The second day was no less
interesting than the first. My roommate Catriona and I went to the Family
Market to grab some breakfast and I ended up with some kiwi yogurt, apple
slices, and some orange juice. I also managed to snag the last gallon of water,
which is clutch considering you can’t drink any of the water here. After our
purchase we both realized that we didn’t have any spoons to eat the yogurt but
had no idea how to ask for them so we continued back to the room and decided we
would just have to get creative. We were pleasantly surprised when the yogurt
contained a fold out spoon (Chinese engineering at its finest) and were excited
we didn’t have to come up with another way of eating it.
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| What we like to call pork buns |
After a satisfying breakfast, we
decided to head out to explore campus in the daylight with her boyfriend Joe
and my friend Bryan, who are also roommates. We instantly found it much less
confusing and overwhelming during the day so we decided to venture out into the
surrounding city streets of Shanghai. Not after more than 50 feet out of the
university’s entrance we see a little white fluffy dog just running around
which we all found quite humorous. We also saw a food stand selling every part
of a duck you ever would or would not eat including wings, tongue, throat, and
feet. We then spotted a restaurant called Kung Fu and decided that it was a
must. We ordered something that we now call buns that are basically a dough
ball stuffed with pork and are absolutely delicious. They came with some
mystery white liquid that looked like milk but was piping hot. We later learned
that it was most likely soy milk which apparently is a common drink served with
breakfast. We then made our way down the street to one of the many shopping
malls in the area. They had everything including electronics, clothing, and
restaurants and to our surprise even an arcade and movie theater.
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| Electronics mall |
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| Sega Arcade drum game |
Next we made our way back to the
hotel and stopped for lunch at Yongheking. The menu outside drew us in but as
soon as we walked inside everything looked different and we had no idea what to
order. We decided to ask the woman behind the counter for a menu which turned
out to be a huge success as it had English descriptions. From there, ordering
was a breeze since we could actually pick out something we wanted and just
point to it to order. I had a dish of beef and noodles, which came in a broth
that was great. We had to meet back at the hotel at 12 to try to figure out our
phone situation and very quickly realized that it was going to be unbearably
chaotic with 40 of us trying to walk into a store at the same time so we
grabbed the only Chinese speaker on the trip, Sanford, and left the pack. After
figuring out a plan to buy with Sanford’s help, we found out that we had to get
unlock codes for our phones to work. Getting the code isn’t a huge deal but you
have to call the at&t customer service which is harder than you’d think
with a 14 hour time change.
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| Beef and noodles from Yongheking |
We decided to kill time by
exploring 2 other shopping malls that were equally if not more impressive than
the first. They have every name brand store you could imagine from Rolex to
Gucci. After exploring the malls we went looking for a traditional market to
buy fruit and such for breakfast. The first market was extremely overpriced,
selling 4 apples for 55 Yuan, which is the equivalent of around 9 US dollars.
We eventually found another market underneath one of the malls and bought some
apples and bananas for a reasonable price. We spent the rest of the day wandering
around the city some more and found a movie theater and Xujiahui park not too
far from out hotel. I also finally got my US money converted, which involved
going to the 32nd floor of a building to the Bank of Shanghai and
filling out some paper work but it was well worth it.
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| Xujiahui Park |
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| Movie Theater |
That night we had a
welcoming banquet at a seafood restaurant near our hotel and had something
along the line of a 20-course meal. We had everything from native vegetables
including about 12 kinds of mushrooms to goose feet and sea cucumbers.
Everything was surprisingly good but I must admit the goose foot was a little
much when we had to put on gloves to pick it up. It was going fine until I
realized that I was basically holding hands with a dead goose and that the
fingers were webbed together. The sea cucumber was surprisingly decent but the
texture was very squishy and was almost impossible to pick up.
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| Banquet Hall |
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| Goose foot, sea cucumber, and mushrooms |
After surviving
dinner, we walked home and passed a bar called koala bar that had a picture of
a heineken on the door so after running home and changing out of our polos (we
thought that would be a little tacky) we decided to try out our first Chinese
bar. We were in luck because Saturday nights there is a deal where you can have
an open bar from 8 until midnight for about $20 so naturally we all went for
it. We realized pretty quickly that we had by chance found the “American” bar
when the menu was all in English, 2 of the first 3 songs were F.U.N., and all
of the people there were either American or European. I decided to start with a
rum and coke, which was a horrible decision because I later found out that they
were using McCormick’s rum, which I didn’t even know was a thing. They were
horribly strong so I eventually switched to Tiger beer, which was actually
pretty good. Throughout the night we played a giant game of Zumi and got in some
pool and darts as well. I even started a conversation with the bar owner named
JoJo who asked how we heard about the bar. I told her that we just passed it on
the way home from dinner and decided to stop in and she was surprised because
apparently people usually get sent there from other Americans in the area, so I
knew we were in the right place. After a successful night at the bar and
definitely getting our moneys worth of the drink special, we headed back to the
hotel to call it a night. We all decided we may not have actually gotten much
accomplished, but we definitely considered it a successful day of getting a hold
of our surroundings and somehow picking good meals and a fun bar.
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| Rainbow mall (they think that symbolizes Christmas) |
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| The lipstick towers |
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