I never thought I'd say this but Lauren's really popular. She's introduced me to more people in China than friends I have at home. Luckily for me, some of them speak English, and unfortunately for her, some of them don't, leaving her to be constantly translating and acting as a constant middleman. In the past two days we've done a bit of Shanghai on our own, met up with a lot of her friends for meals and adventures, and even made some new friends!
Yesterday was our day to "finish Shanghai." We began our morning at the famous Yu Yuan – the area is full of a bunch of touristy shopping streets as well as a beautiful rock garden. We found our way to the back, local streets to get some good breakfast – we were in the mood for an ooey gooey delicious heart attack, and knew the locals would be sure to have a cart selling some. We were so excited when we stumbled into one that we were not paying attention quickly enough to stop the "chef" from adulterating it with ketchup and mayo. It was downright blasphemous and turned the whole experience (i.e. the one bite we took before we threw it out) into more of an ewwy gooey. As much as that joke made me feel a little better, it still brought me down a notch, because as this blog has surely proved, I'm all about the food. We decided that purchasing a bubble tea might perk us up and so we went for round two at Coco. This time, I went for my go-to at home flavoring of choice, caramel, and it was obviously a hit. We explored the garden for awhile – it was pretty serene even though there were a lot of people moving through. We met an old man and his young, American grandson and had trouble deciding which of them was more adorable. We took some fun pictures (obvi) and then decided we had exhausted all Yu Yuan had to offer.
We made some moves to ones of the places I had heard the most about from Lauren during her previous Shanghai experiences – the cheap market. I did really well, and continue to be excited by my purchases. I weirdly enough seem to have no buyer's remorse in this country and just feel better and better about what I buy as time goes on. I wonder how I'll feel tomorrow when I unpack and discover all of the things I bought…oh, well. Sunk costs, amiright?
After the market, we were feeling pretty hungry, so after heading back to the hotel quickly to drop off our goods, we went off to Fudan to explore some of Lauren's old haunts. Ever popular, we ran into the "bike guy," from whom she bought a bike in the middle of the street (to be picked up later in the week…casual), the rice dumpling lady, from whom we bought a rice dumpling, and a member of the ooey gooey delicious heart attack family, from whom we bought a much, much, much better OGDH.
With our hunger satisfied, Lauren took me on a tour of campus! I saw the Wash U classroom, her old dorm, her favorite study spots, the gift shop, and the giant Mao statue in the middle of campus. It further supports my suspicion that China is always watching. We hung out for awhile on the quad as we waited for Lauren's old roommates, Lina and Jisu, for dinner (number one…we met up with more friends for dinner number 2 later. Oops?) She really lucked out in the roommate department – they were really sweet! We went to a pretty mediocre Taiwanese restaurant which was in a nice area of town. Luckily, we only got a little bit of food. We also got Lauren's favorite crème puff (we had to – it was the official one on the list and had to be compared to the one we tried in Guilin) for dessert, a Bearded Papa. Well worth it.
We said our goodbyes, and then had about an hour to kill until the foot massage I promised Lauren I'd get with her. We walked around by her gym where she showed me another one of her favorite study locations, and we ran into more random dance parties. (That's right – parties, as in more than one.) I was nervous, but excited when we headed back to the massage place.
As I previously mentioned, I'm really squeamish about people touching my feet. I'm really embarrassing to get pedicures with (just ask my mom) and was pretty sure I would be unable to sit through an entire hour of someone essentially tickling my feet, but Lauren assured me I would be fine…she was wrong. Luckily, we were in a private room, and Lauren and her masseuse are friends so the only person I was really offending was my masseuse but I just could not handle it. There was frankly nowhere for the experience to go but downhill when he looked at my feet and insisted I let him get all of the calluses off because they were so gross from running and wearing flip flops a lot. I was literally crying from laughing so hard when he actually started massaging my feet that he ended up stopping early and switching to a back and shoulder massage – I feel like this was mostly a strategic maneuver to shut me up, rather than for my comfort. He claims that it's just because it's my first time, and I'll let him believe that, but to be honest, it seems likely that this was also my last time.
Having successfully embarrassed myself in a foreign country, I was ready for dinner number 2. We met with Lauren's friends who work at the gym and headed towards Fudan for a bite to eat. It was really a struggle to communicate as my Chinese is horrific and their English is not all that much better. Whenever Lauren had a phone call (which happened more than once), we all just sort of looked at each other. We got some noodles and dumplings (but the dumplings were the worst – not our best food day), but her friends didn't eat and then decided they wanted KFC so we went there as well. I was telling one of her friends to teach me Chinese, and he tried to say he would teach me Chinese and I could teach him English, but when he asked Lauren to remind him of how to say "teach," Lauren misheard and thought he had asked her to translate the Chinese word for "dumpling" instead, which is how I ended up with the lovely offer that has become the title of this post. Probably the most interesting part of the evening was when they got super excited by the idea that America has erasable pens. To be fair, I was pretty excited when I first heard about them too, but once I realized I would end up with ink all over my hand because I'm a lefty, and how crossing something out can sometimes (always) be fairly cathartic, I got over them. I'm excited to send them some when I get home – hopefully they don't find them to be too much of a let-down. We left KFC (glad I got to really experience "China" with her real Chinese friends) and headed back to our hotel.
We woke up this morning with some time to kill before meeting up with Lauren's other friend (are you losing count? I certainly am.) who was going to take us to a water town for the afternoon. We decided to spend our time meandering towards and through People's Park (which we hadn't made it to yet) until our arranged meeting time. We finally made it there, and were just beginning to walk through, when some girls stopped us and asked us to take a picture of them. They were both impressed with Lauren's Chinese and also all pretty good at English, so they began to talk to us. We were comparing cultures, talking about our respective trips, etc. and they eventually asked us to join them for some tea history and culture event they were heading to. Why not? We thought, and off we went with our new friends.
The girl I was talking to, Bessie, told me a pretty interesting fact on the way to the event – apparently, a lot of Chinese superstars get plastic surgery to make their noses bigger. Strange, but true. We made it over to the event which turned out to be a private room with a private server who was going to teach us about the history of tea and allow us to try some. We looked at the menu and it seemed like it was going to cost us 30 yuan (~5 bucks) to see what she had to offer, so we decided we were in. We learned about the proper way to drink tea (it's different for guys and girls), and learned about the tea god – we rubbed him in different places for luck, money, and love. The girls were all strangely curious about my love life and made sure I rubbed the god right in the middle for a boyfriend. We started with a ginseng tea, which left a surprisingly sweet taste on the tongue after drinking it. It was really good! After the ginseng, we moved onto a jasmine tea. The woman presenting to us explained that jasmine leaves can be put under eyes to reduce bags. When I excitedly told the girls that I always complain about bags under my eyes, Bessie joked that I was likely an insomniac waiting up all night worrying about Mr. Right…it's like she could read my mind. The tea, of course was delicious. It wasn't until the third tea, and deliciously strong and sweet fruit tea, that Lauren and I realized we were being charged lots of money (~50 yuan, with the price only going up as we moved on) per sample. OOOOOOPS. We told them that we didn't want to keep going, but still ended up spending a pretty penny (almost 200 yuan or about $30) with our new friends. Luckily, we were able to try more of each tea and so we did our best to get our money's worth. Dazzy, one of the other girls, also bought us each one of the more expensive teas we weren't able to afford trying which was so sweet of her! Another bonus was that we all got good luck charms at the end. "Our foreign friends" got to pick first, so I obviously chose the Duke blue one. It wasn't until after choosing that I was informed that this is the one that represents love, which they all continued to find hilarious. After all of the meanings were shared, Dan Dan, the other girl, offered me hers, which meant power. I love me some power, so I was super excited to trade but she assured me I should keep mine because I need it to find a boyfriend, and that she just wanted to give me hers to give me it. Maybe they just wanted me to experience the joy of owning a couple's shirt or keychain? Being Duke blue, it already is representing something I love, so I guess it's already working.
Unfortunately, my power charm broke in half somewhere between leaving the tea house and getting into the taxi to meet up with Lauren's friend, Xixi. I'm hoping that it's one of those things that means it will come true when it falls apart. (You know, like those bracelets? You tie them on and make a wish and when they fall off the wish comes true? I promise it's a thing.) If not, I hope someone else finds it and wields the power wisely.
Xixi is so sweet! We met her at the bus stop – I now think we've taken every form of public transportation. Impressive. She took us to Zhujiajiao. A water town is essentially exactly what it sounds like. It's a neat little escape from the city life, with an ancient feel (this one's over 1700 year's old!) and a lot of water. We walked around for awhile. Xixi was hilarious – she was trying to bargain for anything and everything, including the boat prices and even water. (She was successful in the latter endeavor.) She wouldn't let us buy anything as they would give higher prices to us because we are foreigners. We tried this new snack. I have no idea what it's called and Lauren's asleep, but it was a banana leaf filled with sticky brown rice and some sort of meat. It was interesting to watch it being made. It was really good. As we were doing street food for lunch, we then decided to get some part of a pig (ankle, maybe?) also wrapped in a banana leaf. After one bite, I noticed that mine came free with a dead fly inside – no extra charge! – so I decided I was done after that. (To be fair, I've had street food nearly everyday I've been in this country and this was the first incident so don't judge all for one's mistake!) We wandered around for awhile – I ended up getting my second and final corn ice cream – and then got back on the bus to head home.
Unfortunately, once we got back to the main city, it started raining. We took a taxi back to the hotel to regroup, and then headed out to meet up with Changhong for dinner. Being my last night in Shanghai, we wanted to make sure we finished out the list of foods I needed to try while I was here. We had two items left, and Changhong was happy to join us in eating them. The first, a spicy bullfrog dish, was delicious. We found it at a Sichuan style restaurant overlooking the city skyline. It was a great meal! We made sure to not order as many dishes as we had at lunch a few days ago, as we didn't want to force poor Changhong to eat every last bite of leftovers we had. After dinner, the only item left on the list was a "bread box." It's a dessert and luckily, the place that served it was in the same mall we found our dinner restaurant at. Now, for the entire trip I had been imagining a "bread box" as a rectangular plastic box with a bunch of little compartment in it, each containing some sort of delicious, sweet, carb-heavy dish. I was wrong. (It happens sometimes.) It was literally a box made out of a sweet bread filled with a bunch of pieces of cut-up sweet bread topped with a scoop of ice cream. Don't be embarrassed if you're drooling – I nearly was too when I saw it.
After dining on the delectable but decadent dessert (alliterations can make or break any piece of prose), we went for a nice long walk along the Bund. It was more clear out tonight than the last time we went so we snagged a few more pictures. As we were doing so, I met a professor from Clemson! I made sure to yell "Go Duke!" as we continued our walk, because I'm obnoxious like that, but overall we had a nice chat. After walking, Lauren and I headed back to our hotel to do some packing. Shanghai was a wonderful experience, largely made by all of the fun and friendly people I met, even those who don't speak the same language as I do!
The past two weeks have been incredible and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to come here. Although I admit I'm not looking forward to the excessive traveling I'll be doing tomorrow, it will be a good time to reflect – the 13 hours of my long flight should provide me ample time to come up with a creative way to share them. Shang-bye for now!
Shang-bye. You're too funny. Excellent conclusion to a fantastic blog. LOVE.
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