Amy & Karol "Explore" Shanghai as Westerners

[I finally figured out how to upload pics!]

Not really a true exploration, but it did involve metro-ing and walking around Shanghai. To parts of the city that I haven’t been to yet. I have Sundays and Mondays off from work, as does Karol. Karol also lives “next door” to me in the complex across the park. This requires a 3 minute walk to meet up at the gate. We had a very International/Western weekend.

The theme of the weekend? To be Western and to buy Western in China. And to amaze the natives with our ability to speak English “so well! and so accurate!” Because, it’s not like we were born and raised in America or anything. But that’s another story for another blog entry.

Sunday morning started off as a lazy morning. Karol messages me with her frustrations of getting her cell phone fixed and so was going to go to Head Office (HO) to have someone help her translate and get things squared away. She asked whether I wanted to accompany her and I said yes because my other option would have been to bum around the apt attempting hw and attempting cleaning house.

We took metro to HO which is located somewhere near Jing’An (maybe). Spent some time hanging out in the teacher’s office and met some of her Shane teachers. Saw Simon again and again he would speak so fast I would not be able to understand his English accent. When someone had helped Karol contact the Nokia care center, we got back on the metro and headed for Fuzhou Rd. at People’s Square. I definitely want to go back to People’s Square and just wander around. There is a sort of underground shopping mall. There are so many shops to look at (probably expensive though) and tons of people to people watch. We saw a church (I believe it is the Moore Memorial Church) whose peaceful atmosphere was a striking contrast against the bustling People’s Square crowds.

We watched Mr. Bean while waiting in the Nokia Care waiting room. After dropping off her cell phone to be fixed (~1 hour) we went next door to the KFC for lunch. KFC is really popular in China. But the funny thing is, the menu is completely different. For one, I don’t think they sell buckets of chicken or potato wedges, THE typical food of KFC. When we went in, just about everyone was eating shoestring french fries and had a drink. Where was the chicken?! (22-24RMB/meal) However, Karol and I did score some play straws that we could change into funny shapes.We also bought a hand-held sewing machine (15RMB) from a lady off the street. We were so amazed by it that she knew she had an instant sale. It’s kinda shaped like a stapler, but you can sew/hem with it!

After KFC, we walked across the street and saw a McDonalds. We bought ice cream cones (2.50RMB) As we were eating, we came across a huge bookstore. Of course we wanted to go in, but the security told us to finish eating the ice cream first before going in.

Karol wanted to find a China travel guide book. Couldn’t find any, however we did have some fun times in the foreign/bilingual book section. She wants to improve her Mandarin so she was looking through the learn Mandarin books. After laughing at some awesome titles as “EXTREME MANDARIN!” and “Romeo and Zhu Ying Tai Phrase Book” (probably the most awesome book by the way. It basically teaches a Western male step-by-step how to have a relationship with a Chinese female. The book is divided into such chapters as: Saying Hello, Compliments, Meeting the Parents, Fights (long and short ones) and Proposal among others) we came across some Chinese-English dictionaries.

Karol: Here are the pocket sized Chinese-English dictionaries.
Amy: Are you sure these are pocket sized? [points to a FAT dictionary]
Karol: hahaha, you can’t fit this in your pocket. [attempts to fit FAT dictionary in pockets]
Amy: Is that a Chinese-English dictionary in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
[laugh inappropriately for a good 5 mins. or so]

We also visited the Marxism-Leninism Literature. Which was located across from a portrait of Mao Zedong. You gotta love China. Later on, as we walked around the Shanghai Stadium looking for a place to buy Leehom concert tickets [epic_fail], we took pictures in front of Beijing 2008 signs made out of flowers.




On Monday, we attempted to buy train tickets for the upcoming weeklong October Holiday/National Day Holiday. We went to the Shanghai Railway Station to inquire about prices. We probably also pissed off the woman who was helping us because we were asking her to check every single day and for multiple locations: Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou. Well the mission was another epic_fail because we left empty handed. We went back home, stopped at Cross Regions Plaza (Foxtown!) to grab some spaghetti and pizza and then went home. We met up with Michelle and Lisa for dinner at Blue Frog which is a Western style restaurant that has buy 1 get 1 free burgers on Mondays. Karol and I decided to walk over to Michelle/Lisa’s apt because Karol said she knew how. She didn’t really know and we ended up walking somewhat in the right and wrong direction. Though a Chinese-American guy who was walking behind us suddenly asked us “So are you girls from the States?” We were surprised because we were in the middle of figuring out whether the Shanghai Indoor Stadium was different from the Shanghai Gymnastic Stadium when we suddenly hear this American voice over our shoulders. He’s from near Philadelphia.

At Blue Frog. So there we were, four Chinese-American girls, all of us more American than Chinese, sitting at a Western style restaurant eating burgers (40RMB with the discount) and speaking in English. We are super awesome. Bennett also went there for dinner, but he showed up with his Chinese friend when we were about to leave. We made a stop over at City Shop which is an International super market and couldn’t believe how expensive Western brands were. Well, we can believe it, but we were still shocked.

Karol and I departed from Michelle and Lisa and started navigating our way back towards our apts. We used landmarks and big buildings, “I recognize that building, we want to walk away from it.” I saw a store we now call the “2 Kuai Store” where everything in the store was 2RMB. It’s filled with useless stuff that you want to buy. While Karol and I were in there looking around, two Italian-Jewish guys overheard our English and walked up behind us asking us where we were from. It was all cordial in the beginning because we were speaking a mixture of Chinglish, English, Spanish, French and Italian with them, making small talk about being in China. The owners/workers of the 2 Kuai Store were loving us because here you had two white guys and two Chinese looking girls speaking to each other in a foreign tongue. We were probably bringing customers in for them. Then they started hitting on us and kept wanting to invite us out to a club/bar called Baby Face. Karol and I looked at each other and started sending messages to each other with our eyes and walked towards the door to make our purchase. They called out to us again, “Come on, let’s go!” which we politely replies, “sorry, we have classes tomorrow morning!” We asked an old Chinese man to take a picture of us outside the 2 Kuai Store holding the 2RMB plastic world globe Karol bought and then we left for home.