Schwalbs in China

Schwalbs in China

Our family arrived in China last week, and I just now have the time to sit down and blog about our experiences traveling around the mainland.

The trip technically began on the 16th, when we boarded an overnight Z train to Shanghai. But the night truly started when one of our cabin mates stripped off his business suit to reveal bright red long underwear and white puma socks. He was also kind enough to offer us some choices from various shrink-wrapped bags of meat snacks he had brought along for dinner. But we opted for noodles instead.

We arrived in Shanghai the following morning, met the Schwalbs at the Pujiang Hotel, and set off to tour the city. Within twenty minutes of walking on the Bund, a wandering bootblack tried to drip white paint on my father's shoes. After a bit of yelling on my part, however, the errant shiner realized he had a problem, and walked away.

Just before lunch we visited the old city, a notorious tourist trap. Amidst the throngs of westerners and souvenir shops, we saw an old man with at least a foot of hair growing out of a mole on his neck. Unfortunately, we did not take a picture that we could share with all of you.

Next we visited Sun Yat-sen's Shanghai residence, a nice little display of artifacts devoted to the Father of Modern China. All of the walking around made us hungry, though, so we stopped in to a back-alley noodle joint with no English on the menu for a delicious meal. There we used the phrases, "she's a vegetarian," and "he's Jewish, so he doesn't eat pork" with great success.

Post-noodles, we visited the Shanghai Museum. It was filled with tons of visiting PLA soldiers, bronze weapons from China's Warring States period, and more jade chatchkes than the Beijing Silk Market. There was also a bunch of obnoxious American teenagers visiting on a Spring break field trip, representing all that is wrong with too much exposure to the American media.

Exhausted from all the walking, we ventured towards our hotel to find dinner. On the way, we stumbled across several "massage" parlors festooned with unfortunate-looking women sitting about like semi-clad kittens in a twisted pet shop, as well as a small child squatting in a gutter with his pants around his ankles and a grocery bag held to his rear. So much for modernization and the rule of law in China's largest municipality.

We managed to find a nice restaurant amongst the rifraff, and also started a trend of asking for the no-smoking section and being guided to a private banquet room. The food was not the best of our Chinese gustatory adventures, but it fit the bill.

Following dinner, we returned to our hotel to watch CNN before going to bed, only to discover that the signal would cut out for five minutes every time certain topics were mentioned, specifically those rhyming with the words "Polly Mama," "Zibet," and "dieting." Notably, Premier Wen's statements on those subjects were broadcast freely, especially when he claimed to have evidence of Polly's role in causing the schmiolence. And four days later, while flying from Yichang to Beijing, we enjoyed some very interesting articles in the China Daily that showed the Party's perspective on the issue, in particular some humorous commentary concern media bias in the west.

Tuesday saw us head to a little town called Tongli that sits an hour outside of Shanghai. Our driver, who had grown his pinky nail long in order to open soup cans more easily, got a little lost on the way, unwittingly giving us a tour of the surrounding environs by doing so. Near as we could tell, the area outside Shanghai is criss-crossed by canals and what looked to be fish farms and pearl farms.

Tongli itself was great. We visited a beautiful pagoda, walked around the town's ancient canals, got used as props in some Chinese tourists' photos, and served as entertainment for a large crowd of locals when we stopped to try some street food. (The baozi near the city entrance is excellent, by the way.). We also got yelled at by one of the baozi-makers when we tried to take her picture. ("Bu yao piao!" Trans: no pictures!). Finally, a crowd of locals followed us to the Chinese Sex and Culture Museum, although Katie sufficiently embarrassed them by asking them to comment on its contents.

After visiting Tongli, four of us took in dinner and an acrobatic performance in the most westernized portion of Shanghai, an area of West Nanjing Road built up into a Caucasian haven. The food was tasty and the acrobats were talented, but the locals were non-existent--indeed, It was as if Shanghai still had one last concession left, this one was created by vast discrepancies in purchasing power. But for some Mandarin on the menu, you could easily have pretended to be eating in LA.

Wednesday involved a quick trip to Katie's law firm to meet the new managing partner of the Shanghai office before setting off for Xian. We were supposed to leave for Xian that afternoon, but almost missed the train because of some miscommunication with respect to our departure time. We ended up hailing two cabs at the last minute, getting stuck in traffic, and almost losing a small bag in the x-ray machine. But at least we didn't miss the train.

The train to Xian was pretty interesting, in that we did not book our tickets in time and ended up with hard sleeper bunks instead of the usual soft sleeper cabins. So we shared an entire train car with a bunch of migrant workers prone to yelling, eating chicken feet as a snacks, and spitting on the carpet. Because the toilets in the car did not flush, tongs and a full water bucket were placed in the WC for our convenience. Until about 10:30 pm, we enjoyed some bad Chinese pop music that played ubiquitously until the lights went out. And some migrant workers woke up my sister at 3 am when they decided to slurp noodles within three feet of her bunk. Also, we met "Fiona."

Fiona was a little Chinese girl that came walking by after dinner. On her way back from the restroom, she stopped to try out her English lessons on us, which led to an impromptu language lesson. Her mother called to her after about ten minutes, but Fiona's mom must have figured out that she had some discount tutors on her hands, because Fiona returned five minutes later and demanded English lessons. So, we taught her different words, and she asked us questions like "what is your hobby?", using the exact same inflection with every inquiry. (Studies have shown that 70% of China has perfect pitch). Eventually, though, Fiona tired us out, we went to bed, and proceeded to inhale about a carton of cigarettes in our sleep thanks to the second-hand smoke drifting across the unpartitioned train car.

We arrived Thursday morning and promptly met a nice lady named Stephanie who proceeded to offer her services as a tour guide and ticket broker. Sadly, she was not so good at the latter, as the ticketing machines at the station broke down almost as soon as we reached the ticket window. On the bright side, Benjamin got to sample some of Xian's street food while we waited for the tickets.

From the train station it was off to the hotel. Katie struck up a conversation with our cabbie, who elicited a chuckle when he informed us that he'd like to visit the United States, if only he could use renminbi in nyc. The folks at the hotel, however, were not nearly as jovial.

At the front desk of the Bell Tower Hotel, we were informed that they could not find our reservation. They then tried to tell us that they didn't have any non-smoking rooms available. So, I decided to cross-examine the assistant manager, who placed a pad labeled "Disturbing the Peace" on the front desk when I briefly raised my voice. All ended well however, in that I avoided a report to the Thought Police, and managed to get them to let us check in early. We found out later from the China Daily that some hotels have started a "Ruffian Blacklist" for guests known to gamble, use drugs, or frequent prostitutes. I guess semi-annoyed lawyers are an unwritten fourth category.

Following check-in and a shower we headed for Xian's muslim quarter. There we found amazing food, another smokeless banquet room, and China's Great Mosque, which is a truly beautiful and unique structure. Previously unbeknownst to us, Xian has a fairly sizable Muslim population, and their presence is apparent throughout the city.

After touring the Great Mosque, we made our way back to the hotel and found a ginormous Internet cafe next door filled with about 300 people playing video games on aging computers and tattered "gaming" couches. For 2 RMB an hour, we surfed an Internet that was noticably slower than usual, particularly when GMail picked up the words "China" and "Tibet" in my emails and started displaying links to offending New York Times articles.

On Friday we took Stephanie up on her offer and toured the Terra Cotta warriors. I think it is enough to say that they were amazing, and that everyone should visit them that has the opportunity. One should even visit the government-run "silk factory", which is not so much of a silk factory as it is a science project depicting silk manufacturing attached to a gigantic gift shop. Still, it's interesting to see how modern silk textiles are manufactured, even if the "factory tour" is just a ploy for pimping pajamas.

That afternoon we split up, and the visiting Schwalbs went shopping while the China Schwalbs went back to the Muslim Quarter for a bite to eat. We ended up ordering and eating an entire meal comprised of dishes with a still unidentifiable composition in a restaurant that we would not have set foot in six months ago. We're pretty sure our meal involved a rice byproduct, but it sure looked like potatoes when we ordered it. And afterwards, when we walked further into the Muslim Quarter, Katie saw enough open-air butcher shops to once again turn her into a strict vegetarian while in China. I think it was the half-eaten sheep heads on the halfshell that did it.

That evening we saw the famous fountain and light show at the Big Goose Pagoda, which can be experienced through the video below. (I'd say there were more than 2000 people in attendance.). We also went on a quest for a bowl of Xian's signature dish, yangrou paomo (mutton with rice noodles and nan bits), which involved some bad directions, one misguided taxi cab driver, some passengers push-starting a public bus, and some overly-salted vegetarian dished for Katie and Amelia. But the yangrou paomo was delicious.

Saturday it was back on the train, this time for a 14-hour, day-long train ride to the Three Gorges for some Dam-viewing. 14 hours was a bit much, but as you can see in our photos, the Dam was pretty cool.

That's it for now, though. We're in Thailand right now, and will post more details and pictures when we return to Beijing.