I ventured beyond the borders of South Korea for the 2nd time since I arrived in late March this past weekend. Interestingly, or maybe not, it was the first time I ventured beyond South Korea's borders and actually into another country (the first time was when I went to the DMZ and went out ff South Korea and into No Man's Land). This other country was
"jung-guk" - China - and played host to me while I met an old, smarter, and, incredibly, shorter friend, Clancy (Or "Clancy of the Overflow" as Kezza would put it). He had spent 3 weeks in China and on the Friday before I arrived, just finished a University subject via a University exchange program. So, unsurprisingly, it was time to party, and cram as much of Shanghai into a 44 hr window as possible. I would just like to point out that no matter what else happened, I was overjoyed that I wasnt thrown into jail, injured and then woken up in a hospital, or denied re-entry to Korea. Based on this, the holiday was a success.
I arrived at about 6.30 in the evening after a suprisingly good flight with Eastern China Airlines. All the North North-Western Independent Rural China Airlines flight were booked so I had to go East China and was pleasently suprised to recieved a meal and 2 beers in a short 1hr 20 min flight (screw you Jetstar with your miniature packet of mixed nuts and shot of coke). I caught the metro to the closest stop to Clancy's uni, which was about 25 stops away, and took about an hour and a half. Brutal. I was also introduced to something I wasnt expecting that I would see quite often - people openly picking their nose. Probably counted it 3 times on the train and a handful of times the rest of the trip. Cant say i condone that behavior. Once I was off the train, and onto the street for my first real look of China, I was overwhelmed with the amount of people, bikes, motor bikes and cars that were in front of me. Mostly bikes and motorbikes though, as every piece of concrete seemed to be crammed with with one of them and I swear there was about 1000 of them parked side-by-side in an impromptu car-park, well, bike-park, that was only the length of one side of a block. Incredible. I then tried to get a taxi, which proved to be harder than trying to get one at 3 am in Sydney with a group of 4 guys. 20 minutes, and a long, long walk later, i found one and met up with Clancy. Post-exam celebrations were in full-throttle by the time I arrived at the dorms. About 254 people were crammed into a single dorm room, which I figure is skill you acquire if you spend enough time in Shanghai. I managed to find someone else's alcohol to drink as we kicked into maybe the strangest drinking game ever. The game works by playing
Roxanne by the Police and when lyrics say "Roxanne" the boys drink, and when lyrics say "Put on the Red Light", the girls drink. Sounds fun enough, and starts off slowly, but "Roxanne" is followed by "Put on the red light" something like 27 times in a 3 minute span. They are also often repeated in groups of 4 or more in rapid succession. So unless you have a mini keg by your side, you will surely run out of alcohol and you need to be able to drink as quickly as Bob Hawke to keep up with every turn. Regardless of the practicality, it is a drinking game, which means everyone is a winner. We kicked on to a bar that night which was 80
Yuan ($11 or $12) for unlimited alcohol (with return of your cup for each drink.... brilliant idea by the way) but felt far, far to familiar to me. I swear id been there before but I though it was on Darlinghurst road in Sydney. It was so completely packed with foreigners that even the people that looked Asian were actually foreigners (Australians of Chinese descent). Everything about it, from the dancefloor, to the Djs, to the massive D***heads, reminded me of Oz and was very un-Chinese. Either way, it was a cracking night.
The next morning we went into town for a big Chinese lunch. It was at a very highly rated
YumCha restaurant, apparently, and was bloody amazing. We sat at the biggest circular table known to man which required carrier pigeons to communicate with people on the other side of the table. The table had a rotating glass top that allowed you to slide the awesome food around the table. A little bit of everything was eaten - duck, pork, dumplings, tea - and it was fantastic. Unfortunately though, it didn't quite stack up to the $7 sweet and sour pork at my old bar, the "Dugout". That's some REAL Chinese food there. Of course, that's completely bogus, and I was really stoked to get a proper Chinese meal while I was there. By this point a theme was emerging during the trip - "I need some water". It wasn't just me, but many people in general, always seemed to be looking for water. It started coming home from the night before, then in the morning, and then at the restaurant, where they seemed to forget everyone's water, even after repeated pleas. This all stems from the fact that you cannot drink any water from a tap, and the uni was isolated from any shops. So something that is usually so readily available, and absolutely vital for life, was now a scarce and extremely valuable resource. It was a surreal feeling, knowing that right here, right now, i need water, but there is none. It doesn't seem like that should be a problem one should encounter in this millennium. From food, I went for a walk downtown with Clancy and his mate Nick. I knew I wouldnt be able to do much in Shanghai in only a day, so I figured if I walked around downtown for a few hours, I can atleast say that I did something and saw some of the city. It was well worth it. We walked from the main downtown station we walked a fair distance to the river. On the way, we walked through a park where we saw the most peculiar sight ever. About 200 or so older men and women "advertising" there children for marriage. That is what is happening in the picture above. Her bits of paper in front of her are telling of her looks, dimensions, skills, etc (by the way, if there is no picture of the child thats a pretty big red-flag). The ages of their children are in the 25-35 area, but of course, no one of that age is anywhere in the park, its entirely made up of old people, selling or looking for partners for their children. Crazy. The entire walk to the river - and the entire city for that matter - has 30-40 story buildings on every single block. Its hard to tell where "downtown" is because it all looks like downtown. The big, beautiful, and sometimes ugly, buildings are juxtaposed (first time ive every successfully used this word in a sentence) with the conditions of the street. Look up and its 1st world, or even better than 1st world (future world???), and look around u on the street and its 3rd world. Roads are 30 times more dangerous than Korea, beggars everywhere, dirty streets. Wasnt super impressed with this aspect of China. The skyline from the one side of the river across to the other is pretty darn awesome. The strange looking orange tower I actually think is really cool, but not as cool as the bottle opener shaped one. We grabbed a beer at a nearby rooftop bar while the sun was going down which was one of the highlights of the trip. I did find it difficult keeping up with the conversation of the Law students - Chinese foreign policy, the theories of Malthaus and Co and Global Politics arent exactly my strong points. I kept trying to talk about my fantasy football team and why cabbage kimchi is better than radish kimchi, but it didnt elicit much interest.
We headed back into the city as darkness fell and the city just exploded with lights. Never seen so much fluoro, neon, and any other form of bright colours in my life. Street level, underground, and above you, its just a bombardment of lights. Crazy. Another beer followed at a swanky Morrocan style bar once our eyes adjusted to light and were able to find it. Back to the dorms but not before a quick meal at a small, local restaurant. Not a word was spoken by the restaurant people - this was a common theme of the weekend; not a single Chinese person could speak a single word of English. I thought Koreans couldn't speak English at first, but they sound like Barak Obama compared to the Chinese. The waitress ordered for us thankfully and it turned out to be really, really tasty, so we were happy with the outcome. I was also overwhelmed when we received the water for our table. I poured it into my cup and noticed that steam was coming out of it. A little weird to be sure, but I heard that water was heated up in China to kill the bugs in it, and it would maybe be a little warm. But this wasnt just warm, this was almost boiling water. I wondered what the hell was up with this and Clancy said you never drink anything not from a bottle that isn't boiling. So I ate my rice and beef with boiling water. WEIRD (couldnt they cool it down first????) The rest of the night involved......... wait for it....... yes, thats right ..... Drinking. What a suprise. Went to a place inhabited with a few more Chinese, that was really nice, cheap and had personal service to our table. Was quite impressed. This was followed by going to a club right next door called the "Bunker" which was just how it sounds. As you enter the club, you walk through a long, thin and small tunnel into a dark room with a low ceiling, which was the dance floor, and continued into other small, bombshelter-type rooms where you could sit. Very cool place with good music and a unique feeling. Topped the night off very, very nicely.
Unfortunately my trip ended too soon as I had to make my way to the airport from 11 in the morning. I got some Subway for the first time in 9 months (another one of the highlight moments) and jumped on a Maglev train (Maglev are the fastest train on Earth) which travelled at 300 kms/h to the airport.
An awesome weekend to be sure!
Ddeok Guk - Korean girls' mortal enemy
