The first thing that struck me about Jinan is the low visibility. It is so smoggy it is difficult to see a few blocks away at times. The haze tops anything Los Angeles can drum up, well maybe on par with LA in the 70's from what I've heard. It has a lot of redeeming factors though, one being it's natural springs. We walked through a traditional 'hutong' (alleyways) neighborhood and wound our way through all the narrow alleys to a pool where locals were enjoying an afternoon swim. We also visited Baotu Spring which is a beautiful park combining gardens, springs and pools, bridges, temples and traditional architecture.
We split into our work groups to visit our assigned neighborhoods of study. My group studied the old commercial center that was built in the 1920's, other groups studied a traditional hutong neighborhoods, a 1980's enclave, an in-progress high-rise development. We all go to see the model homes for the high-rises (which are highly sought after, very expensive, and by a reputable developer) and were appalled at the horrible construction and tackiness. Cheap laminate covered much of the surfaces that was already becoming warped, the bathroom tiles and grouting were of the quality in which you would immediately fire your contractor and promptly do it yourself 10x better. It was really frightening to see that these are the models which are supposed to entice people by how beautiful they are. The first phase of a the project which was built less than 10 years ago from the outside looked in poor shape and reminded us of a public housing project in the US of the tower-in-a-park type that are mostly demolished by now.
We studied these various neighborhoods to get an idea of what exists in China, how people live, what works well and what doesn't. Our group split into smaller teams and I went with my Chinese-speaking partner to talk to people all over the neighborhood. It was really fun exploring the area and talking to residents despite my lack of communication. We spent the afternoon doing this, then topped it off with some mushroom-stuffed buns, fennel-filled pancakes, pearl milk tea, and local fresh beer. We continued the investigation the following morning before we rejoined the class to visit some more sites in Jinan.
The city of Jinan has created a master plan to manage its growth and [re]development, which consists of a street network with widths of arterials about 50 meters wide and Le Courbousier style towers speckling the landscape along superblocks. High-rises and gigantic streets are the way China has been developing as it demolishes the traditional neighborhoods with their small-grain urban fabric. Because of the a/c, heating, ventilation, elevators, lighting demands, and other mechanical systems as well as the auto-dependent zoning they are designing, the new neighborhoods are far more energy-consumptive than the previous. Considering China's population and increasing affluence, this model is destined to fail miserably. Furthermore if everyone in China owned a car and actually needed it on a daily basis, a highway that covered the entire city of Beijing would not be wide enough. Fortunately, China is very interested in looking at new models for neighborhood development and low-energy designs which is why the department of energy has funded our project. We are looking at ways of designing neighborhoods that have all the modern conveniences but require less land area and energy than the current practices while still retaining the vibrant social life and cohesive communities that are characteristic of traditional neighborhoods.
In our tour around Jinan, we saw swaths of rubble and wrecking balls in action making way for new high-rises, train stations, massive highway flyovers, and glistening shopping malls. It must look a lot like major cities in the US did during the urban renewal era of large-scale neighborhood demolition and inner-city interstate highway construction (except China also invests in rail). Many people displaced by redevelopment here cannot afford to live in the new buildings and many developments remain up to 50% vacant as speculators buy up units for investment rather than as a residence. It may be counterintuitive but China is ultra-capitalist, with seemingly less regulations and restrictions than in the US and the class divide seems to be increasing accordingly. Gone are the comrades, here to stay are the proletariat and bourgeoisie of modern China. It will be a very different place 10 years from now, as I'm sure it was 10 years ago.
After a 3 hour train ride to Beijing, we checked into our apartments in the international student dorms at Tsinghua University (the MIT of the East) and worked all the following day and into the night on our neighborhood analysis of energy and livability. On Friday, we formally presented our findings to the class in a presentation.
I had been getting sick ever since arriving in Jinan and by the time of the presentation was feeling awful. I had a fever and was wearing a sweater while everyone else was sweltering in the 'all the fans are broken' architecture studio. I was feeling weak, dizzy, and coughing uncontrollably. Finally on Saturday, our TA who speaks Chinese took me to the doctor. Many of us have been coughing, attributing it to the polluted air, but mine was far worse than anyone else. It felt too exhausting to walk so I decided enough was enough. After confusing my chart with a 63 year old man and telling me to get an x-ray of my lungs (because they sounded horrendous through the stethoscope) then that the only x-ray machine in the hospital was broken, I got the right medicines and have been taking them for a day and a half and am feeling much better. Not to worry - no swine or avian flu. I was also glad that despite everyone else having bowel trouble, not I. Only a weak immune system. I got some interesting Chinese herbal cough syrup, some western medicine pills, and some wax balls which I pop open to find a glob of chewy herbal concoction; very fun. Unfortunately the urban design professor from my department had to go home because of a family matter; there's a possibility he will come back and I really hope he will because we are missing a lot by not having his input. The other from the architecture dept. is great but in the usual m.o. of architecture professors expects us to stay up all night consistently. Not healthy, not fun, asking for trouble, will have to work around this.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
Tai'an, Taishan Mountain, and Qufu
We left Shanghai on a 10 o'clock night train which was quite a fiasco with 22 people trying to stick together. Our professor and TA had painstakingly organized us into groups of Chinese speakers and non since we were split up into various cars, classes, and compartments all over the train and put a sticky note on our tickets to help us figure things out. The train station has a lobby where one can check the arrivals, departures, status, platform, and waiting room designation. The waiting room category was new to me. After walking through a mall-like corridor, we arrived in "waiting room 7" which though not a gigantic room, alone had an occupancy of something akin to Chicago Union Station. Everything went smoothly (only slight pushing and shoving in the boarding line) considering the amount of people that have to board a train all at once.
We got "hard sleepers" which have 6 bunks to a room stacked 3 high on each side and the 'room' actually has no wall from the passageway so the entire car is essentially one room. This type is 2nd or 3rd level of service, worst being coach seats with no a/c. I got the top bunk which has a head-bumping ceiling height and no window view. This was not a problem since the lights were turned out after an hour and the car was surprisingly quiet. The train was electric, rails continuously welded, and average speed was ~130 km/hr; thus is was a peaceful night and we got into Tai'an at the reasonable hour of 6:30 am.
Our day in Tai'an consisted chiefly of climbing mount Taishan. We were told it was very touristy so the path was paved all the way. When our local guide Michael, referred to "going upstairs" we thought he meant ascending by some funny translation. This was not the case: we were surprised to find out that the hike actually was 3,000 continuous steps, sometimes without landings for a few hundred of them. It was 5 kilometers and took about 2.5 or 3 hours at a not-too-strenuous pace. There were chairs tied to bamboo poles along the way in which people would carry you if you decided you'd had enough. There were also souvenirs galore including the very popular walking stick.
Once at the top, we visited Confucian and Taoist temples, climbed more steps (they seemed to never end) then had lunch at the hotel at the peak. Thousands of yuan and gobs of incense go to Confucius (as the Plato of the East) in prayers for young people to be accepted to good universities like Tsinghua (our partners on this project) and MIT. Red cards adorn the walls of the temple with kids names on them who are in their families prayers. Luckily none of us needed to pray for these things so we played 'coin toss into the vessels' for fun, sort of like a carnival game. We took the aerial cable car down the mountain for a different perspective and to save our knees. It was a nice ride and a scenic end to an exhausting day, but wasn't the last of the fun.
The "scenic" bus ride down the lower half of the mountain, as Michael the tour guide described it, was actually a thrill ride. The bus driver seemed as though he was paid by the number of trips he took rather than by the hour or any other such safe method. He sped around the sharp cliffs and blind corners, slamming on the breaks when met with another bus on the narrow winding road. I stuck my head out the window for fresh air but only on the concave turns.
The day in Qufu was another early one and was a bit tiring. The guide gave us a nice explanation of everything we were seeing at the Temple of Confucius and the Kong Family Mansion. Micheal is an indescribably energetic tour guide and likes to say 'yes' after each sentence or between phrases and 'come on, let's go' after we linger for more than a few seconds at any one spot. If you sit on a stone in the shade as a small respite from the scorching sun, he will quickly inspire you to move on. He must do this because there is always another tour on a 10 second lag or so behind us wherever we are. The microphones of various tour guides are always within earshot and listening to one tour guide becomes quite exhausting after a while so it is best to move quickly to keep a reasonable distance. Michael had some really positive energy and I was sad to see him go when we left for Jinan. After this long morning of touring and a sit-down lunch in a hotel restaurant, our bus drove for a couple hours to Jinan, the site of our design project and case study neighborhoods.
We got "hard sleepers" which have 6 bunks to a room stacked 3 high on each side and the 'room' actually has no wall from the passageway so the entire car is essentially one room. This type is 2nd or 3rd level of service, worst being coach seats with no a/c. I got the top bunk which has a head-bumping ceiling height and no window view. This was not a problem since the lights were turned out after an hour and the car was surprisingly quiet. The train was electric, rails continuously welded, and average speed was ~130 km/hr; thus is was a peaceful night and we got into Tai'an at the reasonable hour of 6:30 am.
Our day in Tai'an consisted chiefly of climbing mount Taishan. We were told it was very touristy so the path was paved all the way. When our local guide Michael, referred to "going upstairs" we thought he meant ascending by some funny translation. This was not the case: we were surprised to find out that the hike actually was 3,000 continuous steps, sometimes without landings for a few hundred of them. It was 5 kilometers and took about 2.5 or 3 hours at a not-too-strenuous pace. There were chairs tied to bamboo poles along the way in which people would carry you if you decided you'd had enough. There were also souvenirs galore including the very popular walking stick.
Once at the top, we visited Confucian and Taoist temples, climbed more steps (they seemed to never end) then had lunch at the hotel at the peak. Thousands of yuan and gobs of incense go to Confucius (as the Plato of the East) in prayers for young people to be accepted to good universities like Tsinghua (our partners on this project) and MIT. Red cards adorn the walls of the temple with kids names on them who are in their families prayers. Luckily none of us needed to pray for these things so we played 'coin toss into the vessels' for fun, sort of like a carnival game. We took the aerial cable car down the mountain for a different perspective and to save our knees. It was a nice ride and a scenic end to an exhausting day, but wasn't the last of the fun.
The "scenic" bus ride down the lower half of the mountain, as Michael the tour guide described it, was actually a thrill ride. The bus driver seemed as though he was paid by the number of trips he took rather than by the hour or any other such safe method. He sped around the sharp cliffs and blind corners, slamming on the breaks when met with another bus on the narrow winding road. I stuck my head out the window for fresh air but only on the concave turns.
The day in Qufu was another early one and was a bit tiring. The guide gave us a nice explanation of everything we were seeing at the Temple of Confucius and the Kong Family Mansion. Micheal is an indescribably energetic tour guide and likes to say 'yes' after each sentence or between phrases and 'come on, let's go' after we linger for more than a few seconds at any one spot. If you sit on a stone in the shade as a small respite from the scorching sun, he will quickly inspire you to move on. He must do this because there is always another tour on a 10 second lag or so behind us wherever we are. The microphones of various tour guides are always within earshot and listening to one tour guide becomes quite exhausting after a while so it is best to move quickly to keep a reasonable distance. Michael had some really positive energy and I was sad to see him go when we left for Jinan. After this long morning of touring and a sit-down lunch in a hotel restaurant, our bus drove for a couple hours to Jinan, the site of our design project and case study neighborhoods.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Shanghai Part II: Studio Begins
The evening of June 16, we checked into our class' designated hotel. We had directions to meet at 6 for dinner and we ate in the hotel restaurant a Chinese dinner that was not unlike typical American Chinese food. With some of the long lost classmates, we attempted to get a drink at a top floor high rise bar with a view. We found one and rode a series of elevators to the bar only to find it empty, not even a bartender. Yet there were people there who looked like they worked there but were lounging around. No one asked us if we wanted a drink, so we simply walked up to the window to take in our river view. No one said a word to us at all, not even a motion that 'we're closed.' We attributed our lack of being kicked out of the closed bar to our Westernness, which seems to come with some privileges every now and then. The drinks were wildly overpriced anyway. After trying another riverfront bar which we discovered had no cocktails, our collective craving, we left and went to the family mart. A $1 bottle of Chinese Vodka and our favorite fruit juices made for a nice drink so we took our juice boxes up to the riverwalk and enjoyed the cool night air and extravagant city lights from the Bund district, the original international hub of the city.
The following day we had a bus chartered to take us around town. We started with a Chinese breakfast in the hotel - a great selection of foods and some surprises (looks can be deceiving in food too!) Our first stop was the Jinmao tower, built in 1994. We went to the skydeck and peered through the smoggy sky to see a hazy view of the city. The tower is in the Pudong new area which has only been built since 1990 and is a mass of skyscrapers on the east side of the Huangpu River from Shanghai. The whole district is evidence of the staggering pace of development here and is still full of cranes and towers under construction. I can't emphasize enough how mindblowing it is. Before 1990 is was rice fields.
After lunch we visited the garden, but didn't have enough time to explore it as I would have liked. We walked through the old city to get there, which was fun but overly touristy. The afternoon consisted of a visit to an architect's office (an MIT alum) to hear about their projects and work in China in general. We visited their first project - a very successful high-end commercial development made from an old french-built housing district. A really beautiful urban design but overpriced everything, including Starbucks which (all of them here) sells drinks for 50-100% more than they cost in the States.
Our second day together we visited the Urban Planning Institute, which is a museum of sorts. A scale model of the city with working lights charmed everyone and the movie-in-the-round of Shanghai's development projects dizzied us. We visited several other interesting sites, including a 1933 butcher complex that is now a commercial redevelopment. Dozens of narrow cattle paths ramp up in spirals which make for a fascinating architectural composition and a recently added glass floor on top allows one to see the lines and curves of the concrete structure from above.
With class, we have been eating our meals all together mainly at hotel restaurants. There is consistently double or more the amount of food that is necessary. Most of the dishes are delicious, flavored with garlic, peppers, and nice sauces. But the food is so heavy; we are all getting tired or mushy oily vegetables, deep fried tempura coating, and lack of fresh fruits and greens. I can't bring myself to buy extra things at the grocery store when there is an abundance of free food for us.
The following day we had a bus chartered to take us around town. We started with a Chinese breakfast in the hotel - a great selection of foods and some surprises (looks can be deceiving in food too!) Our first stop was the Jinmao tower, built in 1994. We went to the skydeck and peered through the smoggy sky to see a hazy view of the city. The tower is in the Pudong new area which has only been built since 1990 and is a mass of skyscrapers on the east side of the Huangpu River from Shanghai. The whole district is evidence of the staggering pace of development here and is still full of cranes and towers under construction. I can't emphasize enough how mindblowing it is. Before 1990 is was rice fields.
After lunch we visited the garden, but didn't have enough time to explore it as I would have liked. We walked through the old city to get there, which was fun but overly touristy. The afternoon consisted of a visit to an architect's office (an MIT alum) to hear about their projects and work in China in general. We visited their first project - a very successful high-end commercial development made from an old french-built housing district. A really beautiful urban design but overpriced everything, including Starbucks which (all of them here) sells drinks for 50-100% more than they cost in the States.
Our second day together we visited the Urban Planning Institute, which is a museum of sorts. A scale model of the city with working lights charmed everyone and the movie-in-the-round of Shanghai's development projects dizzied us. We visited several other interesting sites, including a 1933 butcher complex that is now a commercial redevelopment. Dozens of narrow cattle paths ramp up in spirals which make for a fascinating architectural composition and a recently added glass floor on top allows one to see the lines and curves of the concrete structure from above.
With class, we have been eating our meals all together mainly at hotel restaurants. There is consistently double or more the amount of food that is necessary. Most of the dishes are delicious, flavored with garlic, peppers, and nice sauces. But the food is so heavy; we are all getting tired or mushy oily vegetables, deep fried tempura coating, and lack of fresh fruits and greens. I can't bring myself to buy extra things at the grocery store when there is an abundance of free food for us.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The Shanghai Expo
The flight from Hanoi to Shanghai was nice with the highlight being the coconut milk they serve on China Southern airlines. It was also a bit tense as we worried about the all the coughing people on the plane and how contagious they might be. Upon entering China, everyone must walk through a temperature detector and if you fail the test, they scurry you away in an ambulance to be quarantined. We know from one of our classmates who had this happen on his last trip to China and stayed in a miserable hospital for two unbearable weeks! Worrying sick about it wouldn't help but the flight was also so hot we thought external temperature might begin to affect internal body temperature - all the crazy things that pop into your mind when there's a threat of something terrible of which you have no control over.
We took the immaculate subway to our first reserved hotel of our journey so far. A double set of doors opens only when the train arrives to there is no way to fall into the pit or try to cross illegally. This later proved to be quite scary... Once at our hotel, we met five of our classmates. We then strolled around our neighborhood in the evening marveling at the cleanliness and orderliness of the streets. Traffic lights control flow, pedestrians rarely jaywalk, cycle lanes are separated and motorbike parking has stripes so one can actually walk on the sidewalk unlike in Vietnam where the bikes often prevent the sidewalk from being used for anything but parking, while the street there is full of cars, bikes and the displaced pedestrians vying for space. Here everything is so strangely organized, almost felt like the U.S. We had dinner at a fancy dumpling shop in an upscale retail district.
We planned to go to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo so we headed there first thing in the morning after a breakfast of a rice ball wrapped around a center of doughnut sprinkled with fermented unidentified vegetable, sugar, chili, and dry pork shreds. Getting on the subway was a stampede and Elizabeth and I shoved our way on but Sarah was behind us and wasn't able to get in before the 'door-closing' tune sounded. She shoved her way through the first set of doors but the train doors kept shutting; apparently they do not have the feature where they stay open if you force them as ones we're accustomed to do. If she made it through the first doors but not the second, if she didn't get shredded by the train, she'd get stuck in the pit unable to get up to the platform because the doors are locked until a train comes, by which time she'd be smashed. She wrestled herself out safely back onto the platform and we watched her disappear through the window, hoping she'd be on the next train at the appointed stop. We waited for three trains when we got there but never saw her. We knew it would be a needle in a haystack at the expo so accepted that we would not see her for the rest of the day.
The wait to buy a ticket at the gate was around 3 minutes, but the line to simply enter the place was an hour. Once through the metal detectors, we felt on top of the world; in Shanghai, one of the most fast paced and rapidly changing cities in the world at the long-awaited expo! A once-in-a-lifetime experience. We had heard there were ridiculous lines to get into most of the pavilions and it certainly lived up to this. We waited 45 minutes to get into Pakistan's pavilion, no one of the most popular. The UK had an amazing structure that was not to be missed, so we waited over an hour and a half to see it. These lines are not like the docile lines at the grocery store, but a lot of shoving goes on, cutting, sticky sweaty people touching your arms and legs without noticing or caring, and the worst of the worst - the umbrellas. Short women carry umbrellas to shade their faces from the sun (nothing a wide-brimmed hat couldn't do) and the sharp ends of the ribs jut out at eye level for the non-short people like me. Umbrellas are everywhere, poking my hat, neck, shoulders, and sunglasses (thankfully rather than my eyeballs) and only fold away when the line enters the shaded canopy area (half an hour more into it). Everyone seems to think the tighter you pack into the line and more surface area of your body that is touching another, the faster you will get inside the pavilion. Really insane. An English-speaking girl even came up to interview us about what we thought of the situation. We told her this would not happen in the USA, people would not attend an event where they had to wait between 1 and 4 hours (no joke) to see every single attraction. We spent much of the time walking around looking at the outside of the buildings as there was some really fantastic architecture.
There were pavilions representing countries of the world as well as industry. The China Railroads pavilion was marvelous. They had models of many new stations, bridges, and such (so much built in the last two years) with staggering statistics and captions like "this bridge has the longest span, can carry the most weight, uses so many tons of steel, can handle the highest speed trains of any in the world" or "this station has 5 floors, 30 platforms, serves X destinations, covers X kilometers (the size of a small city)" and the like. To see how much has been built, with mindboggling technology and the sheer size and capacity of things is like watching a movie that is to outrageous to be true. The city of Shanghai represents this - there are cranes galore and so many roads and overpasses look brand new. A super tall highway bridge that spans the entire expo center is painted entirely in white and is a light show as something in Vegas every night. Much of the city is this way. All skyscrapers have flashing/strobing/scrolling/sheetflowing colors of light on the top, the sides, shooting out from the building, or making patterns on the entire visible surface. All the boats on the river save a few barges are colored with lights galore as well. It is really over the top. Most Americans would be disgusted at its gaudiness.
The most uncanny thing happened while at the expo. While wandering around taking it all in, a girl came up behind us and nonchalantly said hi. It was Sarah! In a crowd of 600,000 people that day (the entire population of Boston) Sarah ran into us by happenstance! We were all weirded out and took a picture to commemorate the moment.
We survived a stampede onto the ferry, a crushing crowd in the subway exiting from the expo station, and rewarded ourselves with bubble tea when we got back to our neighborhood. I got "immortal grass" flavor which was delicious. I bought a lamb skewer which was my second meat of the day after the ostrich wrap at the African pavilion.
The next day will be short since I wrote so much about the expo. Again my breakfast was intriguing. A crepe filled with green onion, unidentified fermented vegetable, maybe hoisin sauce, chili sauce, a crispy fired thing, folded up and eaten like a sandwich. We moved hotels to the one where our class was to meet and then walked around the neighborhood on a walking tour our guidebook laid out. The "Bund" and its 1920's - 30's architecture has a rich and colorful history! After a few more photos taken with us by random people spellbound by our white skin and western features, (we must have had at least 20 photo request by now, not counting the covert picture takers who miss out on actually being in the picture with their arm around us) we left the Bund and walked over to the People's Park where shady paths wind, groups of men gamble, and lovers abound. It is a really beautiful park but would never happen in the US. The ponds and water features would be far too dangerous, the beautiful planting schemes with rich understories along narrow paths would invite illicit activity and laugh in the face of crime prevention. There aren't public parks with such nice spaces like this in the US, it's really sad. For better or for worse, good design in the US is completely overshadowed by these issues of crime, safety, and litigation and it seems normal until you see a place where this is not the case.
One more thing: we went to Starbucks. It's really goofy but I was looking forward to it since I haven't had coffee since Vietnam. The place was packed, every seat taken and a line to the door. I was a big-spender on a very overpriced grande drip but enjoyed it thoroughly.
1. Now in China, not only is facebook blocked, so is my blog! I have to use a proxy to write this! And so is grooveshark, the music station I've been listening to while sitting at the computer doing stuff like this and I don't know how to do streaming stuff this way, it doesn't seem to work. grr :-{
We took the immaculate subway to our first reserved hotel of our journey so far. A double set of doors opens only when the train arrives to there is no way to fall into the pit or try to cross illegally. This later proved to be quite scary... Once at our hotel, we met five of our classmates. We then strolled around our neighborhood in the evening marveling at the cleanliness and orderliness of the streets. Traffic lights control flow, pedestrians rarely jaywalk, cycle lanes are separated and motorbike parking has stripes so one can actually walk on the sidewalk unlike in Vietnam where the bikes often prevent the sidewalk from being used for anything but parking, while the street there is full of cars, bikes and the displaced pedestrians vying for space. Here everything is so strangely organized, almost felt like the U.S. We had dinner at a fancy dumpling shop in an upscale retail district.
We planned to go to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo so we headed there first thing in the morning after a breakfast of a rice ball wrapped around a center of doughnut sprinkled with fermented unidentified vegetable, sugar, chili, and dry pork shreds. Getting on the subway was a stampede and Elizabeth and I shoved our way on but Sarah was behind us and wasn't able to get in before the 'door-closing' tune sounded. She shoved her way through the first set of doors but the train doors kept shutting; apparently they do not have the feature where they stay open if you force them as ones we're accustomed to do. If she made it through the first doors but not the second, if she didn't get shredded by the train, she'd get stuck in the pit unable to get up to the platform because the doors are locked until a train comes, by which time she'd be smashed. She wrestled herself out safely back onto the platform and we watched her disappear through the window, hoping she'd be on the next train at the appointed stop. We waited for three trains when we got there but never saw her. We knew it would be a needle in a haystack at the expo so accepted that we would not see her for the rest of the day.
The wait to buy a ticket at the gate was around 3 minutes, but the line to simply enter the place was an hour. Once through the metal detectors, we felt on top of the world; in Shanghai, one of the most fast paced and rapidly changing cities in the world at the long-awaited expo! A once-in-a-lifetime experience. We had heard there were ridiculous lines to get into most of the pavilions and it certainly lived up to this. We waited 45 minutes to get into Pakistan's pavilion, no one of the most popular. The UK had an amazing structure that was not to be missed, so we waited over an hour and a half to see it. These lines are not like the docile lines at the grocery store, but a lot of shoving goes on, cutting, sticky sweaty people touching your arms and legs without noticing or caring, and the worst of the worst - the umbrellas. Short women carry umbrellas to shade their faces from the sun (nothing a wide-brimmed hat couldn't do) and the sharp ends of the ribs jut out at eye level for the non-short people like me. Umbrellas are everywhere, poking my hat, neck, shoulders, and sunglasses (thankfully rather than my eyeballs) and only fold away when the line enters the shaded canopy area (half an hour more into it). Everyone seems to think the tighter you pack into the line and more surface area of your body that is touching another, the faster you will get inside the pavilion. Really insane. An English-speaking girl even came up to interview us about what we thought of the situation. We told her this would not happen in the USA, people would not attend an event where they had to wait between 1 and 4 hours (no joke) to see every single attraction. We spent much of the time walking around looking at the outside of the buildings as there was some really fantastic architecture.
There were pavilions representing countries of the world as well as industry. The China Railroads pavilion was marvelous. They had models of many new stations, bridges, and such (so much built in the last two years) with staggering statistics and captions like "this bridge has the longest span, can carry the most weight, uses so many tons of steel, can handle the highest speed trains of any in the world" or "this station has 5 floors, 30 platforms, serves X destinations, covers X kilometers (the size of a small city)" and the like. To see how much has been built, with mindboggling technology and the sheer size and capacity of things is like watching a movie that is to outrageous to be true. The city of Shanghai represents this - there are cranes galore and so many roads and overpasses look brand new. A super tall highway bridge that spans the entire expo center is painted entirely in white and is a light show as something in Vegas every night. Much of the city is this way. All skyscrapers have flashing/strobing/scrolling/sheetflowing colors of light on the top, the sides, shooting out from the building, or making patterns on the entire visible surface. All the boats on the river save a few barges are colored with lights galore as well. It is really over the top. Most Americans would be disgusted at its gaudiness.
The most uncanny thing happened while at the expo. While wandering around taking it all in, a girl came up behind us and nonchalantly said hi. It was Sarah! In a crowd of 600,000 people that day (the entire population of Boston) Sarah ran into us by happenstance! We were all weirded out and took a picture to commemorate the moment.
We survived a stampede onto the ferry, a crushing crowd in the subway exiting from the expo station, and rewarded ourselves with bubble tea when we got back to our neighborhood. I got "immortal grass" flavor which was delicious. I bought a lamb skewer which was my second meat of the day after the ostrich wrap at the African pavilion.
The next day will be short since I wrote so much about the expo. Again my breakfast was intriguing. A crepe filled with green onion, unidentified fermented vegetable, maybe hoisin sauce, chili sauce, a crispy fired thing, folded up and eaten like a sandwich. We moved hotels to the one where our class was to meet and then walked around the neighborhood on a walking tour our guidebook laid out. The "Bund" and its 1920's - 30's architecture has a rich and colorful history! After a few more photos taken with us by random people spellbound by our white skin and western features, (we must have had at least 20 photo request by now, not counting the covert picture takers who miss out on actually being in the picture with their arm around us) we left the Bund and walked over to the People's Park where shady paths wind, groups of men gamble, and lovers abound. It is a really beautiful park but would never happen in the US. The ponds and water features would be far too dangerous, the beautiful planting schemes with rich understories along narrow paths would invite illicit activity and laugh in the face of crime prevention. There aren't public parks with such nice spaces like this in the US, it's really sad. For better or for worse, good design in the US is completely overshadowed by these issues of crime, safety, and litigation and it seems normal until you see a place where this is not the case.
One more thing: we went to Starbucks. It's really goofy but I was looking forward to it since I haven't had coffee since Vietnam. The place was packed, every seat taken and a line to the door. I was a big-spender on a very overpriced grande drip but enjoyed it thoroughly.
1. Now in China, not only is facebook blocked, so is my blog! I have to use a proxy to write this! And so is grooveshark, the music station I've been listening to while sitting at the computer doing stuff like this and I don't know how to do streaming stuff this way, it doesn't seem to work. grr :-{
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Hanoi & Halong Bay
Arrival in Hanoi was peaceful after the mayhem of the flight from Nha Trang. Children were running up and down the aircraft aisle the entire time and the adults outdid the kids on the noise-o-meter. On JetStar, all food AND drinks are for purchase, even water :-( We spent the first evening in a restaurant that used to be a house, an old classic wooden colonial Hanoi house. It was great sitting on the cool enclosed balcony and watching the street from above while we ate shrimp encrusted sugar cane wrapped in rice paper with aromatic herbs.
The following day we explored the city first by taking the bus to the Ethnology Museum. We found out where to get on bus 14 and were on our way. Someone had thrown up on the floor of the bus and when I stood up to look at the bus route map I stepped in it and tracked it around the bus. At the next stop, the bus driver yelled to the money collector and he ran out the door, scooped a pile of dirt from the roadside and dumped it over the mess on the floor. We didn't know where to get off the bus but after we apparently passed the stop we wanted, the money collector motioned that we may want to exit. It's really nice to be able to pay and get change on the bus; it makes you think how cheap labor must be to employ an extra person on every bus! We got off the bus disoriented and asked several people (unsuccessfully) where the museum was but eventually found the right road. The museum had a description of all the ethnic groups in Vietnam, their linguistic heritage, crafts, religion, music, and economy. Outside, it had a typical house of many of the ethnic groups which were really interesting to tour.
We took the same bus home but it seemed to take a different route, partially along a one-lane road where all the motorbikes were zipping through and anything larger like cars and buses were stuck in a single-file line that did not move for about half an hour. Terrible. Eventually we got off the bus at a park we wanted to stroll through which had many interesting monuments and museums. When we tried to enter through the clearly open gate, we got yelled at by the guards. The next entrance we came upon was gated and locked so I walked up to peer through the bars to take a look at the Presidential Palace. The guard yelled at me aggressively and I motioned that I was just looking and not trying to enter, he yelled more even though I was not even touching the fence but was merely standing on the public sidewalk looking through the fully transparent iron fencing, at least a few feet away from it. He kept yelling so I started laughing and he shouted more and motioned angrily. I could not understand the idea of being prohibited from looking at something that is fully visible from a public space so I kept chuckling as the guard was seething. It was really weird but I guess that is one of those cultural differences that never makes sense to either person.
For the evening we enjoyed some wine from the nearby Dalat region and then went out for a drink where we unexpectedly ran into on of Sarah's high school friends. We enjoyed some 25 cent beers with a group of westerners and had a fun time chatting about where we had visited in Vietnam.
The following day we left early in the morning for a boat trip in Halong Bay, famous for its stunning karst landscape. We again experienced much confusion as we had to get on the bus at 8 o'clock sharp, only to ride in circles and pass our hotel again around 9 o'clock before even leaving the neighborhood. This type of thing was to be characteristic of the entire trip. The bus ride to Halong City was around 3 hours and when we got to the harbor to board the boat, we waited on the sidewalk for an hour at least while hundreds of people like us got sorted into categories of those on 2 day trips, 3 day trips, etc. We spent much of the time writing all of our names and nationalities on a sheet of paper which could have been accomplished much more efficiently on the bus. Dozens of passports were being shuffled around by all the guides for an unknown reason. When we finally got on a boat, we put all of our luggage in a huge pile on the deck, subject to weather and theft and wondered why we could not put it in our sleeping quarters since we were staying on the boat overnight. Our first stop was a magnificent cave but it was an absolute zoo. To me a cave should be a serene place, where voices are hushed, lights are low, and a sense of awe makes one want to take in the experience without distraction. Here, there was a constant stream of throngs of tourists, mostly loud obnoxious ones. A woman in high heals nearly had a panic attack when a stalactite sent a drip of water on her head and in the crowd, nearly pushed Elizabeth down the stairs. Multicolored neon lights illuminated parts of the cave which looked cool, but seemed inappropriate. There was constant yapping the whole time, shouting over the dull roar of the crowd, and shoving to take flash photos in front of the favored stalagmites. It was an amazing cave but by far the worst cave experience ever. We were told we had 40 minutes, so when we returned to the boat conscientiously on time, we waited at the dock for at least 30 minutes while boats vied for exit space from the overcrowded dock. A boatload of Vietnamese men next to us gawked and unapologetically stared and snapped photos of us as if they had never seen western women at this tourist attraction that is full of people that look like us.
The night was to bring even more excitement. Our shower was a tube attached to the sink and the knob was missing that toggles between sink and shower. You can imagine how bad the water pressure would be anyway, the without the know, only the sink worked. Like all showers in this country, it is the entire bathroom. I had to go in another room to use the shower which was a drip anyway. Shortly after falling asleep, there was a horrendous wind, thunder, and lightening storm which caused several anchored boats to collide with ours. A deafening crack of thunder startled me awake and the crew was running around yelling as the boats crashed and tipped. I woke up at 4:30 to watch the sunrise from our top deck and the sky and sea were as calm as ever.
The boat trip was terribly organized but was not without merit. We took a smaller boat around some of the karsts and into a little inlet where we swam around. We also spent the rest of the evening anchored and took turns jumping off our top deck and swimming freely in the warm water. The next morning we took kayaks and explored another cave that was only accessible by small boat so we were the only ones there. It was great until we needed a headlamp to go further so we turned around for fear of stepping off a dark ledge. The boat itself was junky with many things broken but I appreciated that it was all wood and made for a really nice atmosphere.
The boat headed back for the mainland and we waited an hour or so for a bus to take us to a restaurant that was included in our tour package. We were all eager to get back to Hanoi so ate quickly and went outside in hopes of getting on the bus first so we wouldn't get stuck with the miserable seats that fold down in the aisle of the bus. We waited outside the restaurant for an hour and a half or so while our group of ten and a hundred other people vied for the shady row under the awning with all of our luggage that we had to transport from the previous bus, as our bus sat empty and locked on the street in front of us. People were getting impatient and our tour guide was taking his time eating, then smoking a few cigarettes, the arguing inside the restaurant. The arguing became intense and the tourists were getting angry. When the bus finally opened for us, dozens more people than could fit tried to sneak on the bus. The tour guide singled them out and yelled at them until they got off the bus but it was a valiant effort since the waiting situation was becoming unbearable, all parties were angry, and no one knew when the next bus to Hanoi would be leaving.
I left out a few other annoying situations and needless to say we were happy to be back in Hanoi and free of an insane and incomprehensible tour schedule. Despite the Halong Bay mishaps, Vietnam was overall a great experience. We had a lot of fun here. Our last night in Hanoi we celebrated with some streetside seafood. The stall had dozens of clams, shrimp, mussels, etc fresh in buckets on the sidewalk. We chose clams, served with herbs dipped in tamarind/chili/lime sauce and it made for an excellent last dinner in Vietnam. I will miss all the street eateries with 6 inch tall plastic chairs, the vendors of delicious fruits on every corner, the bahn mi stands, the conical bamboo hats, the random chickens on city streets, the motorbikes with a million baskets enveloping them (or pig carcasses), the $6/night hotels, and the 50 cent fresh fruit shakes. Maybe China will have some of these things.
The following day we explored the city first by taking the bus to the Ethnology Museum. We found out where to get on bus 14 and were on our way. Someone had thrown up on the floor of the bus and when I stood up to look at the bus route map I stepped in it and tracked it around the bus. At the next stop, the bus driver yelled to the money collector and he ran out the door, scooped a pile of dirt from the roadside and dumped it over the mess on the floor. We didn't know where to get off the bus but after we apparently passed the stop we wanted, the money collector motioned that we may want to exit. It's really nice to be able to pay and get change on the bus; it makes you think how cheap labor must be to employ an extra person on every bus! We got off the bus disoriented and asked several people (unsuccessfully) where the museum was but eventually found the right road. The museum had a description of all the ethnic groups in Vietnam, their linguistic heritage, crafts, religion, music, and economy. Outside, it had a typical house of many of the ethnic groups which were really interesting to tour.
We took the same bus home but it seemed to take a different route, partially along a one-lane road where all the motorbikes were zipping through and anything larger like cars and buses were stuck in a single-file line that did not move for about half an hour. Terrible. Eventually we got off the bus at a park we wanted to stroll through which had many interesting monuments and museums. When we tried to enter through the clearly open gate, we got yelled at by the guards. The next entrance we came upon was gated and locked so I walked up to peer through the bars to take a look at the Presidential Palace. The guard yelled at me aggressively and I motioned that I was just looking and not trying to enter, he yelled more even though I was not even touching the fence but was merely standing on the public sidewalk looking through the fully transparent iron fencing, at least a few feet away from it. He kept yelling so I started laughing and he shouted more and motioned angrily. I could not understand the idea of being prohibited from looking at something that is fully visible from a public space so I kept chuckling as the guard was seething. It was really weird but I guess that is one of those cultural differences that never makes sense to either person.
For the evening we enjoyed some wine from the nearby Dalat region and then went out for a drink where we unexpectedly ran into on of Sarah's high school friends. We enjoyed some 25 cent beers with a group of westerners and had a fun time chatting about where we had visited in Vietnam.
The following day we left early in the morning for a boat trip in Halong Bay, famous for its stunning karst landscape. We again experienced much confusion as we had to get on the bus at 8 o'clock sharp, only to ride in circles and pass our hotel again around 9 o'clock before even leaving the neighborhood. This type of thing was to be characteristic of the entire trip. The bus ride to Halong City was around 3 hours and when we got to the harbor to board the boat, we waited on the sidewalk for an hour at least while hundreds of people like us got sorted into categories of those on 2 day trips, 3 day trips, etc. We spent much of the time writing all of our names and nationalities on a sheet of paper which could have been accomplished much more efficiently on the bus. Dozens of passports were being shuffled around by all the guides for an unknown reason. When we finally got on a boat, we put all of our luggage in a huge pile on the deck, subject to weather and theft and wondered why we could not put it in our sleeping quarters since we were staying on the boat overnight. Our first stop was a magnificent cave but it was an absolute zoo. To me a cave should be a serene place, where voices are hushed, lights are low, and a sense of awe makes one want to take in the experience without distraction. Here, there was a constant stream of throngs of tourists, mostly loud obnoxious ones. A woman in high heals nearly had a panic attack when a stalactite sent a drip of water on her head and in the crowd, nearly pushed Elizabeth down the stairs. Multicolored neon lights illuminated parts of the cave which looked cool, but seemed inappropriate. There was constant yapping the whole time, shouting over the dull roar of the crowd, and shoving to take flash photos in front of the favored stalagmites. It was an amazing cave but by far the worst cave experience ever. We were told we had 40 minutes, so when we returned to the boat conscientiously on time, we waited at the dock for at least 30 minutes while boats vied for exit space from the overcrowded dock. A boatload of Vietnamese men next to us gawked and unapologetically stared and snapped photos of us as if they had never seen western women at this tourist attraction that is full of people that look like us.
The night was to bring even more excitement. Our shower was a tube attached to the sink and the knob was missing that toggles between sink and shower. You can imagine how bad the water pressure would be anyway, the without the know, only the sink worked. Like all showers in this country, it is the entire bathroom. I had to go in another room to use the shower which was a drip anyway. Shortly after falling asleep, there was a horrendous wind, thunder, and lightening storm which caused several anchored boats to collide with ours. A deafening crack of thunder startled me awake and the crew was running around yelling as the boats crashed and tipped. I woke up at 4:30 to watch the sunrise from our top deck and the sky and sea were as calm as ever.
The boat trip was terribly organized but was not without merit. We took a smaller boat around some of the karsts and into a little inlet where we swam around. We also spent the rest of the evening anchored and took turns jumping off our top deck and swimming freely in the warm water. The next morning we took kayaks and explored another cave that was only accessible by small boat so we were the only ones there. It was great until we needed a headlamp to go further so we turned around for fear of stepping off a dark ledge. The boat itself was junky with many things broken but I appreciated that it was all wood and made for a really nice atmosphere.
The boat headed back for the mainland and we waited an hour or so for a bus to take us to a restaurant that was included in our tour package. We were all eager to get back to Hanoi so ate quickly and went outside in hopes of getting on the bus first so we wouldn't get stuck with the miserable seats that fold down in the aisle of the bus. We waited outside the restaurant for an hour and a half or so while our group of ten and a hundred other people vied for the shady row under the awning with all of our luggage that we had to transport from the previous bus, as our bus sat empty and locked on the street in front of us. People were getting impatient and our tour guide was taking his time eating, then smoking a few cigarettes, the arguing inside the restaurant. The arguing became intense and the tourists were getting angry. When the bus finally opened for us, dozens more people than could fit tried to sneak on the bus. The tour guide singled them out and yelled at them until they got off the bus but it was a valiant effort since the waiting situation was becoming unbearable, all parties were angry, and no one knew when the next bus to Hanoi would be leaving.
I left out a few other annoying situations and needless to say we were happy to be back in Hanoi and free of an insane and incomprehensible tour schedule. Despite the Halong Bay mishaps, Vietnam was overall a great experience. We had a lot of fun here. Our last night in Hanoi we celebrated with some streetside seafood. The stall had dozens of clams, shrimp, mussels, etc fresh in buckets on the sidewalk. We chose clams, served with herbs dipped in tamarind/chili/lime sauce and it made for an excellent last dinner in Vietnam. I will miss all the street eateries with 6 inch tall plastic chairs, the vendors of delicious fruits on every corner, the bahn mi stands, the conical bamboo hats, the random chickens on city streets, the motorbikes with a million baskets enveloping them (or pig carcasses), the $6/night hotels, and the 50 cent fresh fruit shakes. Maybe China will have some of these things.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Nha Trang, the South China Sea and the Ho Chi Minh Trail
Night train was set to arrive at 4:20 am in Nha Trang. Too early to get a hotel so we headed straight for the beach, thinking we'd get a quiet sunrise. Well, the train was late so the sun was already up and the beach was absolutely packed! All the locals were swimming, exercising, making sand castles, etc. By around 8 am, people mostly cleared out and the tourists started appearing so we went into town to find a guest house. The afternoon was spend at some hot springs up in the hills. It was a progression: shower, mud bath, shower, hot pool, cool pool (not cold by any stretch of the imagination), warm pool, spray massage, cool pool, waterfall, etc. Quite the relaxing time.
The remainder of the first day was mellow as we strolled along the beach and planned some
activities for the next few days, including a two-day motorcycle trip on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. For dinner we had traditional barbecue of fish and shrimp with a mouthwatering green mango salad. We chilled the rest of the night on the beach drinking a local lemon rum.The next day we commenced our motorcycle journey up into the mountains. The Ho Chi Minh Trail is now a nice paved mountain highway that offered fantastic views. Most of the scenery was of rice fields and there were also swaths of dead zones where agent orange was used and trees still turn brown and wither even today as they continually plant and try to revegetate the mountainsides. We took many stops along the way to DakLak Lake where we spent the night. We went to a fishing village, a brick factory, a coffee farm, and had food and coffee at various local places. Our guides said we were only the 10th group of Americans they've had in a decade or so, most people who go on their motorcycle trips are British, Australian, and various other Europeans. After dinner, the guys told us some ghost stories and taught us Vietnamese words. We had a great time all hanging out and laughing at miscommunications. The four guides were
really fun.
The second day of the trip, we started the morning by visiting a minority village of which there are 54 in Vietnam, mainly in the highlands. They speak a different language and have special rights because the Vietnamese have encroached on their land, logged, altered their livelihood, etc. We again hit the road and stopped at someone's house who was making rice paper (the eating kind) to see how it was made. We also watched a one-man rock quarry and stopped along the roadside to take in views of mountains, rivers, boats, pigs on bikes, dozens of live geese dangling from bikes, water buffalo plowing rice paddies, etc. The highlight of the day was
the 
hike to the waterfall where we jumped from a high rocky ledge into a deep pool of truly refreshing water (which is hard to find in this country, it's always warm). Swimming around the caves and waterfalls and deep pools among the rocks was a blast. The entrance to the cave was canopied by a mass of spider webs overhead, filled with large spiders like guards to a secret hideaway. There was also a big lizard and an amazing translucent spider the size of a cd, looked like a jellyfish morphed into an arachnid. The last hour home was fast as we sped down the highway and when we got into the city, swerving and weaving through rush hour traffic was
fun like a video
game. Our last beach day was a lazy one. We had a leisurely breakfast with a special egg in tomato sauce dish with fresh french bread and unlimited coffee (good coffee). We rented bikes from our hotel and cruised down the coast highway to the harbor where we hired a boat to take us out to explore the islands. First stop was the aquarium where we saw various sharks, eels, sea turtles, and dozens of species of tropical fish. When we first entered, we passed the ticket booth and it was quiet and dark ( I had a feeling someone was sleeping in there), so we walked on into the place and got stopped by a ticket collector for not having tickets. He directed us back to buy tickets and we were intentionally noisy when we got there so as expected, a head popped up out of a hammock and a dazed face dealt us some tickets. Typical.
After the aquarium we walked down a trail across the island which was paved and lined with a wall. I thought it fun to walk on top of the wall and it was great until the disaster. A tree was in the way so I tried to prance around it but slipped and fell of the wall, somehow smashing both of my shins. The others thought I was doing a trick or a dance twirling off the wall but I was really in pain and a golf ball swelled up on one leg and was getting blood all over my shoe. When we reached the water on the other side of the island I washed it and asked the drink shack for some ice. The lady took her giant ice block and with her butcher knife hacked off a chunk for me which I tied aound my leg with my bandana Punky Brewster style. The beach was rocky and crowded so we walked back over the trail to our boat who took us out to sea again. The waves began to increase in size and intensity and while the sky was clear, the water was choppy and angry. There was confusion over the next stop as there was no place to dock so the captain suggested we swim ashore which we did not want to do because there was a traffic jam of not so small boats to swim through and high waves. We soon steamed back to Nha Trang but the boat trip was very nice and the view of the islands and fishing villages were quite scenic.
Later on, we attempted to take an evening strolll to see the town but ended up at the previous restaurant Lai Rai around the corner haning out with some of our moitorcycle guides. It turned into a late night and a jolly time was had as we ate fried fish with lemon grass in rice paper with fresh herbs and chili sauce and drank the local Saigon beer.
Morning came early as we got up for sunrise on the beach, took a swim, watched the middle-age women's aerobics class (five star entertainment value), napped on the beach until the sun got hot at 7 am, napped the rest of the morning in the hotel, ate egg sandwiches for breakfast, drank
bottomless coffee until our taxi showed up to haul us off to the airport down a gorgeous winding cliffside drive.1. The pictures are not in line with the text or in any logical order, but they sort of are. They are really hard to manipulate wysiwyg unless I spend a lot of time at it. Not worth it.
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