Shanghai

When we finally took off, we were running 40 minutes late. There was some turbulence on the flight to Shanghai as well. In first class, we were served an appetizer of shrimp and walnuts, and my main course was pomfrets with Shanghai sauce and fried noodles. It was pretty good although the turbulence made for some rough eating.

Once we landed, we gathered and were ready for the trip into Shanghai.

So far this trip, we have an overall escort, Veronica, who is a Beijing native who lives in Derbyshire part of the time. She's got an excellent command of English. At each destination we also have a local guide, Terry in Hong Kong, Yeung in Guilin. Both were young men who know their home towns well. Here in Shanghai our local guide is Ms. Ren, who looks to me to be about 18 years old. She can be difficult to interrupt when you have questions, but she clearly likes her home town.

We went from the airport to the Orient Pearl television tower. This is a 400+ meter tower. We stopped at the rotating restaurant at 267 meters. We had a light tea, and I walked around to take some pictures. The Pu Dong area of Shanghai has seen some tremendous growth, with huge skyscrapers being erected (including the TV tower) in the last 8 years. (If China can do it, we ought to be able to rebuild the World Trade Center to be better and stronger just as fast. To be honest, I think that rebuilding is essential for the national psyche.) The Hyatt is an 88 floor hotel, the world's tallest. Motorola is among the companies with buildings here.

After the tea, we checked into the Portman Ritz Carlton Hotel, where my room is on the 33rd floor. It has a magnificent view out over the city, but, alas, it doesn't face the Pu Dong area. I'll probably take a picture out the window, anyway.

It took a while for the staff to figure out the transformer situation. Their 240->110 volt transformer works fine, but it did not have a US grounded plug. It took a while to finally find a multi-plug power strip that handled 110 volts. So, my lap top has all the juice it needs.

I went out to buy some post cards, and very quickly demagnetized my room key. Argh. With the flight situation, we all wonder how long it will take for postcards to get home. I suspect my British and Australian friends will get theirs expeditiously.

In the evening, we had a talk by Zheng Wannian, a professor of history at Fudon University. He spoke very actively and forcefully about the history of Shanghai, going into details of the roles of Jews in Shanghai and how the area was a haven before and during WWII until the last 58 were forcibly expelled during the Cultural Revolution.

Perhaps more intriguing was Zheng's discussion of his life during the Cultural Revolution, and how he was a member of the Red Guards. One day, he went to school to find the building closed and all the desks smashed. The schoolmaster was kowtowing to a picture of Mao, and the janitor told him the schoolmaster was accused of being too academic and forgetting the political life.

Based on what I've read on my own since, I suspect it is likely that schoolmaster was later killed.

After a couple years, when he was old enough, Zheng was sent to the country to learn from the only legal professors: peasants. He grew rice, and two years of growing rice as a peasant was enough for him to qualify for university.

He had an older sister who spent ten years in hardship working as a peasant in the country.

We had dinner with Professor Zheng, a western meal that left me a bit cold. A chicken salad, seafood consomme, and beef with sun dried polenta. I skipped the creme brulee afterward (and noted it did not appear to have had the surface of sugar caramelized). I woke a bit peckish before the restaurants opened, so ordered some dumplings from the all-night menu, and slept soundly after that.

Almost too soundly, to be honest. I woke up near 6AM, which is very late for me. Showered and went to the breakfast buffet. The Chinese selections need some help.

Today was a busy day, and for me a little frustrating. Somehow, in the trip from Guilin to Shanghai my camera has changed state. (Probably a change in the custom settings? It was in my backpack on the flight as opposed to being in the camera case.) Now, there is a delay from depressing the shutter to when the picture is taken; I could figure out how to change the delay (2 seconds) but not how to eliminate it. And I don't have my camera guide with me -- I normally do. I guess this is a job for the Internet.

Our first stop was the Bund. Bund is actually a Hindi word for river bank. The Bund was the center for commerce and extraterritorality during the colonial era, and many of the buildings are from that era. It was quite scenic.

Next stop was the Shanghai Museum. We had two hours here, but it really wasn't enough time. I started at the top, at the coin collection. The next stop was minority nationalities, and there were quite a few Tibetan artifacts. (Odds are good those artifacts belong in Tibet.) The highlight of the top floor was the jade collection. You could see how the exploitation of jade developed, starting with simple jade knives and other blades, and advancing to some very intricately carved jade sculptures.

One floor down was more art. There was a large gallery of Chinese paintings. A lot of landscapes and some birds. I found these particularly beautiful. It is radically different from western art. Also on the floor was calligraphy, where I spent a short time, and "Chinese seals." These are now called chops, and function as signatures.

The second floor I visited briefly; it consisted of porcelain. Ming vases, etc, but I didn't have time to see them all. The first floor had bronzes that were fascinating, again, I sped through there.

Three or four hours are needed to see that museum.

Our next stop was lunch at Green Ripple restaurant. This is one of Shanghai's oldest restaurants, and is used to entertain visitors such as President Clinton. Lunch consisted of cold appetizers like jellyfish, octopus, and other tasty morsels. Then came the more traditional courses, including kung pao chicken (Shanghai Style), beef in brown sauce, crab soup, and dim sum. It was quite filling.

We worked off lunch on our walk through the Yu Gardens. These were next to the restaurant, and consisted of traditional Chinese rock gardens with pagodas. It makes a change from more modern Shanghai.

We took a short break after the garden. Others went shopping for antiques, I joined our tour guides for water at the local Starbucks.

Starbucks is all over Shanghai, with eleven branches opening in the last six months. Had Douglas Adams lived, he might have revised his "Shoe event horizon" to be a "Starbucks event horizon." It amazes me the number of these stores opening world wide. Soon, we really will be totally mobilized for a coffee-based economy.

The next stop was my worst nightmare, the Children's Palace. This is a restricted admission day-care type facility. Young children are taught arts and crafts, like painting, dance, and musical instruments. We were given a recital by three year olds, and I explained Jonathan Swift to Veronica.

A short break at the hotel before a cooking demonstration and talk with Geoff Bone, the sous chef for the Ritz Carlton. We had a demonstration of preparing dim sum and a talk about the various forms of Chinese cuisine. After the Children's Palace, I was in heaven. We were served char sie bo, har gau, spring rolls, Shanghai dumplings, and pot stickers. We were also treated to a demonstration of hand drawn Beijing noodles, where a 1.5 pound ball of dough produced 8192 noodles, so fine they could thread a needle. This 68 year old noodle maker once made 32,768 noodles from this same amount of dough, the world record for the thinnest noodles.

The remaining courses were Beijing noodle soup, steamed fish, fried rice, fried chicken, and sweet almond cream.

The last even of the day was a performance by the Shanghai acrobatic troop. It started with a Chinese fan dance and dragons, and included some very difficult acrobatics. One irritating point was the contortionist, who seemed to be a five year old girl. Other than that, the troop was very skilled, and a joy to watch.

I woke at 4:45, and took my shower. Breakfast was at 6AM, and I then went to the business center for Internet access. I spent a good bit of time trying to find documentation on my camera, first on the Nikon web site (that was singularly unhelpful) and then by doing some google searches. These did not yield favorable results. So, I got on my cell phone and called Nikon in the US, and they were closed. So, I called Keeble & Schuchat in Palo Alto, and talked with their repair staff.

Put simply, the camera is not working properly and needs service. I have all the setting right to disable the self-timer, so there must be something wrong with the internal electronics. In the interim, I'll just have to spend the next two weeks with the 2 second self-timer delay on every photograph. No wildlife, but since I am mainly looking for scenery, that's not a big deal.

The camera will go in for repairs on September 29, the day I get home.

Today was a trip to Suzhou, a city about 100 kilometers outside Shanghai. The primary industry here is silk. We set off at 8:30AM and arrived at the silk embroidery institute at about 10AM. We received a lecture and tour of the institute, where they make hand-made pictures out of silk. It can take six months to a year to make a picture, and the prices reflected that.

We visited the store at the end of the tour, and seeing prices like RMB 150,000 ($20,000) did cause me to reconsider any purchases. Even the smaller items were priced in the $1000 range. They looked lovely, but I decided against making a purchase.

Besides, I don't have any room.

Guardian Dragon

Gardens

Click on any image to see a larger picture

The next stop was the garden of the humble administrator. This is a twelve acre garden, with a good bit under water. There were a lot of lotus flowers.

Chinese gardens are made on four items: Flowers, water, stone, and architecture. There are pagodas and studies for viewing the gardens, stones for fixed beauty, flowing water, and flowers/trees for the living garden.

Suzhou has over 300 gardens, and is perhaps the garden capital of China. The garden of the humble administrator is one of the largest, and is quite popular. On a tour, we look at the different layouts and visit different studies for the view. They are pretty amazing.

After the garden, we went to lunch at the Bamboo Grove restaurant. We started with the cold appetizers, and had courses of roast pork, crab, sweet fish, fried rice, and beef. We had a special Suzhou dim sum, and a chicken soup. Most outstanding was the fish. It was given a squid cut, and was much better than other fish we had eaten. Although we had sweet and sour fish before, maybe it was a combination of the specific river fish with the sauces that gave it a sublime flavor.

After lunch, we went to a silk factory. We saw how the silk is harvested from the cocoons, and at one point, we saw the actual silk worms and moths. We learned about double pupae cocoons, that aren't useful for making the finest silk, but can be used to make quilts (comforters). I was tempted to buy a comforter, but I wonder how long it would have lasted with Leela and Gremalkin.

I did buy some silk garments. I bought a pair of silk robes, and a tie, as well as some gifts. The silk robes cost under $100, and both feature a dragon. One is Duke blue, and the other is red.

The drive back to the hotel was uneventful, apart from a short delay in traffic as an APEC motorcade needed to use the freeway. We got back by 5PM. Since we had time, and since Ren and Veronica were curious, I showed them a bit of my work on the Internet. They were impressed.

Dinner was on our own. I really wanted something spicy, as did Veronica. Good thing she liked Sichuan food, as no one else wanted to go. I doubt I would have found my way there alone. We went to a Sichuan restaurant, where we dined on cashews & bean curd in chili oil, spicy chicken, fried eel, and turtle. The chicken was normally diced and cooked, but on top were about a cup of shredded chili peppers. This hit the spot. The eel was prepared with cornstarch, chili, ginger, and garlic, and was smooth. Neither of us had eaten turtle before, and neither of us was that impressed. I found the meat to be a bit rubbery, like squid, but with more fat. The turtle was served in a potato/chili sauce, that was pretty good.

I had been developing a sore throat, and the smoking in the restaurant put it well up on the radar. I found some fisherman's friends that should help.

Interestingly, today can be thought of as the 70th anniversary of the actual start of WWII. On September 18, 1831, the Japanese laid siege to Shenyang, and captured the city. This invasion of Manchuria provided the Japanese with a starting point for the invasion of China, and the reason for the US to cut off the oil and rubber exports to Japan, the casus belli for the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor.

Larium dreams! It was a tough night due to some sinus congestion, but I woke at 4:41 having had a vivid larium dream. For some reason, I went home early. I don't recall the flight (and that had be very confused at the end of the dream) but I was home. I even went to see Pam, my travel agent, to get a refund for my air ticket from China since I flew a different carrier, but since it was Wednesday, she wasn't in. I then visited another friend, who seemed to have been expecting me.

It was so vivid and lifelike by the end I thought I actually had gone home early, and some of the logical inconsistencies were bothering me, like why I didn't recall being served any food on the flight. I had even planned to send email to those friends to whom I had yet to send postcards. It was downright spooky.

I am committed to continuing the trip. Larium dreams are just larium dreams.

Breakfast was back at the buffet. It seems that the sore throat I developed has expanded into sinus congestion, so at 8AM I went to the pharmacy, It opened at 9, but the grocery next door was open. Based on its stock, though, the only nasal decongestants are for children. I'll subsist on the throat lozenges until I return from the museums for lunch.

The morning is "on our own," so I am planning on visiting the urban planning museum, and later perhaps the Shanghai museum for a second time. All depends on how much time it takes; the museums open at 9AM. We also have lunch on our own, and the only planned activities are a visit to the Jade Buddha temple and the flight to Chongqing.

I took a taxi to the People's Park, and after walking around, found the urban planning museum, but instead opted to head back to the Shanghai museum. I am glad I did.

On the ground floor is an exhibit of stolen antiquities from Tibet. There are signs in Chinese and English that talk about how this is a loan from all the people of Tibet (I wonder what the Dali Lama thinks of that!) and how Tibet has always been an integral part of China.

While I am certain there had always been trade between Tibet and China, and that at time Chinese (and Mongol) warlords had occupied Tibet, I've always viewed it as occupied territory that should be free. Ward-room rules.

The antiquities were beautiful, with a lot of gold masks and a huge gold Buddha statue. I wish I could have seen these in Lhasa, or the Portola Palace, where they belong.

My sore throat and runny nose seems to have developed into a minor head cold. I ran into Mike, who is an immunologist, at the museum and his wife was carrying cold medication. I took some, and am waiting for it to take effect.

I took a taxi back to the hotel, RMB 11. I found my own stash of cold medicine, Tylenol Cold, in the pharmacy. I'll hold on to the supply.

I stopped by the Northwest Airlines office at the hotel and asked about the ongoing impact on flights to the states. They report they expect it to clear in 2-3 weeks, but since I have a confirmed seat reservation, I should be on my flight.

Lunch was at the Summer Pavilion, the hotel's Chinese restaurant. Naturally, I ate dim sum. Here is the breakdown of the bill:

The exchange rate is 8.2644 RMB to the dollar, so that's $15.49 for dim sum and $19.36 for drinks, plus automatic gratuity. $40.08 total. We won't discuss the laundry bill.

After lunch, we checked out of the hotel. We visited the jade Buddha temple in Shanghai, where they have two Buddhas carved from jade. During the Cultural Revolution, these Buddhas were protected by a very clever monk. The Red Guards were smashing all religious symbols, so one of the monks erected a pane of glass in front of the Buddha, and painted a picture of Chairman Mao on the glass. The Red Guards were not able to break the glass surrounding the Buddha due to their reverence for Mao, so the Buddha survived.

The last stop was the airport, where we were to fly China Southwest to Chong Qing. We boarded uneventfully.