Shanghai

Forth night in Shanghai now, I spent most of the weekend with Wenying and Linna, mostly eating and talking about going to a club but never really doing anything. The second day we spent walking around Fudan’s campus, they have some nice Japanese gardens but I didn’t have any camera on me so no pictures. We had once again Italian food, and as usual it is American pan pizza instead of Italian pizza, some pasta dishes that actually seemed Italian and a rice dish that was no-where near Italian, we had some tiramisu too but it wasn’t as good as the one Francesca made in Sweden. We planned to go to a club after but it was “already” 9pm so they thought it was too late (I don’t think that is too late to go out clubbing but I wasn’t in much mood for clubbing, the pasta had made my stomach a bit weird and I wasn’t too energetic) so we just went back to my hotel room and talked for a while; mostly made some plans for the third day.

The third day we spent fulfilling those plans, that is we went bowling after breakfast (read brunch) and after that we went swimming (read bathing), Linna couldn’t find any nice enough bathing suit so she went home instead, Wenying and I had a really good time playing in the great and overly crowded pool though, I managed to teach her swimming under water and even brave the deepest part of the pool (2.2m) and dive down to touch the pool-floor there. After swimming we found Linna at her dorm and went out to have Korean food, which was bulgogi but wasn’t named so, a “Korean” sweet and sour pork which was just too much like the Hong Kong sweet and sour pork to be anything but that (but really very good) and some other quite tasty dishes. Like the second day we had talked about going out to a club but always jumping between decision we finally ended up back at the hotel room instead, we did find a club just 200m from the hotel on the way back though, so we had some plan of going there but in the end I was just so annoyed that I would rather go to bed, which of course ended in a lot of bad feelings before we said goodnight. Partly my fault for acting out when I was too tired which I know I shouldn’t but sometimes can’t help anyway.

Today I met Songsong, a Chinese girl that I know from online that I also met last year when I was here with Joyce, for lunch in central Shanghai. The trip there took about an hour and was really bothering, I had slept really bad last night because of a trouble stomach and a troubled mind (over the annoyance last night) but finally found Songsong at the place we had decided for meeting about 20 minutes too late (I was there on time but you know girls…). On the metro, or subway or underground or whatever they call it here, I saw something really unnerving; it was after an interchange, that meant about 5 minutes of walking, when I got on the train and the doors was just about to close a young mom with her daughter was trying to get on the train and the mother held the girls hand but leading her in front of herself and the train doors closed between them. The little girl, perhaps 5 years old or so, was trapped on the train and the mom outside, she started screaming of course but a man took charge of her, screaming something angrily to the mother, I would guess something about irresponsibility, and tried to sooth the child at the same time as he was scolding her too. I don’t know how it resolved, just that they didn’t get off at the next station and I forgot about them when I myself was getting off at the most crowded station in all of Shanghai.

Songsong and I spent about an hour walking up and down Nanjing road to find a nice restaurant to have lunch at; she had her mind set on some that she couldn’t found and then another that she couldn’t find either. We finally found a nice place though, seemed way too luxurious but we stayed there anyway and had a really good meal. I think Chinese people really can’t order food properly, they tend to order for about twice as many people as there are, we ended up with about half of the food left over and she took some fried dumplings in a doggy bag to give to some poor homeless guy later. After lunch we walked (took train) up and down Nanjing road again and went off to look at the famous Shanghai skyline of the Bund, where there always seems to be popping up new buildings, in the rain. It was raining quite heavily for a while and I was pretty much soaked when I met Wenying again and said goodbye to Songsong.

Wenying and I spend the first hours or so just killing time by walking around in a big shopping mall, raffles mall, and having some hot tea that wasn’t hot at all at a too expensive place. After that we tried to catch a bus to go back where at least one of us knew the restaurants but finally gave up and tried to find someplace where we were. This was all about a bet that I lost before, some of you might know of it as the 5 questions bet. We finally found a place that served Hong Kong food which at the point seemed as good as any, the food was quite ok actually, just a little bit too much flour on the deep fried pork in the sweet and sour pork and the dessert that on the picture looked like some piece of bread that you usually get in dim sum places in Hong Kong was just a flour coated whipped cream pie. All in all it was still good and we were satisfied, we took a taxi home instead of wasting time with the metro and busses, and it ended up being about the same price or even cheaper than it would have been taking the metro, the bus is not really comparable, it’s just a few (3) Yuen for a trip like that. Back at the hotel we tried to watch a movie that I have thought she would be interested in, but she had stayed up all night last night for some reason and just fell asleep after about 20-30 minutes, so we finally gave up and she just went back to her dorm, she is working tomorrow after all.

And now I sit here all alone without any internet, trying to cheery myself up by writing about the weekend’s events. I did have a good time here despite everything, and tomorrow night and leaving for other adventures in Beijing.