Shanghai

So we left for Shanghai on 7/6/08 at noon. It was me, Robin, and Qiuqiu.

First Impressions: Shanghai's pretty awesome. Lots of tall buildings while having little pollution. Shopping paradise, and bubble tea stands everywhere. It was also pretty hot, but better than Nanjing.

That first afternoon, we checked in at our hotel (which by the way, was free because Qiuqiu's uncle had connections). Our hotel was right on Xizang Zhonglu (Tibet Middle Road), which is in the center of downtown Shanghai. Across from our hotel was the train station, a block north of us is the famous Nanjing Road. After checking in, we decided to go to Nanjing Road. It's a huge road (no cars allowed) surrounded by many malls with all your designer brands and whatnot. There are also a bunch of restaurants (not one, but two mcd's!), small shops, and food stands. From there we walked down Nanjing Road to the Bund, this road next to the Huangpu river (which splits downtown shanghai). it had a lot of western architecture...the palce where all those foreign countries settled when they came into shanghai. from the bund we took pics of Pudong (Huangpu East), which has all the business-y stuff and the famous skyline. around 10 we decided to get dinner at UBC Coffee....I got teppanyaki again xD

The next day Qiuqiu had to go to some university to register for english classes, so Robin and I went to Chenghuangmiao. Chenghuangmiao, or the Temple of City God, is this temple surrounded by all these shops and restaurants built with traditional chinese archtecture. So...its a fun place to just walk around and buy small trinkets or all kinds of food (sbux and kfc are available for the un-adventurous xD) Chenghuangmiao also includes the Yu gardens. Hmm I ate 2 boxes of takoyaki and also some popcorn chicken from kfc. Yisheng messaged me and asked us to go have dinner with her, so we went back to our hotel in the afternoon.

People: Yisheng Lin goes to Oakland Mills, going to UMD, met her at math team. Jenny Su is my mom's friend's daughter, also graduated this year, going to Emory. I met her when I was in Orlando, but we didn't know each other that well then. Liu Li is this guy from Nanjing, Qiuqiu's friend.

Yisheng took us to Wujiang Road, a "snack street" that also has a bunch of small restaurants. Qiuqiu loves chicken wing kabobs, so she bought some even though we were gonna eat in a restaurant. After eating we went to ktv (my first time ktving!) at Haoledi.

Ktv is karaoke, really popular in china. Different from the karaoke in the US i guess... you get a small room equipped with a huge tv, a computer for selecting songs, and a comfortable sofa. There are thousands of songs in the computer, virtually any chinese song you can think of, and many english, kroean, and japanese songs. ah it was so fun =) we went home around midnight. Good thing about living in a hotel with no parents is that you can go home whenever you want.

The next day we went to the Shanghai museum with Jenny. personally i don't really like museums; most of the exhibits were boring except the new one about the origins of the olympics. We had lunch at Papa John's (how creative) and decided to go to Qipu, this palce with quite a few malls all dedicated to [very cheap] clothes. Robin and I noticed that qipu "tseepu" sounds like "cheap" (concidence??). After that Jenny had to go home, and Qiuqiu told us to quickly go back to the hotel cuz her uncle (uh oh, the loaded uncle) invited to (a probably very expensive) dinner. So yeah, we arrive at some 5-star hotel, and the uncle takes us to his private room. For dinner there were things liek duck tongues, small lobsters, sea cucumber soup, etc. you get the idea. Qiuqiu's uncle had to talk to qiuqiu, so he got someone to drive robin and me back to the hotel first. We were bored, so decided to go to Nanjing Road again.

The next day we went to Qibao, one of the many Venice-looking places in Shanghai. Since the entire Shanghai/Suzhou region is like all rivers and canals, there are a lot of those river-straddling towns. Qibao was disappointing though...it was only one street. One end of the street sold trinkets and clothes. One end sold food. Around noon, Qiuqiu's friend Liu Li arrived from Nanjing. The four of us went back to Wujiang Road to eat some barbecue, and then we went ktving (on nanjing road, but also a haoledi) again. this time with beer (which makes everything mroe fun xD). around 11 we went back to the hotel and played cards...until like 3 am.

Next morning we had, guess what, TEPPANYAKI! except this time, it was made in front of us. yum. after getting train tickets back to beijing, and back to nanjing for liu li and qiuqiu, robin and i went to the art museum. meanwhile qiuqiu and liu li just played cards and watched tv in the hotel. on our way back from the museum to the hotel we saw this hilarious engrish in the park:
Qiuqiu and Liu Li are know each other a little too well xD Qiuqiu's always threatens him by saying "I'm going to tell everyone about what you did to that girl and how you're a pervert!" She also calls him "da bian (poop)" and "zhong ba (w/e that means)". They're always arguing with each other and chasing after each other hahaha. That afternoon we went to Qipu again, and Robin got more Hello Kitty stuff. Oh btw, Robin's goal in Nanjing and Shanghai was to get hello kitty stuff, as much as possible, to give to this girl that goes to school with him. He was planning on giving it to her in hong kong (where she was for the summer), but we ended up not going to hk, so now he'll have to awkwardly go to her house in the U.S. and give it to her there xD. After Qipu we met up with Yisheng and her boyfriend at Xiaofeiyang (Little chubby lamb), a hotpot restaurant. Mmmm twas delicious. They gave our sodas in these collectible glass bottles. After that we played some pool with them, and then went back to our hotel. I learned some Shanghainese that night, "alamapeh." it means something along the lines of "there are no more free tables" o_O. We didn't feel done for the night, so Robin, Liu Li, and I went to Nanjing Road again to get a yexiao (midnight snack). Since i lost the card game the night before, I had to treat everyone to McD's. Qiuqiu wasn't with us, so we just got her something to take back. Then we went to an internet bar. They checked ID, so only Liu Li could get a computer. Robin left after a while, and I sat there really really bored-ly watching Liu Li play wow. We left around 1:30, and on the way home we were approached by a man who was like "young girls, young girls, itnerested? very pretty, come take a look." i said, "no we have a train to catch in the morning. we don't have money anyways..." Then Liu Li started being perverted and wondered aloud how mcuh we couldve actually gotten with our money...."30 yuan for a girl, nothing more...50 yuan for a girl and a chair...70 yuan for a girl and a bed...100 yuan for multiple girls and a bed....200 for the girls, the bed, the midnight snacks, and the other accessories..." somethign along those lines.

Friday morning, we took the subway to the train station. All four of us were on the same train, a bullet train btw, but Qiuqiu and Liu Li were gonna get off in Nanjing. Around 8 pm or so, I arrived back in BEIJING.