We’re in Shanghai for 4 days. I’ve strayed from our scheduled group tours to the Shanghai tourist attractions and opted to explore semi-randomly by bus or taxi.

Traveling: Took an overnight train from Jinan to Shanghai. 3 level bunks, kinda like the hold of a ship, but a bit nicer. 160kph, not bad.

Day 1: Picked a tall cool looking building at walked at it. Ended up in the downtown area. Shanghai feels like SF without hills, or NY but with all Chinese people. Doesn’t feel like China, its clean, it’s rich (comparatively), it has western toilets, and toilet paper in the bathrooms. Found a Starbucks, then found 20 more. At night, we walked into what looked to be a hotel with a Ferarri parked outside. Went inside took the elevator up and wow. There were about 20 waitstaff in a semi victorian, semi church hotel lobby type thing. Walking down the halls and getting eyed, it seemed like there was 5 waitstaff to 1 guest, but we couldn’t find out how much rooms were or if they had a restuarant. After some probing and getting followed by security, we determined that it some sort of high class karaoke (ktv) place which was a front for some expensive prostitution. All of the men were old, all of the girls were young and looked like they were having too good of a time. As we were leaving Nick goes, “So what exactly do you do here….?” We walked across the street and found a nice hotel. After touring the hotel we, found a huge club, drank and danced. We asked a random kid on the street for some hao che de and he walked us to a 24 hour restuarant.

Day 2: Picked another tall building…the Jin Mao Tower, which is the tallest building in China and the 4th tallest in the world at 88 stories. (1st: Taipei 101, 2nd: Petronas Towers, 3rd: Sears Tower). Took some random city buses, walked along the river, ended up there. Explored the hell out of the tower. Went to the 88th floor observation deck, shot a lot. The prize was the Grand Hyatt Hotel which occupied floors 54 through 87. It’s a 5 star hotel and we were so out of place, but no matter. There’s an inner atrium that spans floors 56 through 88. It’s hard to imagine a 30 story atrium. At the bottom is a posh lounge. I had really good tiramisu and coffee. Climbed up some stair wells, got caught by security who showed us the way to “Cloud 9,” a bar on the 87th floor with views of all Shanghai. Hung out, shot, tall Matt and I vowed to come back and be ballers.

Day 3: Rode the mag lev train which connects Shanghai city and the Shanghai airport. It’s the fastest train in the world, and the fastest public ground transportation. 430 kph, 267 mph. 30 km in about 5 mins. So we basically went to the airport just to ride the train. More than worth it. Subwayed to the other side of the river…the subway has the most pushing and shoving, literally people diving for seats when they get on the train. Limbs getting caught in the door because the train car was so full. It’s all clean and modern, just crowded. Randomly walked into the oldest skyscraper in Shanghai, built in 1933. Went back to our hotel, grabbed some people and went out for the ballerest of all dinners back at the Grand Hyatt. More later….

Tomorrow: 1 more day in Shanghai, the night train to Bejing.

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A woman snaps a shot of the view from the Jin Mao Tower observation deck.

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30 story skyscraper apartments looked like model buildings from the top of the Tower.

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Looking down into the atrium, from the 85th floor to the 56th floor.

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Tiramisu and coffee at the lounge at the bottom of the atrium.

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Taking pictures, Jin Mao Tower observation deck.

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Observation deck, they had the normal souveniers, but one counter had 4 women and a bunch of jewelry that seemed completely unrelated to the tower. They said free real pearls. We thought scam. They said “give ticket” so we gave. They marked our ticket to the deck, picked 2 clams from a pile (left side of pic) shucked em, and we had 1 real yet oblong pearl each. Then they tried to sell us the metalic accessories that might normally accompany a pearl, such as a necklace or a ring. They offered to mount our newly acquired pearls at a charge. Holes were drilled in my pearl, we said no thanks and promptly left, but hey a I got a free pearl with some holes.

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Common sight. A really nice place with security walking toward us/following us telling us no pictures. 2 seconds later this guy told me no pictures.

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I got sick.  Felt like food poisoning but without the stomach stuff.  My temperature kept rising.  37.3, 38.8, the next morning 39.2.  I didn’t know celsius to farenhiet conversion, so none of this made much sense.  Wei Xia (Vanessa) was pretty worried about me, so she took work off, and walked me down the street to a clinic.  They gave me a thermometer, I stuck it in my mouth, they laughed and said it’s for your armpit.  (Chris’s joke after I told him about this thermometer experience: What’s the difference between a mouth thermomemter and a rectal thermometer?  The taste. hahahha.)

After verifying that I had a fever and seeing how shitty I looked and a lot of conversation between Vanessa and the nurse, I was walked into a small, dank,back room with 4 beds all of which had older Chinese people in them.  The nurse brought a shot for me.  I thought…I just have a fever.  She told me to roll over and pull down my pants.  I was mooning everyone in the room.  She gave me the shot in my butt.  Then she brought in an IV.  I had 2 different IV medications…4 drugs in all.  They don’t fuck around in China.  What is prescription in the U.S. is easily over the counter in China. It worked, and my fever was gone in a couple hours. I asked for the drug fact sheets which had the English names.  They gave me 2 antibiotics, 1 antiviral and 1 anti-inflammatory.  My fever was 102.7 F.  Not sure if that warrants IV drugs.  I’ve had a 104 fever and my doc told me to take tylonel.  The whole treatment was 40 RMB ($4.50).  I’m going back later today for a 2nd round.

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Under the table and dreaming….

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Attemting to cross the street.  While there are signals and crosswalks, they are rarely obeyed by pedestrians.

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Happy Birthday Wie!!

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Emily.

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Too much China can cause mental unrest.

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La Dongmen Market.  Fake Purses, shower spigots, crescent wrenches, jade, jewlery, cheap clothes, calculators, wash buckets, and wedding dresses.  This wedding dress shop was located next to the bathroom.

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A coffee mug admires the view from my hotel/dorm window.

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Life tends toward equilibrium.  We do what we’re used to.

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Lunch at Wei’s.  More than anything, my curiousity is in how people do everyday things differently.

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Lame.  Hotel hallway, need to start checking things off on the to do list.

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So North Korea tested a nuclear weapon today. I’d really like to talk to my friend Luke who is studying in England right now. He worked at a anti nuclear proliferation nonprofit for several years and probably has some excellent insight on this event.

The main image on the front page of nytimes.com and cnn.com was a Korea soldier who appeared to be keeping watch at the DMZ for any North Korea military activity. (See image below) The caption for the image said something to the same effect. In reality, the soldier is looking into a set of tourist binoculars that give you a brief glimpse a little farther into the DMZ (not actually North Korea) for the price of 500 won or $.50 USD. There’s a Family Mart (convenience store) on the 1st floor of this building. 100 yards to the soldier’s right is a huge amusment park for children. He probably was just posing for the picture…why would a military officer pay 50 cents to spy on a forest, when he surely has access to areas much deeper in the DMZ? Just goes to show how misleading a photo can be.

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The CNN/NY Times front page.

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The View. The view is of a train track that goes into the DMZ and a river that serves as a border for the DMZ. You can also see our tour bus which was coincidentally yet appropriately from a company called “White Tours.”

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Self Portrait. 50 cents in the binocs gets you a minute of fun.

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Ok, so I visited Qing Dao (pronounced Ching Dao) for a couple days.  Technically, we’re not supposed to travel by ourselves outside of the abroad group, but that the lamest thing I’ve ever heard, so I escaped.  I had a goal to visit Qing Dao, home of the Tsing Tao (also pronounced Ching Dao) brewery…which is basically the only Chinese beer in America, and the only decent beer in all of China.  Many of the cities in Shandong Province were once under German occupation which is the only reason China has beer today.  Tsing Tao beer is more common than any beer in the U.S., so it confounds me as to why other breweries have not opened in China to take advantage of the 1.3 billion potential beer drinkers.

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A manequin works the styrofoam hops at the Tsing Tao brewery.

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Beer is of course included in the 50 RMB cost of the tour.  The notion of tasting beer at the brewery is pretty pointless, as everyone has had Tsing Tao and they only make one variety.  However, it was substantially better cold, from the tap, as opposed to room temperature from the bottle, which is how most of China drinks its beer.

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Pearls.  I did some pearl shopping with the girls too…maybe a little too much shopping with the girls.

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