The week’s holiday that China takes from 1st – 7th October is known as Golden Week, and I cannot think of a more appropriate description – it has been pretty special. Not only did we decide to spend our holiday with a bunch of other i-to-i/TTC interns in Shanghai, but it was also my 24th birthday! I’ve always wanted to go to Shanghai because I like the word (and I think it should be used as verb more often) and when I was little I thought 24 sounded really grownup and glamorous so I’ve been looking forward to this birthday more than a usual birthday, just in case it turns out I was right and I’ll magically become both grownup and glamorous...
Anyway. Steph, Laura and I got the train from Handan on Friday 1st expecting (dreading?!) a 12-15 hour journey… it took us 20 hours, sat very upright in chairs at 90 degrees and crammed in with seemingly the rest of China in our carriage. Purgatory, I swear. I’m never doing a train journey that long without a bunk EVER AGAIN. Fortunately, once we got to Shanghai station we were so thrilled to be off the train that the fact that none of us had slept didn’t matter. (Well, I think I snatched the grand total of about an hour and a half, but only because I’m more used to long train journeys than the others.) Life was worth living again after the hostel’s power showers and once we were all assembled, twelve of us headed out to see the city. We got lunch at a Japanese restaurant close to the hostel then negotiated the metro to People’s Park so we could walk down the famous (and hyper busy!) shopping street Nanjing Road East down to the Bund (riverside promenade). Discovering a café that sold Stella on tap meant we didn’t get to the Bund until twilight, just as the lights were coming on through the drizzle and mist over the river in the skyscrapers of the Pudong district. We took our own photos and posed for Chinese people’s pictures until it got properly dark and then went to find a restaurant. The lack of sleep caught up with me after that and I went back to the hostel, but all the others made a night of it – they found a gay club and rolled in at 5am! Hardcore.
I left the others sleeping off their excesses and went with a Canadian teacher (Andi) who I’d met the day before to see the Yu Yuan Gardens in Shanghai’s Old Town at the southern end of the Bund. We walked down Nanjing Rd and the Bund again – in the sunshine this time – and found our way to the Yuan area. It was absolutely heaving, just like the rest of the city, and I had a frantic ten minutes literally running from McDonalds to Pizza Hut to KFC trying to find a toilet, then an increasingly desperate wait in the queue. This became something of a pattern for the week… some things, like taxi drivers trying to cheat you and no queues for men’s toilets, are universal and sometimes I hate being a woman! We pushed our way through the bazaar’s crowds - past dumpling outlets and souvenir shops (haggling for two t-shirts each on the way) and managed to find a quiet(er) entrance to the gardens. Inside was a comparative haven. The Yuan gardens are traditional Ming-style gardens with about six different connecting areas of pavilions, grottoes and water features; I don’t know if I saw all six, but what I saw was beautiful. It was still busy inside by the standards of home, but I could stretch out and not be touching anyone and it was lovely to have the sole use of my personal space for the duration!
Andi and I went our separate ways after lunch and I wandered through some markets and parks soaking up the sunshine and the vibrancy of the city, until I realised I’d been in the sun for about five hours without hat or brolly (with suncream, I’m not a complete fool) and finding some shade was a must. I went back to the hostel for a nap. That evening we’d decided on a sightseeing bus trip, but Nicole (one of the interns from Beijing) and I bought metro tickets to the wrong place so we ended up going to Madame Tussauds’ instead since Nicole, being Australian, had never had the doubtful pleasure of a visit. Bit of a rip off as ever, but we had a good giggle. We didn’t manage to catch up with the others, but they had a night in the French Concession that ended at dawn again. Oh for their stamina!
The next day was a sightseeing epic. We’d planned to do the sightseeing hop-on hop-off bus that the other’s had done, but for the things we intended to hop off for doing it by metro was just as easy. We started off at the Jade Buddha Temple. Definitely a rip off… but I did buy the most beautiful picture of a landscape by a monk which he’d done with his hands/fingers/nails. You’d never believe it unless you’d watched him work though, it’s that detailed. After that we had a bowl of noodle soup in a greasy-chopstick, yum yum, and headed to the Ji’nan Temple with its golden roof, enormous silver Buddha and next door shopping mall. We met up with the rest of the group after that, they’d been using up the rest of their 24hr hop-on-hop-off ticket’s validity, and went to the Shanghai Museum of Art then the Museum of Contemporary Art which were right next door to each other in People’s Park. Some of the drawings and paintings in the SMA made me remember why I love art, a couple of pieces in the MoCA made me remember why I liked contemporary art before I did my degree and everything else brought on such a violent CFAP (Critical Fine Art Practice – my degree subject) hangover that I had to resort to hiding in a corner behind a mediocre installation and my sunglasses so that I didn’t lose some serious ‘face’. It was such a lovely afternoon that once I’d got myself together and we’d finished being cultural, we all sat on the grass in the park and did some lazy people and sunset watching before heading back to the hostel to get ready for the evening.
Lisa (another Beijing intern) had heard that there was a French band called The Nitwits playing somewhere, so after eating the spiciest Chinese food I’ve ever experienced, we piled off into the metro again to find the gig. I played Mother for the evening, taking charge of the metro tickets and the precious piece of paper with the address of the bar on it. It was all fine and dandy until we got off the metro and into taxis having decided that we would get hopelessly lost trying to find the place ourselves… turns out that it was literally outside the station, and we drove around the block and paid three taxis for the privilege!! That little glitch meant we got inside just as the support band was getting to the end of their set which was a shame because it was a Chinese rock band and they were awesome. The Nitwits were a pretty good band, the drinks were plentiful, the company was fun and the jokes were the best kind of bad - including my impression of a French existentialist seagull (“pour-quoiii?!”). Tell me that’s not funny. Go on, I dare you.
The next day, the last day, I was determined to go and see the Shanghai Museum so (feeling a bit delicate) off I went with Nicole and a Malaysian guy called KG from the hostel. The queue to get in was dauntingly long, but we persevered because it was the only thing left on mine and Nicole’s sightseeing checklist. Fortunately it was only tedious bag checks and we were only standing for about half an hour. Inside were four floors of ram packed with Chinese history and culture; somewhat mind blowing on a mild hangover, but interesting nonetheless. Afterwards, Nicole and I wandered down Nanjing Rd for the last time and found a café for a cup of tea and some cheesecake. For our last evening, we went over the river to Pudong to have dinner and get a closer look at the Oriental Pearl Radio Tower and all the skyscrapers and lights before meeting up with a friend of a friend. We ended up in a backpacker-sports bar where I had drinks bought for me all night, and consequently played very badly at darts and pool!!
Needless to say, I did not enjoy the train journey the next day. Urgh. URGH. I don’t like trains anymore.
We arrived at 5am on my birthday (yay!) and spent the morning asleep. I got up in time to be sung to via Skype by my family, and then crashed out again before being given presents and cake by Steph and Laura, getting lots of Facebook messages and having a quiet evening watching one of my favourite films. Somehow or other I also managed to pick up another cold which has been plaguing me for the last few days. On Saturday night we went out for a delicious birthday meal with Dan and Kan, the plan on Sunday night was for pool and a massage, but Swallow rang us and invited us to a tai chi meeting. Intrigued, we agreed and got a taxi to Handan’s new five star hotel, as directed. We met a new group of other non Chinese people (!!) and had a meal which included a spicy frog dish and donkey meat sausages, then got into a convoy of coaches and were driven to the nearest town, Yong Yen, for the ceremony. It turned out to be the opening ceremony of a big tai chi competition and they wanted us to parade behind our national banners like at the Olympics! The event was held outside what I presume is an historic fort, there was a river/moat, a bridge and a long high wall with pavilions at each end all of which was lit up like Vegas. Once we’d paraded, there were speeches which we paid no attention to, a story told in six ‘acts’ on the walls and on boats and on the stages at the base of the wall, then some famous singers and more fireworks than I have ever seen in one go. It was yet another randomly brilliant evening, and I’ve (sort of) ticked off another lifetime goal to go with Shanghai and being 24: representing my country at a sporting event! I would say I’m going back to normality now, but I think we all know I don’t mean that – there’s no such thing as a normal week here!!
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