The plan for the day was to go look around a museum in Shanghai, then wander around looking at the lights around the city when it got dark. Yvonne wanted to go to the Art Museum, so that is where we went.

The first exhibit was paintings, which were yawn. I think they were Rembrandt's work, but I don't really care about painting so I didn't pay attention. The only one I liked was a painting of the same skull from six different angles, and I only liked that because skulls look great. It may have been technically wondrous from a painter's perspective, but I'm not a painter, so I just saw skulls. To be honest, I like CGI art better, partly because none of the old painters painted pictures of space ships or aliens, which I like. Maybe there is a painter who painted pictures of fish? If there is, then I like his/her work.

The next exhibit was of ancient Chinese bronze work, which I know Kenneth adores. Most of the photos I took were from this exhibit, because the others were similar to the paintings exhibit, in that they were yawn. There were a lot of pots in this exhibit, which is good because it means that the ancients had things to cook in. A lot of the pots had nice designs on them, but at the end of the day they are still just pots, and I'm not quite lame enough to photograph pots, no matter how old they may be. Among the pots were appeared at first to be upside down pots, until I read the labels. They were in fact, bells. Bells are cool, so I felt no shame in snapping a few shots of them. Also there was nice bell music playing around this area, getting us all excited about the bells in the glass cases. Good thing there were glass cases, actually, such was the excitement generated by this part of the exhibit. Around the corner, and we came upon the diamonds in the rough, weapons. Though the weapons were all very old, I'm sure they'd still be deadly. They were great, so I took photos of them. You can skip the rest and go drool on your keyboard now if you like Kenneth :P.

That was floor one, up we went to floor two. I'm pretty sure I'm getting the order wrong now, because as none of the upper floors held any interest for me, I didn't pay much attention. In fact some of them we didn't even bother to look at. There was a pottery display, from which I present two photos; a display of stone work, from which I present one; a display of calligraphy, which we didn't look at; a display of old currency; a display of masks and clothes; and a cafe. There was also a jade display, but that was closed. I would have liked to look at the jade display, and will return to the museum in a month or so to see if it has been reopened.

There you go: Shanghai Art museum, mostly yawn with a smattering of death.

After the museum we went to the underground mall, which is just like an underground carpark, only with shops instead of carparks. It was quite full, and the shop Yvonne wanted to look in was playing that hideous christmas music everyone loves for some reason. It drives me insane, so I stood outside. Among other things, we got some ginger ale from this shop. We were pretty excited, as ginger ale is great. This ginger ale, however, tasted like schwepps ginger ale that had been watered down then mixed with dirt. We threw both cans away.

Pizza Hut was next. The fast-food chains in China are not the same as ours, being generally cleaner, with better service and food. Pizza Hut was no exception. The pizza was like Domino's, the desserts actually tasted nice, and the drinks were quality. See photos.

Dinner being over, we exited PIzza Hut and walked slowly to the place from which one gets the best view of Pudong, which is the area filled with big tall buildings, including the "kebab stick" tower of Shanghai. It takes a long time to get there from the Art Museum, and my feet were sore far before we reached our goal. I took a lot of pictures of the pretty buildings on the way. In Shanghai, at night, EVERY building is lit up. The amount of electricity used must be immense. 70 of China's electricity comes from coal power stations. To get to the viewing area, we walked down the pedestrian-only street, which was packed. There were much more people out at night than there were out during the day. A few areas had blaring christmas carols, which I despise. We passed by a bunch of old people dancing to live jazz, which held our interest for about 10 seconds. After one has played Zelda/Paper Mario/Metroid/BF2142, reality has to try pretty damn hard to keep one interested for any length of time, and old people dancing didn't quite cut it. Flashing lights do though, because they are just like games. We looked at the lights for awhile, and I took lots of photos. There were a lot of boats going up and down the river, and the passenger boats were covered in gaudy neon lights. It cost 78元 to ride on one, which was too expensive for what it was. One boat had a massive screen on it, and every time it passed the view was obscured by advertising. The screen was incredibly bright, I took photos of it, and one of Yvonne and I basking in its glow.

On the way back to the bus terminal (yes, we had to walk ALL THE WAY BACK AS WELL!) the camera ran out power. This meant no more photos, obviously. I wanted to ride the slow train down the pedestrian street, but Yvonne refused to potentially miss the chance to look in any shop that sold makeup caught her eye. As we were going through an underpass I noticed a sign advertising "Fish World" or whatever it was called. We're going there on Thursday, the day after we return from Hangzhou. Oh yeah, we're going to Hangzhou tomorrow, on a train. Apparently the train is flash, I'll take a photo of it. Hangzhou and Suzhou are known as the "Heavens of China". We'll see...

Obviously I won't have the internet while we're there, so I won't be updating this. I will be taking plenty of photos, and writing this as we go. I'll upload it when we arrive home.

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Tags: China | Culture | Night | 夜 | 文化 | 中国 | 旅行

Our goals for today were to enroll me in Shanghai University's summer program, and to have a look at the big electronics market. Long story short, we successfully completed both goals.

We took bus 767 to the university. While we were waiting for this bus I noticed a funny box fixed to the wall. I asked Yvonne what it was, and she said it was a condom dispenser. I took a photo of it, and giggled for awhile. About five minutes later this old guy came up on his bike, which had metal carry boxes fixed to the rear. He walked up to the dispenser, and I wondered at the fact that a man in his condition could attract women.

Actually, he was just doing his job, refilling the city's condom dispensers.

Then the bus came. During the bus ride we ate some chocolate whose packaging claimed was of four different flavours: strawberry, rock melon, banana and some other fruit that I can't remember. The package was lies, it should have read: candy centered chocolates with four different colours, not flavours, as they all taste the same. After eating our fill of the lie-chocolate, we just sat for awhile and I tried not to irritate Yvonne. I obviously wasn't very successful, because she decided to play a trick on me. She reached into her bag and pulled out what looked like two small chocolate brown candies, and handed them to me. I popped them into my mouth and started to chew. One burst in my mouth with a loud pop, which alone was rather disconcerting. The flavour that followed was entirely unexpected, being more similar to grape seeds than chocolate. Turns out they were pills, not chocolate, and one is supposed to swallow them with water, not chew them... They made my tongue go purple, hence the photo.

After arriving at the university, we went to ask the security guard for directions to the foreign student's building. He gave some rather vague directions: "once you pass the big lawn go right". He was old and looked grumpy so we didn't press him further. We passed the only lawn we could see (not a very large one) and then turned right. We walked for a little while until we realized we were entering a construction site, and all the workers were giving us the "what the hell are you doing here" look. We turned around and wandered further into the university. After walking for some time we noticed another, far larger lawn. We crossed it and turned right, asking people for further directions as we went. There are no signposts pointing the way anywhere on this campus. The buildings themselves are labelled, but that isn't helpful when one is one kilometer away, with buildings and trees preventing line of sight. Finally we found a building that looked promising (it had some English written on it) and went in. I have no idea what that building was for. The interior was that of a posh hotel, totally out of place on this campus. The receptionists told Yvonne that this was definitely not the foreign student building, that building was further along. Eventually we did find it, though the building itself had no label, and the reception area was on the third floor. Totally logical, I thought, and out-of-their-way helpful to boot.

The enrollment process was pretty quick, and for me involved a short attempt to initiate the process in halting Mandarin, then a lot of sitting, and then paying, while Yvonne did the talking. It seems that people either can't, or can't be bothered understanding my attempts at Chinese speech, unless they have a real reason (I'm staying at their house, in a store, asking about something they're proud of etc.). Enrollment was 410 元, or 410/5.25 = NZD, I can't be bothered moving the mouse over to open my calculator program, do it yourself.

When the enrollment confirmation form arrives I'll be able to get the rest of the money from the Confucius institute, from whom I have been lucky enough to receive a scholarship to do some study here in China. Thanks Confucius Institute! And thanks Dr. Wong, who convinced me to apply for the scholarship.

The university is only one bus ride (short distance in Shanghai) from Yvonne's parent's house, and there is a subway station right in front of it.

Enrollment done, it was time to go to another part of the big shopping center that is Shanghai. This time it was my turn, after lunch and a quick look around the makeup stores, of course. Yvonne's dad has a lot of vouchers for meals and the like, and he often kindly gives them to us when we go out. This time we went to a restaurant in the mall pictured here. It was called "Flowers of ... something", I forget. My meal was nice, but from Yvonne's reaction hers wasn't so good.

One is not supposed to take photos inside the big malls, I have idea why. There were not many security staff about in this one though, so I snapped away. I saw the shotgun-toting armour guards again, but didn't take any photos of them (reason: shotguns, sour looks). Shanghai malls are different to what we have in NZ, in that there are actually very few closed-off stores. Everything is open plan, one is never sure whether one is actually inside a store or not. This also means that the salespeople are free to harass you almost anywhere in the mall, a freedom they take full advantage of. The tactic that Yvonne taught me works really well: ignore them totally, like they aren't actually there. This doesn't stop them, not by any means. What it does do is prevent them from getting an opening. Despite this treatment, a previously ignored salesperson will treat you well the second you ask them a question. They really could teach the NZ salespeople a thing or two, bar Remy who works at Bond & Bond at The Base in Te Rapa. He is a sales God.

So yeah malls blah blah. We left the 'Zelda' mall* and crossed the road, into another mall. This one was not as nice, so forget hearing about it.

The main act of the day was the electronics market, which is a 4 story building filled with tiny electronics retail stalls.

It is awesome for these reasons:

• There are four large floors devoted to electronics
• Each store sells a variety of similar products, meaning they are all competing with each other
• No store is larger than three square meters, meaning there are A LOT of stores in this building
• The salespeople generally know what they are talking about, are nice, and can speak/understand Mandarin
• One is able and expected to haggle

The competition between stores means that the prices are generally quite low to begin with. Each sells a diverse range of whatever specialty product they've chosen. Say a store sells mp3 players - this store will have at least twenty types of mp3 players across a wide price/brand range. The store will also sell every mp3 player accessory imaginable.

We were looking for an electronic dictionary with the following features: ability to search for the English/Mandarin definition of a word, the ability to display Pinyin for a selected character, and a library of Chinese idioms. Idioms are the most difficult part of Chinese, as there are so many, and often quite abstract in that the literal translation has no bearing on the actual meaning. The ability to have a word read out was not desired, this is often flawed and serves only to inflate the price.

The saleswoman at the first store tried telling us that these features were impossible, so we walked off. The next one's was OK, but too expensive, so we walked off. The next store's salesperson obviously didn't know what she was doing, evident by her inability to correctly orientate the batteries in the display unit. We hung around for long enough to realize this, then moved on. The next stall we stopped at had a dictionary with all the required functions. Yvonne haggled the price down quite low as well, I think from around 500元 to 300元. I didn't like it though, it was white with a lime green stripe around the edge, and was wedge-shaped, not cuboidal which is the ideal shape for any electronic dictionary. We left that guy, telling him we wanted to check out all the other stores first.

We finally found what we were looking for at the next store. It has all the features we wanted, and is attractive in two-tone white/black. The cuboidal shape is ideal for my pocket, and doesn't look like folded crap. The other one looked like folded crap, if crap were plastic and white/lime green. Yvonne haggled the price down for this one too, from around 500元 to 280元. I almost felt sorry for the saleswoman. From this store I also bought a small screwdriver set, which ended up costing 60元. I mainly wanted because the Wii has been playing up for some games, and I need a special tri-phillips head screwdriver to get it open so I can have a look.

I demanded to be allowed to peruse the products sold in the stores that we hadn't yet looked in. As we had two Wiimotes, but only one nunchuck, I figured we ought to get another one, so we could play two-player boxing and soccer (actually so I can beat everyone at these games, I'm tired of winning in tennis). Genuine Nintendo products are pretty much fixed price no matter where you go, like Mac. For this reason the nunchuck was the same price as we'd get in NZ, only in 元. The salesman in the shop we bought the nunchuck from was incredibly helpful, and genuinely a nice guy (or a good actor/both). We noticed he had a Wii carry-bag on the shelf, and asked about it. He told us it was 200元, real leather. We murmered that it was too expensive, and looked at other things. I asked if they sold Wii component cables, as I was sick at looking at an image that had been squeezed down a single RCA cable, especially since I'll be playing on a quaility TV for a change, for the next couple of months. He grabbed one of the shelf and said 150元. I was pretty sure they cost that much in NZ (I was right, I checked trademe), so I said no and we started walking out. When it was obvious we actually were leaving, not pretending, he came up and told us he'd give us both the bag and the cables for 200元. We accepted.

*I give it this name because its layout of crevass-spanning walkways and bright colours reminds me of a big Zelda level.

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Tags: China | University | Malls | 大学 | 中国 | 商场

I thought, after the last post, it would be a good idea to write an entry about those whose lifestyles are rather different, beggars.

New Zealand doesn't really have beggars, not like China.

We have 'transients', or 'homeless people', but they aren't the same. You see, our country has a welfare system, whereby people (unless they screw the system) are guaranteed at least enough money to eat when time gets rough (or the rough get lazy). China doesn't have that, people rely instead on their family, or when that fails, begging.

Some of them (the beggars) are probably just lazy. Walking around the streets, one can't help noticing large amounts of blue overalled workers sweeping or picking up (the plentiful) rubbish. Doesn't look like fun, probably isn't. It wouldn't pay well either. I'd say their job is about as low as it gets, maybe slightly above sewage duty. These people will be making barely enough money to sustain themselves, performing quite labour intensive jobs. It isn't hard to imagine that at least a small number of them chuck it in and resort to street begging, or maybe some of them just use it as a secondary source of income on their off day/s. Diversification is the key to success, so many newspaper-advert finance advisors claim.

Yvonne claims that a lot of the beggars change occupations because they find they can actually make more money begging than they could sweeping, and as an added bonus they get to sit/lean/stroll all day. It is this class of beggar that seems to have spoiled it for the legitimate ones, the ones who actually can't work due to injury or illness. Also, once they get used to the filthiness that accompanies such an activity, the ever foraging beggar has a veritable smorgasbord of treats available to him/her in the form of discarded trash.

I've been called callous and inhumane for my lack of empathy for my fellow humans that find themselves in such sorry states, criticisms that I can understand when I consider how my views might appear to someone so misguided that they don't understand how our western society works. You see, we, those rich enough to have had sufficient education to read this page, need to maintain the status quo, else we'll lose our cushy lifestyles. Those of you who don't believe it, think about where your crappy throw-away consumables come from, and why they are so cheap! You get them from China and India (and maybe South America soon), the result of cheap and ready labor camps. Without these hives of industry, it'd be our country being polluted all to hell, and you working fourteen hour shifts at the Nike factory six days a week. I know you wouldn't be able to handle that, because you're accustomed to a high value dollar and all the benefits that brings. I'm not inhuman, not at all - I used to feel sorry for the beggars of the world too, but then I realised: the world is like a pyramid, richest highest, poorest lowest. Put another way: fewest highest, most lowest. This is the truth, get used to it, go join the other crazies and volunteer; or shut up with your holier-than-thou proclamations about how sad and messed up the world is (we know), go back to the couch and watch your Dr. Phil or daytime infomercials, shows like that are designed to make people like you forget about the nasty world, let them do their work.*

Taking photos of beggars is actually quite a challenge, because no-one wants to be chased by a possibly diseased angry wretch. They have nothing to lose, and your camera to gain, whereas you have a desire not to contract AIDS. I walk past the beggar, ignoring his/her pleas for loose change, and go around the corner. Then I poke the camera around the corner and quickly snap of some shots. Or I just wait until they aren't looking and take photos. Either way is fine, so long as one is prepared for anything.

A few times I've seen beggars actually eating from the trash! Yep, gross - glad he didn't see me taking that photo

So, beggars huh. Feel sorry for them if you like, hell, even give them money, but don't be surprised if they turn around and spit in your face, they know where they stand more than you do.

*The paragraph you just read may offend, please don't read it

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Tags: China | Culture | Beggars | 乞丐 | 文化 | 中国 | 旅行

It was like walking into a nightmare.

First floor - Makeup
Second floor - Clothes/makeup
Third floor - Clothes/Starbucks
Fourth floor - Clothes (more expensive than the third floor)
Fifth floor - Clothes
Sixth floor - Guess?
Seventh floor - Cellphones and clothes
Basement - Foodcourt/makeup

We went to three (four?) malls, all like this. NZ doesn't have anything like them. The third one we went to was the most opulent, costly mall you could ever imagine. I actually thought the price tags were misprints, until I had seen ten pairs of pants all priced at 6000 RMB (~1000NZD). This mall also had the most makeup. Yvonne made a bee-line to the 'Kanebo' stand, and started talking with the saleswoman. The saleswoman convinced her to sit down so Yvonne could experience the wonders of the Kanebo brand first hand. I guessed this would take awhile, and walked off. The entire centre of this mall was filled with makeup stands. Actually, I'm going to call them 'makeup shrines', due to the religious fervor that women displayed when nearing one.

So as Yvonne was paying her respects to the Goddess Kanebo, I wandered around first the interior of the mall, then the exterior. The interior, like I said, was stupidly posh. Who wants to pay 1000NZD for a pair of brown pants? Maybe if the stitching was gold thread, but not for 'prophet brown' cotton. The salespeople were nice though, and when I told them I wasn't interested in buying anything, I was just waiting for Yvonne, they offered me a seat. I politely declined, saying: "我坐公共汽车的时候可以坐好很长时间，所以我现在要站， 谢谢。" Or: "I can sit for ages on the bus, so I'll stand for now, thanks." That made them leave me alone. Aside from the TVs I saw on the top floor (32" Panasonic LCD = 6000 RMB, or a pair of brown pants), I only saw one thing I wanted. A nice blue tie, in the same shop as the pants. I couldn't be bothered asking the price though. I guess it'd be over 200 NZD. Looking at things one can't afford/doesn't want quickly becomes boring, so I left. I stood out the front and watched the security guards usher street merchants (selling umbrellas - it was raining lightly) away. The street merchants didn't actually, leave, instead they stood in a group on the corner. The security guards kept a good eye on them though, making sure those stupid enough not to bring an umbrella with them on such a day were punished properly.

Some time during the shopping mall wander I went to the toilet. The toilets were nice, see photo.

Yvonne finished, and bought some makeup. The saleswoman was good at her job, and Yvonne left with less money and more makeup than she had planned. I explained that one has to pretend that your money is your blood, and salespeople are vampires trying to suck it out. Anything else and one doesn't care about the money enough to put up a good defense. Or one can simply ignore the salespeople unless one actually needs a question answered, like I do.

After that we went to KFC. NZ KFC are total crap compared to these ones. There are no grossly overweight people slouching in the corner stalls, and there is a hand-washing area near the service counter. Like every fast-food store in China, KFC sells chicken wings. I had a burger, which was about the same as the NZ version. The chips weren't as good as the NZ ones, but I ate them all anyway. Also the pepsi tasted like it had dirt in it, but I've had 'dirt pepsi' in NZ as well. This didn't affect my lack of desire to drink much of it though, as I have learned to drink copiously at home, and not at all when out. The KFC tray liner has a funny Chinese KFC motto on it, which I'll get Yvonne to translate again some other time.

Oh yeah and we went on the subway, which was fun. The subway was much faster than the bus, obviously, and cost about the same I think. There is no subway to Yvonne's parent's house though, not until 2009.

The bus rides from Baoshan (Yvonne's parents' suburb) to the subway terminal took about an hour.

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Tags: China | Malls | 商场 | 中国

Spent the day in town, visiting Yvonne's relatives.

Took a taxi to the first house, her grandma, uncle and aunties. They were nice, and gave us some pudding. The pudding was sweet with hard boiled egg, which was weird. I ate it all though, and thought it tasted pretty good. Savory egg in a sweet pudding is still weird though.

Then we went to some place to have lunch. The food tasted OK, but as you're allowed to smoke inside everything was tainted with cigarette smoke. Also the wallpaper was stained and peeling. We clearly weren't in Panmure. Across from us there was a man whose eyes pointed in opposite directions. He was creepy, like those paintings that seem to be staring at you no matter where in a room you're standing.

Next we went to Yvonne's other grandma's house. I like that grandma. I made them all laugh with my perfect imitations of her Shaoxing accented speech. Just before we left I went to the toilet. Toilet paper was not free.

On the way to the bus stop we saw one of Yvonne's other uncles, who demanded we accept his offer of a free ride. Being driven in Shanghai (and I imagine it is the same in all China) is an experience. Indicating is for losers, and there is a competition to see who can pull off the nearest miss. Everyone drives how me (and Grandad) would like to drive. The most common, by far, make of car is Volkswagon. There is a whole taxi company who seems to have an entire fleet of Volkswagon Santana 3000 cars. They are pretty good cars. There are almost no Japanese cars. This is probably because China and Japan hate each other. Generally, the roads are in good shape, just really complicated. If you didn't know where you were going, you'd be liable to run out of gas before finding a place to park.

Did you hear? There was an explosion and a petrol station today in Shanghai, 4 people dead, many more injured. Unsurprisingly, in a city of 20,000,000+ people, I was nowhere near the scene. Sorry I couldn't get photos.

We walked down a bunch of roads, I have submitted a few photos as evidence. Maybe it's too cold, but I haven't seen the seas of people I expected. I actually haven't seen nearly as many people on the street as I have in Auckland even. There are a crapload more streets than Auckland though. Also, there is construction going on EVERYWHERE. I may have said it before, but jeez. EVERYWHERE!

We were lucky enough to pass the bank just as the money transporters were doing their work. I say lucky because guns are cool and they had them. Two men stood at the doors with pump action shotguns, while four others did the rest. Two of them carried the money case, with one leading and one trailing. Those people also had pump action shotguns.

After that, we had to walk past another construction site. The footpath was narrowed, and we were forced to walk two abreast. A guy on a scooter came up behind us, and after awhile we let him pass. Yvonne mentioned that he wasn't supposed to ride on the footpath, and I offered to throw him into oncoming traffic. Yvonne laughed, but declined. Later, as we were crossing the road, we saw that a cop had caught him and was giving him a fine. Ha ha ha.
hen we walked through 'old Shanghai' as Yvonne's dad called it. It did look old. People were selling things on the street (where are they notin China?), and on one block we saw that the police were busting a bunch of them. They do this periodically - if they don't then the hawkers would become too numerous and force pedestrians out into traffic. They actually do force you out into traffic most of the time. What I mean is they'd forceyou out into traffic ALL of the time. That'd be pretty bad, as buses don't really stop for anything smaller than another bus, or a bus stop.

We went and saw a particularly old part then, which has actually been condemned. It dates from about 1940, and looks its age.

After that we went and had dinner at a popular Shanghai seafood restaurant. Before sitting down the group has to walk around a big table that has aquariums or ice beds all around it. This is so the customer can see that the food is fresh. I don't think many westerners would actually enjoy this, as a lot of the 'food' looks strange. I liked it though because fish are cool.

I needed to go toilet, but my past experience made me hold it.

We sat down and waited for everyone to arrive. In total there were 13 people. Incidentally, 13 is a lucky number in China. Yvonne told me that westerners don't like the number thirteen because it is the number of people who were at the last supper. I didn't know this, but it sounds convincing. I don't really care about stupid superstitions, unless they are proven using the scientific method. I have seen no peer-reviewed articles showing that 13 is 'unlucky'. therefore to me, it is just another number.

So then we ate dinner, and I wowed the family with my ability to eat Chinese food. Also I said "Happy to meet you all" in Shanghainese, and drank whenever I was told. Sometime during the dinner I went to the toilet. One of the uncles kindly got up to show me where it is. I thought that he just wanted to go toilet as well, and I was a little worried as that ruined my exit plan, in case the toilet was too gross. He just pointed to the toilet and returned to the table though. The toilet was OK. I didn't even get any on my pants, though it looked like it because I had spilled so much sauce and soup on them already. I acted cool about it though, and no-one noticed, or if they did, they didn't make a fuss.

Xiaolan's family liked me a lot, and her dad was happy.

Dinner finished eventually and we went home. There was so much cigarette smoke in the air that I was relieved.

All-in-all, dinner was good.

Jamie: I think they were standard MP5s, with a short stock. I couldn't get a closer look because we were only transferring, so we weren't allowed to go downstairs. The camera I have been using, well, it kind of ... sucks.

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Tags: China | 中国