Day one in Shanghai

So I am in my hotel room and the power has gone out in the building. This would have been less of a big deal in Nanjing, because I would have known where the staircase is and simply gone down the 4 flights of stairs and outside to see what’s what. But, I’m in Shanghai and it’s a little scary. But, I won’t write about that to validate my fear because I have this strange feeling that situations like this is where Stephen King gets his inspiration and I would like nothing to do with that. I am just thankful that my computer still works and that I have a full battery that should last until I decide it’s time for bed. I don’t think I did justice to the acrobatic show in my last post, so I’ll start with that. It was the perfect end to a hectic feeling sort of day. After trying unsuccessfully to hail a cab for about 20 minutes, we decided to hop on the bus and bus/walk to the theater. It was a largish theater, I’d say Schnitz size.

Whew…ok, the lights are back on. That was fast, thankfully.

The theater was full of westerners, or laowai as they/I like to call us. It was kind of bizarre to see so many white people all in one place. I think going back to Portland is going to be a trip (haha). I’ll be excited to be in Asia again, I’ve gotten pretty used to it. So the first act was these guys jumping through impossibly small hoops. They kept building them higher and higher. Then these amazing women with these yo-yos they have here…the same kind as the one the guy is using in that video I have on my flicker. But, they were all in sync, and throwing them in the air and to each other, it was beautiful. Then some comedic knife throwing, and some jumping up in the air on a see-saw thingy. I think my favorite though, which I have a picture of, is the couple doing flying acrobatics on the pieces of fabric. They were lovely. The most impossible seeming were the women who balanced themselves on precariously stacked chairs about 10 high and then all proceeded to do handstands. I have a picture of that too. I kept saying “don’t do it don’t do it!” “get down get down!”, which is pretty unlike me for acrobatics. All in all it was great. I think cirque de soleil is better, but this didn’t have any of the cirque theatrics or music or costumes, so it is hard to compare.
I took a cab home afterwards with some other ladies and slept alllllll night, which was great as I’d had nothing to eat that day except a croissant I ate after the show and before bed. My stomach is a lot better today and I have feasted in comparison to the last few days.

Today I got up and ate breakfast (yay! Tea and toast!). Then a bunch of us set out on an adventure via metro to the Shanghai erotica museum. It was a display of relics from all through Chinese history, some amusing some lovely and some downright weird. They even had a nice little display about homosexuality and a little statement about how we shouldn't judge people. Go China! I have a bunch of pictures. If you’re not squeamish about things like large and very unsanitary ancient ahem “tools”, go ahead and look. If you’re my parents, well, you can look too, I am 27 after all. (Hi mom! Hi dad!)

Then we went through the Bund’s crazy underwater tunnel, which was this little pod-like ride through this insanely lit tunnel. There was a warning all about how you shouldn’t go through if you were an array of things like: drunk, mentally unstable, shirtless, obnoxious, pregnant, etc…”. Some of them did, and some of them did not make sense. We came out on the other side on the Bund, a collection of very out of place looking European buildings built when Shanghai was being colonized by Europe.

We finally made our way to an awesome vegetarian Buddhist restaurant where I ate more than I have in a while, GI problems or no. Even the white rice was good, and it was cheap for a meal like that! $35 RMB, which is like $5 USD.

Then an adventure with Beth to find the metro to get back to the hotel and shoshi (rest). We wandered for a while and found the Shanghai art museum which we saw the outside of. The Shanghai Bienniale is going on right now and today there was a line that wrapped around the building to get in. I might try to check it out tomorrow, but we’ll see about that line. We saw some great art on the outside of the building though, and eventually made our way back to the hotel. My long awaited shoshi didn’t happen however, as I had made it my mission at some point earlier in the day to see the symphony in Shanghai. I think it might have been when we passed the out of place looking statue of J.S. Bach. So I went down to the front desk and tried to navigate my way through language to some information about the symphony. All this was unsuccessful. Eventually I got my computer with internet back from Robynne who had used it during the day and we found a great performance that four of us went to this evening. It was called “Modern and Classic; The Oriental Angels”. It was a group of six women playing various Chinese instruments. It was beautiful! It was really nice to see because some of the Chinese music I’d seen to this point was pretty terrible. There was this one woman who was definitely “first zither” who had a solo where she played it like a possessed woman. It was great to see something played with that much passion, especially in China where all the women are supposed to be gentile, shy and lovely. The cab ride there was across the river to the Pudong district of Shanghai, all of which has been built within the last 20 years, before which it had been farmland. The cab ride itself was wonderful. Shanghai has some impressive and beautiful buildings with more lights than you would ever expect. Some of the buildings are striped with rainbow colored lights that flash and ripple and bounce off other surrounding buildings. Others have tetris-like lights stacking against their sides, some only have the top few floors lit so that it seems like it floats above the city. It really is beautiful, though it kind of inspires a “what the hell are we doing” sort of feeling.

So now I’m in Shanghai-home, with the room to myself and it is lovely. After posting this and futzing with my pictures on flickr, I might take a shower and head to bed before it’s breakfast time tomorrow and my last day in China—on this trip anyhow.



This is my favorite picture of the day. I love photos with Robynne!