Week 32 (My 60th post!): Suzhou was Su-junk, or The Flight From Hell

Suzhou - Getting Soggier

Coming to Suzhou meant more rain and more cold, sopping wet adventures. It rained nonstop for all three days we were here. I misread where our hostel was located and, even though I was right in thinking that it was within walking distance of the subway stop, we got off at the wrong stop and wandered around for over an hour.

The hostel had lots of cuddly cats, which was nice. There were also some dogs, but they were decidedly unfriendly. In fact, they were a lot less friendly than you'd expect dogs living in a hostel to be. It was mildly alarming.

Our rooms were definitely an improvement though, smaller and cozier. We only had one roommate most of the time, and he was a quiet little innocuous guy. He barely made a peep the whole time. This was lucky, since most of the other guests in the hostel were part of this huge Chinese family group. When I say family, I mean the whole damn family. Aunts and uncles, babies, angsty teens, and even grandmas and grandpas were staying at this hostel.

We had to interact with them whenever we needed to use the bathroom or the showers. I tried to be friendly, but I'm pretty sure I scared the poor souls. They freaked out and clutched all their belongings to their chest when I walked by. One of the nights we stayed there, one of the middle-aged members of this Chinese family got stuck in our room. I swear she didn't sleep a wink. She was terrified of Laura and I!

Whenever we deigned to venture out into the misty cold, we were bombarded with other tourists. Suzhou is famous for its canals and its gardens, two things that date back to about 500 years ago. The canals are mostly restricted to a single historic district now, and it just so happens that this is where our hostel was.

It was nerve wracking to walk along these thin canal streets, with walls on one side and nothing but water on the other, being squeezed shoulder to shoulder with about 50,000 other people. Still, we managed to enjoy ourselves whenever we could.  We took some really great pictures, and spent most of our time in one or two little cafes in this touristy area. One of the cafes sold hot watermelon juice, which Laura fell in love with.

One night we stumbled across a Sichuan family restaurant. Sick of fast food and "western" food, we decided to eat inside. The food was pretty tasty, but that is not what I remember the occasion for. No, I will always remember this restaurant, until my dying day, because it's the restaurant where Laura got peed on.

I am not sure if I have mentioned this in my writings or not, but babies in China don't wear diapers. In fact, they rarely wear pants. If the weather is cold or wet, their parents will put special pants on them that have no middle. I have seen so many baby genitals this year, and it's always a bit of an unpleasant shock. You just want to quietly eat your putrefied tofu paste or your chicken toenails in peace, and before you know it some toddler is flapping his penis at you.

Well, this restaurant was really just some family's living room. There were four tables, each of which would have comfortably sat 3 or 4 people. When Laura and I walked in, 3 of the 4 tables were packed with 7 or 8 people each. It was... cozy... to say the least. One family had a baby who we all thought was cute at first. This is before we were betrayed.

Anyway, we're trying to eat our food and this baby is being allowed by his parents to wander wherever he wants. He kept trying to go play with the hot stove and the knives, which everyone thought was adorable. Just as we were finishing up our plate (of hot fried noodles! Delicious!), the baby walks over and just starts peeing. The parents thought this was adorable, and let him finish peeing in front of Laura before they picked him up. Then a waitress came over and, with a broom, "swept up" the pee.

I couldn't even make this stuff up if I wanted to.

During the time we were there we only checked out a few gardens. Even though it was the "off season" and most of the plants were dead or not-yet bloomed, the gardens were charging double their normal price because it was the spring festival. Still, there was some cool stuff to see at the ones we went to. My favorite was the enormous Bonzai tree garden within the "Humble Administrator Garden".

The evening after the urination incident, we were both feeling particularly homesick. We managed to find a single "western" bar in town. It was Irish-themed. We decided to go there and spend the evening. We had some mediocre hamburgers and enjoyed the live band. There was an Irish guy there that befriended us. His name was Aiden and he lived in Shanghai. Apparently he was also a school teacher. His job is to teach American history to 15 year olds. He managed to make us feel really at home and we had a great night sharing "war stories" and also stories about American wars. Then, halfway through the evening, he got up and went to the bathroom and never came back. I'm not sure what happened to him, but I hope he's okay!

On our last day in Suzhou, we took a trip out to the Tiger Hill Pagoda Recreation Park. Tiger Hill Pagoda is actually one of the last unrestored pagodas in China. It is nearly 1,000 years old and aside from a few joists that were inserted to slow its leaning, nothing has been done to it for a millennium. It was really cool to see this huge tilted monolith peeking out from above the bamboo forest. It really does look like it's from another time and another place. Apparently bigger, older, and leans more than the tower of Pisa, so even though the Tiger Hill Pagoda is sometimes referred to as the "Pisa of the East", it would be more appropriate to call Pisa the Tiger Hill Pagoda of the West.

I got to eat some more stinky tofu in Suzhou. I was surprised to see it, since I was under the impression that it is more of a Taiwanese treat, but I could smell it from a few streets away and I definitely knew what it was. This vendor actually had two versions: there was the traditional stinky tofu and then this other kind that was made out of black tofu. I tried the black variety and it was even better. It was smoky, complex, slightly burnt-tasting, and very spicy! It also gave me bad breath for days!

After three days trying to stay warn in Suzhou, we bid farewell to our quiet British roommate and went to our final destination of February - the greatest city in the world: Shanghai!

Getting Shanghai'd

Shanghai is unlike any city I've ever been to in China. It felt absolutely nothing like China at all. When visiting Hong Kong, I remarked that it reminded me of a completely westernized China. I have to amend this statement now, because I think that Shanghai is even more westernized than Hong Kong is.

I've been fortunate enough to visit New York City once in my life. I was a lot younger than I am now, but I remember it vividly. Shanghai was exactly like NYC to me. It was NYC with just slightly more Chinese writing everywhere.

The buildings were big and modern, and everyone spoke really great English. The signs were in Chinese, yes, but all of the English translations were fantastic. There were more western stores and restaurants than I knew what to do with! I mean, let me be clear here, Shanghai has Applebees, Outback Steakhouse, and TGI Fridays.

If you have a TGI Fridays then you have no right to call yourself a Chinese city.

True to form, most of what Laura and I did in Shanghai consisted of walking around and exploring. We both enjoy being physically active and it's a lot cheaper than paying for things. Even though it was still very cold and rainy, there was about one and a half days where it wasn't too bad and we totally capitalized on the opportunity.

One of the first things we did after we got into town was to meet up with our friend Adriana for dinner. Adriana is doing some teaching and tutoring at the college level at NYU's satellite campus in Shanghai.

She showed us around a little bit, took us to a good restaurant, and told us all about her experiences in China. It's really amazing to think that we're both living in the same country, because the way her story sounded, I would have thought she was living in Paris or something. There was a lot more different about the Chinas that we've both experienced  than there was in common.

I won't editorialize too much here, but I will say that Adriana is already planning on doing a second year in China, and possibly even more years than that. Meanwhile Laura and I are counting down the days until we can come home to FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY.

Oh yeah, we popped into a grocery store after dinner (Adrianna needed something), and they had CHEEZE-ITS. I can't clarify enough how unlike the rest of China that Shanghai is.

Our second day in Shanghai was super rainy, so we spent the day checking out some of the malls near our hostel. I've seen enough malls in China, if I'm being honest, but it was pretty much our only option. We had fun seeing the differences between Shanghai malls and Foshan malls, though. One Shanghai mall had an M&M store! We bought nearly a half kilo of M&Ms. I won't tell you how quickly we ate all of them because then you wouldn't respect me anymore.

After lunch we went to the Shanghai Museum of History. Routinely rated as one of the best museums in China, the SMH is also completely free! We spent several hours looking at 8,000 year old clay pots. One of my favorite galleries was the collection of ancient currency. China was one of the first places to develop coin money, and the Shanghai Museum has a pretty big collection. They also have coins from other ancient empires that were originally collected on the silk road. Another amazing area was the "ethnic minorities of China" gallery. What most people think of as a "Chinese person" is someone of the Han ethnicity. In reality there are dozens and dozens of ethnicities of people who are culturally or legally Chinese citizens, and just like a lot of minorities around the rest of the world, they are not historically treated very nicely. This area of the museum was dedicated to a lot of the amazing clothing and art by these oft-forgotten but no less important groups of Chinese citizens.

For dinner we went over to the Pudong area of the city, which features some of the world's tallest sky scrapers including the soon-to-be-completed Shanghai tower. At 632 meters, it is the tallest structure of any kind in China, and the second tallest in the world (behind that Wiz Kalifa one). We settled in at Little Yang's Dumplings, home of the Shengjiao soup dumpling.

Soup dumplings are a specialty, very famous all over Asia, that originate in Shanghai. They are technically buns, and not dumplings, but either way they are much like traditional buns/dumplings in that they are some delicious steamed meats wrapped up all nicely. The twist with soup dumplings becomes apparent when you bite inside. There's soup inside too! The way they make these puppies used to be a well kept secret, but nowadays the secret is out. They freeze a small cube of soup stock, and wrap it up with the meat when they make the dumplings. The steaming process not only cooks the meat, but melts the soup. You have to be careful when you eat soup dumplings, because the soup is usually boiling hot and can gush out if you are not properly prepared.

The dumplings were delicious! We ended up trying both styles of soup dumplings (the Shengjiaos at Little Yangs are a lot bigger and are fried on one side), but I'm pretty sure I preferred the ones at Yang's. You can't beat fried things!

We didn't stick around too long in Pudong, it was just too rainy, but we did take a few moments to enjoy the mysterious and post-apocalyptic feel that the clouds were giving the skyscrapers. The pictures I took that night are some of my favorite from all of Shanghai.

Next morning it didn't rain, so we took advantage of it! We got up early and explored the Bund. The Bund is another famous area in Shanghai, directly across the river from Pudong (in an area called Puxi). The Bund is a street not quite like any other in the world. After the Opium Wars ended, China was forced to open up a number of ports to the western world for trade. Shanghai, at the time a tiny fishing village, began its journey into being one of the biggest and most modern cities in the world at this time. One section of the city, right on the river and near the ports, was given over completely to western control. As countries from all over the world started showing up and taking a piece for themselves, they started building buildings. Some friendly and not-so-friendly competition, combined with different styles of doing things, meant that every single building had a completely different style. Walking down The Bund is like taking a trip around the entire world and all of modern history. The architecture of no two buildings are quite alike. While most of the buildings are banks nowadays, almost every one of them has a fascinating history. We took plenty of pictures of this area too.

Heading south from the Bund we ended up in the "Old Town" area, which is the most traditionally Chinese district in Shanghai. We walked through some old buildings which form a bazaar area, and also checked out one of China's most famous tea houses.

From here we headed west in search of the Shanghai Bird and Insect market. We eventually got too hungry while searching for it, so we decided to come back leader.

Lunch was at 21B Baker Street. That's right, I found a Sherlock Holmes-themed cafe in China. It was basically a shrine to Mr. Bendleby Cumpersnitch. Laura was in heaven. We took a lot of fun pictures with costumes on, and to top it all off the food was shockingly delicious!

Finally sated, we headed back to look for the market and we found it! I had a lot of fun looking at all the prize-fighting crickets. You heard me right: prize-fighting crickets. Another Shanghai specialty is cricket fighting. It was the "off-season" so I didn't really get to see how it works, but Chinese dudes take it very seriously. It's a serious source of income for a lot of people, as gamblers put a lot of money on the fights. There's also apparently a lot of money in breeding crickets. I saw crickets at the market for as much as 300 RMB ($50 US! For a single cricket!). The birds were just okay. It was kind of sad to see them because the cages were so small. Also, one lady in the market clearly didn't get the memo because she was selling pet chinchillas. I'd never seen a real chinchilla though, so the joke was on her.

The next stop on our cross-Shanghai tour was a walk through Fuxing park. This was supposed to be one of the highlights of the day, but it was really disappointing. Everything was dead and brown, and most of the park was flooded. Yuck! We still sat on a bench for a while though because our feet were so tired; we had walked nearly 10 miles at this point.

Later we walked through some of the trendier shopping districts in the French concession. Like its name sounds, the French concession was the area of the city that France took over back in the day. They've left behind a legacy of high class and high fashion, and it's one of the nicest and most developed parts of the city. The malls and shopping were way out of our league, though, so we didn't stay long.

It was already time for dinner, so we went to a place recommended by our friend Adrianna called Southern Barbarian. Southern Barbarian is a bit of a trendy restaurant catering to tourists or expatriates, but they specialized in Yunnan food. Yunnan food was a cuisine I had not yet tried in China, and I was excited because (surprise), they eat bugs out in Yunnan!

We ordered some fried goat cheese, some spicy mint salad, and a three bug platter featuring Grasshoppers, Bamboo worms, and Bees. Everything was really great! If I had to be picky, I would say that the grasshoppers were a little burnt. They tasted like burnt soybeans. But bees, on the other hand, may be my new favorite bug. They taste like you'd think, as long as what you think is that they would taste a little bit like honey.

Since we love being total disgusting shameful gluttons, we actually went out to eat again before bed. In our defense, it was another 3 or 4 hours later, and we had walked another several miles. This time we were searching for place that had Xiaolongbao, the other type of soup dumplings. Shockingly for a city as big and modern as Shanghai, almost every place that we tried to go was closed even though it was only 8:30 or 9. It took us over 2 extra hours of walking to finally find some places that were open.

To be honest, I was so hungry at that point that I would have just taken anything. This restaurant seemed like a pretty generic family-style Chinese restaurant, which is always a really good indicator in China. We were not disappointed! Shanghai-style food is just divine. A lot of Chinese people don't like it because they claim that it is "too sweet", "too oily", "has too much sauce", or "has too much seasoning" on it. From where I am sitting these are all GREAT attributes about food (save for oily maybe).

American Chinese food is, I'm sure most of my readers will know, very little like actual Chinese food. Shanghainese food, though, is the closest thing I've found to American Chinese food so far. It's funny because most restaurants in the US are labeled as "Cantonese" restaurants. Well, I live in the part of China that used to be known as Canton, and it's so very different that it's laughable.

The next day was not as fortunate in the rain department. It was the coldest, rainiest, soggiest day yet. It was our last full day of our month-long trip and it was tough to stay in a chipper mood. It nearly ruined our first stop of the day at the Muslim market.

A number of the previously-mentioned Chinese minority groups are traditionally Muslim (as opposed to Buddhist, like the majority of Chinese), and they have their own distinct cuisines and food types. Shanghai has a large population of these fine folks, and every Friday morning they gather near one of the mosques and sell all sorts of fresh food. By the time we got to the market the rain started pouring really hard. Luckily there were tented areas near the grills. We hung out near a hot stove and bought lots of goat shish-kebabs, fresh yogurt, fresh pita bread, and lamb meat pies. The full, meaty flavors almost made all the misery from the rain go away.

After, we made our way to the Propaganda Poster Museum on the far end of the French Concession. I had heard about this place online a while back, and it was a good thing I had good directions because it was really hard to find.

It was located in the basement of an otherwise completely unmarked apartment complex. It's basically just some guy's private collection. The museum itself was really cool, and was exactly like it sounds. I had a lot of fun pretending I was a secret agent in the Soviet era trying to find the place, too. The security guards saw us when we walked in and I said the password (Museum). They handed us a crudely drawn map and we had to navigate to the right building and find the secret entrance to the basement. Once at the bottom we had to hook a sneaky left turn and follow the poorly marked sign and we found it!

Learning about China's Red history through its own propaganda posters was a unique way of looking at one of the world's darkest and most deadly eras. We would have stated there a very long time, except that the basement wasn't heated and wasn't very dry either.

Taking a deep breath we braced ourselves for more wet misery and we left the museum.

There's not much else to tell of our Shanghai adventures. We spent a lot of time in the hostel, which was once again full of entire Chinese families. One night we had a grandma and a grandpa in our room. They put all of their comically large underwear on the space heater in the middle of the room and went to bed at 5pm. They woke up at 5am the next day and started making all kinds of noise as they did their stretches and packed their bags!

One night while we were out walking, we saw a grown man taking a dump in the middle of the street!

Just like Taiwan, Shanghai has a bunch of cat cafes. We had a heck of a time finding one though. The addresses we went to never had cat cafes at them! Adrianna says that a lot of stores and businesses seem to move around a lot, and I guess we just had bad luck. The one cats cafe we did manage to find didn't have any coffee, any pie, and also didn't have any cats. We stormed out after threatening to burn the place down.

And so February, which had entered with a roar, went out with a whimper. We boarded our plane and endured the worst flight of our entire lives. If you ever get a chance to fly on Spring Airlines I highly advise you not to do it.

The plane was tiny. They crammed six seats into every aisle when there should only have been four. The plane ride was choppy and full of turbulence the entire time. It is a "budget airline", so they did not serve any food or drinks on the whole three hour ordeal. Even water cost nearly $2.

As is common on most flights anymore, the captain announced that passengers could buy some duty free items from the in-flight magazine if they wanted. Unlike most flights, though, one of the flight attendants got up and went to the front of the plane with a cart full of stuff and with a megaphone. He proceeded to have some sort of auction-style sales pitch on all the items! He did this for nearly 90 minutes. Half of the flight was spent listening to a guy scream into a megaphone trying to get passengers to buy over-priced selfie sticks. Perhaps most unbelievable of all was that everyone on the plane was going NUTS for the stuff. Seriously I think Laura and I were the only passengers not to buy at least one item. This airline probably made $3,000 on that flight. It was like Black Friday on this airplane for these colognes and these replica Titanics.

When this fellow finally finished his spiel, I was ready for the last 40 minutes of the flight to be somewhat peaceful. Of course, I was wrong. China always has a way to take it to the next level. A recording came on the air and asked if we were all sore or tired from our long flight. Then an aerobics tape started, and the entire flight attendant staff led the passengers in an INSANE exercise routine. I wish I were joking. Nearly everyone on board the flight was swinging their arms and clapping their hands and rocking their head side-to-side in this twisted nightmare of a flight.

We got back to Foshan not a moment too soon!

I thought after traveling for a month that I would be exhausted. I was! I also thought that the "traveling bug" would have left me. I assumed that after going to so many places that I'd be ready to settle down. This is where I was mistaken. It was not even a full day later that I began planning out our next trip during our next break. May can't come fast enough!

Overall I am not sure what my favorite part of the trip was. The Southeast Asia portion was definitely better than the China portion. But even still, looking back on a lot of the experiences in China, I can admit that we did and saw a lot of amazing things. I'm just glad I took plenty of photos and finally managed to write almost all of it down. It is a period in my life that I do not want to soon forget.

Is it time for another trip yet...?