FROM SHANGHAI TO LONDON BY TRAIN: China: Shanghai

When I opened the curtains in the morning, I peered across a sea of small old tiled buildings and looking down at a somewhat generic ‘Asian’ scene. Bicycles loaded high-up with boxes and food, animals and cages, beggars, rich people, and many street vendors. We needed a cheaper place to stay so we set out across Nanching Road, the main strip in Shanghai.
“You want watch, DVD… very cheap for you… hello, where do you come from?” were blurted to us by men and woman, and more obscurely: “you wanna come to art exhibition?” which we later discovered was a genuine invitation just with a not-so-genuine entry-fee. Everybody had someway of squeezing money from us so every ‘hello’ from a Chinese person was met with well-founded suspicion.
We found a tourist information centre and on entry, discovered three young people, about our age, all eating lunch. Nobody attempted to acknowledge our presence (even though we were clearly the only customers) so we approached the guy who was concentrating hard on his noodles and asked what places we could stay in tonight. He replied after a second’s pause:
“No. No places.”
I persisted,
“you mean there’s nowhere in Shanghai we can stay?”
“Yes, nowhere, sorry.”
He seemed eager to return to his noodles. They did point-out an internet café so we went there and after five minutes of checking out passports and visa, settled to check our mail and to find details of places to stay in Shanghai. An email from Aki sent me spinning again… that chin… that cute cute chin which I’ll probably never see again… just unbearable horrible heart-ache. Those tears, those hard sad sobs. I cried in the dark computer room, wondering when this pain would stop. Thank-god we’re always on the move, I thought. It would be too much to stay in one place and just think… think…hope… of Aki… and Maki.
Lunch was a KFC meal, with a cup of hot orange juice, a first for me. We moved to the next place we’d be staying in, a large YHA hostel known as “Captain’s Hostel”. We had a dorm room with about eight other beds and Chris was a bit annoyed as he’d been placed right by the door, which didn’t have one of those heavy-duty-slow-down things on the top. We set out for a walk across “The Bund”, a famous walk-way by the river, decorated with street vendors every ten metres or so, selling watermelon and pineapple on sticks, river tours, drinks and various types of meat, cooked over small charcoal fires. Across the river was the somewhat hazy sky-scraper district with many oddly-shaped buildings, in particular a huge globe in the middle of four vertical columns which reduced to a large TV aerial at the very top. It was kind of red and dirty gold coloured but the constant Shanghai mist made it hard for any vividness.
We wandered into the more authentic backstreets, past a group of men who were flying extremely high fish-shaped kites across one of Shanghai’s main roads, and into an entirely different world. Everything was to do with food: people were either carrying it, cooking it, maintaining it (there were many washing up bowls filled with fish with hoses running water in a constant flow) or eating it. It seemed to be rush hour now as people dodged between endless ancient bicycles and mopeds and electric bikes. We passed hundreds of vague shops, at the back of houses, repair shops, fish, fruit, vegetables, books, many textile shops and more strangely, places with young women in them who would open the door and call “hello” as we walked past.
It was a chaotic free-for-all when it came to roads, although there did seem to be some vague adherence to the many traffic lights. In complete contrast to Japan, nobody waited for the little green man apart from when there were traffic wardens, armed with whistles, who blew and pointed at cars that didn’t follow the lights with such an intensity, you’d have though the drivers had just personally insulted the warden’s mother.

That night, we met a friend of Chris’ from long ago, a guy called Kiren who now lived in Shanghai as an English teacher. Chris hadn’t seen him for about four years and didn’t know what to expect but he turned out to be the nicest guy you could ever hope to meet. He clearly loved living in China, and having been here only six months, was able to confidently converse with the locals. He even seemed to enjoy chatting to the beggars and dodgy salesmen. Over dinner in a pretty nice place, he told us that he always had opportunities to practise, what with people always approaching you. After dinner and wan coconut juice, he walked us around the city centre and pointed out some sights, at one point referencing a huge concert hall that was the first building in history to be literally picked-up and moved to a new location, apparently because it had been built too close to a busy road and the noise from the traffic could be heard during performances. We passed many beggars with abnormalities such as a missing arms or burnt withered hands, and these people all had themselves in clear display. Although not warm, one guy with no hand or arm was kneeling in the subway with no top. These types of beggars were everywhere and it really made me think how sad a total lack of a welfare-system can be. Shanghai’s metro closes quite early so Kiren had to get back after pointing out a shorter way for us to get back to out hostel with a weak nautical theme.
The next day we had to decide when we’d move on to Nanjing, so we took a metro to the north railway station and discussed in a Starbucks what we should do. I disliked being in a Starbucks for the usual reasons but also because I was paying international prices once again for a local product, some black tea. We settled on leaving the next day and started queuing in the one counter out of twenty that said “English speaking”. The amount of people pushing-in was no=where near what I’d expected and we managed to get out “hard-seat” tickets (hard being second-class, soft being first) after dealing with a rather blunt severe ticket woman.
We decided to walk back to the hostel via the main market area which sold a huge amount of crap touristy crap but also a lot of intriguing food. I kept seeing people eating what looked like a deep-fried bat on a stick and after some serious consideration, bought one myself for a closer look. It was some type of bird. It’s head was sagging downwards, as if ashamed. I couldn’t quite deal with this little beaked face, so I plucked it off and enjoyed the rest of the remarkably meaty and tasty bird. Then we practised haggling, which is expected almost everywhere in China. Chris wanted a wind-up Chairman Mao watch with a flicking arm that waved every second. He got the initial price of ¥120 down to ¥20 within a minute. All you need to do it seems, is to offer a low price and then slowly walk away until they rapidly reduce the price to your original offer.
“¥120? No no no… ¥80… last price ¥70… wait… last price ¥60… last price ¥20” was about how it went.
We took a quieter road by the river to get back to the hostel and found one of Shanghai’s many out-door gym areas for public use. We attempted to use the various pieces of equipment but a few totally perplexed us, until an old man wandered over to us and demonstrated how to use them and what parts of the body they were supposed to help, while speaking Chinese. Somewhat more confused than when we arrived, we continued onwards and once we arrived, I got chatting with two Japanese guys in our dorm, who were traveling as a celebration of their university graduation. Having quickly used up my entire Japanese vocabulary within minutes, I was happy when a Chinese guy came back to the dorm, who called himself Davy, and spoke English and Japanese. He told us that he lived in Japan and had a very good friend there (surely his boyfriend) and was back in China because of a new job opportunity that wasn’t turning out to be much fun, so he was in a hostel as he didn’t want to commit to being in an apartment. I asked him to take us to a good cheap restaurant, so the five of us found ourselves in a busy basic place just around the corner. The prices on display were very low but when we were handed an English menu, everything looked more expensive. Davy confirmed this and asked the waitress why. She responded it was because the food is cooked a little differently for foreigners, total nonsense of course. It was just another chance to con us. So after some seemingly high-tension dialogue between Davy and the waitress, she agreed to charge us the same. On the way back, we bought a few bottles of “Tsingtao”, which comes in large green bottles but is 3% alcohol, and drunk them back in the hostel, not wanting to go to the hostel’s bar to pay ¥35 per Tsingtao, as opposed to the ¥3 they cost from a convenience store. We got Davy a sweet fruity drink for a sweet fruity guy, to thank him for showing us the restaurant.
As I closed my eyes that night, and the French singing Spanish guitar player had finally sand the last of his many encores just outside our room, I thought of the two people who had been floating around my head with equal intensity: Aki and Maki. Funny how similar those names are but what such opposites they are as people. I was too tired to cry once again when I thought of Aki’s heart-breaking sobbing, but still alert enough to get yet another pang of heart-ache, guilt and love for her. I believe I’ve seen the saddest sight in the world, but I’m the only one who’ll believe that.

We woke at about 8.30 which seemed to be the norm on this trip and after collecting our things together and saying goodbye to the Japanese guys, got the metro to the railway station. The Shanghai metro has people selling all sorts of rubbish in the subways and a unique feature is the to-the-second count-down that the information screen gives until the next train. It would have been more impressive if it didn’t keep jumping back up a few seconds,
“20-19-18-17-16-35-34-33-32-37-36-35…” until the train arrived, which seemed to somewhat undermine the whole automated point of it.
Once we arrived, we needed to find the right platform but in actuality, we needed to find the right waiting-room, a huge room filled with people of all kinds, many watching the huge TV screen at the front which was playing an English premier league game. British football and snooker are very popular in China. After some announcement was made, everybody reacted in a way which suggested a delay. This was confirmed to us a few seconds later by a sweet young Chinese girl who spoke good English and explained the train will be fifteen minutes late.
“Wow, you speak great English! Did you live abroad?”
“No, I just like to study English.”
“Did you learn English at school then?”
“Not really. We just studied grammar and reading. I learn with movies and English TV.”
I’d managed to lose Chris in the crowd and she guided me to the right platform. I was a little surprised by the newness and softness of the ‘hard’ seats and was relieved to find Chris next to me, although someone was already sitting in my seat. I showed my ticket and he loved although the guy next to me was clearly unaware of my existence and leaned over me and stretched his legs apart as if I wasn’t there. There was a woman coming through the carriages with hot water for people’s flasks of tea, and occasionally a tray of snacks or drinks was on sale. Half-way through the journey, the Chinese girl from the waiting room appeared and told us what a beautiful place her home-town was , and much better than Nanjing, our destination. She seemed a little disappointed when I said we couldn’t go, much as we’d love to see her town. The watery landscape passed and I asked someone when our stop was. We arrived in Nanjing without incident.