(Author's note: This posting is not about China at all. Sometimes travelling gives you a chance to think about where you came from, and it's just as important for that reason as any other.)
Opportunities come and go every day. Some we take, some we pass up, and these can be good or bad decisions in either situation. About two weeks before I left Korea, I half-drunkenly mentioned to my friend (who we will call "Upsayo") that it was too bad we had never started a band and didn't have any time left to. He called me the next day not suggesting so much as demanding that we put together a show before I left. This was one of the opportunities I didn't pass up.
Despite the fact that my final two weeks were already a little booked with entertaining Taylor's mom for a week while Taylor finished her classes, entertaining BOTH of our mom's for an additional week, moving out of my apartment, planning and arranging all the logistics for a four month trip to China and Southeast Asia, writing a manual of how to perform my job, and tying up loose odds and ends, I managed to squeeze in time for band practice. These were always after 10:00 at night on quiet nights at the bar where we would have our "final" show. It was difficult, exhausting, but extremely enjoyable. Miraculously, we managed to put together a full set in just four practices, and pulled off a show the Saturday before my departure.
The reason I mention it (aside from wanting to show off (videos can be found here) and give some proper credit to Upsayo (as well as Snake James)) is to encourage everyone to take a chance sometime on something that sounds crazy, difficult, or just plain too much. I've passed up a lot of things in my life because I was too busy, too tired, too grumpy, etc. Many of these I'm happy I passed up. But this experience was one that I could just feel was worth it, and I gained a whole new dimension of friendship, musical experience, and rockstardom by taking the crazy chance.
9/13/07
9/12/07
shangwho?
(Author's note: although this posting technically covers only exploits in Shanghai, I have found it necessary to include a few extraneous details from my previous location. Please bear with me, and I promise we will get to Shanghai soon enough.)
In Qingdao, people drink beer. Lots of it. You would expect this, it being a brewery town and all, but even at lunch time all the tables at a restaurant are littered with pitchers of beer. It's also (in retrospect) an extremely pleasant place where people are incredibly kind, friendly and generally good natured. I just have to make sure we understand where the score stands on Qingdao before we start talking about Shanghai, namely, good.
We boarded our sleeper to Shanghai a little bummed out that the dudes in the upper bunks had made themselves at home sitting on our lower bunks with us. This was not the optimal situation, but luckily they later moved up top. Around supper time, the older and rounder of our bunkmates scampered down from his perch and produced a bag full of food and two bottles of Tsingtao. He promptly laid this all out on the table and offered me one of the bottles of beer (all done with hand gestures). He also invited us to sample some morsels of his dinner (a whole roasted chicken, and some delicious buns served with condensed milk). We moved up to one word (pretty much all in English) sentences catalyzed with copious smiling. When there was one piece of chicken left, he offered it to me. That piece being the head, I politely declined, and he promptly stuck the whole thing in his mouth, retrieving only the beak. After dinner, we had more halting conversation mostly revolving around looking at different pictures in our China guide book. Our second bunkmate made no attempts at contact with us.
It's good that the company on the train was somewhat interesting, because the scenery certainly was not. If you could imagine combining the two fantastic American landscapes of midwest cornfields and Utah desolate weird chemical industrial plants, you would have exactly what we saw for twenty hours. Oh shit, that's not quite right, I forgot the sprawling uniform government housing/dorm buildings that were interspersed.
For better or worse, we arrived in Shanghai around lunch time, and promptly took the subway in the wrong direction (are we detecting a theme here?) and so wandered around back and forth for about 4o minutes trying to find our hostel. We finally taxied to the "Captain's Hostel" right in the ritzy part of town. This is one of those classic large scale city-center hostel affairs. About five floors of dorm rooms are seemingly packed to the gills with a mix of 78% German, 8% Scandanavian, 13.5% Asian, and .5% (us) American backpackers. All in all, its a pretty nice place.
Shanghai is a city of stark contrast. The main tourist drags are lined immediately on either side by dark streets and alleys full of smelly water and hanging laundry. Half of the city is seemingly spurting right up out of the ground in great glittering geysers of development, while the other half seems to be being torn down in dusty dingy destruction. There are more foreigners here than any city I've been to in Asia, many of them businessmen, and a lot of them tourists (can't seem to find too many teachers). There are about three main tourist traps, and we've hit all three of them hard. They are mostly worth it. One is the area along the river, which highlights views of the impressive exploding skyline on one side, and classic European architecture on the other.
The other worthy candidate is a classical Chinese garden dating from the 1600's. It's pretty spectacular, but they've engineered the stupid thing so that you have to fight your way through a labrynth of shops, fast food, watch, bag, shoe and sunglass peddlers, and art students for what seems like hours before you can even find the entrance. (The exit is cleverly placed at a different location in the same mess, so you can't retrace your steps out.) But the garden is quite special, you can really feel the oldness of the place, and it's as if the stone, rocks, wood, carving and plants have all kind of grown and melded into each other to become one single unit. It's also interesting to catch the odd glimpse of a sky scraper or hanging laundry or have the silence (brief periods of which exist in between the barking of megaphone mass tour guides) pierced by the honk of a scooter careening around outside.
Possibly the best piece of Shanghai we've seen was an interesting complex of art galleries near the train station. It was cool to see, and there was some good work there, but I'll let Taylor fill you in on the details of that.
Though people generally wear clothing over their torsos, and children don't generally run around in assless pants (unlike Qingdao), I would say the level of manners is generally lower here. This is, of course, kind of a big city phenomenon, but it is very strong here, and most apparent on the subway. Even in the biggest, rudest cities I've been to, the people understand the rule that you have to let those on the train get off the train before you can shove your way on. That's not even manners, it's just the way that things need to happen in order for the system to work. Well, in Shanghai, that's not how it works. You fight your way on, and the people getting off be damned. This is not the only example of rudeness, of course, but it is the most visibly obvious. The rest is mainly just that indifferent face and lack of smiling or acknowledgement of your existence that is common in other locations as well.
Overall, Shanghai is about what I was told it would be: not that exciting a place to visit. I'm certainly glad I came, and I think that living here could be pretty cool, but I don't live here, and I don't have time to search out everything that is cool. That being said, the coolness certainly doesn't jump right out at you. Tomorrow we'll be heading out for Suzhou, about an hour west of here, for some even more outstanding gardens than the one here. We may or may not return to check out Friday nightlife in Shanghai before moving on to the western mountains.
In Qingdao, people drink beer. Lots of it. You would expect this, it being a brewery town and all, but even at lunch time all the tables at a restaurant are littered with pitchers of beer. It's also (in retrospect) an extremely pleasant place where people are incredibly kind, friendly and generally good natured. I just have to make sure we understand where the score stands on Qingdao before we start talking about Shanghai, namely, good.
We boarded our sleeper to Shanghai a little bummed out that the dudes in the upper bunks had made themselves at home sitting on our lower bunks with us. This was not the optimal situation, but luckily they later moved up top. Around supper time, the older and rounder of our bunkmates scampered down from his perch and produced a bag full of food and two bottles of Tsingtao. He promptly laid this all out on the table and offered me one of the bottles of beer (all done with hand gestures). He also invited us to sample some morsels of his dinner (a whole roasted chicken, and some delicious buns served with condensed milk). We moved up to one word (pretty much all in English) sentences catalyzed with copious smiling. When there was one piece of chicken left, he offered it to me. That piece being the head, I politely declined, and he promptly stuck the whole thing in his mouth, retrieving only the beak. After dinner, we had more halting conversation mostly revolving around looking at different pictures in our China guide book. Our second bunkmate made no attempts at contact with us.
It's good that the company on the train was somewhat interesting, because the scenery certainly was not. If you could imagine combining the two fantastic American landscapes of midwest cornfields and Utah desolate weird chemical industrial plants, you would have exactly what we saw for twenty hours. Oh shit, that's not quite right, I forgot the sprawling uniform government housing/dorm buildings that were interspersed.
For better or worse, we arrived in Shanghai around lunch time, and promptly took the subway in the wrong direction (are we detecting a theme here?) and so wandered around back and forth for about 4o minutes trying to find our hostel. We finally taxied to the "Captain's Hostel" right in the ritzy part of town. This is one of those classic large scale city-center hostel affairs. About five floors of dorm rooms are seemingly packed to the gills with a mix of 78% German, 8% Scandanavian, 13.5% Asian, and .5% (us) American backpackers. All in all, its a pretty nice place.
Shanghai is a city of stark contrast. The main tourist drags are lined immediately on either side by dark streets and alleys full of smelly water and hanging laundry. Half of the city is seemingly spurting right up out of the ground in great glittering geysers of development, while the other half seems to be being torn down in dusty dingy destruction. There are more foreigners here than any city I've been to in Asia, many of them businessmen, and a lot of them tourists (can't seem to find too many teachers). There are about three main tourist traps, and we've hit all three of them hard. They are mostly worth it. One is the area along the river, which highlights views of the impressive exploding skyline on one side, and classic European architecture on the other.
The other worthy candidate is a classical Chinese garden dating from the 1600's. It's pretty spectacular, but they've engineered the stupid thing so that you have to fight your way through a labrynth of shops, fast food, watch, bag, shoe and sunglass peddlers, and art students for what seems like hours before you can even find the entrance. (The exit is cleverly placed at a different location in the same mess, so you can't retrace your steps out.) But the garden is quite special, you can really feel the oldness of the place, and it's as if the stone, rocks, wood, carving and plants have all kind of grown and melded into each other to become one single unit. It's also interesting to catch the odd glimpse of a sky scraper or hanging laundry or have the silence (brief periods of which exist in between the barking of megaphone mass tour guides) pierced by the honk of a scooter careening around outside.
Possibly the best piece of Shanghai we've seen was an interesting complex of art galleries near the train station. It was cool to see, and there was some good work there, but I'll let Taylor fill you in on the details of that.
Though people generally wear clothing over their torsos, and children don't generally run around in assless pants (unlike Qingdao), I would say the level of manners is generally lower here. This is, of course, kind of a big city phenomenon, but it is very strong here, and most apparent on the subway. Even in the biggest, rudest cities I've been to, the people understand the rule that you have to let those on the train get off the train before you can shove your way on. That's not even manners, it's just the way that things need to happen in order for the system to work. Well, in Shanghai, that's not how it works. You fight your way on, and the people getting off be damned. This is not the only example of rudeness, of course, but it is the most visibly obvious. The rest is mainly just that indifferent face and lack of smiling or acknowledgement of your existence that is common in other locations as well.
Overall, Shanghai is about what I was told it would be: not that exciting a place to visit. I'm certainly glad I came, and I think that living here could be pretty cool, but I don't live here, and I don't have time to search out everything that is cool. That being said, the coolness certainly doesn't jump right out at you. Tomorrow we'll be heading out for Suzhou, about an hour west of here, for some even more outstanding gardens than the one here. We may or may not return to check out Friday nightlife in Shanghai before moving on to the western mountains.
9/5/07
china: here we aren't
A disclaimer: this posting is stolen from the joint Travis-Taylor travel blog that we have started. I will continue to post here on gonzobonsai, but both Taylor and I will give additional travel updates and photos over at fanny pack snackers . Check it out!
Having said all our goodbyes, cleaned out our cozy little home for the past year, wiped the sentimental tears from our eyes, and hoisted our luggage on our backs, we made our way for Seoul first thing Monday morning. We secured our Chinese Visas with no problem, were given our hepatitis shots, and had a pleasant final Korean dinner. Tuesday morning I climbed Namsan ((남산) mountain) for spectacular panoramic views of the city, and Taylor and I left with over two hours to make it to the Inchoen ferry terminal by 3:30 for our 5:00 departure. The sun was shining, our spirits were high, we were leaving Korea on a high note.
Due to some sort of engineering malfunction, however, the Number 1 Subway in the direction of Inchoen (인천) splits into two separate routes at Guro (구로). Had we known this, we would have tried to check which line the subway we got on was going to take. As it turned out, our train took a turn for Choenan (천안) at Guro (구로), not Inchoen (인천). We only realized this about 40 minutes past Guro (구로), when Taylor could finally slip out from behind our mound of luggage to see how many stops we had left before Inchoen. It was about 3:00 when we hurriedly leaped from our train to change directions. It soon became clear that continuing our current route would not get us to the ferry terminal anywhere near our 5:00 departure time. We called the ferry office, and the woman suggested that we immediately hop in a cab and we should be able to make it in time.
The nearest subway stop basically ended at the side of a major highway, where available cabs were few and far between, and those that did exist were zipping by at high speeds. We finally hailed a taxi with a blue-eyed driver (extrmeley unusual), and through a mix of Korean, English and hand gestures, we indicated where we needed to go. The poor guy was not really familiar with Inchoen (인천), as we were about five suburbs over, so he had to call someone else for directions. Soon, however, we were moving at 100km/h towards our port destination. The only problem now was that we had not foreseen the possibility of a cross-country cab ride, and had thus disposed of most of our Korean currency. It started to look like we would make it to the terminal around 4:30, which, we reasoned, should give us just enough time to run to an ATM to pay our driver, quickly swipe our credit cards to pay for the ferry tickets, and sprint across the waiting gangplank onto our China-bound fairy. Spirits were again lifting.
City traffic slowed us down, and then Taylor thought she saw a sign pointing towards the terminal in a different direction from that in which we were heading. We soon started seeing signs in our direction, and things again looked good. Upon arrival at the terminal, however, we were informed by a random passerby (terminal employee?) that we were at Terminal 1, when in fact we needed to be at Terminal 2, which was across town. Back through the traffic we headed, towards the sign Taylor had previously seen. As it was now past 4:30, my pessimistic side fully took over. Our driver felt the pressure too, and I hope he wasn't too stressed out, driving through rush hour traffic in a strange city, with two very anxious foreignors in the back seat.
When we arrived, Taylor arranged for a split won (원), dollar payment at a high exchange rate. We sprinted into the ferry terminal at quarter to five to be received by nothing but befuddled faces that we thought there was any possibility of us getting on the 5:00 boat (for which we had reservations).
Exhausted, irritable, and totally bummed out, we had to sit down and regroup, consider our options. The next boat didn't leave until Thursday, so we basically had two days on our hands. No option seemed bearable; Inchoen (인천) is not a real treat of a destination, getting back on the subway for another ninety minutes back to Seoul was kind of pointless and extremely unpleasant, and going back to Daejeon (대전) for two days with our tails between our legs wasn't particularly enticing either. In the end, after we had calmed down a bit, we reasoned that the only rational thing to do was to get a love motel room in Inchoen (인천) and wait it out for two days. The woman at the information desk gave me very detailed directions of how to get from where we were to a central district where we could stay.
That route took us to a busstop right in front of an E-Mart (giant grocery store), and we both agreed that before climbing onto another mode of transportation, we needed to sit out in front of the E-Mart and drink a beer. When I came out with the beers and a snack, Taylor had busted out the guitar, and we made a little party out of our unfortunate circumstances. I even wrote the better part of a song about our troubles that day. The sitting, beer, music, and attention from E-Mart shoppers brightened our moods quite a bit, and by the time we checked into the Royal Motel (로얄모텔), we were both ready to fully joke about the fact that we had missed the boat.
Having said all our goodbyes, cleaned out our cozy little home for the past year, wiped the sentimental tears from our eyes, and hoisted our luggage on our backs, we made our way for Seoul first thing Monday morning. We secured our Chinese Visas with no problem, were given our hepatitis shots, and had a pleasant final Korean dinner. Tuesday morning I climbed Namsan ((남산) mountain) for spectacular panoramic views of the city, and Taylor and I left with over two hours to make it to the Inchoen ferry terminal by 3:30 for our 5:00 departure. The sun was shining, our spirits were high, we were leaving Korea on a high note.
Due to some sort of engineering malfunction, however, the Number 1 Subway in the direction of Inchoen (인천) splits into two separate routes at Guro (구로). Had we known this, we would have tried to check which line the subway we got on was going to take. As it turned out, our train took a turn for Choenan (천안) at Guro (구로), not Inchoen (인천). We only realized this about 40 minutes past Guro (구로), when Taylor could finally slip out from behind our mound of luggage to see how many stops we had left before Inchoen. It was about 3:00 when we hurriedly leaped from our train to change directions. It soon became clear that continuing our current route would not get us to the ferry terminal anywhere near our 5:00 departure time. We called the ferry office, and the woman suggested that we immediately hop in a cab and we should be able to make it in time.
The nearest subway stop basically ended at the side of a major highway, where available cabs were few and far between, and those that did exist were zipping by at high speeds. We finally hailed a taxi with a blue-eyed driver (extrmeley unusual), and through a mix of Korean, English and hand gestures, we indicated where we needed to go. The poor guy was not really familiar with Inchoen (인천), as we were about five suburbs over, so he had to call someone else for directions. Soon, however, we were moving at 100km/h towards our port destination. The only problem now was that we had not foreseen the possibility of a cross-country cab ride, and had thus disposed of most of our Korean currency. It started to look like we would make it to the terminal around 4:30, which, we reasoned, should give us just enough time to run to an ATM to pay our driver, quickly swipe our credit cards to pay for the ferry tickets, and sprint across the waiting gangplank onto our China-bound fairy. Spirits were again lifting.
City traffic slowed us down, and then Taylor thought she saw a sign pointing towards the terminal in a different direction from that in which we were heading. We soon started seeing signs in our direction, and things again looked good. Upon arrival at the terminal, however, we were informed by a random passerby (terminal employee?) that we were at Terminal 1, when in fact we needed to be at Terminal 2, which was across town. Back through the traffic we headed, towards the sign Taylor had previously seen. As it was now past 4:30, my pessimistic side fully took over. Our driver felt the pressure too, and I hope he wasn't too stressed out, driving through rush hour traffic in a strange city, with two very anxious foreignors in the back seat.
When we arrived, Taylor arranged for a split won (원), dollar payment at a high exchange rate. We sprinted into the ferry terminal at quarter to five to be received by nothing but befuddled faces that we thought there was any possibility of us getting on the 5:00 boat (for which we had reservations).
Exhausted, irritable, and totally bummed out, we had to sit down and regroup, consider our options. The next boat didn't leave until Thursday, so we basically had two days on our hands. No option seemed bearable; Inchoen (인천) is not a real treat of a destination, getting back on the subway for another ninety minutes back to Seoul was kind of pointless and extremely unpleasant, and going back to Daejeon (대전) for two days with our tails between our legs wasn't particularly enticing either. In the end, after we had calmed down a bit, we reasoned that the only rational thing to do was to get a love motel room in Inchoen (인천) and wait it out for two days. The woman at the information desk gave me very detailed directions of how to get from where we were to a central district where we could stay.
That route took us to a busstop right in front of an E-Mart (giant grocery store), and we both agreed that before climbing onto another mode of transportation, we needed to sit out in front of the E-Mart and drink a beer. When I came out with the beers and a snack, Taylor had busted out the guitar, and we made a little party out of our unfortunate circumstances. I even wrote the better part of a song about our troubles that day. The sitting, beer, music, and attention from E-Mart shoppers brightened our moods quite a bit, and by the time we checked into the Royal Motel (로얄모텔), we were both ready to fully joke about the fact that we had missed the boat.
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