Day number tres. That's Spanish for, day number three. It just got all multicultural up in this hizzouse.

Today we decided to head over to a restaurant near the Propoganda Museum for lunch. Now very familiar with the area due to our wanderings, we made it with little effort. We also ran across a shop promoting the famous Chinese philosophy of "Three Gun living concept". Aaron and Dan are displaying three guns in the traditional Chinese fashion.

The guidebook recommended their fish soup, which I loved despite my well known dislike of fish. Also I tried the menu for a spin and ordered something where I only half knew what it was. It turned out to be a roll of meat with veg in the middle, with a flaky crust. All of it was absolutely delicious and incredibly cheap.

After lunch we popped on over to the town center to walk through a pedestrian area. They had these dudes rolling around on these skates you attach to your shoes. The 200 RMB price was eventually reduced to 33 RMB. I honestly would have bought them for 25, but he didn't budge on the price. He did budge himself to follow us around for a while in hopes of us changing our mind and buying them. Persistent dude, but not persistent enough to drop his price 8 RMB. If you're reading this Chinese roller skating pedestrian salesman guy, you just lost a sale from a stubborn American.

We also saw an old guy skating around and inbetween bottles while holding fans. I know that's so completely absurd that you need a photo.

So yeah. There's that.

We mosied on over to the Shanghai museum afterwards, who have an ingenious security system. They don't allow liquids inside for I suppose the same reason the airlines do - that you might make some bomb out of them or something. So you're allowed to bring in liquids, but you have to take a drink of it in front of them. Why don't we do this? No liquid limit on planes, and you can bring back as much as liquor as you want - provided you drink it for the TSA.

To be honest I found the museum to be a bit dull. Yeah there was a lot of really old things, as museums do, but it wasn't really cool old stuff. Lots of writings, paintings, and clothing. I mention the clothing only because the ancient Chinese dressed like the guy from Assassin's Creed.

After a rather dull (for me) trip, we got a call from our friend Lucy saying she was almost back in town from her trip to Inner Mongolia. We wanted to meet her for dinner, so it was back to the hotel to drop off our things and rendezvous a few blocks from there. Lucy took us to this wonderful restaurant that had mushroom stew with a billion different kids of mushrooms. As to be expected, I was quite the fan. She also brought back a skin of wine with Genghis Khan on it. Have you ever consumed wine out of a skin? It makes you 10x more badass than any other method. We also were informed to check out the "amazing restrooms", which were to her credit, pretty amazing. It was like peeing in a cave, and washing your hands in a communal stream.


Unfortunately afterwards Yllen and I had to run back home for work the next day. Lucy took Dan, Aaron, and Lindsay to the world famous Bund. I don't exactly know what occurred there, but I've been assured it was "trippy" and "awesometastic".

 See you, Shanghai. (again)

Heeere we go! Day 2.

We had decided to go see the Propaganda Museum. Which, in a way is funny if you think about it. If China really did hold an indoctrinated populace with no freedoms, wouldn't it just be called "The Museum"?

It's right smack in the middle of two subway stations, so we decide to get off at the first one because "it seemed more interesting". We're walking along, eventually find the road, and the street numbers just skip right over the address we have. So we backtrack. Again, it's just not there. We double check, backtrack a third time. Double check the road. We are definitely in the right place. Where this "museum" should be, there are only apartments.

The Lonely Planet book we were using was a bit out of date, and cities in China can change really rapidly. So I figured that the museum is gone. We walked past the entrance again, and the guard there must have understood we were looking for something. He gave us a tiny piece of paper with instructions on how to navigate this apartment complex, to find the apartment containing the Propaganda Museum. Lo and behold, after taking an elevator in this one building, we found it.

It said no photos, but I've always maintained that signs are not the boss of me. What are they gonna do, give me a splinter? Go to hell, signs. So here's some photos. I don't really know what they're going for with the one above. I guess if they're trying to indoctrinate the people who love creepy babies, they're doing it right. The one on the right I'm especially fond of. I mean, I get the point. Big bad America is coming, and China's regular folk resist them. However we apparently learned all our lessons on warfare from Wile E Coyote. If we have a tank, why do we need to carry a bomb? I will say this though, we are the classiest soldiers out there. I always don my war top hat before manning my tank. Harump harump!

Afterwards we went to this big street market where you can buy everything under the sun. But on the way there, magic happened.

A good burger isn't exactly the most common thing here. Holiday Inn has one, but it's very expensive and not really that fantastic. Other than that your only choice is McDonalds, which is well, you know McDonalds. There was an advert outside a shopping center showing me the most beautiful thing in China.

In my head I heard a choir of angels sing when we found the place. I got a mushroom thickburger, and it was absolutely delicious.

So, after the sidetrack, back to the market. There really is just alleyway after alleyway of shops about the size of a cubicle. It's an awesome place to get lost in, and you can find anything under the sun there. Also you can haggle for everything (!) which I think is awesome. After for a brief snack at an Indian restaurant, it was back to the hotel to drop off our newly gotten gains, a rest, and off to dinner. Dinner tonight was at a cool Spanish place Lucy used to work at. Really swanky all around, it's a restaurant inside of an old Spanish villa from back in Shanghai's yesteryear. The food was great, and it filled that fajita gap that had been in my stomach for quite a while.

I'm feeling exhausted writing this, but the last stop was to a new bar that opened up called Adams. This may be my favorite bar that I've ever been to. It has a whole Adam and Eve vibe, with delicious drinks and a very enthusiastic owner. As we learned talking to him, Adam was a lawyer for one of my old job's competitors. He did it for years, decided lawyering sucks, so he moved to Shanghai to open a bar. I want to copy his menu and give it to every bar in the world. Lindsays drink was especially impressive, as it came with a glass of fog. What do you do with this fog? Well you refill your drink with it, silly. Why? Because it's awesome, that's why!

Whew! Day #2 down, only one more to go in beautiful Shanghai.

Fun fact: Shanghai means "On" (Shang) "the sea" (Hai). So when you say "I got Shanghai'd", I guess you're saying "I got all up on that sea."

So after an exhausting day in Hangzhou, clearly the best course of action is to travel some more. We caught the early train from Xiaoshan to Shanghai, which honestly can be just as long as the trip to Hangzhou depending on traffic. It's only an hour and some change from the train station, which itself is only ~10 minutes from my place. Cool deal.

Anyway upon arriving we checked into the hotel to ditch our bags. We were immediately faced with a problem. You see, to check into a hotel, buy train/plane tickets, etc, you need an ID. I've always used a photocopy of my passport to avoid carrying the actual one, and there has never been a problem. Today there was a problem. They wanted an actual copy, which only Aaron had. So that means 1 room instead of 2. Yaaaay? Fortunately Yllen came later, and she brought her passport so we could get the 2nd room. Except they raised a fit that she came into the country through Hong Kong instead of China proper. Oh, I'm sorry Shanghai hotel. I wasn't aware this was also the Department of Immigration. Maybe we should stop off at Ellis Island first?

So after ditching our bags, we decided to first get lunch and then mess about. We didn't really have a concrete goal, so we went into the heart of town to see things. And boy did we! As you may (or not) know, Shanghai has only recently become a giant city. Well it would seem the Chinese thought Lord of the Rings was a documentary of a successful society, so they went and built an Eye of Sauron right in the middle of things. BEHOLD IT'S LOOMING GAZE AND DESPAIR.

That's right. An extra large picture for an extra cool looking building. I think it's actually a Hyatt, and they should totally build a room suspended from those pillars.

We also saw a lot of parks. One of those parks and a giant metal fat baby. Here's us reflected in it's tummy and underboob. Never in my life did I think I would say "giant metal fat baby underboob".

One park in particular had quite a find. There were a few carnival rides, and like most public places, had people hocking stuff. I absolutely love street vendors. I don't care if I even need the stuff, I just like to see them reduce their prices 90% after I initially act interested. This fellow was selling movies, of course all pirated. He started out by saying in heavily accented English, "My friend, English movie!". I told him "Bu yao! Wo yao Zhongguo!" (No! I want Chinese!") I shuffled through and picked out two, and then the holy grail of movies was thrust upon me. I could just tell you what it is. I'm not going to though. You have to visually experience it's greatness:

That's right. The famous Chinese movie NUNCHUCKS, which as you can see was only released in theatres a month earlier. The kung fu is awesome, the story completely bizarre, the subtitles horrible, and of course it's one of the greatest movies ever made. If you read the Engrish synopsis and aren't moved to tears by "moving piece big net" and "behold legend of cut stick", you're less of a human than I.

After checking out people trying to catch tadpoles in a pond, we decided to head back for some dinner. Along the way we were stopped in a subway station by someone wanting us to come to their shop and buy purses. I feigned a large degree of excitement and said in Chinese "Reeeally?!", and then proceeded to offer 1 RMB for each item they were selling. He laughed and offered me the paper he was holding. At least he was a good sport, but in retrospect I should have bought the paper. Afterwards I bought a 200 RMB pen for 26 RMB. I love haggling.

So right, dinner. One of my favorite meals of the trip, Lindsay found in her Lonely Planet book a really swanky looking place. It turns out it was very, very Chinese. Dan and I stuck with beer, while Aaron and Lindsay got tea. They continued to be unimpressed by Chinese tea. But the real star was the famous Peking Duck. I've never had Peking Duck before, so without a baseline to compare it with, I will say it was absolutely delicious. Whatever magic they do in the kitchen is totally worth it.




After that we popped off to the train station to meet Yllen. However on the way we passed a promo for the 2nd best movie in China. Coming soon - the hilarious romantic comedy of one man torn between the affections of two women. That's right, its that highly anticipated masterpiece, "Love in the Butt".

After a quick meeting back at the hotel, it was off to the bar. We got some decent beer and margaritas, plus a free shot for name dropping Lucy. (Did I mention how awesome she is?). This continued back to the local convenience store, where we picked up some essentials. There was also a police officer who had left his hat inside. I ran out to return it to him, which he was less enthused by. Granted it might have been because I returned it to him while wearing it. Phew! Day 1 down, 2 to go.

Adorable Asian Pose... activaaaaaate!

Hi ho. Hi ho. It's off to Hangzhou we go. After chilling around the suburbs, for day #2 I figured we'd go into town. So after waking up, we caught the bus into beautiful Hangzhou for the day. Except this time, we were accompanied by the lovely Jessie to serve as our bilingual guide. We met her in a street market very popular with tourists, in front of the ancient Chinese restaurant known as "McDonalds".

Unfortunately, my hand could not be saved.

There are plenty of pictures of the place on Facebook, but it's basically exactly that. An entire street with shop after shop. Looking western gets the price tripled unless marked, so bring your haggling hat. What they do have however, is some pretty awesome stuff on the cheap if you can talk the talk. They also have the famous "alleyway of food", where I quite like the pita bread filled with cumin fried meat and veg. It is as delicious as it sounds, I promise you.

Dan and I got a chance to defile some presumably ancient statue, as seen on the left. Oh, and you see that shop advertising the 10? Those are silk scarves, and they're 10 RMB each. For those of you doing the math, that's about $1.75 each. For silk. Granted there's little margin, but I've bought them for 9 RMB before. There is no shame in my frugality.

After we had our fill of shopping we took a bus over to the famous West Lake. I think this is where everyone got to experience the real China. This bus was standard bus size. That being said, I think all of China crammed into that bus. You get the hilarious phenomenon of when there is no more room for people to step on the first step, the people that want on start pushing. I half expect some startled Chinese man to go flying out the other door. I actually had a pretty sweet spot next to the driver, so I got a nice breeze. The others, not so lucky. Dan, being his tall self, communicated back and forth with me using a series of carefully orchestrated hand signals.

漂亮！

Right so, we hop off at West Lake. We briefly dashed along, and then stopped at a very nice park. There are just too many pictures of this place to do it justice, but this is my favorite and current desktop wallpaper. Before we got there, people were standing on those rocks and taking photos. However some vice cop came along and started shouting at people to get down. Later I would come to learn that his family died in a vicious flower attack only days earlier. He was trying to protect us while holding back the tears.

After another quick jaunt around West Lake (I chased a bird), we decided to head back to the market for dinner. Unfortunately it was a long walk, and being rush hour, hard to find a bus or cab. We eventually found this old, gross looking dude with a van who offered to take us back for a respectable sum. Before telling this guys story, I want to emphasize this may be my favorite part of the day.

See, this guy was gross. His van was gross. He spoke very fast Chinese. He did however, speak in an accent I could understand. Which meant I could sort of understand what he was saying some of the time. I can tell you he was perverted, which amused me. He asked where we were from, and kept complimenting how beautiful Lindsay and Jessie were. He was just having a blast driving foreigners around, and kept rolling down the window to yell at people. Keep in mind we were going about 5 MPH in this traffic, so it was perfectly reasonable. Anyway he just wanted more passengers, and thought the best way is to heckle everyone into coming. I decided, this guy is awesome, I want to help him out, but how? Clearly a westerner yelling terrible Chinese was the only solution. So I mustered up my limited Chinese knowledge to come up with something I could say. The fruits of my labor were "Don't you want to come with us foreigners? We're very pretty!" What a sight that must have been. A beat up old van with a crazy asian person and a crazy white person yelling at people on the street. We did however, get two more passengers. I call that mission success.

After a lengthy ride we went to a famous Hangzhou restaurant, but the wait was just too long. So instead we ate at a rather awesome hibachi grill. After that we got a guy with a van to drive us back home, with some passing out on the way back. They also insist I told the guy wrong directions, which I admit, I did. But I had a GPS, and it at most added 10 minutes to the trip. That's my story and I'm sticking to it, no matter how wrong Aaron is.


See you, Hangzhou.

So as mentioned recently I had three friends come visit me for a week or so in the Chinas. Due to hilarious planning, the first friend arrived at 10am. And then the next at 10pm. And the last around 7pm in a city quite a distance away - so I had to go to the airport twice.

I didn't want friend three to get to my place before I got back from the airport, because fuck him. I told the cab driver both there and back to go quickly, and it's a good thing I did. We managed to show up about 30 minutes before him. Although I did give him some basic phrases and directions in Chinese, the bastard actually did manage to show up at my door. I am going to owe it to luck, because my building is barely marked at all.

Lucky bastard.

After a good nights sleep, we needed to have a chill day to let them overcome jetlag, and ease into the Chinese lifestyle. The answer? A several mile walk to a lake, whereupon we could walk around more. I am a bastard.

My plan was to check out a tea house on the lake, because I figured that would be a nice touch. I suppose in theory it would be, but they seemed less than thrilled at our arrival. We showed up at the door, and I said we had 4 people. They didn't understand. Granted my accent can be pretty bad, but usually it's obvious when you show up at a restaurant the first thing you're going to tell them is how many people you have. Regardless, I may have messed up the word, so I simply held up four fingers. This did not alleviate their confusion. Now I'm confused. Is this not a restaurant? This is descending into an endless cycle of confusion that I'd still be in, now weeks later, if drastic action were not undertaken.

So I stop it there, and say in Chinese "We'd like to drink tea". Still no dice. "We want tea". Again, looks of confusion like I have three heads. So now in English I say "drink tea", and they seem to get it. But it was kind of a "God, whatever" kind of getting it. They lead us to a table, don't get a menu, simply 4 green teas poured for us. While the atmosphere was nice, the tea was average. One friend made their displeasure of the taste quite well known, but honestly it tasted like all other Chinese green tea to me. Unfortunately what I didn't expect was the price. Sheesh. I know it's a touristy area, but 45 RMB a person is way too much.

So after taking a bus back, we went onto the Japanese restaurant in one of the 5 star resorts in the area. It's my favorite restaurant in China, because you get to eat absolutely amazing Japanese food, and here's the kicker - it's all you can eat and drink. Not a buffet, you get a proper menu and order whatever you want, as much as you want. And the drinks? Sake, beer, you name it. As much as you want, for 150 RMB a person ($24)

After a drunken night of merriment, we stumbled back home and palled around the apartment until we passed out from excessive alcohol consumption.

Day #1 down. Several more to go.

Hi.

Apologies for not updating, but a slew of things have happened over the past few weeks. First off I was working really hard to get as much of my work as possible done before three friends visited me. Then of course while they were here, I didn't really feel like taking time away to write about it. Then they leave, and I start to catch up on all my work.

If you had told me at that time that in 36 hours I'd be back in Cincinnati, I would have said you're crazy. When I came home from work, I had 3 separate E-mails telling me to call home ASAP.

And I did.

And I was told me grandfather died a few hours ago.

And then I didn't know what to do.

I started to think that when he had died, I had just walked into my last class of the day. Everything seemed like it was out of a dream, that it's just not possible for something like thist to happen. Of course it did, but at the time it didn't really "sink in" I suppose. I went to sleep thereafter with a feeling of disbelief, but not sadness.

Then I thought more and more about going home. I did and I didn't want to at the same time. But I eventually concluded I only have two grandfathers in my life and I'm not going to get any more. So now, I make the call to work to tell them I'm leaving ASAP. Still no problems. It wasn't until I actually said, out loud, "My grandpa passed away last night." that it hit me all at once. Suddenly I was starting to get a bit choked up. And then I get word that dad got me a flight in the morning. Since the first train of the day wouldn't get me there in time, I had to go ASAP. As in, a few hours from now. So I quickly packed my things, all the while being a bit misty eyed and emotional. Before these were just some words from the other side of the planet. Now its real, I've said it, and this event is changing my life.

And now here I am. I learned most of the funeral responsibilities were delegated before I got here, but of course I'm still wanting to help if possible. It's still nice to see familiar faces and the same places. While it's great to catch up, I don't really feel that I can enjoy my time here as I would if I came home under better circumstances. I just want to trade all of this for my busy week of work back.

Aha, you looked! 10 RMB please

Sorry for not being that funny. Next time we will return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast of fun in Xiaoshan, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. As an apology, please accept these West Lake flowers.

-W