While "random photos from around Asia" might not be the greatest blog title this is in essence what these are. I quite like the photo of the Beijing Bird's Nest Stadium and the tourist with the drone from Laos. Overall I think I am most happy with this set of photos. I guess with travel I saw new places so consequently the photos of those places are new. In Shanghai I often did just my daily life or saw the same things several times.
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With the year coming to a close it is a good time to revisit my favorite places in Shanghai before I go, check out the stuff I haven't been to yet, and buy souvenirs for my friends and family. Today, a friend of mine and I decided to do all three. Besides being the former home of Mao Zeidong and Shanghai's most famous Buddhist Temple the Jing'an Temple District (named obviously for the temple) is now one of Shanghai's nicest. We actually couldn't get into the temple because it closes at 5:00 and we got there at around 4:50, but we got to go to Dunkin' Doughnuts Shanghai! The doughnuts were actually very different from the doughnuts served in the US, they even just introduced the "new" dunkin' doughnut with the handle (you know, their first product ever). The coffee is on point just like it is in the US. Hopefully Dunken' will expand in Shanghai since I like Dunken' Doughnuts coffee more than Starbucks. We walked around for a bit before deciding to go to Yu Gardens since it is the more interesting neighborhood. I actually wanted to buy a few things for friends and a Mao bust for my room next year at Juniata. Mao stuff is actually kind of hard to find in Shanghai since Mao's Red Cult isn't dominant in modern Shanghai. Most Shanghaiese are big fans of Comrade Deng Xiaoping; it is not like they don't dislike Mao they just like Deng more. The other issue I have is that it is actually kind of heavy; I might just mail it back to the US if only so I can confuse the poor customs agent who opens my package for inspection. I also got to check out a new cafeteria style restaurant in Yuyuan Gardens. It was basically the same as my old stand by Yuyuan restaurant except it has way more of that golden plastic materiel and seems has a giant plastic soup dumpling in the dining area. I am continuing to knock stuff off my final Shanghai to-do list and I even got some time to study for my Philosophy final.
Comrades, as we all know, Karl Marx taught us it is not a matter of if the workers of the world will unite, but when and when better than International Workers Day, or May Day. In actuality, May Day celebrations were about as intense as Columbus Day celebrations, aka most people just got the day off and sat around. Still Comrades, as we also know if there was no Communist Party there would be no New China, so some friends and I decided to pay our respects to the Revolutionaries who came before us. Shortly after lunch we started off to the Memorial Hall of the First Congress of the Communist Party of China located in the French Concession neighborhood of Shanghai. As the name suggests, the French Concession was formally under French control so it was a bit easier for radicals and, in the words of Chen Kai-shek, "bandits," like Mao and the Communist Party, to have meetings there. The building still stands as a museum to the early days of the Party. While getting in was free, security was actually quite intense. I would put it at one level below Tienanmen Square level of security and around the level I saw at most of the Republican National Convention in the US. The museum itself is OK, but, unlike many other Communist sites, had signage in both English and Chinese. What is interesting is that the museum split its focus on all delegates to the First National Congress, not just Chairman Mao. I would say the building was comfortable but simple, the nicest things were the museum elements put in after the Communist takeover of the Mainland and a tea set the delegates apparently used. Now I know what you are all wondering, yes they had a gift shop, and yes I did buy a both Mao Badge and a Hammer and Sickle pin. After that, we walked passed Zhou Enlai's, the former Primer of China, old home but we couldn't go in since it was closed for renovations. We than took the subway to dinner. We went to a world famous Pyongyang Korean Restaurant to respect the founders of the Peoples Revolution there. While the Pyongyang restaurants are know for their interesting dinner shows, they are most famous for being owned by the North Korean (Democratic People's Republic of Korea/DPRK) Government. The waitresses and chefs are all imported from the DPRK; apparently the waitresses are the daughters of major Workers Party members and Government officials as waitress at a Pyongyang is a very desirable job. While the food was all authentic Korean it all has a northern flair to it. Many of the dishes were Pyongyang specific, including my Pyongyang Rice in Soup and the Pyongyang Kimchi we got for the table. Furthermore, they do the mishmash of little appetizer things at the beginning of the meal, apparently to show off the vast bounty of Socialist Korea, which I read was a common way for foreigners to eat when touring North Korea. The South Korean guy sitting next to us said that North Korean food is overall less spicy than South Korean food. The food actually wasn't bad, a bit expensive but not bad; the South Korean guy must have liked it since it was his second time there. What is funny is that the Pyongyang restaurant served Budweiser and Coke-a-Cola, in addition to a wide array of Chinese beverages, including wine and beijiu. To be honest, I was a little bummed out by their drink selection, I heard North Korean beer is actually very good and was hoping they had some. Also who ever pays 300RMB, 50USD, for a bottle of Chinese wine is just dumb. To be fair though, they did serve the good for export Tsingtao, not the domestic stuff Ellen's Bar serves/gives away on Thursdays. The meal was just preparation for the main event, a musical extravaganza put on every night at 7:30 by our many lovely Korean waitresses. The waitresses are truly multi-talented, all could play one or two instruments and sing in Korean and Chinese while servicing the customers in Chinese, Korean, and English. The South Korean guy we met could understand most of the songs, he had a few problems with the last song and told us he couldn't tell if it was in Korean or in Chinese. The restaurant was actually more subdued than you think a North Korean place would be. There were no pictures of Kim Jong-Un, Kim Jong-Il, or Kim Il-Sung anywhere and the waitresses avoided singing any political songs. From what I read, public events in the DPRK begin with a singing of the National Anthem, Aegukka, and the red anthem of the current Supreme Leader, now We Will Follow You Only but formally No Motherland Without You or the Song of Kim Il-Sung. The South Korean guy said all the songs with words were about welcome and friendship, which I guess makes sense in context. Comrades, I can report to that the East is Red, and there is Peace at the End of our Bayonets. While some of the bourgeoisie would like to tell you that respecting our Party Fathers and eating with our Korean Comrades isn't fun, they are wrong as they are with most things. So tonight, we all exist to Serve the People and to Defend the Headquarters of the Revolution! Good night and Long Live Chairman Mao!
Two days ago at the time of my Mom and I took a China Eastern flight to Xi'an, the ancient capital of China. We didn't have time to do more then get dumplings for dinner and see a bit of the city on the first night. Furthermore, my suitcase broke on the way to the airport so we had to have it wrapped before we left and we had to be extra careful with it.
\nThe next day our tour guide picked us up in the hotel lobby to take us to the Terracotta Warriors. The Warriors are always impressive, particularly in the off season when there are fewer people around. On our way to lunch we got to shake hands with Mr. Yang, one of the five farmers who discovered the Army back in the 1970s. We ate biang biang mian (a dish who's character is so complicated my phone can't actually reproduce it), eggplant with beans, and enjoyed a traditional Chinese tea ceremony complete with a wide array of very interesting teas. We then drove back to Xi'an city proper to check out the old city walls and the Muslim quarter. The Muslim quarter houses a very interesting old Mosque that is done in the style of a Chinese garden. The Mosque is surrounded by some great shopping. I was able to buy a full set of Mao pins and a new suit case. \nAfter a short break back at our hotel, my mom and I met our guide again to go do dinner and a show. Dinner was more dumplings; 11 different types to be exact. All were very good but the duck dumplings were by far the best (and shipped like little ducks). The show was interesting. It seems like every Chinese cultural show is a bit of a trip and this one was no exception. Even though they did spend a bit too much time recreating Tong Dynasty poetry as dances it was an experance. Yesterday I took the train from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China, to meet my Mom for two weeks of touring. My first night we basically got to the room and ate dinner. The next day we hit the ground running and went to Kowloon Island to shop and see the remains of the Kowloon Walled City. The Kowloon Walled City was formally the densely populated place on Earth before it was demolished by the PLA in the early 90s. Because it was technically part of British Hong Kong while surrounded by Qing run China it became a manufacturing center, for both legal and illegal goods. The little museum said 80% of Hong Kong's fish balls were made in the Walled City. There are a few things left in what is now a very nice park. My Mom and I then went to the Ladies Market to buy some 100% totally legit designer goods. We ended buy buying two belts from some Chinese lady and two purses from a Pakistani guy. He then recommended us a very good Indian place near by which, while base, was extremely tasty. Finally we walked through the Jade Market where we didn't buy jade, we bought a Chairman Mao watch. Finally we went out to a Cantonese place and had a very interesting fried brisket with a bean sprout and mushroom dish. The food continues to be good here, though I have to get use to eating at places several tears above Lamian.
Two days ago by the time of posting I arrived in the city of Guangzhou, formally know as Canton, for a short visit before meeting my mom is Hong Kong. Guangzhou was a major treaty port and was one of the first Chinese SEZ. Now it is a major trade hub for mainland China in part because of its physical closeness to Hong Kong. The first night in Guangzhou I didn't do much besides get my train ticket, which I later learned was wrong, at around 8:00pm and ate some local specialties, a peanut rice crispy type thing and some candied ginger, of Fenghuang my friend gave me. The next day I decided to see all the kind of odd sites. I got a 24 hour "go anywhere on the metro for one price" cards and I was off First was the Martyrs Memorial Park where there were monuments to Communist revolutionary hero's, Sino-Soviet Friendship, and Sino-North Korean Friendship. I then visited the Peasant's Movement Institute, now a small museum, where many early communists, like Mao Zedong, taught. Interestingly it was a KMT institution that was formed before the KMT and the Chinese Communists split after the death of Sun Yat-sen. Dr. Sun apparently spoke at the Institute a few times. The museum was ok, it was free and has Mao's old office hidden away in a corner so I guess it was worth it. Continuing on, I then went to Xiaobai (小白), home of Guangzhou's African and Middle Eastern migrant communities. To be honest, while I did see more black people (about 10 in total) and sober Arabs (about 30) then I normally do the communities seem small. This may be because they are all off for Chinese New Year (a holiday they don't celebrate, but would get off regardless), the weather left much to be desired so many stayed home, or the size of the communities have been overblown by the foreign media. You can be the judge of that. I moved on to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, an impressive building with a ok exhibit on Dr. Sun but not much else. Finally I got dinner on Beijing Pedestrian Street. I got some seafood noodles that were kind of overpriced and didn't provide me with enough food, I ended up getting some squid sticks form a roast meat guy just to satisfy my hunger/seafood cravings. I then returned back to my room to snack on more Fenghuang specialties.
For those of you who don't know, Hunan Province, the province who's capital is Changsha, is the home of Chairman Mao Zedong. Mao was born in a village about an hour away from Changsha and graduated from Hunan Normal University in Changsha. It is only fitting then that one of Changsha's major sites is a massive bust of a young Chairman Mao. Forentually, this bust is located on Orange Island (橘子洲), basically a large park on an island, within walking distance from my hotel. The walk might possibly have been nice in warmer weather, but alas it is a chilly 43F in Changsha so it wasn't that nice of a walk. I did notice that the Changsharen are much more interested in me than the Shanghaiese. I caught several people openly talking about me (I guess under the assumption I don't know any Chinese so couldn't understand them talking about the 外国人), more people quietly pointing me out to their buddies, and one little girl who just openly took pictures of me. Obvious foreigners are still a novelty in Changsha, unlike Shanghai who gets a large amount of white folks passing through. After my long walk I went to get some lunch. Octopus is one of Changsha's kings of street food and I must admit the spicy grilled octopus I had was very good. I actually had two versions, one which was spicier dry rub and the other was a smokier sauce. I also had these doughnuts that were most like Israeli Chanukkah Sufganiyot without any jelly. I would also like to note that Hunanese stinky tofu, the other king of Changsha street food, is less appetizing then Shanghaiese stinky tofu since it is black, in addition to reeking of death. I will never understand why in a country with such good tofu do the locals insist on eating the tofu that smells like sewer. I then went to Walmart to pick up some gifts for Chinese New Year. If you are worried about American companies, I can tell you Walmart of Changsha is having no problems getting customers in the door. Walmart is kind of like McDonalds in that they can adapt their business to any environment. Unlike the Walmart of Huntingdon, PA, which is the kind of place where you can pick up bread, a radar detector, and a shotgun, the Walmart of Changsha feels like any other Chinese grocery store. I picked up some gifts, a small bottle of nice baijiu, and a small bottle of Chinese brandy. I really didn't want the baijiu though, a local girl insisted on helping me pick Chinese New Years gifts in the alcohol section with myself being unable to tell her I was buying for myself. I am having a harder time with the language here then I thought, but I refuse to take responsibility for this. The locals don't seem to speak standard Mandarin and aren't use to foreign accents. It didn't prevent me from doing anything, it is just a bit annoying.
Today, I had to go to Shanghai’s outlying industrial districts to put some items in storage. The only eventful thing that happened dealing with the storage was that I could do everything in English, including signing the contract. I did though get some time to walk around the neighborhood before returning to campus. While I am not wholly sure where in the City I was it was very clear that this area was established under Mao. First, many of the shops and homes had the look of buildings built by workgroups under Mao. From everything I have read, architecture under Mao’s China was a dying art and that is plain to see looking at some of the buildings. The other thing Mao tried to do in Shanghai, that I believe wherever I was had a part in, was turn Shanghai from, as the good Marxists say, a city of feudalists, imperialists, and consumption to a city of production. Factories and other large industrial buildings, like storage centers, were all over the place. While Mao would probably be pleased that there is so much production going on and that many of the factories are relatively new, he might not have been too happy about how they were built. Many of the factories were joint-ventures between a Chinese company and a foreign company. My storage center proudly flew the Bundesflagge und Handelsflagge, the German flag, the factory across the street flew the Stars and Stripes, the American flag right alongside the Five-star Red Flag of the Chinese state. The last interesting thing was that right along the factories was small family farms, a rather strange combo.
Yesterday, the Global Business Project and I went to Shanghai Oriental Land, kind of a park/resort hotel/military training grounds type of thing to do team building with our project groups. I do not believe that Shanghai Oriental Land could exist in modern America. Wishing no offence both sets of my grandparents, who all read my blog, I think this is what a resort hotel must have been like in their day. First thing we did after getting to Oriental Land was making a flag to follow around, that I ended up carrying, because the Chinese love to follow around flags. The first set of activities we were given were kind of field day type things, a bit too complicated and fun the first time but get kind of annoying the third time you have to do it. We could also watch the High School Military Training Exercises, basically in China all high school students have to go through a super abridged boot camp type thing in preparation for the inevitable American/Soviet invasion of China. One of my Chinese group members whole heartedly believed the High School Paramilitary was a good thing and remembers her few days quite fondly, it seems to be more fun now anyways rather then a serious preparation for foreign invasion but you do have to wear a camo uniform. After lunch we, which was nothing special, we got to race Dragon Boats, which was kind of cool actually, and do a scavenger hunt type thing through the park. The scavenger hunt is where it became obvious that Shanghai Oriental Land could only exist in America if it was 1952. They had a lot of jungle gym type things that were universally made of wood and metal: no plastic, helmets, padding, or frankly much safety equipment at all were in sight. These were not just things they built in the 1960s and left, they were building this new hamster wheel bridge type thing that looked like you would ether have a lot of fun on or severally hurt yourself. Our last stop on the scavenger hunt was their sculpture garden containing statues of important historical figures from world and Chinese history. I feel like I need to mention that this is a sculpture garden with a bust of Adam Smith and Mao Zedong; like Wealth of Nations, inventor of Capitalism Adam Smith and Little Red Book, father of Communist China Mao Zedong. The Chinese students seemed to know who both people were and why they are important, although they treated Mao with far more reverence and could recite a poem about Mao's Long March from memory (to be far though, you would have to be a real economics dweeb to write a poem about Adam Smith). They also had this military exhibit thing that I only saw form the bus going back to campus, to be honest it looked kind of fun. Finally, they had a resort portion that we did not spend much time in but I could see being very popular in the summer among middle class Shanghaiese trying to get out of the city center for a few days. Overall, it was actually kind of fun, although my legs still feel a bit sore from all the running around the park. If I was little Jared however I would have had a great time, they had cool slides and model jets!
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AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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