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My Journey To Shanghai – Part Deux

May 25, 2009

shanghai-day“Angel is good. But when Angel is bad, it’s a big bad.”

It was a warm Monday morning in Shanghai. Flora and I were about to head out for our first full day together when she stopped us short at my hotel room door.

“Wait wait,” she said, “Your hair is-a messed. Let me fix.” She grabbed something out of her little shiny black purse and stepped in close. So close I could feel her breath. So close I could notice every minute expression her adorable face revealed as she pinched and prodded her fingers through my hair.

In all of 10 seconds, her face told a complete story of her mysterious creation. She cycled between looks of concentration… surprise… and holding back laughter before finally settling on a mischievous mouth and innocent eyes.

“Okie, let’s go.” she said, hurriedly taking my arm.

“Woah, wait a second… what did you do to my hair?”

“I make-a you HANDsome,” she said wide-eyed, all innocent-like.

I played along. “I thought you said I was already handsome.”

“Mmm!” she smiled, nodding. (in Flora-ese this meant “yes”) Then she explained, taking careful time to fully pronounce each word, “You are a very handsome man, but here in Shanghai there are a lot of ladies. So I make-a you…” Her eyes squinted a playful seriousness, “…even MORE handsome.”

I’ll bet. We stepped into the elevator and I punched the button. Inside most of the wall was mirrored so I started turning around to assess the damage.

“No no no no no no no no no no no no!” Flora’s little mouth rattled off faster than a machine gun as she spun me back around, away from the mirror.

“Ohh, handsome, huh?” I said, slightly grinning at her with penetrating skepticism.

“Mmm! SO handsome!” She paused, before adding, “Most handsome man in the whole world!”

She was laying it on thick. This couldn’t be good.

I reached up to feel. But Flora was too fast. Just as my fingers grazed the hairline, she grabbed both my hands and pulled me in close. Our hips touched.

She knew how to keep my attention long enough. The elevator doors opened again and as we walked through the lobby, all bellhop eyes were on me. Strangely they only observed. No one smiled or threw even a fleeting glance of disapproval.

Out on the street, eyes followed me. Heads craned. A man passed us by only to double-take, looking back and grunting in utter confusion.

Before we got on the subway, I caught a look at myself in a bathroom mirror.

Flora had pinched up a wad of my hair with one of her pink hair pins. It stuck straight up in the air as if frozen by too much hairspray.

I looked ridiculous. But by now it had been like that for too long – there was no going back. And little did I know this little stunt of hers would come back to haunt me in ways I couldn’t possibly imagine.

Not only was I a tall white devil in a land of little yellow men and even littler women, but now I had this gender-bending symbol of cuteness permanently fixed atop my skull. Yet not a single person made fun of me. Maybe it was because the hotel staff were hired guns, paid to take my side. Maybe it was because I walked with confidence, straight and unflinching.

Or maybe… it was because I had on my arm one of the hottest Chinese girls in town:

flora
The little angel herself, clad in black “Satan clothes” (her words)

Our first stop was Yuyuan Garden, a 500 year old creation from the Ming Dynasty.

yuyuan_garden1yuyuan_garden2

To get to it, you cross a zig-zag bridge over a river of goldfish. Flora explained the bridge was built that way because Chinese legend has it ghosts can’t follow you into your garden of solitude if unless they have a straight path.

But it wasn’t ghosts that frightened Flora. As we descended deeper and deeper into the 5 acre garden maze, the passerbys thinned out and before too long we were the only 2 people in sight.

“Ummm…” she hesitated, “Let’s go ‘dis way.” Flora rounded the bin. The next thing I hear is a little shriek trailed by a whimper as she came running back to grab my arm.

I stuck my head around the corner. For whatever reason, a squad of rifle-toting Chinese police were coming straight at us. “Shit!” I thought, “What did we do to deserve this?”

Yanking Flora by the hand, we ducked into a nearby wooden building – waiting, until the heat died down. The cops marched by with a purpose, as if looking for someone. Thankfully, not us. I slid the door back and we made our way back out – across the street, and onward to the crowded marketplace of hustlers, pushers, and dealers.

They say Americans are the most marketed-to human beings on the face of the Earth. They’ve GOT to be wrong. On the marketplace streets of Shanghai, walk 12 steps or wait 7 seconds – it doesn’t matter. Because that’s all the time it takes before they hit you with the next pitch.

Beads, buttons, thread, cookies, crackers, and every piece of stereotyped Chinese factory reject goods you could possibly imagine. Take your pick, it was all there – like a bomb went off and products scattered everywhere.

One turn to the left, down an alley and Flora led me underground (yes, literally under the streets) where there hung every kind of knockoff you could dream of. Louis Vuitton bags. Dolce & Gabbana clothes, glasses, and belts. And of course, what chop-shop wouldn’t be complete without their very own Rolex watches. I compared their fake to my real. Amazing; nearly identical, except for the serial number hologram and the fact theirs was only gold plated.

In one of the small shops I found something I’d wanted for years. A few times in high school, a friend of mine would jokingly challenge people to find him “two jade monkeys by the next full moon.” Of course, no one could actually do it. But here and now 10 years later I stood underground the crowded streets of Shanghai, staring into the eyes of two of the most elusive jade monkeys this side of the Huangpu River.

I had to have them.

“How much?” I asked, turning them over to reveal a price tag that read 480 yuan ($70) for the first monkey, and 380 ($56) for the second.

“Geezus, this is highway robbery,” I complained to Flora. She turned to me and asked if I really wanted them. I told her the story of what they meant to me and she understood. She said “Okie, I get them for you.”

I was surprised and felt a little bad. This offer of kindness came from a girl who made less than $500 for a whole month. “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

“No no… you wait over there,” she replied, pulling me away from all the people, pointing outside. She had a look in her face. She was up to something. The little angel had a plan.

As I waited outside and fought off roving hordes of Rolex salesmen, Flora was at the counter twirling her hair, throwing around Chinese fast and furious. About 10 minutes later she emerged, holding a little paper bag.

“Two jade monkey,” she said, handing me the bag.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

She smiled, “It’s okie – 100 yuan for both.” She faced forward with an ever-so-subtle smile of satisfaction.

A hundred yuan was about 15 dollars. She’d knocked off over a hundred bucks. In the game of sales, negotiation usually starts at the first price anyone dares to call out. In this case, the price tags were meaningless – used only as a mental anchor on unsuspecting white devils like myself. Lesson learned.

jade_monkeys
Speak no evil, Hear no evil – my 2 jade monkeys

We moved on and I saw a lady demonstrating a spinning top that floated midair. I stood mesmerized as she demonstrated over and over. You spin the top on a magnetic base, then slowly raise it up into the air and it… just floats there, twirling. There weren’t many things I wanted out of those little shops, but I had to have this top – it was just too cool.

The price? 300 yuan. ($44)

“Bullshit,” I thought, tapping the attention of my little 5 foot Secret Negotiating Weapon.

“Can you get this for me?”

This time I had a front-row ticket to see the carnage up close and personal. Flora locked horns with the shopkeeper in a battle of Chinese, unintelligible to me. The sales lady gestured furiously while the little angel sat back, twirling her hair with a puzzled, innocent look. When the lady tired, Flora leapt up and struck back. Back and forth, back and forth. Escalating bitterness and hostility. Finally she took my hand.

“Go go… let’s leave,” she said, shooing us away.

“What’s going on? What happened?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder while slowly walking away with Flora, hand-in-hand.

“You’ll see,” she replied, stroking her hair and looking straight ahead.

With each step we got farther away from the shopkeeper and with each step the shopkeeper’s voice grew louder. Of course I had no idea what she was screaming at us, so I looked over at Flora. She was smiling.

“The lady just offered 150,” she said.

We took a few more steps. We now stood about 50 feet from the wild, screaming store owner.

“100,” Flora added, trying not to laugh.

We turned back and approached our opponent, who now wore grizzled eyes and carried a frayed voice. The angel took advantage and struck again – and again – with more Chinese, more wild eyes and more pointed fingers. Then she grabbed my arm, pulling me away.

“No! We go now.”

And again we marched down that street. Again to the same 50 foot marker. And again with the exhausted shop owner, hoarsely crying out at us from a distance.

It was here Flora stopped, dead in her tracks. “30 yuan,” she turned to me, smiling. “I think… this is good price,” she added.

I’d say. We left the shop that afternoon, top in hand, for a whopping $4.30 – less than 10% of the original asking price.

Flora was too good. Having her around was like being able to storm into any store in America, flailing your arms demanding 90% off everything – and actually get it, with compliments from the owner.

But now we were hungry. The negotiating joust sapped Flora’s strength so now we searched for a good place to eat. I scanned some nearby signs and saw a very familiar logo with some very unfamiliar scribbling.

It was Papa John’s – or in China, literally “Grand John’s.” We stopped in to check it out.

I wasn’t expecting too much. In the U.S, Papa John’s has good pizza but their actual establishments are about 2 notches down from “Pizza Hut” and 2 notches up from “rat hole.” Not here in Shanghai. At the door we were greeted by a nicely dressed hostess who took us to a quiet, comfortable booth in a cozy corner of the restaurant. We were served on porcelain China and ate with silverware and heavy cloth napkins. They even had the little silver spoons for your cappuccino (yes, cappuccino.)

Living up to her self-described reputation of “little eating machine” Flora ordered plate after plate of chicken wings, noodles, who knows what else. I just had a small pizza. And it was fantastic.

The price for all this? Less than $15.

mcdonalds_china
McDonalds in Shanghai – notice how all the burgers only have chicken

This was a trend in Shanghai. Papa John’s was a fancy sit-down, McDonalds actually healthy. The the only place that made me think twice was Burger King. On the wall there was a public health safety sign, the same kind we have here in America. The only difference here was their rating system: Smiley face for “Good”, Straight face for “So-so”, and a frownie for “Bad.” It was only until after I bit down into my mediocre chicken sandwich I noticed the straight-faced smiley hanging out in the back, trying to look inconspicuous.

When we came out Papa John’s, I noticed a ton of people gathered around one of the trade booths set up along the marketplace walkway. There were a lot of booths here and each one of them sold something unique. But the man in this particular booth was the most unique of all.

His name was Li Sheng Biao, 3rd generation master of the art of clay sculpture. His promise was compelling and his proof overwhelming. The deal was that in 20 minutes he would mold a true-to-life little clay figure of whoever sat before him. And scattered all around his setup were pre-made figures of celebrities and past customers just to prove he could do it. Each figure had beside it a photo of him and the actual person so you could compare. From a sales point of view, this was brilliant. On a street lined with pitch men and con artists, he had people lining up from all over to gladly pay whatever he asked and the man didn’t have to utter a single word.

For 180 yuan ($27) he would make a half figure of you. And for 260 ($42) he’d make a full. This was a steal. And since I didn’t know when or even if I’d be back this way for sure (and even if I was, would Mr. Biao still be there?) I absolutely had to have this. I wanted one of me and Flora, but she was too shy. So I booked an appointment to come back and get one made before I left Shanghai.

Over the next few days, Flora and I had fun. Real, clean fun – the way it always looks in old movies. The way it should be.

We went to Qibao old town. “My god,” I remember Flora gasping, stumbling back from the ticket agent when she saw the complicated series of 6 different trains we had to take to get there. It was worth it. We floated one of those old Chinese-style paddle boats down a little river in Qibao and landed in a dusty, dingy part of town. The shops here were different than the ones before. We were far out from the tourist areas. This was real Shanghai, as seen by native eyes.

Flora introduced me to surprisingly tastey seaweed graham crackers (“biscuits” she called them) and we ate lunch in a little-hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant so authentic it wasn’t even trying to be a Chinese restaurant. Over soup, hash browns, and green tea we talked with the owner in a setting right out of an old Bruce Lee movie. The owner pointed at me, laughed and said something to Flora in Chinese.

“What’d he say?” I asked.

“He said…you look like-a Satan,” Flora giggled.

The guy then made little horns by perching his index fingers over his ears, confirming her story. The white devil lives, and his name is Greg Thompson. Go figure.

I got up to go to the bathroom, if you can call it that. Creeking open the door, I saw before me what looked like a horizontal urinal turned sideways and built straight into the floor. Literally, a hole in the floor. Zero toilet paper. Squeeky, rusted out old sink with one nozzle: cold. If I ever wanted authenticity, Qibao dished it out in spades.

After I was done, Flora took a turn. My imagination ran wild with the possibilities of how this beautiful girl dealt inside this cramped hellhole of a restroom. Minutes later she popped out the door, fresh as a daisey – her cleanliness and good nature still baffling me to this day.

Outside on the street, they were slicing up this huge green spikey fruit. I had no idea what it was but Flora wanted us to have a piece.

“The fruit is sweet; the taste, good,” she said.

The verdict was in. I had to get me a taste of that exotic heaven. But I was soon reminded how Mother Nature seldom gives you a rose without a thorn. Hidden beneath the bright yellow fleshy awesomeness, the seeds on this thing were the size of a fat man’s thumb and tasted about as good. You had to anticipate and know when to spit them out. Still, it was worth it. Kinda wish I had some of the stuff now even as I write this.

Not wanting to take another set of 6 trains back, we hopped in a taxi and headed for one of the main drags in downtown Shanghai. Flora had a tendency to get car sick on the long rides so she closed her eyes and curled up next to me in the cab. I put my arm around her and sat back, watching ads for Haagen Dazs, L’Oreal, and some crazy Chinese dude with a cell phone on the little TV built into the headrest in front me.

The cabbie dropped us off at a mall somewhere near Shanghai Times Square. Flora wanted to find a new swimsuit and I wanted to see what a Chinese mall looked like. Win-win.

The building was huge, but inside it was a lot smaller, hotter, and more cramped than American malls – though no less elegant than a Neiman Marcus. A small army of nicely dressed Chinese girls literally lined the walkway, hands to their side or behind their backs – smiling and just waiting to be of some assistance.

As we passed, Flora looked over the selections. I caught a glance of one of the Chinese girls staring at me, trying hard not to laugh. Another one did laugh. Others waited until we passed before joining in. A few even abandoned their stations to follow me around the store.

“What is this? What’s going on?” I wondered. Then it dawned on me: that little pink bow in my hair. I reached up. Yup, still there. Damnit.

But then, the unexpected:

“You’re so cute!” one of them said, beaming with good nature.

A growing number of Chinese girls gathered around me, wanting to talk and touch. And all of a sudden, just like that, Flora’s quest for a new swimsuit came to an abrupt end. I reluctantly let her pull me out of the store, curiously attached to my newfound fame. She, on the other hand, was not so impressed.

That evening, we strolled along The Bund, a breezy perfect walkway strip right on the Huangpu River:

the_bund

Just off the Bund, there was a walkway leading to a large boat floating there in the river. With a restaurant on board, dining there overlooking the brilliance of the lights relfecting across the water was the perfect place to draw our day to a close.

Inside it felt strange, like a dream. The walls were white and the carpets and waiters suits were red with gold fringe. Back in the restroom, I remember looking out the window over the water. It reminded me of the kind of boat MacGyver might get trapped on. At least it had a real toilet. Still no paper.

Flora ordered fish soup and I had the chicken. Unusually crunchy chicken. I didn’t think too much of it until it dawned on me the crunch came not from crispy chicken but from crispy chicken bone. Oh god, I was gonna hurl. It was enough to make me push it aside and, in an attempt to calm my stomach, focus on the usual plethora of food Flora always pushed onto me.

And she didn’t disappoint. Her “little fish soup” turned out to be a huge vat consisting of an entire fish (eyes, fins, scales, and all) adrift amid a lake of yellow soup. She swore it was good. And, it was. But there was no way I was touching that fish. Flora scooped out the eyeballs and ate them. “Her favorite part” she said.

Among all this yellow soup were little white cubes of… something. Of course, she ate it up. But after witnessing the fish eyes, I was skeptical.

“What are they?” I asked.

“Try,” she said, pushing a few onto my plate, “They very good.”

Hesitantly, I ate a couple. They were… “ok”, at best. Still I had to know what they were.

“Eat these,” she pushed more onto my plate, “then I tell.”

There was something fishy about these fish soup cubes. And The Angel’s little face had that look of mischief I was by now all too familiar with. She was reeling me in for something, but what?

Mouse, that’s what. If chicken bone wasn’t enough, I’d now just eaten a plate-full of mouse.

I was full, but at what cost? Drowning my thoughts in more fish soup and green tea helped me forget what I’d just eaten. I couldn’t blame Flora though. She was so sweet, so cute, so fun. And now she was using her chopsticks to stand the fish up and animate its lips.

“I’m sorry Greg,” said the eyeless fish, “Let’s kiss and make up.”

The cool restaurant air meeting the hot soup caused steam to rise off the fish. Flora said in her best ‘fish voice’, “What’s wrong Greg? Don’t you want to kiss the smoking hot sexy fish?”

We both burst out laughing.

Later on in my journal Flora jotted in a note that read, “Greg left his smoking hot fish in the restaurant and he miss his sexy lips and regret.”

When we got back to the hotel, I poured Flora a glass of water and went to use the bathroom. Finally, a real bathroom; the first toilet paper I’d seen all day.

I got out and went downstairs. Flora wasn’t on the couch where I’d left her. I looked across the room and saw stumbling toward me something freakishly close to what the little girl, Samara, looked like in the horror movie “The Ring”:

samara

It was Flora, with her long black hair draped down in front of her face, stilting toward me at a broken pace, just like in the movie. In fact, too close to the movie. I stood there for a brief second or two, genuinely disturbed by how closely her small Asian frame brought that film to life right before my eyes.

I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her out of her trance. We had a good laugh, but it was late, dimly lit, and the last thing I wanted on my mind were creepy little dead girls running around my hotel room.

Instead, we cuddled up on the couch. Flora told me about how she started her career working at a leather factory for a couple hundred bucks a month. She told me how she left that to become the seller for a textile company – the go-to girl for international clothing manufacturers. And she told me how she struck out on her own, building her own website and becoming an independant, the connecting link between several textile mills at a time.

Then she said, “The money was good, but I was alone. The website, the business, everything you have to do yourselves.” She paused for a beat, taking my hand before adding, “Life is short. It is not good to sacrifice happiness for money. So I went to work at the lower paying job so I could have friends.”

I couldn’t help but admiring her. Here was a young girl my age, hundreds of miles from any family or anyone else who gave a shit, and she’s out in the world doing stuff – making life happen, whatever the cost and without any special props or outside resources. All of this while making dirt for money and sharpening her own brand of mischevious humor.

Comparing this to the “afraid to go out to the park alone on a sunny day” attitude of most American girls I’d met back home and, well, there was no comparison. The skill, wit, and respectfulness of the Chinese girl made their American counterparts seem caveman by comparison.

Then Flora told me about her plans for the future. She drew a little blueprint on one of the scraps of hotel stationery. It included a house, a car, and… a husband – all living far enough from the city to be away, but close enough to shop and get what she needed.

Then she asked what I wanted. Told her I was still figuring all that out. So she started to draw me out a little blueprint of my own. She drew a house, a car, and a wife. Then she drew 6 more people.

“Who are they?” I asked.

She pointed them all out, “This one is the wife… this is the lover… the girlfriend… the honey… the darling… the sweetheart, and the…(she was running out of names)… babe.”

“Damn,” I thought, “She’s got me figured out pretty good.”

She went on, “You see, you have your American wife who take care of the baby, and you go have fun with the other girls. There you go. There is your plan.” It was one of those situations you couldn’t help but smile. She talked like this was It, the Final Solution to the problems that plagued man. And who knows, maybe it was.

I played along, “But what if my wife wasn’t American? What if she was Chinese? Could I still have all the other girls?”

“Oh nooo,” she professed, “A Chinese wife would not allow the other girls. She would meet with them in private, serve them ice cream and tell them to please go away.” She made a shooing motion with her hand.

Priceless.

The next day I finally got my appointment with Li Sheng Biao, the master clay artist. Flora “fixed my hair” that morning in the same fashion that got me so much attention from the Chinese mall girls the day before. I figured “what the hell” – you can’t mess with success:

clay-figure

On the last day, Flora curled up next to me and napped away our 30 minute cab ride to Pudong Airport. The last 6 days was one trip I’d never soon forget. And thanks to my site here, I won’t have to.

As we were about to part ways before I headed off for the gate – the point of no return – I asked Flora if there was anything she’d like to say before I left.

She looked away. Then slowly, and with profound sadness, she softly whispered, “Take care.”


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Tags: china, chinese, chinese girls, communism, communist china, counterfeit goods, culture, flora, jade monkeys, li sheng biao, louis vuitton, pudong, qibao, shanghai, tourism, travel, trips, vacations, yu garden, yuyuan garden

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