china

 

It was suggested to me that having a mission to complete is a great way to see a city, as it encourages you to go beyond the obvious and perhaps engage with people in a different way. I’ve completed two critical missions in the past two days:

Mission 1: Buy a memory card

My second (pocket) camera needed a memory card, and I thought they would be easy to find in such a populous and modern city. But after several hours of wandering its countless shops, I still hadn’t found one. Just north of the East Nanjing Road tourist trap is a bustling area with hundreds of small stores often devoted to specific items. For example, some shops specialise in wheels for trolleys, others in stuff to bling up your motor scooter. There was even an entire street dedicated to nuts, bolts and metal piping. But I couldn’t find a single shop that offered anything like memory cards or computer stuff of any kind.

Ending up back on Nanjing Road, I was approached by one of the many touts who come up to foreign tourists offering to take them to a shop. Apparently we’re all interested in “watches, bags, DVDs”, though one did also offer me a pretty woman, “very cheap”. Frustrated at my inability to find the memory card, when a young guy approached me and said “what do you want?”, I told him. “No problem”, he said. “Follow me”.

I was naturally cautious, but didn’t dismiss him entirely. I’ve never felt unsafe at any time so far in Shanghai (except crossing the road), and as we were in a very public place I didn’t see any harm in following for a while. We went a little way into the local market area, but when it appeared that we might wander deep into the maze I expressed my doubts. “It’s very close, just over there” he assured me, and he was right. Leading me into a shop displaying only suitcases and handbags out the front, in the back room I was shown an array of different memory cards. Picking one that I wanted, we haggled on price then I insisted on testing it in my camera before paying. All was good, so I got a 4G card for less than I would have paid in Sydney. And if I hadn’t used the tout I probably wouldn’t have got anything at all. Some of them ooze dodginess, but this guy turned out good.

Mission 2: Buy a train ticket

To the next city I’m heading to: Bengbu in Anhui province. My rudimentary mandarin has been enough to survive so far, but I haven’t practiced properly the module on buying a train ticket. And Shanghai Train Station is not for the faint-hearted or weak-tongued. It is huge, over 50 ticket windows each with a queue of people buying passage to the four corners of China and beyond. The vast plaza in front is packed this day with more than a thousand people sitting, smoking, waiting. I wonder what they do when the weather is bad?

There is just a single booth that proclaims “English speaking counter”, and I join its queue with some hesitation. I have not been able to view any kind of timetable so I don’t know which train I want, I don’t know what it should cost and there is no guarantee that the English spoken at the counter will be good. If it’s not and I can’t use my pidgin Mandarin to make myself understood, it’s back to the books with a prayer before I attempt to buy one again.

Fortunately the agent’s English was fine, albeit she was brisk due to the number of people to be served. I’ve got a seat to Bengbu leaving at the civilised hour of 10.50am, and the journey of over 300km takes less than four hours. All for Y150 (A$33). Another mission accomplished!

Quite literally, this time. For every previous overseas trip I’ve always done a fair degree of reading in advance, so I could hit the ground running and have a pretty good idea of what I wanted to see and do. But this time, with all the distractions of the last few weeks and months I’ve done bugger all apart from booking a hotel (which was a friend’s recommendation, not from research). I didn’t even know exactly how to get from the airport to the city!

Apparently the quickest way is by rocket, also known as a Shanghai taxi. Arriving well after dark with the temperature dropping rapidly, a taxi was the obvious choice and I knew it would cost about Y140 (A$31). My young driver treated the road like a mobile chicane, weaving through late model cars and 1960s-era military trucks at up to 130kmh (the speed limit is 100) and passing sickeningly close to most of them. And there weren’t any seatbelts.

It was safer than it sounds as the road was wide and flat as a runway, there was very little traffic and the guy knew how to drive. And after a pleasant but long flight getting into town quickly was just what I wanted. Still, there were quite a few white-knuckle moments!

Big ups to Qantas for getting everything right for a change, too. This is the first long-distance flight I can remember where every part of the trip went smoothly: noone next to me therefore heaps of room, an entertainment system that worked perfectly and had a huge range of things to watch, quiet passengers nearby and friendly service. Even the food was decent.

Did I use my time to cram in the mandarin practice I’ve missed in recent weeks? Well…. eventually. After watching X-Files: I Want To Believe (dull) and In Bruges (excellent) I did break out the books for a while. Then a nap, more food, some Simpsons and Top Gear, then the first half of Batman Begins… unfinished because the system was shut down for landing. Finally time for some more study!

But deliberately no reading about Shanghai. I decided to embrace ignorance and set out into the city with only a map and the address of the hotel (written in mandarin) if I needed a taxi back there. A blank slate. I wonder what “The Whore of the Orient” has to offer?

I’d heard mixed reviews about Shanghai from friends and acquaintances who have been here before me. Some loved it, some thought it was “interesting” and others called it a “shithole”. I think in a city like this – any city of 10+ million people for that matter – you can probably find something to justify every opinion. I found bits to love and bits to hate in just one long day of strolling, But overall my first impression of Shanghai is warm and positive.

It’s really hard to pin Shanghai down because it’s got so many sides, so I won’t even try. I’m sure some born and bred here might struggle to define their city (try describing Sydney usefully and comprehensively in 500 words or less), so it’s not my place to attempt it after one day. But the pastiche of images is striking…

A clover-leaf of elevated highways a la The Jetsons, while old people walk backwards in circles for their health in the park beneath. Beggars with 3-year-old children aggressively seeking alms on East Nanjing Road, the city’s most prestigious tourist and shopping strip. Traffic wardens on every major intersection, often ignored by drivers, cyclists and pedestrians alike. Massive retail precincts that can rival Paris’ Champs Elysses or Singapore’s Orchard Road, only a few blocks from a street corner where vendors offer vegetables from sacks at their feet. An outdoor gymnasium being energetically used by elderly men and women, across the road from a noisy construction site with bamboo scaffolding. Beautiful and stylish houses on tree-lined streets in the French Concession area, not far from dense quarters of grubby apartment towers. The hyper-modern Pudong New Area, built on formerly swampy farmland that has catapulted Shanghai from a backwater into the top rank of global financial centres in less than 20 years. And everywhere small hole-in-the-wall eateries offering steamed pork buns, noodles, barbequed meat on sticks and more for just a few yuan.

There’s a vibrant energy on the streets, and Shanghai feels like a city that works and is going somewhere – fast. Whether it knows where and how is a different matter, but so far I like this place a lot

As the sun dawns smogly in the east, a man in a white apron stands behind a circular hotplate waiting for his next customer. I walk up and nod, saying “wo yao”.

“Yi ge?”, he asks. “Yi ge” I reply, and he goes to work.

He pours some batter onto the foot-wide hotplate and immediately scrapes it wafer thin to the edge. Cracking a raw egg in the middle and spreading that too, he grabs pinches of chopped shallots, cooked chinese cabbage and chilli and scatters them across. A healthy squirt of barbeque sauce follows, then the lot is topped with a square of pre-cooked waffle. He folds the whole several times and then chops it in half, slips it into a plastic bag and hands it to me in exchange for Y2.80 (A$0.60).

Crispy, spicy, filling and so tasty it’s probably addictive, so went my first ever meal in China.