Tuesday, August 3, 2010

adventures with travis

catching up on the weekend - slowly but surely! i left off with friday night so i will begin with saturday morning. i woke up well rested from my night in with sarah, and hoped to check a few last tourist destinations off my list that day. i was getting ready to go when who but TRAVIS HOLLER called me up and asked if i wanted to go to people's square! (i met travis at GW but he grew up in orange country too and graduated from huntington beach high school. so we have lots in common! he was studying in shanghai with a gw program for just 3 weeks) it was perfect: his last day in shanghai, he wanted the visit the urban planning museum, the fake market just outside people's square, and the propaganda museum. i had already been to urban planning, so i told him i would visit the chinese textile museum on east nanjing road while he did that, then we could shop and see the propaganda together.

we met up and took the line 10 metro to east nanjing road, which is a pedestrianized shopping street that resembles china's take on paris's champs elysee. we feasted on mcdonalds for lunch - nothing tastes quite like home. oh, but note in the picture below, instead of apple turnovers, china has TARO turnovers... to my immense delight. after lunch, we took our time strolling toward people's square. travis got a cute expo shirt with the haibao mascot on it!
by the time we reached the urban planning museum i had convinced travis that it's really not that interesting (truth) and i could show him my pictures of the $6 million model some other time ;) so we continued on to the infamous fake-brand market on the corner of chengdu and nanjing xi lu. the place was a scene... stacks of "marc jacobs" wallets and "diesel" jeans, people screaming and haggling, policemen occasionally busting in, and to top it off, the most westerners i had seen since arriving in china. now i know where they are all hiding. since it was travis's last day, he sort of went all out. 2 northface backpacks, 2 tory burch wallets, 1 pair of ray ban sunglasses. i would hate to be haggling with that boy.

after we could shop no more, we hopped in a cab through the french concession to some random apartment complex, in the basement of which is the propaganda museum. could have fooled us! it is literally a private property in a residential area, but this old man (who was a college student during the cultural revolution) has millions of dollars worth of communist propaganda stored or on display in this basement. admission is a modest 20 kuai ($3) and the collection is great. he divides the posters by era and explains the political conditions and various upheavals corresponding to each. he also translates many of the captions into english, which is hugely helpful. here are people all over the world rising up with the chinese against their colonial oppressors:
while travis was buying some poster souvenirs (they are all original) i had an interesting ching-lish conversation with the proprietor, who vividly remembers propaganda posters on his school campus, as well as big character posters written by his colleagues (which would either earn the approval of the CCP or quickly get them into hot water). he says he still sees them in his sleep 60 years later! he never spoke a negative word about the communist party, but he is openly fascinated with mao and the use of communism to "make the country crazy." he has a historical perspective... why did the taiping rebellion never go as far as the communist revolution? what made mao so persuasive? these are actually the ideas he wanted to share.
travis and i were proud of ourselves for being so productive SO we treated ourselves to mexican fooooood in the french concession! tacos, salsa, and frozen margaritas to die for at "cantina agave." i swear, i do not know how such authentic mexican food made it to china. maybe it's deprivation, but i would say agave is better than any mexican restaurant i have been to in washington dc (not saying much, but still!) the owners were also very nice and happy to hear that california people loved their food. travis had a quesadilla and i had a salsa verde taco with tons of mango/black bean salsa fresh off the salsa bar.
after dinner we walked through the gorgeous, leafy french concession area to the metro, and came back up to the fudan area. in the evening, we went out with a few of my friends from tonghe (some alliance, some BU). we began at helen's, as all good tonghe students do. in the pic below, we are paying respects to the american table there! alas, the helen's servers are becoming way too familiar with our faces and drink choices. from there we went to "angelina's pub" for the first time, because a friend was celebrating his bday there. a rather authentic chinese bar, but serious lack of a dance floor, so soon we wanted to go to M2 (moreover, i needed to show travis M2 because it's the largest, and probably the most famous club with foreigners in china). M2 was crowded and the music was pretty good, but the air con was not happening... big no-no! we were out of there pretty quick. last quick stop was G+, per andrew clark's request that travis not leave shanghai without seeing it.
the cab ride back was gloriously air conditioned and we realized how exhausted we were... but not too exhausted for 4 am street food back at tonghe. xinjiang roasted chives, chicken, and mantou (chinese steam bread) are tonghe rites of passage. in his three weeks here, travis hadn't eaten an ounce of street food! thank goodness he made it here... and loved the skewers!
on sunday, i saw him off with all his new goodies. his plan was to take the famous maglev (magnetic-levetation) train from downtown shanghai to pudong. this insanely high-tech train goes across one of china's largest metropolises in 7 short minutes. THAT is because it's going 430 kilometers/hour (about 270 mph). for more info on the technology, see website http://www.smtdc.com/en/gycf3.asp.

needless to say, i was worried sick, but happily received a text message that he arrived safely at the airport an hour later. and what did i do sunday? ab-sol-ute-ly nothing. everybody needs rest, right? i guess i prepared more for my trip and my final exam friday, if i really had to make something up!

No comments:

Post a Comment