Schell of a Man

Greetings All! I know I am not going in any sort of chronological order here, I'm just writing when the mood strikes me, but last weekend I took my first official trip to Shanghai. As I noted in the last post, October 1 was National Day, and Howie (my roommate for those of you who don't know) and I decided to do what 374 million other Chinese people were doing that weekend--travel to another city. Our friend Krissy Solomon, who is teaching in Changsha (also in China), was going to be there with two other teachers from her school. So we decided to make it up for a reunion.

Actually everything started two days before National Day, on Thursday, when Krissy and her friends arrived in Shanghai after a 20-hour train ride, on which they were unable to get beds and therefore had to sit on hard seats throughout the trip. They called us to say they weren't sure they could handle the three-hour bus ride to Shaoxing to come visit that night, but they would discuss it and call us back in an hour. Five hours later, Howie and I still hadn't heard anything and we had a dinner date with Wendy so we assumed they weren't coming and left the apartment.

A quick digression on our dinner: We went to dinner at Ladefense, which was supposed to be a posh "western-style" restaurant. One thing I have learned in my short time here, if you want western food and decent service when you are in China, go to McDonald's or KFC (both are big here). Any other place you go will just leave you disappointed with the food and amazed at both the poor service and (relatively) large bill.

So after a long wait, a small amount of food, and a frustrating conversation with five servers, we returned to our apartment to discover Krissy had left her friends in Shanghai to come to Shaoxing, and she had been waiting at the Shaoxing bus station for the past hour and a half. We quickly hopped a cab (which took us the long way) to the bus station.

After bringing her back to the apartment so she could drop off her bags and take a shower, we brought her to one of our favorite restaurants (which I am shamed to admit I don't know the name of), where we got our favorite dish: squash fried in duck egg (see photo). Mmmm, so good. (For those of you who are counting, you're right, that was our second dinner of the night, but the first one didn't count because I never actually got my food.)

The rest of the night was spent in relative relaxation, talking, trading stories, and sipping on the Jim Beam whiskey Krissy brought us. (This was before we discovered the one store in Shaoxing that sells western alcohol--apart from the cans of Budweiser and Pabst Blue Ribbon in the grocery store). We were excited to have a little taste of back home. We had tried a couple of different Chinese liqueurs, but they all tasted like honey beer spiked with kerosene.

They next day was hot, but we set out anyways to show Krissy the town, starting with our other favorite restaurant, Grandma's Noodles. The fried mushroom and chicken (maybe pork?) noodles are the best I've ever had. Krissy ordered my other favorite dish, "The sauce explodes the eggplant," which is not really as violent as it sounds. We sat at our usual table outside on the covered walkway next to a small canal. The food and company were excellent, and the quality of the service was very well summed up by the English phrase printed in large letters across the front of the building, "Your come is our honor."

After a casual stroll through the antique market and a trip around one of the city parks, we retired to the cool of the apartment, and the warm glow of the television. (We watched Kung Fu Hustle in Chinese, just so we didn't forget where we were...as if it were possible). That evening we couldn't decide on where to eat so we agreed to have a cocktail and think about. Well, one turned into a few more, and it was getting late by the time we went to the dumpling place for dinner, then on to bar street.

Now I have never been know for my abilities to consume large amounts of alcohol, there are no legends about me growing in the dark halls and back alleys of St. Johns right now (at least not of that ilk), but whatever sort of tolerance for the devil's brew I once had is most surely gone now. I get a good buzz from gargling with mouthwash. So needless to say after a few cocktails on an empty stomach, I was in rare form that night. From what I have been told, the pictures I've seen, and what I can remember, I had a great time. I loved the world, and according to Howie and Krissy, I wanted to tell everyone. All I know was that night I made some new friends (who I surprisingly haven't seen since) and ate the greatest McChicken sandwich of my life. So much for being good ambassadors for the United States.

Feeling like a million bucks the next morning, we set off for the big city. We arrived at the bus station at 11 am and purchased tickets to Shanghai on the next available bus, leaving at 1:10. The station was packed and there was no place to sit, so we found a corner to squat down in and proceeded to pass nearly three hours (the bus was late), with only the occasional entertainment of a curious child who wandered over to investigate the strange foreigners. Apart from the hard floor and hard stares, the time in the bus station was rather enjoyable, listening to music and joking around with my travel companions.

Our bus finally pulled out of the station around 2:10 and we were on our way to one of the largest and busiest cities in the world...