1st September- 2nd Day in Shanghai

I woke up at around 10am and got ready to explore Shanghai. Shanghai has quite a good public transport system so it is very easy to get around the city. My travel buddy for this trip is Calvin and he would be arriving later in the day. As he has interned in Shanghai last year, he told me a list of places that I could explore on my own. Before he arrived in Shanghai, I would walk along Nanjing Xi Road to the Nanjing Dong Road (Shanghai’s version of Orchard Road.)

I left the hostel and walked towards the Jian An Temple Station to take the train to Nanjing Xi Road, Along the way, I saw a Russian buying tea in a teashop and decided to check out the price. The price of tea in this particular shop in Shanghai was about 4-5 times cheaper than Tea Chapter in Singapore. This teashop was relatively far away from the tourist traffic in a rather bad location, so the price should be reasonable. But as I knew that there was always a possibility that I might bump into another tea shop that offered a better deal, I only bought some tea. I didn’t buy a lot (by my standards, anyway) only five bottles of various kinds of flower teas which cost me around 250rmb. It was a decent deal, but the subsequent discovery of just another tea shop that sold cheaper tea confirmed my initial suspicion.

After buying my tea, I proceeded to the Jian An Temple Station. As the Jian An temple was just next to the station, I decided to just check it out. It didn’t look too impressive from the outside, especially in comparison to Tian Tan in Beijing, and had an entrance fee of 10rmb. As I backed away from the temple, I was accosted by a very persistent fortune teller who told me that I had “xiong guang” on my face and offered me a fortune-telling, for a fee, presumably. I was more amused than annoyed, grinning away, and was quite oblivious to whatever premonition that this Cassandra had to warn me. In any case, I told her I believe in Science and was not the least bit interested. Unfortunate for me/her, she didn’t get me and somehow believed that I might be persuaded into learning my wretched fate if she lowered her fees. Five minutes of my life wasted.

To sidetrack a bit, while some of you are aware that I have reservations about the Christian faith, I am equally unimpressed with the CO2 emission of Buddhist-Taoist syncretism. During the Hungry Ghost Festival, people in my housing estate burnt tons of hell notes and dirtied the entire estate. The presence of hell notes presupposes the existence of a market economy in hell for people to use the money. So hell is really not that bad, and there must be a comprehensive legal system and a Central Bank to sustain a viable market economy (Take note Bernanke, you know where you can send your resume if you screw up.) And let’s not talk about burning paper ipods, paper Mercedes etc. I suppose one has to burn paper batteries, paper earphones and paper barrels of oil as well. But then again, I am sure the hell authorities can tap on the eternal source of hell fire.

Anyway, back to Shanghai, after I shrugged off the money-making Cassandra, I tried to buy a train ticket to Nanjing Xi Road. To my embarrassment, the train attendant told me that Jian An Temple was linked to Nanjing Xi Road and I couldn’t buy a ticket. Thanks to the train attendant, I got out of the train station using the right exit and made my way to Ren Ming guang Chang along Nanjing Xi Road.

As I mentioned earlier, Nanjing Xi Road was just like Orchard Road, but the shops there had better service. Actually, Shanghai did not feel very different from Singapore, Capitaland even built a “Raffles City” shopping complex in the heart of Ren Ming Guang Chang. It is worth noting that even though both Singapore and Shanghai have women, Shanghai women seem better dressed and dare I say, look prettier too. Oops.

It is quite cheap to eat in China and I got myself my Lao Ya Fen Si Mien which was pretty good. In order to force myself to shop, I had deliberately limited the number of shirts in my luggage. Thus, I was “forced” to buy some shirts from Qi Pi Lang, a Shanghai brand. I eventually bought the shirts not because of their appearances, but rather the Chinese slogan that translated to “Believe in oneself, Believe in the Pack” or something. I love buying Timberland stuff because it claims to only “Get me from Point A to Point B” and care about nothing else. I am brand conscious in this sense. I have to admit it is rather lame.

Again, I am going too much into the details. After lunch, I went to buy tickets at the Shanghai Railway Station. My Chinese is quite bad as the ticketing officer gave me one ticket when I asked for two. After buying the train tickets, I had some awful xiaolongbao in a random restaurant and left for Da Shi Jie. Da Shi Jie is neither big nor remotely interesting and I walked back to Ren Ming Guang Chang from there.

It is worth talking about the beggars in Shanghai. They are all strategically located at places with high traffic flow and either are really dying or have great acting skills. As I walked past the Posche Show House, there was this beggar without legs, pulling himself along the road. Seeing me in the distance, he pulled himself forward before dropping his face and chest on the ground with a resounding thud, arms sprawled in a v-shaped manner for dramatic effect. Unfortunately for him, I love to think of myself as a cruel, heartless capitalist and I didn’t give him any money. In any case, I think most of these beggars belong to a well-organized syndicate, sort of like a modern day Gai Bang. I will not be too surprised to know that some might have their limbs deliberately chopped off and are thrown on the streets to earn money. Apart from this beggar, it is common to see “beggar tag teams”, comprising of a woman with a baby, or a blind old man with sunglasses, playing a musical instrument and held in hand by an old lady. I saw those Mozarts at two different locations and realized they use the same, exact musical instrument. It is rather amusing to think that the syndicate probably buy those musical instruments in bulk and rent them to the Mozarts. Anyway, I did eventually give some money to an old lady beggar who was leopard crawling along the road in Tianjin. Yes, leopard crawling. She didn’t have legs, or to be more precise, everything below the knees was chopped off. I reasoned that even if she was acting, it was a rather painful way to act. Oh, as an aside, the bowls of beggars in Tianjin have a lot more money than their counterparts in Shanghai.

After lunch and some shopping, I went back to the hostel to wait for Calvin to arrive. He eventually came and brought me to “— jie” to eat da bao, and told me that while it tasted terrible, it was a local delicacy and a must-try. So we spent 170rmb in this Marche like place and ordered the da bao alongside with other dishes. It turned out that all the other food tasted absolutely horrible and I concluded that he was wrong in assuming that the dao bao tasted bad since everything in that place was like crap. It was so bad that we decided to take a picture of it and preserve the disgust for all posterity. We went to the Bund after that and it is a lot prettier than Clarke Quay. All this while, I have been checking the price of tea in the teashops that I passed. So far, the tea that I bought I the morning was still the cheapest until we bumped into a really ulu shop that sold tea at a really low price. I would return to that place to buy 1.5kg of tea at the end of my trip. I realized that my shopping mantra is to buy in bulk or none at all.

After the Bund, we went to the top of Jin Mao Da Sha, to this bar called Cloud Nine. The view was pretty good and we spent around 170rmb. I ordered a Blue Shanghai cocktail and it tasted ok. This entry is getting too long. After drinking, we went supper in “—jie” and had some Japanese Ramen. After Ramen, we went back to the hostel and slept.