So today was our very first full day in China, and what a day it was. I started out by waking up at 6:30, bright & early. I’m not sure why, but since I was awake and Jerry wasn’t I decided to go check out the gym (not only to work out, but rumor had it that you could get free bottled water there which is important since you can’t drink the tap water around here…good thing the rumor was true!). I came back and dragged Jerry out of bed and down to breakfast. We had what we are now dubbing the “million dollar breakfast.” Turned out the American buffet is targeted to take advantage of foolish Americans eating in the hotel. I don’t think I’ve ever had a breakfast that cost roughly $70…and never will again. Mental note – Starbucks tomorrow morning.
After breakfast we grabbed our backpacks, camera and guidebook and ventured outside. We weren’t 10 steps from the hotel when we started getting accosted to have Jerry’s shoes shined or asked if we wanted to buy a cheap watch/purse/DVD/fill-in-the-blank. I am not kidding when I say it was incredible how many times we were confronted by random people on the street asking us to look at their stuff (and every single one of them had the same laminated piece of paper with the offerings, so you know they were all in cahoots to screw Americans out of money). This happened no less than 30-40 times while walking down Nanjing Road, the big tourist road that leads to The Bund. After we successfully navigated the tourist trap, we arrived at The Bund which is a nice riverfront area with lots of parks, old buildings, and just generally good people watching. We wandered up and down that area, checking out the local vendors. Here you could buy kites, skates, and pretty much any kind of food on a stick imaginable or otherwise…a popular choice with the locals was what appeared to be squid on a stick. No joke. Needless to say, Crohn’s girl did not partake in that little local delicacy. Instead we opted for a nice Chinese restaurant where we both had beef & noodles. I can’t imagine us getting Chinese take out when we get back to the states at any point in the foreseeable future.
After lunch we headed to the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium. While it’s no Georgia Aquarium, it was pretty nice. But it was here that Jerry and I realized a very important point. Kids here in China are allowed to pretty much do ANYTHING they want. I am not joking about this either. I guess it’s because they are only supposed to have one child, so that one child is spoiled to the hilt. These kids were running WILD in there. And the parents didn’t care one iota. I mean, I know you see kids doing that in the US on a daily basis, but there’s usually one mom that at least looks like she’s ready to jerk a knot in her kid’s neck if said kid doesn’t sit down in the stroller and quit the whining. Not here. All the moms were laughing at everything the little princes and princesses did. I however was ready to do some knot-jerking but obviously couldn’t. :)
Another thing we realized yesterday – they aren’t kidding around about respecting elders. This little epiphany came to me while waiting in a ridiculous line for a public toilet (which I later found did not have any toilet paper – queue the pack of Kleenex) and an older woman decided that she didn’t have to wait in line and could break in front of the roughly 10 of us standing in line. I was glad to see, though, that I was not the only one in line that wasn’t terribly pleased with that turn of events.
The final epiphany we had on Day 2 – there are no traffic rules in China. Sure, they have traffic lights and signals that tell you when you should and should not walk. Pay no mind to those. They are merely suggestions, and not closely followed ones at that. There were plenty of times that Jerry and I found ourselves walking with the masses and before you knew it you were standing in the middle of the road with cars honking at you.
All in all it was a very overwhelming, intimidating, but enjoyable day. China has a lot to offer, but there’s a LOT to take in all at once. And because of this, I’m tired and must go to sleep…but I have to remember to relate the story of Jerry and the tea ceremony before this blog is done at the end of our trip!
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