你好 everyone! I will now attempt to sum up four very eventful days in Shanghai in one short blog entry.
Last Saturday night a Harvard friend (Spring), an HBA friend (Bailu) and I took the overnight train from Beijing to Shanghai. We had soft seats—so the 12-hour train ride was a lot like my flight from California to Beijing, but with more legroom. I’ve heard great stories from other HBA-ers about making Chinese friends on the train, but didn’t have this experience; all I found out about my neighbor during the entire ride was that she was from Singapore!
We arrived in Shanghai early in the morning and, after recovering from the blast of heat that met us when we stepped off of the train, took the subway to a stop near our hostel. We stayed at “Le Tour Youth Hostel,” and although it is rather far from downtown Shanghai, I would highly recommend it to any future travelers. The staff was friendly and the bathrooms were clean—in China, these aren’t things to be taken lightly! We checked in, ditched our backpacks, and headed out into the city.
Our first afternoon we planned to meet up with some HBA Yalies for Dim Sum and Xiao Long Bao (“Little Dragon Dumplings”—a Shanghai specialty). We all made it to People’s Park, and then our communication lines went down: cell phones ran out of money and we, being students in our last week of travel, didn’t want to buy more minutes. We finally met by The Lotus Pond—but the half hour of wandering the park looking for our friends actually proved surprisingly fun. The park was full of Chinese eager to practice their English, and nearly every person who passed us greeted us with, “Hah-loo. Vwhat country you from?”
Sometimes we ignore these calls, but in the park they were so ubiquitous that this strategy proved impossible. We finally began talking with the locals—and quickly, a crowd formed. The would-be English speakers hung on our every (English) word; it felt strange being a sort of commodity, but also felt like a good diplomatic opportunity. I tried to be friendly and to pepper conversation with lines from our textbook like, “I hope that America and China’s relations continue to improve,” or “I’m really impressed with China’s modernization and progress,” which, in addition to actually being true, never fail to elicit happy smiles from a native crowd.
Our Xiao Long Bao were good, but not what they’d been talked up to be. Call me provincial, but I prefer Beijing’s good ‘ole jiaozi.
Late that afternoon, we met up with Wen Jun and his older brother Grant (who stayed with us at Le Tour). The five of us made our way to the European side of the Bund, Shanghai’s riverfront, where we ate dinner at a restaurant called “Shanghai Grandmother’s Restaurant” (the name spoke to us). Afterwards, we got drinks at a bar called Atanu that had mediocre drinks but made up for it with a breathtaking view of the other side of the river—of Shanghai’s modern skyline. We stayed past eleven, when the city turns off most lights, and watched as the skyscraper’s electric blues and reds flickered in the river’s water, then went out.
Much in need of post-HBA relaxation, us three girls spent most of the next day reading at the Yu Gardens. We claimed a pondside pavilion for ourselves, and sat there eating watermelon ice and lackadaisically flipping pages as the sun sank low over the traditional-Chinese-style rooftops. In the evening, we headed to the other side of the Bund for dinner with the Yalies.
We ate at a small restaurant a few blocks back from the waterfront. At the time, dinner seemed great—looking back on it, not so much. Soon after getting home that night, my stomach began to rumble, and by the time that we went to bed, I was getting waves of sharp cramps. This isn’t unheard of in China, and so I crossed my fingers that something just wasn’t sitting right and fell asleep.
Unfortunately, I woke up two hours later sweating and with gripping stomach pain. After one more interminable hour in bed, and a perhaps even longer hour sick to my stomach, I woke up my friends and asked them to find a Western hospital. In China, food poisoning is sometimes serious and sometimes not—all I knew was that I couldn’t stop vomiting, and that I wasn’t taking any chances.
A decidedly uncomfortable taxi ride later, I found myself in an (empty) Western hospital talking to a doctor from San Diego. I had already explained my situation to the nurse: “不舒服，拉肚子，土好几次…” but repeated it all to the doctor as well. He pressed a stethoscope to my stomach, listened for a few minutes, told me that I needed an anti-nausea medicine so that I could keep water down, and promptly gave me a shot.
I spent the whole day (and that night) in bed. Luckily, in our hostel this meant a clean bunk, with white, freshly-pressed sheets and the faintest smell of pine. I would wake from time to time and try to read a few pages of my book—but usually I just fell asleep again. I tried to walk to dinner with my friends, but didn’t even make it through the “liang cai” (the Chinese version of soup-and-salad) before my insides gripped up again and I headed back home.
Luckily, I woke up in the morning feeling okay (so long as I avoided all smells and the sight of any Chinese food)! We decided on two easy, indoor activities: a visit to Sun Yat-Sen’s (He was a very important Chinese political leader) former residence and then a trip to the Shanghai Art Museum. The Shanghai Art Museum is definitely worth a visit—it was small, but had two beautiful exhibitions of photography. We wandered the galleries; the images of Chinese rural life reminded us of our weeks of social study in Henan and (for Bailu) Shanxi.
We took an overnight sleeper train back to Beijing. Let me for a moment extol the virtues of the sleeper car. Particularly after airplane and soft-seat travel, nothing really compares to the luxury of having about three-by-seven cushioned and pillowed square feet all to yourself. Chinese trains even play soothing music in the cars, which muffles neighbors’ conversation and helps you to relax. On top of the small table between the two bunks, there is even a small plastic vase holding a small plastic flower. It’s terribly civilized. I love sleeper cars.
Spring, Bailu and I had bought dinner at a grocery store on our way to the station, and so the three of us crashed on Spring’s lower bunk and chatted about our respective China experiences. When the other passengers started to snooze off, we retired to our respective bunks and slept soundly until the morning.
