China (Part V - More Shanghai)

DAY 10 - SHANGHAI 上海 (Dongtai Antique Market, 66th Plaza, Street Market, The Bund, Sichuan Restaurant)

Hopefully this will be the last of the China posts. Let's hoping. K, so we woke up early on our first free day so that we could make the most of our time. We started out the morning with our beloved hotel breakfast. I would seriously recommend this hotel if not for the breakfast alone! Seriously. Haha. We then took a taxi to Dongtai Road Antique Market, an outdoor market that sells everything from jewelry boxes to Communist-era posters to Maoist memorabilia....you name it. The catch is that mostly everything is fake, so buyer beware. We saw several items we liked, but then came the bargaining part. Chinese people are hardcore when it comes to this art, but I just get impatient after awhile. It was funny, b/c this one Chinese lady who we ended up buying things from twice, would say things like, "You my first customer, so I give you cheap.......We are friends, so I give you cheap........Ni sha si wo le!" ("You are killing me!"...referring to our best offer). It's hard to recall specifics, but it was just funny to hear the things that people will say in order to sell you something. We did, however, encounter some vendors who didn't seem to care if we left or not. Hmm...perhaps it was b/c we went early in the morning. Oh well, their loss!

After the Antique Market, Jeff and I thought we'd be adventurous and search for the French Concession on our own. Bad idea. We walked for what seemed to be ages, but we were still unable to find the place. We did pass by Huaihai Road, a famous upscale shopping area in Shanghai. We didn't stop and shop there, as we were intent on finding the French Concession. That never happened. We finally gave up and caught a cab to 66th Plaza, a mall that had been recommended by Vivian. Sadly, it just consisted of more upscale shopping, something not suited for our budget.

We got out of 66th Plaza and decided to just walk on the main street, Nanjing Xi Lu, not to be confused with Nanjing Dong Lu, where we went yesterday. Anyhoo, we stopped for lunch at this busy canteen area. Let me just say, not really being able to speak Mandarin in China can be quite a challenge for tourists. Ordering lunch for us involved a lot of pointing and broken Chinese phrases....pretty much just looking and sounding stupid. We ended getting pretty decent dishes, even though I had no idea what I paid for before they brought out our food. =)

We continued walking around that area when we discovered a street market behind the main road. Jackpot. This was DVD HEAVEN. They had the newest movies, ie) The Pursuit of Happyness, which was still in the theaters back at home! The best part was that all the DVDs cost about $0.50 each! Awesome. I bought the ENTIRE series of The West Wing in 8 discs for under $5!! Jeff and I just went on a DVD buying spree, grabbing anything that looked remotely interesting. We've since tested out many of the DVDs back here in Japan, and they are mostly of good quality! I remember Lynn told us that if you aren't satisfied with the DVDs, you could always bring them back to the street vendor and ask for you money back, as they're always in the same spot. Hmm...I wonder how that works. Like, "I want my $0.50 back!!" They also sold tons of brand-name imitation wallets and purses. Perhaps a cute-as Coach wallet and a men's Luis Vuitton wallet MAY have been purchased. Hehe. So anyway, I definitely understand China's HUGE piracy problem now. Why would ANYONE pay a million dollars to go to the movie theater when you can get a good-quality DVD for the price of a candy bar! The whole street market experience reminded me of markets in Thailand, but this was even better, as they had a MUCH wider selection of DVDs and they were cheaper as well!

After our DVD raid, we headed back to our hotel. When we came back out again, it took us over 30 minutes to hail a cab! It was as if EVERY person in Shanghai decided to take a taxi at that exact same time! It was quite frustrating, but we finally finally got one to stop for us. I asked the taxi driver to take us to "The Bund," and he couldn't understand me. How can Shanghai expect to host foreigners for their World Expo when their taxi drivers don't know what "The Bund" is, one of the most famous attractions in all of Shanghai!! Thank goodness I had also written down the Chinese character for "The Bund," or else we might've spent another 1/2 hour looking for a new taxi!

So we got to The Bund, this time with a night view, and took a million pictures. It was sooo pretty at night! Thank goodness for digital cameras! We walked around that area a bit, then decided to take a taxi to a Sichuan restaurant that came recommended in the little awesome free guidebook I snagged at 1221. Our taxi driver was young and cute! We hadn't seen any cute guys in Shanghai thus far, so we were totally excited about our cute taxi driver. Plus, he's young, so he played Chinese pop music during the ride. Woot.

After the taxi dropped us off, it took a bit of walking to find the Sichuan restaurant. We finally found it and went in. The waitress that served us was super-nice, as she totally helped us with everything, seeing that we couldn't speak Mandarin. We ordered a Sichuan hot-pot, and well, just imagine a pot of boiling spicy oil, b/c that's essentially what it was. Don't get me wrong, everything was delicious, but looking at that pot of oil just made me think how I could possibly regret our decision in the near future. Sichuan food is known to be very tasty, yet extremely spicy. Thinking of the chopped red peppers in our pot of oil, I think they lived up to their reputation. After we finished our yummy dinner, we walked around to burn off calories. We found a TenFu Tea Shop that was still open late at night! We went in, and bought ridiculous amounts of omiyage; I think we may have bought everything in the store! Haha. Anyhoo, afterwards we headed back to our hotel. Ahh....hotel, sweet hotel.

DAY 11 - SHANGHAI 上海 (Shanghai Museum, People's Square, Nanjing Lu, Xujiahui Shopping City, Nanjing Lu...again, and Xintiandi)

In the morning, after a most excellent breakfast, we cabbed it to the Shanghai Museum, which houses ancient Chinese art in many forms. We chose to go the museum by ourselves, since our tour was already over. I was quite proud of us, as we pretty much visited every collection on display. It was funny, b/c I overheard another tour guide telling her group that she'd leave them at the museum and pick them up after an hour or so. Um, what is the point of a tour guide then?! Haha. Oh yeah, it was here that we saw displays of ancient Mng and Qing furniture, which Jeff and I were quite the experts on, after our time in Beijing. ;-)

Shanghai Museum is located in People's Square, a large public square in Shanghai. It is the site of Shanghai's municipal government building. There was really nothing I found special about the Square, but it is famous, so I'll put that on the list of places we visited. Hehe.

People's Square led us right back to Nanjing Lu, where we roamed around and...well, just that I guess. We then took the taxi to Xujiahui Shopping City, where we hoped to find something to buy, as we seemed cursed in Asia when it comes to purchases. Xujiahui is home to 6 major shopping malls. You'd think with that kind of odds, we'd buy something, right? Wrong. We did see a Best Buy there which got us really excited, but once we went in and found out they didn't sell DVDs, all hope was gone.

After Xujiahui, we headed back to the hotel for our daily afternoon "rest." We then headed back to Nanjing Lu, where we planned to spend our New Year's Eve, as we saw posters for some sort of Chinese pop star concert to be held there. Yep, New Year's Eve in Shanghai....we were excited to see what the city had to offer. Crowds were already beginning to take form on Nanjing Lu, as it is a popular area to roam around for NYE? We decided to eat dinner at Haagen Dazs. Well, not dinner, just chocolate fondue. Hehe. Remember how I raved about the chocolate fondue at the Haagen Dazs in Seoul? Well, it turned out that chocolate fondue in Shanghai had little to be desired for. Everything looked great on the poster they had up, but little did we know that the chocolate would be luke warm at best! We asked them to heat it up and they sort of did, but it was still not nearly warm enough. Just imagine room-temperature chocolate fondue. What's the point, right? After a while, the chocolate started to harden, and it was difficult to even dip things in! After paying close to $30 for this (which is like $1 million in China), we were NOT amused, to say the least. Bleh.

After coming back out to Nanjing Lu, we saw many people trying to look over the massive wall that had been built in place to prepare for the concert to be held for the NYE countdown. People were standing on their friends' shoulders to sneak a peak. Parents would boost their children up and tell them to report what they saw. Chinese people are funny. Anyhoo, Jeff and I saw that a line had started at the entrance, so we decided to stand in line early as well, since we had nothing else better to do. We were waiting in line in order to get a good spot for the concert. However, we saw a bunch of other people standing on the side and NOT getting in line. We were like, "Why don't they just get in line?" After about twenty minutes of queueing, we began to realize that, "Hey, maybe we need a ticket in order to go inside??" Um, we are RETARDED. I asked a policeman and sure enough, we needed tickets, and tickets seemed to have already been sold out. Nice. We are so bright. =)

After that embarrassing incident, we decided to find a new venue to celebrate the coming year. We attempted to walk to Xintiandi and failed, and ended up just cabbing it there. Xintiandi was also packed, as many people, especially foreigners, occupied the various bars/restaurants in the area. Being the Americans we are, we decided to have KFC for dinner. Hehe. We both had a huge craving for KFC for reasons unknown, and it turned out to be soooooo good. I forget how good KFC can be! Mm mmm! We finally settled for drinks at a Brazilian restaurant for the countdown. It was nice b/c we also got to people-watch. Woot. It was amusing to watch people scramble to find somewhere to be at the last minute. Anyhoo, 'twas nice and chill and I was happy with that. There were fireworks too, as that's a must since Chinese people were the ones who invented it! Hehe.

DAY 12 - SHANGHAI 上海 (French Concession, Shanghai Olde Ye Station Restaurant, Xujiahui Shopping City, Pudong - Superbrand Mall, Vegetarian Restaurant)

Since we didn't get back till around 2am the night before, we slept in and skipped breakfast! Sad. We woke up, then attempted to find the French Concession again. We were successful this time around. Woot. Unfortunately, there's nothing in the French Concession 'cept some old colonial buildings, but our aim was food. Hehe. So we left, headed back to the Xujiahui area, and ate at Shanghai Olde Ye Station Restaurant, which was recommended in the guide we had. We were definitely in an upscale sort of restaurant, but it was still very affordable, as everything was considering we came from Japan. It was nice to eat and order as much as we wanted, w/o having to worry about costs.

Here is the condensed version of the rest of our day: We hung around the Xujiahui Shopping City, did some grocery shopping, then headed to the Pudong side. We ended up at Superbrand Mall. This was my kind of mall as it was mostly just full of restaurants! Haha. We ate dinner at this one vegetarian restaurant that was SO good. Mmm. We skipped the Jin Mao Tower and headed back to our hotel as it was super foggy so we wouldn't have been able to see anything anyway.

DAY 13 - Shanghai 上海 / Tokyo 東京

This was a traveling day. Enough said.

OK. I'm sure you are just as tired of reading about my trip to China as I am tired of writing about it. It was taken me almost 2 months to finish blogging about it! Ugh. I promise this is the end of it tho. I still have pictures to post, but that's about it. Even though I am soo done with writing about China, I must say that this is one of the most enriching trips I've ever been on. I learned so so much about China and the Chinese; I feel as though I've connected with my roots more so than before. I can't explain it, but I'd definitely recommend that you go there some day to see for yourself. K, I'm really done now. I still have yet to blog about my recent trips to Hokkaido and Hong Kong!