Chicken's Knees

Our first tourist stop in Shanghai was the Cloud Nine bar at the top of the JinMao tower. 87 floors up with a breathtaking view of Gotham City. It is a lounge/bar reminiscent of the W Hotel and The Standard. The Hyatt Hotel, where foreign executives, bankers and lawyers negotiate the privatization of Communist China, is a few floors below. Next to the men in suits and their fake-tanned fake-boobed wives sat our group of vagabond backpackers ordering 100 Yuan drinks ($1 = 8.25Y - just to contrast, we usually pay 5-10 Yuan for a 20 ounce beer). If we were in LA or NY, we never would have been allowed into such a swanky place in flip flops and capris. Especially when our greatest delight was discovering the cleanest bathrooms in China and taking turns paying homage to the porcelain god.

We then walked along The Bund, a promenade along the Huang Pu River, lined by old buildings that you would expect to see in Paris or London. Seagulls Restaurant provided us a river-side spot to grab a few beers and get a late dinner. Perusing the menu, the entry "roasted chicken without bone" sounded safe and fairly straightforward. That would be our choice.

When it arrived, however, it was not as we had imagined. It was little breaded chunks of crunchy stuff. We decided to send it back and had the most hilarious time attempting to explain to the waiter, in Chinese, that we thought we got a plate of chicken's knees. After futile attempts to remember the word for knees, our tour guide pulled out a paper and pen and drew a picture of a chicken and pointed to the knees and pointed to our dinner. Not sure if the waiter understood, but we got a good laugh out of it.

Today began in the antiques market, where we watched a dog having convulsions in the middle of one of the streets, gasping what were probably its last few breaths of air. We then went to the XiangYang market to pick up some new clothing since everything that has been worn to date is filthy. We then strolled along HuiHai Street, where all the foreign stores are. From Swarovski to Adidas to Coffee Bean, you could be in anywhere USA. Can you believe that Finesse shampoo was the most expensive of Herbal Essences, Vidal Sassoon and Pantene? That crap sells for $2-$3 at home.

Trey got his hair buzzed at a cool little salon -- for 30 Yuan he got a haircut, which comes with a head and neck massage. Pretty good deal. I stumbled upon the book street, wandering through various bookstores in search of English-language books. The Chinese equivalent of Barnes & Noble is 8 floors high and was packed. The target of my search, the foreign language bookstore, was not too far away and had some pretty good deals. All the classics of American literature were 10-30 Yuan, although Charles Dickens has never appealed to me. I brought 6 books with me for this trip and I am on the 5th one already. I restocked with 3 more books for tomorrow's 26-hour train ride to GuiLin.

Today I crossed the China tolerance threshhold. Imagine being in NY, but with 5x as many people, and you will then only begin to imagine Chinese cities. It has been quite an adjustment to the crowds, the noise, people pushing to get to the front of lines and the traffic that goes in all directions at once and somehow works. It was truly wearing me out. "Boo-ya" means I am not interested and speaking a few Chinese phrases keeps the peddlers from hounding you to death. The coffee/tea houses are peaceful hideaways and are some of the few places you can find black tea. We're off to a Brazilian BBQ steakhouse for dinner tonight. This is our last night in city life until we get to Hong Kong in another 8-9 days. I am looking forward to the peace and tranquility of the countryside.