21 September 2009
Leaving our bags at the hotel concierge desk, we set out to old Shanghai. Since Scotty believed that we were leaving yesterday, his magical power over rain failed and it rained the whole day. We walked around the main shopping area and took in all the vendors offerings. Some shops specialized in handmade stamps (with whatever name or symbol you wanted on it), others were filled only with fancy combs (ranging from 150 to 1000 Yuan - 20 to 120 dollars), Chinese fan shops, pearl jewelry shops (where they would do a love demonstration by cutting open the oyster and showing you the pearls... btw, freshwater oysters can have upwards of 30 pearls). For lunch we wanted to go to the Nanxiang Dumpling restaurant, however, their was a huge line despite the rain. I think Jack cut in line when we ate at the Restaurant last time. So we instead ate at the restaurant directly below the Nanxiang. While the food wasn't as good, it offered great views of the tea house and the ponds. We had dumplings, spring rolls, a soup filled dumpling, and sweet bean cakes (all for about 60 Yuan). Then we ventured off into the side streets where we found the real Shanghai. Live and not so live fish in small tanks ready to be killed and sold, unknown varieties of vegetables/fruits, and pig hearts, feet, and snouts abounded. Scotty took pictures of the veggies at one stall and got laughs from the surrounding vendors for his weird foreign like behavior. He also elicited an angry response from the pig feet/snout lady when he tried photographing her stall.
We returned to get our packs from the hotel and I relaxed in the lobby while Scotty got a hair cut. Well, more like a head shave. Apparently the #3 here shaves a lot closer than in the US. I named it the Buddha head cut. His head was practically shaved bald.
We walked to the train station and were pretty soaked by the time we got there. We had been booked soft sleepers, the ultimate luxury seats on the train, for the overnight train ride to Huangshan (~15 hours.) The China rail system is definitely no Amtrak. The four classes are hard seats and soft seats (cramped compartment with seats that don't recline and filled with cigarette smoke and loud people), hard sleepers (open compartments where you can lie down on a fairly comfy bed but with beds stacked three high and also very smoky and loud), and soft sleepers (enclosed compartments with beds stacked two high, with four beds total per compartment). Scotty almost got locked in the hard seat class when he went exploring. In the soft sleeper class we got a western toilet where the other classes had squatters. Needless to say we enjoyed our soft sleeper especially since it was just the two of us in the cabin.
We watched the scenery flash by from our compartment window until the evening darkness set in. We couldn't figure out how to get food so we had the snacks we had packed from the US. We fell asleep in anticipation of our first hike.
-Julia