Shanghai 2007
Trip Start
Oct 19, 2007
1
2
70
Trip End
Ongoing
Shanghai,
Shanghai,
China
Friday, December 28, 2007
This time around I was going to meet up with Mum who had graciously decided to come and spend Christmas with me. As usual, I didn't get enough sleep in the week before I left (this is the story of my life in China thus far... I never get enough sleep) and was quite depressed to find myself back on a hard sleeper (the visa run to Hong Kong took place but one week before). I did not sleep well at all and, worse, arrived in Shanghai with a desperate need to poo.
Sad but true. There was a line up for the toilet on the train and I was convinced I would disgrace myself if I tried to stand up for that long. So... I sat hunched over on my bunk with my legs crossed, in absolute agony as tears began to well up in my eyes, wishing the train to go faster. As soon as the doors opened, I flew off the train leaping over rolling suitcases in a manner worthy of Liu Xiang himself as I went and galloped into the nearest toilets. I sobbed with relief and left the station sniffling. That is definitely the last time I have spicy food before catching a night train.
I caught the metro to where Mum had texted me to meet her. The metro was an interesting reintroduction to Shanghai. The cars were all packed. As the train doors opened, the poor souls standing at the front exploded outwards as those behind them forced their way through like rugby players, with impatient yells of "Rang kai!" (out of the way). It was shocking. I was scared. Figuring I might be a tad too polite to negotiate my way onto the train, I gravitated to the middle of a group of locals hoping that, in their single-minded determination to get on the train, they might well be able to shove me on from behind. It was a tight squeeze, but the plan worked nicely.
I was just starting to feel smug when I had a nasty realisation. Shanghai metro drivers are lunatics. At one point the driver braked suddenly. Having nothing to hold onto and being crammed together, we all started toppling. The weight of the masses ended up being balanced upon the rib cage of a stick skinny Chinese woman who, pinned against a pole, squealed in protest. Getting off the train would have been nigh impossible if not for the Herculean efforts of an officious old lady standing behind me who shoved me and those between me and the door, all the way off the train and onto the platform. Good thing it was my stop. Can't say the same for the others she displaced though.
Feeling bruised and battered, I found Mum and went back to the hotel where Mum, rather callously, I think, refused to let me sleep and dragged me off for a walk. We walked a lot. Ate. Shopped. Then ended up at O'Malley's for Xmas Eve drinks. We ate lots of food, lots of wine and, feeling nostalgic over memories of drinking a pint (hurm, well, perhaps a few pints would be more accurate) of Kilkenny after ju-jitsu practice when I still lived in Australia, oh so many years ago, we drank a couple of those as well, then started walking off to the hotel. It was a really long way.
Just before midnight we walked past a crowd standing outside a catholic church waiting for midnight mass. Curious, we too hovered about. Midnight passed but the church remained black in the shadows, with a great big padlock locking the front gate. Mum and I smellt a rat. What kind of church doesn't hold midnight mass?! Apparently there had been rumours that the church would hold mass...thus the big crowd, but (perhaps alarmed by the crowd gathering) when somebody finally came out to address us, it turned out they had decided to hold midnight mass in the afternoon instead, without bothering to tell anybody. People moved off disappointed.
Mum and I decided we had just witnessed a case of "the communists who stole Christmas". Atheist (or bunny-loving tree-hugger, "Use the Force Luke" pantheist) that I am, I guess it should be neither here nor there to me, but it kind of irked me that the Communist Party had had the nerve to mess with Christmas. It is bad enough that they go about messing with Panchen Lamas, now they are off meddling with mass too. Later on TV we saw glorious scenes of people "celebrating" Christmas all over China (ie, they were shopping while dancing girls in Santa hats gyrated to disco versions of carols on big stages nearby). I'm not sure if this was supposed to be a bragging session by the government about how cosmopolitan/prosperous/enlightened/open China has become but the only thing I could think of was consumerism gone mad. I swore vehemently in Chinese from my bed as I drifted off to sleep.
The next day we went out with the goal of meeting up with Petra and her parents before catching the night train back to Wuhan. We wandered off to the old town bought steamed bread dumplings from a place Allison and I went to years ago, only to find that it is now hideously famous and you need to line up (ie, barge and push) for ages to get anything. It was worth the wait and the bruises. I think I might actually be getting better at this barging thing. Not that this is at all to my credit. As Tracy told me in a text message the other day "You were much nicer when you were living in Taiwan!" (I believe I'd just called her a blow up doll... if you see Ally's photo album on facebook, you will know why, if anybody can hack into Ally's Facebook account to remove that photo, I'd be much obliged Fj
After being chased about by hawkers a little too much for our liking, we headed for Nanjing Rd, met up with Petra and parents, had a snack and drinks, snuck into the Sofitel next door on a mission to stealth pee in their bathrooms, then went off to the train station.
Something terrible happened upon arrival at the not-yet-completed Wuchang train station. The taxi drivers were all refusing to use their meters because there was no taxi stand and they were keen to take advantage of the lack of supervision by ripping off newly arrived train passengers who, just having staggered off overnight trains at some god forsaken hour of the morning, were in a poor position to defend themselves. There were also lots of illegal cars trying to make a fast buck in there too. After bargaining for a bit, Mum and I got only mildly ripped off. We got into a car with a driver, the driver's boss and a male passenger. The boss was a sleazebag. He sat in the back with me and Mum and tried put his arm around me.
Mum didn't notice (about which I am relieved since she had to put up with enough of this kind of crap in the Middle East...seriously, by the time we got to Turkey she was getting woken up by nightmares about me getting sexually harrassed... indeed her nightmares generally woke me up too what with all the punching, shouting and kicking she was doing in her sleep!) until I snapped at him in Chinese to keep his hands to himself, causing all 3 men in the car to blanche and Mum to look around in shock (I don't think she'd every heard me use that tone of voice). The other passenger started to complain bitterly how Wuhanese drivers are pirates and parasites of the worst kind, the way they try to rip off travellers. The rest of the trip to Hankou (the part of Wuhan where I live) was made in embarrassed silence. Mum and I huddled together, the sleazebag feigned sleep, while the young driver looked apologetic.
And that is where the Shanghai adventure ends.
