Anyways, our final day in Shanghai was spent with friends. An old college friend I had recently reconnected with took us to a Shanghaiese restaurant that was pretty popular with the expat crowd. The food was great and we then went to have stir-fryed soup dumplings (delicious) as a snack. After that we checked out Xintiandi, which was a really weird experience. I felt like I was in Los Angeles, but it’s not because it looked like it, per se. That’s just the only place I can think of that’s about 40% white, 40% asian, and 20% other stuff. It was hip, busy, modern and so unlike any of the other places in Shanghai I had been. We finished with a very cool, expat popular lounge.

All in all, Shanghai has been a fun experience. It’s been interesting seeing such a vibrant Chinese city that really does feel like its on the verge of something. Back in the 1920s, Shanghai was the jewel of Asia. It was a fashion and cultural capital. Then it slumped and became sort of a backwater…it’s really fascinating getting to see the city reawaken. There’s construction EVERYWHERE and I’m pretty sure the next time I come back it’ll be completely different.

My friend Adriel asked me what annoyed me so far about Shanghai (he asked because I’m a hater who finds faults everywhere I live) but I couldn’t really respond. It was hard to say. Yes, service sucks–but I expected that. I suppose the fear of dying in a fiery crash everytime I get into a taxi sucks, or maybe knowing everytime I cross a street a bus or taxi might run me over and keep driving is a bit annoying…but hmm.

Anyways, tomorrow we leave for the next stop on our little adventure, Suzhou. It’ll also be our first experience on a Chinese train, so that could be a fun entry for tomorrow. Haha…

This is the part where I digress for awhile…

One of the things I have always wished I could be was a model. Being hot is not really an issue–most models aren’t. Talent and height mean more. Unfortunately, I don’t have the height (probably not the talent either, but hey ;p) So as a consolation prize, I’ve always wanted to have these Chinese-style model/wedding photo shoot done. For my birthday, Hugh indulged in my whims and we went with my friend Jon (who speaks Chinese, but is not from Shanghai) looking for photo studios.

We went to one, but were disappointed by the portfolios. I wanted something more haute-coutre and magaziney. Anyone could take a nice picture of me if we took enough photos, I wanted something unusual. We found one place and were immediately drawn by the photos on the wall of crazy Vogue-esque photo shoots. Everything seemed fine… but this is when the business side comes in.

So first, they forced us to pay ahead of time. In hindsight, we should have never agreed to do that. We were lucky it didn’t turn out worse than it did. Then they changed the dates on us and tried to change the times on us–which is annoying, but whatever. Realizing they were just messing with us because we are foreign, we had Jon’s Shanghaiese driver take care of us. He did a lot of yelling–but them being pros, we got nothing we wanted.

I was concerned about the day of the photo shoot, but the people at the studio were really helpful and lovely. However, the business end came back to ruin the night. After a staggering 14 hours (which Hugh and Jon very patiently sat through–thank you so much!) we thought we were nearly done…and then the studio tried to tell us we couldn’t finish that day and had to come back the next day. This infuriated me because they had told us we could finish on the same day, which was the reason they told us to change days in the first place. We refused and demanded we finish on the same day.

Then, of course, comes the part where they backed out on their contract because it wasn’t clearly specified what was included in the price (what does, “you get pictures on a disk!” sound like to you?) We should have checked more thoroughly, perhaps gotten it in writing–but would that have mattered? They were clearly quite used to this because despite having 4 people protesting at them in 3 different languages, most of them seemed completely unphazed and apathetic to it. It seems to be something they do everyday–couple goes in, couple finds out they only get 25% of all the shots they took, girl gets upset, boy buys pictures to try and soothe upset girlfriend. By the way, each extra photo costs $10. WTF, seriously? It isn’t even that expensive in Japan or America.

So, they made us pay ahead of time, they changed dates and times on us, and then they blatantly lied to us when they told us we would get all of our pictures. In the end, they tried to get us to pay $400 US for my remaining pictures but we refused. They tried to say things like, “Oh what a waste of a day, are you sure you don’t want to just buy the rest of the set?” They tried to nickle and dime us for everything and tried to force us to buy photos we didn’t want (for example, they tried to force me to buy an ugly photo because they “needed” it to super impose onto my hand for another shot–$10US for a tiny picture of me sitting in my own hand! Fuck you guys, really.) I refused to give them another dime, even if it meant giving up some nice shots.

Well anyways, lesson is–don’t go to Venus Wedding Plaza on Huihai Zhong Lu 568. Actually, since they swear every studio works the same way–don’t go anywhere on that road. Afterwards, Jon’s driver (who spent a good hour yelling at them for scamming us) told us that this is how it is sometimes, and they do it to everyone, but especially to us because they knew they could get away with it.

Oh well, I only got to take home 30 of my 120+ photos…but on a sidenote, the people at the photo studio (seperate from the people who run the business end in Huihai) were lovely and let us take photos even though we weren’t allowed to. I got to do poses that Jon and Hugh and I came up with (including tons of stupid ones) and not just some of the random cheesy stuff the photographer had me do. So screw you Venus Wedding Plaza and here’s a sampling of what I did yesterday I’m pretty sure I got more than $400 worth of ellicit photography ;P

Getting made up as a crazy fairy...

Who needs a professional photographer when I have Hugh to snap shots like this one

For example, today I gathered three friends that I knew from three different places. How many times can you even say that when visiting one city? Now, how many times will I ever be able to say I ate at a Thai restaurant while being seranaded by a Filipino cover band while in Shanghai.

The band was awesome, by the way. I told one of the guys before I was Filipino (I recognized his accent) so he squealed (he was flamboyantly gay) and had the singers sing in Tagalog to us. He then proceeded to hit on my friend Evan by telling him, “I like your breast! Do you work out?”

Later that night we bought drinks and games and played an epic game of Monopoly, Beijing style. Hugh and I won in the end with an epic land-grab real estate property merger. All the while we were taking shots of Chinese rubbing alcohol, aka, Baijou, one of the foulest things I have ever drank in my life. It smells vaguely fruity (or like feet, depending on who you ask), burns as it goes down, and left an oily aftertaste which was described as tasting like stinky tofu (which if you don’t know what that is, be glad. =P)

Oh yeah, and we watched a horrible movie called Teeth which was about some chick with teeth in her vagina which was, well, considering we were drinking whiskey+green tea (not as bad as it sounds) and 56% proof Baijou was fairly sobering. And disgusting. But comical. Go figure.

All in all, not a normal tourist night.

However, it can be kind of alarming. I’m a cautious person, but I don’t want to be too cautious.

We had a couple conversations with the hollerers and we don’t know what to believe yet–are these just outgoing young Chinese kids who want to practice their English with foreigners their age, or is it just one of those scams where they try to get you to go to their brothers tea shop then hit you with a huge bill? Since my friends in Shanghai are Chinese they aren’t exactly getting this treatment so they don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to assume the worst…it’s entirely possible they just want foreign friends (there’s plenty of gaijin hunters in Japan afterall, who basically do the same thing.)

This is most obvious when it comes to eating. There are many travelers out there who would never dream of eating at a Denny’s or a truck stop, yet when in a foreign country figure these places are more “local” and “authentic.” Why? I suppose because in the third world people are poor, therefore, travelers should eat poorly as well?

I’ve always thought this a bit silly. Afterall, I seek out quality cuisine in America. I look for cute cafes with interesting menus, dive diners with a solid reputation–above all, I look for quality. So, how is a traveler’s experience cheapened when they do the same thing?

Another thing–why is it less authentic and local to eat, say, Italian food in Japan? I assure you, the Japanese eat it at least once a week if not more so. I don’t think any Brit considers themselves less authentically British for loving a good chicken tikka marsala (and some would say, not liking it makes you somehow less British.) Certainly, Italian in Japan isn’t “traditional” fare, but then again neither is a lot of things local, authentic Japanese people eat.

So today, Hugh and I decided to try and be a little “local.” Upon arrival, a local who was helping us set up showed us the closest restaurants and told us they were very good. We were a bit saddened to see they were mostly non-Chinese places, ooh, sooo NOT authentic (right?) She then pointed in a direction of more restaurants but added, “those are for the taxi drivers, please don’t eat there.” Now, if I were one of these stubborn authenticity-seekers then we woulda gone over there, but here comes the rub. WHY? You go to New York and your friend says, “Yeah, avoid those spots–not so good,” would you really go? Why do we travelers act so patronizing to our host countries sometimes? Cheap & bad =/= authentic.

So anyways, unable to take my own good advice, we contemplated eating at the Chinese Hooters for giggles (needless to say at Hooters China the, um, waitresses are a little less hootery…) but we decided to save that for when we were really dying for Western food. For some unknown reason we decided upon a Japanese restaurant that are fairly popular in China it seems. Here’s where the whole bit about travelers doing things they’d never normally do comes to play–we would NEVER eat at one of these places in Japan, a chain restaurant that serves cheap food poorly. Yet we did it in China. Not surprisingly, it was pretty meh. We followed it up by going to a “local” (and dead) ice cream parlor (and not the insanely busy McDonald’s or Haggen Daaz) only to be served ice cream with freezer burn and a mint coffee that tasted like antacid.

For foodies like us, this was depressing.

Am I saying all “local” Chinese places are bad? Of course not, I’ve eaten at some delicious ones so far and found cute cafes and wonderful modern places. Some would say eating at a place that costs more than 50 cents makes it less authentic, but I call those people stupid. From now on, I’ll take my advice. Eat with the locals, even if that means having Italian in Japan.

The flight was uneventful and I fell asleep before the flight took off (as usual) to wake up to a very disgusting meal, thank you very much China Eastern Airlines. After lunch I gazed out the window until I came upon this vast expanse of chocolate brown below us.

Ah, could it be a desert? I wondered, No, we’re too far east–it must be post harvest rice paddies?

Then I saw a container ship cut through what I had previously thought was earth…

No, it’s the ocean. It takes a special kind of pollution to make the ocean look brown from 20,000 feet, I must say.

Anyways, so we arrived at Shanghai, took a harrowing taxi ride into the city and arrived at my friend Jon’s father’s spare apartment located in the expat district of Shanghai. We ate lunch, bought some breakfast supplies, than had traditional Chinese massages. All in all, a very nice start to our adventures. Honestly, I’m glad we’re able to ease into the China thing…. I’ve heard plenty of scary stories (all vastly exaggerated, I’m sure). We’re heading pretty far off the typical tourist path in the next few weeks, so it’s nice to have the chance to acclimate and learn a little Chinese first.

Now I just need to learn how to say, “I don’t speak Chinese,”