Day 2 in Shanghai

After trudging around Shanghai for something like eight hours, my beloved New Balance hiking shoes became my arch enemies (pun intended!) My weary, jet lagged legs could no longer function and I wanted to kill my shoes. Every step was making me think of the poor bound-footed Chinese women of the past. (OK, I exaggerate a bit and don’t do justice to the true torture those women had to bear, but this is my blog and I’m a know exaggerator.)

We finally made it to the apartment after a stop for some takeout dumplings (delicious of course) And after taking off those traitorous shoes, we decided to take a short nap, maybe an hour or so. Eight hours later at 11:45 pm, we woke  up feeling somewhat better. Svend had set an alarm, but we totally ignored that. SO now at midnight we played cards, watched boring news, read and went back to sleep until 8 AM. Now we had a handle on the jet lag and were able to venture out again. In my new favorite and much lighter Sketchers, trusty umbrella, scarf of course and sensible rain coat, I was ready for day two. Back to the happening spot - the People’s Park, where we picked up tickets to see the Peking Opera that night (more about the PO later) and then hopped back on the sightseeing bus.

There is a section of the city called Yun Yuan which is a place where several hundred years ago, a devoted son built beautiful gardens for his aging parents, complete with many charming pagodas to rest or read or do whatever it is aging parents do. In our kid’s case they hop on a plane and visit other peoples' ancient gardens. The rock gardens here were so beautiful, complete with caves that were maybe cooler in the summer for the aging parents? There was even an impressive thousand year old jade rock. t was truly a lovely oasis in that huge city.

The area around the gardens have been built up into a modern day Mecca for shoppers complete with a Starbucks and a KFC (I know, I don’t like it either, but we have been lured into a Starbucks for decent coffee a couple of times) There was also a crooked bridge that led to a tea house where only the foreign travelers seemed to visit. The natives were too smart to fall for the overblown prices, but it was nevertheless worth it have jasmine ginseng tea with the quirky little “tea snacks” that accompanied it (small tea quail eggs, kumquats covered in something good (not the official name of that delicacy) a sweet tofu thing and some peanuts, definitely peanuts..I’m pretty sure.

I must comment on the 27 million people's ability to get around especially via the subway system. It's absolutely amazing! Somehow, the literally thousands of people get through turnstiles, go up and down stairs, get on and off trains in what seems like a choreographed march - and may I add, a large majority of them are watching something on their phones -movies, tv shows, pictures of their kids - something. Those who are not actively watching something have earbuds in and might be talking to someone or listening to music. It is truly a small minority who are not attached to a phone. The trains are frequent, there are signs on the floors that help organize which way everyone should go. Everything is very well marked, color coded, modern and efficient, at least where we were. Yes, there are people walking in front of you and no one ever says, "excuse me" or anything like that, but one must not get annoyed with that, it's their way and if you go with the flow - it really works fine.

Okay, now I must describe the Peking Opera. I was very excited that we were lucky to be in Shanghai when there was a performance. I have heard about the Peking Opera, seen vague snippets or perhaps parodies of it before, so was happy to see the real thing. The Si Yu theater was wonderful, spacious seating with a good view from the entire hall. The lights stay up through the performance, The costumes were splendid, which is an old fashioned adjective, but perfect to describe the whole scene. The acting seemed wonderful, even without knowing a single word being said. Now about the music…a cacophony of cats!!! This phase popped into my head and I couldn’t shake it. The band was the leader of this dissonance. Their job was to punctuate the action with some annoying sounding notes. Then on occasion go into a full blown all-instrument dissonance. The female lead -a  beautiful woman in a stunning robe with sleeves that went way below the wrists and with some seemingly slight of hand the sleeved folded up to wrist length, then down again no doubt in synch with the action of the unknown story. This she did well, but sing? I’m 100% sure the Asian audience loved her performance, but to me she sounded, not only like a cat, but a weird cat. Now the second male lead also had a weird voice, but it went up and down in range and sometimes matched what my ears like to hear. (I know this all sounds xenophobic or what ever cool word we use for racist, but I can’t help it and again, my blog -oh right and Svend’s too. I know he would agree with me if he knew what cacophony meant!) -yust yoking...

My favorite character was the emperor/warlord/mayor of the town; or whoever he was. Also splendid robes and a killer perfectly square grey beard that went to about his knees. A fabulous presence on the stage with lots of meaningful shakes and shrugs and prancing about in those mandarin platform shoes. His assistant or maybe second in command had what looked like wired bee’s wings on his back, which I would loved to have know why, but alas don’t. I know the play had to do with a sword because it was in the title, one showed up on the stage, later was stolen by a ninja looking character and then used by soldiers to kill the guy with the up and down vocal range. I was kind of wishing it was used on the orchestra. 

    Now you might think this review would mean I don’t recommend a Peking Opera, but quite the opposite! It was a wonderful experience and only my lack of refinement and education made me not appreciate the cacophony - I mean music.

Enough for now, I'm boring myself -I'm trying to add pictures, but there is a challenge trying to coordinate iCloud or even getting to Google (have to use Google Hong Kong) Ta ta for now..

Shanghai - It took Marco Polo over 3 years to get to China,, so I guess the 14 hour flight from Newark to Shanghai wasn’t so bad, especially with the extra leg room, but still.. Anyway the flight was uneventful save for the magnificent view out the window of the coast of Greenland. What, we wondered were out fellow passengers taking pictures of out the port side windows? And surely it was an awesome sight. Backed by the red sunset horizon were icy coastal mountains and dark fjords cutting into the coast. Of course our cameras were in the overhead, so you’ll have to trust me that it was magnificent. I never would have thought we would be going over Greenland to get to from Newark to Shanghai, fortunately I am not the navigator.

So a book, a movie, 2 naps a few games and some TV; and next thing you know we are in Shanghai. Ha ha Marco Polo.

Being rather adventurous, we decided on getting an air bnb in Shanghai, city of over 24 million people! That's more that all of all of Scandinavia, with a couple of other European countries thrown in! We were smart enough to arrange for a cab to pick us up at the airport (when I say we, I mean Svend) otherwise we never would have found the apartment which was at the end of an alley. The building was a little sketchy, but the apartment was just fine. Clean and comfortable. While waiting for Svend and the cab driver to figure things out, I stood by the cab with the luggage. We were fairly obviously not natives and were the subject of many stares. One nice gentleman decided to practice his English and said "Good afternoon" already beating me in the language game. Somehow he said the word teacher, I said I was teacher (not exactly accurate, but close enough) and he had a few other good words, "wonderful, beautiful" After that, he managed to be out on his balcony several other times as we were coming or going, always saying "Hello, USA teacher, wonderful, beautiful". I say his English was pretty darn good! He may have been the village axe murderer, but he was pleasant.

View of zucchini climbing palm tree

We scoped out the neighborhood, which had a lot of charm. It was a few subway stops from the heart of the city (The People's Park) and was near a very busy intersection, but because it was a series of alleys off a small road, it seems very removed from the hustle and bustle. Of course we were exhausted and went to bed early, only to wake up at 3:30 AM, thinking it was time to get up. We were    out raring to go at 5:30 AM. You would think a city of 24 million people would have coffee available at 5:30 AM, but no. We took the subway to the People's Park, but the people weren't there yet. The good news is the subway was not too busy yet. 

We found coffee in a hotel lobby and were back to being happy enthusiastic travelers. Oh did I mention the rain? It was getting worse by the minute. I, having paid attention to travelers advice and weather reports had a nice raincoat, an umbrella and my seriously good New Balance walking shoes (no bad weather - only bad clothes) Svend was trying to be all Viking but was finally convinced to a least buy an umbrella from a street vendor ($1.50) Our plan was to get a 48 hour hop/on hop off city tour bus pass, but they didn't start until 9:00Am it it was still only about 7:30. So we went walking in the People's Park and lo and behold we found what you would expect in a park in China - people doing tai chi (under an enclosure, remember the rain?) I'm not ready to join in yet, but it was only day one, who knows what the future will bring. OK fast forward, we get on the bus, Svend wants to sit on the top level where it's really wet. I of course never complain so that's what we did. No seriously after I stopped griping and wiped off the seats and the rain stopped and I had my trusty scarf to sit on, It was the better choice.

So 24 million people means lots of high buildings and traffic, and pedestrians and mopeds and bicycles and you know what? Somehow it all works.