from the ground, it wasn’t in the food. No wonder these people were so thin. No wonder Flora was a 92 pound eating machine. With food like that, they didn’t even have to TRY. It also helped that many people walked or rode bikes everywhere. Compare that to the midwestern U.S. where you can’t even go to the store without a car – you’d die of starvation before you even got there. Being an ad guy, I paid special attention to the ads; I never once saw a weight loss ad the entire time I was over there.

This also included the food at Eversunshine Hotel. I’ve stayed at plenty of hotels in the states where “Continental Breakfast” meant 2 dry bagels and a plastic thing of orange juice. Not here. The first morning when I took the elevator downstairs to the dining room (yes, “dining room”) I was astounded with what lay before me: fully catered service in silver – everything from fresh eggs cooked right there by a real live dedicated cook, to a selection of meats, salads, breads, fruits, and desserts. Go ahead, take whatever and however much you want. Every day. The stuff was so thorough, I seldom ever had to eat until the very end of the day… even after walking upwards of 4 to 5 miles. And if it hadn’t been for Flora stuffing me fuller when we ate out, I probably could’ve even done without that.

Oh, and my room? For the price of a 2-bit rat hole in the United States, I got set up in a full-blown suite at Eversunshine Hotel – complete with full kitchen, living room, and stairs leading up to my bathroom and bedroom.

Here, see for yourself:

hotel1
My concrete bed

hotel2
My 5 liter jug of “survival water” and kitchen, complete with stove

hotel3
It’s bigger than it looks. The glass shower (not really pictured here) was incredible.

hotel4
Inside my living room high above the city overlooking beautiful night-time Shanghai

The only thing about Shanghai is everyone’s afraid of the water. Seriously, afraid. In fact there are actually signs posted reminding you not to brush your teeth with it and especially never to drink it. The only thing it’s good for is bathing. But that’s no big deal because down across the street at the local store you can pick up a 5 liter bottle of water for like 80 cents. Super cheap and lasts a week. Perfect.

Flora had work the first 2 days so this was my time to poke around and check out the Chinese manufacturing gold rush I’d heard so much about back home. So my first day, I set out to explore the Shanghai Pudong financial district just south of the Huangpu River. Ultimately my destination was the Oriental Pearl TV Tower I’d first seen photographed in an issue of GQ magazine.

Being so out of place and such a… white devil… I expected everybody on the street to shoot me strange looks. But interestingly, that didn’t happen UNTIL I went out with the camera around my neck. I might as well have been wearing a glowing green moonrock for all the attention it got.

“My god, you have such big fancy camera,” Flora gushed whenever she noticed my camera. Hmm, maybe that’s why everyone got all touchy feely around it. Oh well. I went on letting them believe what they wanted. Little did they know it was big because it was old, not because it was fancy (8 years – an ancient artifact in digital time)

Strolling down the streets in Pudong, I noticed everybody had on these medical surgical masks. “Why?” I wondered. Then I remembered the whole SARS thing from a few years ago. Oh shit. Do they know something I don’t? Am I the only idiot walking around in broad daylight unprotected from some weird pathogen? Fuck. I covered half my face with my shirt collar, not unlike how little kids do when someone farts. As if that would spare my life in the event of biological contamination.

A few minutes later, after hacking up dirt and noticing all the little dust storms swirling about the streets, it finally hit me: the construction. Flora told me they’re building so much stuff all the time, landscape around here changes almost monthly. With that comes a hella lotta dirt.

Hence the masks, idiot.

I walked about half a mile, right by the big glass skyscraper Flora pays an unbelievable $150 per month to call home. Ironically enough called the “Tomson Centre”

tomson_center

The traffic lights in Shanghai, I discovered, are not so much commands, as they are indicative of a much larger existential truth. In America, the little green man means “go” and the little red hand means “stop.” Simple enough. Not so in Shanghai. In Shanghai, the same little green man means “According to our calculations, you are less likely to get smacked by a random bus now than you were a minute ago” and the little red hand means “Instant remorseless roadkill. Do not pass Go, do not collect 200 yuan.”

About a mile and a half further – past Citibank – past KFC, Dominos Pizza, McDonalds and some building resembling a giant can opener, I arrive at my destination:

pearltvtower
The Oriental Pearl TV Tower: Shanghai’s Giant Phallus

Actually, it’s a lot bigger than it looks, even in my photo above. Right next door was a Subway, selling the cheapest sub sandwich I’d ever seen in my life:

subway_china
15 yuan for a 6-inch sub means $2.00, folks. Try getting that price here in the states. Oh, and there’s no sales tax in China either. You give them a 20 for this, you’re gettin’ back 5. Simple as that.

Apparently there was some kind of Expo Shanghai had been chosen for in 2010, so you saw this little blue smiling mascot guy everywhere you went. Outside the Oriental Pearl TV Tower, they had huge models of him set up all over. A lot of people liked to get their picture taken next to him. People like this girl here:

expo_shanghai
Yes, they all mimicked his pose

The rest of the day was spent up high in the TV tower and otherwise sauntering around the Pudong area, soaking in as much sun and breeze as I could coming off the Huangpu River. Seeing the sun hang there in the sky was a stark reminder of the fact everyone I knew back home was tucked away in their beds at this very moment, fast asleep, a whole world away. But everything here burst with life. Chalk it up to one of those obvious facts “everybody knows” but it never really hits you until you’re right there, experiencing it for real.

The next day after my amazing breakfast, I got dressed and headed out at 8:30am feeling fresh as a cool spring. My destination? The Shanghai Museum of Science and Technology:

shanghai_science_museum

This place is the St. Louis Science Center on steroids. The exhibits were actually *gasp* fun, and there was so much to do I spent the entire morning and afternoon there. It had some of the same stuff (I saw an IMAX of the moon) – but most I’d never knew existed. They had a huge computer set up to do 3d scans of your head, which they then pass along to some robots to make 3d wax sculptures… of you… which you can then buy for around $80. They had computers for kids, programmable robotic arms, robots that played musical instruments, and you could even go head-to-head against a robot in a contest of archery. They had full size TV green rooms where you could record yourself in any environment doing anything you wanted. Full size nature environments simulating caves to crawl through and miniature mountains to climb. Huge backlit vats of water suspending all sorts of aquatic life as if in some kind of mad scientists laboratory.

girl_archery
Girl archer versus robot archer: robot wins

dancing_robot
The robot dances better after he’s knocked back a few

That evening I went home and took a nap, utterly exhausted. Flora was supposed to come over and meet me after work but I couldn’t get ahold of her. I’d get some weird tone on the phone, then a recorded Chinese woman trying a bit too hard to pronounce her English came on the line, “We ah sahrry but dee persohn you ah trying to reach is OUT OF SEHRVICE AIREHA for dee mo-ment. Please try a-gain lahter.” (the capital letters are when her tone got oddly aggressive before calming down again)

Later the machine lady informed me that Flora’s phone was “power off.” Great, I thought. Totally unreachable. Oh well, I’ll go take a shower.

As I shed my clothes for shower time, the phone above the toilet rang. (yes, if you’ll remember from the photo earlier there was a phone right there – presumably so traveling businessmen didn’t have to “shit or get off the pot”)

It was the concierge lady, “You lika massage?”

I almost said no thanks and hung up but I stopped short. Hearing all the stories in the U.S. about Chinese “Happy Endings” and whatnot got me curious. So I decided to let this thing play out.

“Uhh. Sure, I love massages.”

“We send massage girl to you now. Ok?”

Awesome. Not only is this a full-blown suite but they send girls to your room at night whenever you’re just about to shower.

“But wait,” my logical brain took over, “I bet this costs money.”

So I asked, “Is this complimentary?”

“Yes. We senda massage girl to you now. Ok?”

Wait, that was weird. Maybe she didn’t understand me, “I’m just asking if this is part of the hotel service or does it cost extra?”

“280 yuan?” she said, phrased as a question. In China everything is negotiable. But I was hot, sweaty, dirty, and tired. Definitely NOT in the mood for dealing with this, let alone an unexpeced drain on what little cash I was carrying thanks to the ripoff currency exchange in Chicago.

“Uh, nevermind, I don’t want a massage.”

“We senda massage girl to your room now. Ok?”

Was this all she could say? Maybe if she said it enough times, most would cave, but with the intimate relationship I have with my money, I refused to back down.

Finally she got the message and ended the call, “Ok. Thank you. Good night. Hope you have good time.” Never again was I offered another massage during the whole stay. Fine by me. I continued with my shower, and yes, I had plenty of “good time” thank you very much.

The next morning, Flora’s number was still a no-show. “OUT OF SEHRVICE AIREHA for dee mo-ment” the robot operator lady harped at me over and over. I started to hallucinate. Around the 9th time, I half-expected her to add a “hope you have good time” on the end of it.

“Impossible. This has GOT to be bullshit,” I thought. Flora barely wakes up this early. Something’s gotta be up with her phone.

Sure enough, a few minutes later I made contact at last. Flora explained how much her phone sucks and how she needed to get a new one. No kidding. Said she’d wash, eat, and be there at ten. When I opened my door at 10:00am on the dot, there she stood in a little black tanktop, denim skirt and (another) set of knee-high black leather boots, these with a silver buckle at the top – good enough to grace the cover of any Maxim magazine in the world.

Her days of work were finally over and for the remainder of my time there, she’d completely dedicated every waking hour to me. Soon we were to leave for our first day of exploring together.

But before we left, she did something to me that would forever alter how I would be remembered in the minds of hundreds of Chinese women.

TO BE CONCLUDED IN PART 2…

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