Friday, March 16
How about a Chinese lesson? Owen says there are 13 major
dialects including Mandarin which 30% of the Chinese people speak and
Cantonese. Plus there are about 20-30% more who understand Mandarin but don’t
speak it. Mandarin is taught in
schools and contains 30,000 written characters though one has to know only
7000-8000 characters to successfully read and write. Children begin to learn the characters at ages 3 and 4 and
continue study through high school. (By the way, Chinese children start English
when they are six!)
After 1949 most people started using the simplified Chinese characters and, surprisingly, about 50% of the Japanese language characters are taken from the ancient Chinese though they are pronounced differently and Chinese people cannot understand Japanese. In any case, it is not an easy language to acquire.
The first few phrases we learned are:
Knee how ma (this is not the way it’s written in Chinese) =
How are you?
Knee how= Hello
How= Good
Shee Shee= Please
Ma Ma Who= So, so
Boo Yow= No
Boo Yow can prove helpful when one is pestered by the ever
present folks trying to sell you something but is kind of rude so it’s better
to save it until you are exasperated.
Other pearls of wisdom to start the day were that the city
is reasonably safe though venturing in certain areas or going off with someone
who wants to show you Rolex watches for $25 is not such a wise idea. Bathrooms
are much improved but one should still carry a stash of toilet paper and be prepared
to wait for the handicapped stall, which has an actual commode or be prepared
to use a “squatter”. One can
change money at the hotel or a bank and you get the government set rate of 10 Yuan=$1.50
US or take money from an ATM machine.
Last pearl on the string: drink bottled water even in the hotels and use
bottled water to brush teeth. An exception to this caveat is that the ice in
hotels is perfectly safe as the hotels use purified water to make ice.
Breakfast at the hotel was a feast of the known and the
unknown. One could choose local foods like con gee (a rice mush) and dragon
fruit (which I did try and loved…now I will recognize it at the international
markets at home) or opt for French toast and chicken sausage. Plus you could
choose what we’d consider dinner items. There was positively something for
every taste and plenty of it. This may be the one trip where I gain weight.
By this morning we had the lay of the land but unimproved
weather so we set off umbrellas in hand to visit the Bund. Bund is an
Anglo-Indian word meaning “embankment” or “waterfront”. In Shanghai, the Bund
area is like Wall Street with numerous banks and very expensive stores
especially jewelers –think Tiffany’s and Harry Winston. Shanghai is considered
to be one of China’s most vibrant cities and a “comer” in the future of the
country. You can definitely feel the power when you are along the river. |
| Typical housing |
 |
| Mao surveys the Bund |
There is a wide boulevard with an adjoining promenade by the Huangpu River
(gateway of the
mighty Yangtze) on which many people were strolling. The various buildings built
by the numerous foreign powers that divided up old Shanghai are lovely and it
is easy to see why Shanghai is often referred to as the “Paris of the East”.
The river is bustling with ships of all kinds and earns its’
claim to be the third busiest seaport in the world. While one side of the Bund
is replete with architectural marvels from the 20’s and 30’s, the other is
stacked with towering, modern skyscrapers that are home to a terrific laser light
show at night.
We took brief stroll along the Bund, snapped a few photos
and we were off to the silk factory via a drive through the old French
Concession. The British came to
trade in 1842 and several other countries including the Americans and the
French rapidly followed…each building their own little enclaves named
“concessions”. I had just read a
book named “The Russian Concubine “ which was about the concessions so I felt a
little smug that I knew a bit of history of the area!
The silk factory was a place to learn a dollop about silk
and the process from the silk worm to cocoon to thread.
However, the main thrust was the “purchasing” part…the factory’s silk
duvets that are ubiquitous on hotel beds in China and, we are told, used in
most homes in the country. They are thin but warm and work as well in summer as
well as winter. No top sheet needed if you use this comforter. Yes, we bought a dual king and it was
compressed enough to put in the bottom of a suitcase. They couldn’t, however,
compress the weight so we’re limiting our purchases for the rest of the trip on
only the second day. Perhaps not good planning.
 |
| Shanghai Museum |
After the silk factory experience, we boarded the bus for a brief journey to the handsome Shanghai Museum. Guarded by several stone statues of lions, this museum sits near a large city square and houses artifacts from ancient China. Included in the collection and, of most interest to Paul and me, were the Chinese paintings, jade objects d’art and minority nationalities art gallery. Each gallery was excellent and we regretted not having more time to browse the other offerings. These treasures would be worth another trip to Shanghai.
However, we were a bit over half the day on this trek and were scheduled to return to the hotel, which we did. Lunch was not included in our tour so Ted, Judy, Paul and I and about 8 others joined Owen for a short walk to a very local place for a marvelous and cheap lunch complete with excellent Chinese beer. Owen did the ordering and we all did the eating. It seems that this area around the university provides a choice of reasonable choices for food. Of course, we would never have found this place without Owen! On our way back to the hotel, we spied a French bakery (one of the vestiges of the French concession area) and had a pastry and a cappuccino for a tasty dessert.
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