Final days in Shanghai

After jumping off the train to Suzhou, we decided to go out to the House of Blues and Jazz to check out some live music. Sore disappointment lay ahead as we discovered an empty building on a quiet street where the venue used to be located. Tom had a back-up plan however, so we went to a bar where we enjoyed english conversation with the bartender for a couple of hours. We were the only ones there.

On Monday, we had a plan. Phase one was to visit the famous Yuyuan Garden, followed by tea at a fancy tea house and some Nanxiang steamed buns. The morning was a success, although the street merchants trying to sell us watches and iPhones really got to Tom after a while.



Our excursion through the winding alleys surrounding the garden was followed by a pricy visit to the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium. If you're into walking through the occasional glass tunnel to look at enormous fish, sharks and turtles, the aquarium is a good place to visit. Overall, I thought it was slightly overpriced ($25 admission), but it was still an interesting experience.




What better way to end the night than do dine with our friend Jing, who introduced us to Shanghai a couple of weeks ago. We had a tasty dim sum meal at Ding Tai Fung followed by some drinks at a reputable jazz bar, JZ Club. Now that's how you do it, Hangzhou.


Today should be pretty quiet. Not much on the agenda, besides battling robots at the Science and Technology museum and picking up our tailored clothing. Perhaps I'll enjoy some tea served through a 60cm spout in the evening. We'll see.

* * *

The Science and Technology museum was a complete bust. We were overwhelmed by thousands of children running and yelling while we walked past the rather mediocre exhibits. The highlight of the trip was ROBOT WORLD where we both failed at shooting arrows from a bow, but were soothed by a robotic piano performance. Hopefully dinner goes well. No battles with robot took place.


Only a few hours left!

Abort!

Last night in Hangzhou after parting with Fanny and Thomas, Tom and I decided to check out some live music that was playing at a nearby jazz cafe. It was just awful, even after a few beers. Avoid Friend's Jazz Bar in Hangzhou at all costs, unless you're interesting in old ladies swinging their hips and forgetting the words to songs while be backed by a mediocre band.

Today we were scheduled to take a four hour long train trip to Suzhou. Once we got on the train, however, we reconsidered. Our train would be passing through Shanghai, and would not be arriving in Suzhou until 6pm. After reading through the Lonely Planet's entry on the city, we decided that due to the weather and our limited time planned to be there (departing at noon the following day), we would not be able to truly enjoy what Suzhou has to offer. Thus, after a rather uncomfortable 3 hour train ride, we jumped off the train at Shanghai.

Ahhh. It feels good to be back.

Sorry, was that Debussy?

The four of us have been having a great time in Shanghai. We've been walking, shopping, and eating. Last night, Thomas, Fanny and I went out to have some dim sum and it was delicious! I couldn't believe the flavours coming out of some of the dishes we had. And get this: we mostly ordered vegetable plates. WOAH!! Awesome. I also had a mango lassi in the French Concession earlier in the day, so my digestive system was pretty happy with me.


Today was the day we'd all been waiting for. Thomas, an extraordinary amateur pianist, is here in Shanghai to perform in Pianestival, and tonight he showcased his talents. But before we dive into that part of the day, let's reminisce about the morning and afternoon!

Morning: Exploring the Shanghai Museum.





Afternoon: Buying 8 tailored shirts and a tailored suit.


And now on to the performance. For those of you who don't know Thomas Yu, check out the following video to get an idea of his stern personality and piano prowess.


Well, the truth is, he's a great guy and we've all been having a fantastic time together. For something a little more light-hearted before we move onto the brutal truths of the evening's performance, check out Thomas' arrangement of I Want You Back by Jackson 5 below.


All right, now that you've been sweetened up, here's how the night went down. The concert begins and the tiny venue is packed. Children are sitting at the front of the room away from their parents, and people are literally having conversations over the piano. At this point, Tom, Fanny and I were standing at the back of the room and could still hear the piano fairly well, albeit over the rustling of the crowd.

Midway through the third piece, somebody's cellphone goes off for a good 15 seconds. As you would expect, everyone was informed to be quiet and have their cellphones turned off during the concert. That, of course, doesn't apply to me, right? And so the rage began to build within me and my friends. It was only augmented when part way through the fourth piece, somebody who was delivering flowers barged into the room and loudly asked where the recipient was. Disastrous.


This was only the first performer. The audience seemed more well behaved for the second, or at least any rage that was felt seemed minuscule compared to that when Thomas, the third performer of the evening, took the stage. By this time, we were sitting in the second row. There were five children sitting down in front of the first row and they literally would not stop talking, making noise with paper and bags, banging their feet on the ground and thrusting their butts in the air with their heads firmly planted on the floor. Recall that this was a piano concert, not a puppet show.

It became nearly impossible to hear Thomas play. I caught beautiful glimpses of it in the rare few seconds of peace the children gave us, but the children were not the only ones disturbing the music: it seemed like a good time for the adults to do it as well. They ruffled bags and answered cellphones at will. Thomas, usually a very focused performer, had to get up and leave after his second of four pieces to try and find somebody to handle the noise issues.

Unfortunately, nobody was there and it wasn't until the fourth piece and encore, after Fanny and a few other audience members tried to control the children, that I was finally able to enjoy the music. The parts I heard were fantastic and if you ever get a chance to listen to this man play, do it! His musicality is off the charts, and he's a classy guy to boot.

It took a while for us all to relax after the show, but everyone's happy now. Heading out to Hangzhou on the 25th and Suzhou on the 26th then back to Shanghai for my final two days in China. Peace!

The Expo

The day finally arrived. Today I went to the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, China with Tom, Fanny, and Thomas.

Before I even arrived at the Expo, my day was off to a flying start. We had planned to extend our stay at our hostel for a few more days, but we found out that no twin rooms were available. Our plan was to meet up with Fanny and Thomas at 8am, which meant we had to pack up our room fast.

We hastily packed our room and set out to Fanny's hotel where we would leave our bags all day. One step out of the door and one of the receptionists at the hostel calls out to ask us if we've found a place to stay yet, just as she hangs up a telephone. It turns out somebody just canceled a reservation and we could continue staying in our room for one night. Back we went, dropped off the bags and headed to meet our friends, if only fifteen minutes late.

As it stands, we do not know where we'll be staying tomorrow night and are hoping that something clears up by morning. There are dormitory spaces available, but Tom prefers the twin, so the search will continue.


On to the Expo! Before the 35 degree weather got to us, we managed to enter the following five pavilions:

• Australia - was recommended by others, and had an awesome theatre, but awful content
• Belgium - free chocolate!
• Italy - the favourite by far; simply gorgeous; really awesome vertical orchestra.
• Canada - the bike-driven video was neat, and so was the reactive pond, but the gloomy closing video was in poor taste. Oh, and there were these men wearing very strange costumes running around, which was surprising.
• North Korea - hide your children, hide your wife

It seemed for the most part the pavilions were more interesting from the outside.








Anyway, it was a good day. I've been inundated with activity for the past few, however, and I really could use some rest, so I'm just taking it easy tonight. Perhaps tomorrow will include a visit to the Bund.

Mall, Thai, Acrobats

Delicious Thai food in another multistory mall before watching a spectacular acrobatic show at the Shanghai Center.






A great meal followed by a great show. Beijing tomorrow.

Miscellaneous Musings

Shanghai redefines skyscraper-- every building is enormous.

Monotype Corsiva destroys the image of otherwise respectable stores

I embarassed Tom by having this hilarious picture taken

On the train to Nanjing (video)

Upon arriving in Nanjing, the train station was packed!

Parting words from Shanghai

Wonder is the
Vacancy in Purity
left over after
Light has been Crystallized.

Oh dear.

Nice to meet you, Mr. D

Tom has been raving about this chain he discovered in Taiwan called Mister Donut. When we stumbled upon one in the French Concession, we had to go.



Little did I know what we would eat would turn out to be our lunch. Tom asked me to find us a seat while he ordered two donuts each. When he arrived at our table, there were six. Apparently the kind ladies at Mister Donut decided we deserved two extra. TOO MANY!

Tomorrow we head for Nanjing to meet up with Tom's friend Lee for a few days.

First day in Shanghai and the OSL Finals!

Hi everyone! Today has been fantastic. It started with a delicious breakfast at our hostel, where we indulged in a western-style breakfast buffet. From there, we decided to head to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower to see if we could figure out how to get into the OSL finals.



When we got there, nobody at the ticket booth had any idea what we were talking about, but luckily one of the security guards did and let us know how to get admission. It wouldn't be on for a few hours, so we headed to the nearby Super Brand Mall for lunch.

Now this mall is HUGE. It is the largest one in Shanghai at 10 floors and 3 basements. It's ridiculous how large it is. Struggling with choice anxiety and getting pretty hungry we headed to the Pizza Hut. That's right, Pizza Hut and boy was it swanky.




They have evidently taken stuffed crust pizzas to the next level here, as there were some pizzas that had sausages in their crust and others with jumbo shrimp. We got the popcorn chicken pizza and it was pretty tasty.



We headed over to the OSL location and stood by the gates for a while. When they opened, we found out we needed tickets to get in-- tickets that we did not have. Without a ticket, we would be required to stand behind the gates, which was somewhat far away. Luckily for us and within a minute of finding out that we required tickets, a random man announced he had two extra he could give us, partly because we were Canadian (he lives in North York). It was so generous of him-- and completely awesome since you actually couldn't buy the tickets, you had to have them given to you at some point. So we made it into the gated section and took a seat (on the stairs) fairly close to the front. Soon thereafter, we received balloons to bang together to make noise.



When the games finally began, it was really intense. This Korean girl behind us kept yelling "Jaedong fighting!", which was great. The Korean commentators essentially stood up the entire game and were extremely animated. I recorded a couple of videos, but I think they're too large to upload right now. In the fourth game of the series, we finally got our chance to be on screen. I will embed the video here when it gets uploaded.

Update: here's the video! Fast forward to 47:10 to see us.






Oh, and we also got these awesome 4gb USB keys. There was no paraphernalia for sale, nor were there any signs to write on. Some guys at the event had made 5 t-shirts that were pretty awesome and offered to sell us one for $35, so I got it. I do have 5 of the balloons that I'll be bringing back. If you want one, let me know.

I really don't think any other post will be this long.