Riffraff

Last night at dinner I ordered napkins. Yes, when you go out to eat in Shanghai, there are places that do not have napkins there for you. If they do, they are most likely sealed in a plastic pouch. Unbeknownst to you (until now), opening that pouch will cost you 2 kuai (about 28 cents). Anyway, where I went Saturday night, they didn't have napkins, and the meal was a bit messy. (or maybe I'm messy, either way is probably accurate.) I just learned the Chinse word (canjinzhi - sounds kinda like "tsahn jeen jhur" with first, first, and third tones respectively) at my tutoring session on Wednesday. So I was like hey, I can practice ordering napkins here! However it took me like, five minutes to build up the nerve to do it, haha.

That's one interesting thing I have to contend with here - the fear of being misunderstood and thus feeling dumb. Already on Friday night the waitress had trouble understanding me when I ordered a bottle of water. But, I mean, the only way to learn is to speak as much as possible. Plus, although I might speak Chinese only one way -- there'll be tons of different people listening to me. Not all of them are as perceptive and/or able to understand lao wai as I'd like. So you gotta keep trying. And I've only been here three months. I shouldn't expect to be fluent at all, no matter how much I'd like to be :-)

So I built up the nerve to say fuwuyuan, you mei you canjinzhi? (Fuwuyuan is what you say when you want to get a server's attention in a restaurant -- if your server is female, you also can say xiaojie, or "little sister", but colloquially it is equivalent to saying "Miss!" But be careful where you say that, because it can mean something completely different depending on where you are.)

Anyway, she smiles and responds "yi kuai qian!" (One RMB!) So, woohoo, she understood me! I happily pay my 1 kuai, considering it the price for confirming that I know how to say "napkin" in Mandarin. She gave me a cool little pack with like 10 napkins in it. I took the unused ones home with me. C'mon man -- that's 14 cents!! ;-)

You might wonder, and I'll applaud you if you are actually wondering this because it means you're paying way too much attention to this blog, how you can ask a question in Chinese without using ma? The deal is, you mei you literally means "Have don't have". When you say it like that, it becomes like a question: "Do you have ... ?" So you don't need a ma here. Jeremy calls this the "multiple choice" way of asking questions, so I stole that way of thinking about it :-)

But this statement is the equivalent of Mei you ... ma? which also is correct. Either way is fine. One more example:

These two phrases are equivalent:

Neng bu neng ... ?
Neng ... ma?

Neng being the word for "can", as in, "can you speak English?"

You can do this with any verb. Yao bu yao biede? means "Do you want anything else?" Notice again the lack of ma when asking a question. Also notice that bu and mei both negate whatever comes after them. You sorta have to remember when to use which one.

Another interesting thing about Mandarin is that, there's no real way to say "yes" or "no". If somebody asks you Yao bu yao biede, you say either yao ("I want ...") or bu yao ("I don't want ..." ). Notice you're just repeating the verb there, maybe plus a negation word depending on your actual answer. Dui is a very commonly used word, but it's more of a "that's correct" answer than a "Yes". But it can get the point across. Today at Garden Books, the waitress asked me Hai yao yi bei shui ma? "Do you want another glass of water?" I said dui, but I should've said yao. Luckily she understood :-)

Stuff like this is fun.

After dinner I came home and watched Southland Tales. Horrible movie. Don't bother.

Today I went to go read at Garden Books. Going there is great because I get outside, but only to do some reading. So it's a great mix of leaving the house and staying inside all in one activity. Afterwards I walked down Ruijin Road to Taikang Lu. The alley in between Taikang Lu and Jianguo Lu is filled with these narrow little buildings, every one of which is either a 1) art gallery, 2) cafe, or 3) knicknack shop. So I had a lot of fun wandering around there. I normally detest shopping for the sake of it, but Taikang Lu was the first place I've been here that actually made me want to spend money. So at some point I might just go and do that :-) I even saw a bunch of Threadless shirts on the rack in one store, including one I own, which made me laugh. I guess someone is just buying Threadless shirts and reselling them here -- I wonder for how much, because they're already pretty expensive from the web site. Unfortunately they didn't have the one I really want.

I had lunch at this narrow, NARROW cafe called, appropriately enough, Bohemia. The waitress there spoke excellent English, much to my surprise. Normally when a Chinese waitress/waiter talks to me in English, I try to keep it in Chinese -- as much to practice my Chinese as to avoid their non-native speaking and understanding of English. But as soon as this waitress spoke to me, I responded in English automatically, so I kept doing it. It was strange, but nice. Rarely do I compliment people here on their English, but hers was very good, so I told her so. (And no, she is not ABC.)

Side note: I order in Chinese EVERYWHERE I go, including places like Starbucks and the nicer/upscale-er places. These places are packed with lao wai and so the staff is usually halfway good at speaking English. So you can get away with saying "I'd like a grande cup of coffee" at Starbucks. But I insist on saying Qing lai yi da bei ka fei. Every other time I've heard a lao wai order something, it's been in English. I don't know if I'm being annoying by ordering in Chinese or not. I know that the staff probably wants to practice their English. But, I'm the customer, and I want to practice my Chinese, so I win :-) I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this, but it's definitely a difference that I notice.

Back to Bohemia -- The food was way overpriced, but it was still probably cheaper than in Xintiandi. Actually Taikang Lu reminded me a lot of Xintiandi -- a lot of hip (read: trendy, expensive, and filled with lao wai) stuff goes on in both places -- but whereas Xintiandi's hipness is a result of extensive planning, security guards to keep out the riffraff, and forced relocation of residents, Taikang Lu's hipness is more organic, as the whole thing kind of sprung up around what's already there, which includes "real Shanghai residents!". At least that's what I gathered from some quick Internet research.

Anyway I'm really glad I went because a) I have a new weekend hangout spot and b) a new place to take visitors. Supposedly there's another cool spot like this on Moganshan Lu. I'll have to go there sometime as well.

The Old and the New

Whew, I'm out of clever headlines for these posts :-) Today, even though did nothing special yesterday except eat dinner at a friend's house, I was feeling really beat. Still though, I pushed myself to do another walking tour, my third in four days. The biggest reason was that the sun was shining and the temperature was a balmy 5 degrees C. These occasions have been rare in the past 2 - 3 weeks, so I figured I'd better tak advantage of the decent weather. Also I guessed it'd be a good day for picture taking :-) And I was right:

Looks positively tropical, don't it? I'm kind of amazed the skyscrapers in the background came out so clearly.

Today it was the Nanshi ("Southern City", but referred to as "Old Town") and Xintiandi, which translates to "New Heaven on Earth". A pretty bold claim if I say so myself. So it was kind of a mix of more traditional Chinese lifestyle, although Nanshi is pretty tourist-ified, and the bright new future of Xintiandi, this mixed-use development just a little bit west of Nanshi.

I had the cabbie drop me off at Fangbang Zhong Lu and Henan Nan Lu, which is about on the southwest border of what is considered the old town. Even though I had the walking tour handy, I kind of wandered around by myself for a bit. I'd been here with Andrea and James back in November, so the sights were familiar, but the crowds were even more intense this time around because of the New Year. Yuyuan (Yu Garden) is a popular tourist attraction on any given weekend, but in the days following New Year's it suddenly becomes even more important. So I avoided it, which was not hard given that I would have had to exert serious effort to even get near it. I will have to actually go there one of these days.

As I entered the main plaza I came across this fine character:

Pretty impressive if I say so myself. Rats all around! There were tons of other decorations hanging from the buildings and even floating in the lake:

I was hungry, so I stopped in a tiny dessert shop and had some ... shit, I don't even know what it was, but it was the only place there that wasn't jam-packed full of people. I ate my "meal" and took a picture of the neat sign behind the counter:

That's totally going to be the name of my band, or at least my next demo CD. Dessert Monster Invade the World. I'm actually impressed that they spelled "dessert" correctly :-)

After that I got on the walking tour, which just involved going south and heading back out onto Fangbang Zhong Lu again. That street is a marketplace and, again, it was insanely crowded. I kept having to dodge people trying to sell me watches and DVDs and whatnot, but I'm pretty used to that by now. It doesn't bother me at all.

I wandered through the alleyways and headed west along Dajing Lu. I saw a bunch of marketplaces, and one of them even had live frogs chilling on the street in a basket:

I suspect he's not long for this world. There was a bucket of guts right beside him :-)

I continued out along Dajing Lu, past the White Cloud Taoist Temple, and came out to Renmin Lu. Here I kind of freestyled for a bit and wandered north away from the tour. After a little more wandering and picture-taking, I decided to walk to Xintiandi since it was kind of close. Along the way there I passed a group of guys playing cards on Chongde Lu, and sat and watched them for a bit.

I wanted to take a picture of them, but, and this might sound odd, but I feel weird taking pictures of people. Because I feel like that would be treating them like some stop on a tour. And these are just, you know, people going about their lives in the city. I don't want to intrude or make them feel like they're under my magnifying glass or anything. So I kind of avoid taking pictures of people, except maybe in groups. But then I feel like my pictures are all of buildings and streets and things. Which are fine, but that's obviously not all there is to this city ;-) And it gets a bit boring.

Anyway, I ended up walking past Huaihai Park. On a whim I decided to go in. I'm pretty happy I did, beceause I encountered a bunch of people singing and dancing:

It was these two women and a guy. They had a mic and a small speaker and were singing in the middle of the park. A couple people had stopped to watch and clap along, which was kinda cool. I stopped to take some pictures and some video, and then I was like, shit, I kind of want to join in.

So I did. I started clapping along with them. They were smiling at me and continued singing while I clapped on the beat. The whole time I was thinking "I should totally sing something. Nobody knows me here, and even better, nobody will understand me. What can I sing?" The words "Bon Jovi" flashed through my brain but uh, I don't know any Bon Jovi. I just think it'd be fun to sing "Livin' on a Prayer" in a park in Shanghai. Too bad I don't know the words :-)

So I kept on clapping and in a little bit I ended up dancing, well, as much as I could to what was going on. It was pretty fun. Then the woman who was singing stopped, passed the mic off, and came over to dance. We danced around each other for a little bit, then we grabbed each others' hands and did some quasi-tango sort of thing, I dunno what exactly, but it was fun. I spun her around a couple times on one hand, you know, and she seemed to like that. Then they tried to hand me the mic, and because I couldn't think of anything on the spot like that, I declined. But I really should have sung something. Anything. Stupid Bon Jovi! :-)

Anyway, here's what we were dancing to:



My dance partner rewarded me with a very well-put "Thank you!" and I smiled and said you're welcome, bowed a little bit and excused myself because I was hungry. I went ten steps down Taicang Lu and ran into the Bellagio, which I recognized because Andrea took James and me there in November. So I sat down and had a nice little meal of pork fried rice and some dumplings. Mmmm, xiaolongbao.

I even managed to ask if they had watermelon (xigua) and order some even though it wasn't on the menu. Go-go Gadget Mandarin :-) It was funny because they have watermelon juice on the menu, but I didn't want juice. The waitress heard me say xigua, brought over the menu, and pointed to the watermelon juice. But I said Wo bu yao he ("I don't want drink") . Wo yao xigua chi. I'm sure that last one isn't a recognizable sentence, and neither is the former, really, but chi means "eat" so I figured if I threw that in there I'd get my point across. And it worked :-) I ended up with a lovely watermelon platter:

(Yes, I'm starting to take pictures of my meals.)

A lot of the places I've eaten serve watermelon as kind of a dessert thing. It's actually a really refreshing way to finish your meal. The cold watermelon is a nice counterpoint to the hot, oily, sweet, and fat-ridden main dishes. I can see this becoming a habit :-)

After that, I continued on to Xintiandi. The name might be fancy, but I think it's kind of boring. I guess it might be a good place to go with friends, but there doesn't seem to be much to there except shop, eat, and catch a movie. I wasn't really interested in either of the three, so I took a bunch of pictures and passed on through to a small park on the south side:

Then I turned around and saw this coming at me:

I wish I could like, give some background as to what was going on here, but I can't :-) It probably was just some New Year's celebration.

I tried to catch a cab home, but the cabbie pretended he didn't know where I was going. Hah! I tried to play dumb and was just like "Go to Shiji Dadao," but he just said "No go, No go." So I got out - obviously he didn't want to go out to Pudong. But I AM proud that I conducted that conversation entirely in Chinese. So yay me :-) Then I realized I was really near the Huangpi Nan Lu metro stop, so I just caught the train home.

Now I'm super-tired and ready to sleep, but there are still fireworks going on outside my window. It's not as bad as New Year's Eve or even last night, but I'm still gonna rock the earplugs.

Not sure what I'm gonna do this weekend. I'm pretty much toured out for a little while. I feel like I really made good use of this week off, having taken walking tours on Tuesday, Wednesday, and today. I'm sad the break's almost over, but I have stories, hundreds of pictures, and a lot of video to look back on. That makes me feel good. And, um, I still have five months left here and there's tons of more things to see and do in the city. I'm not complaining at all :-)