Kinda reminds me of japan

Or, perhaps more accurately, “How to lie to the Chinese.”

Today’s just going to be some random highlights from the Shanghai trip, because I don’t really have time to cover the whole thing and this gives me an excuse to be lazy with regard to fluidity. In return you get a bunch of little anecdotes as opposed to the standard long-form craziness. Everybody wins!

Day 2: Mike took us to People’s Square, which is a pretty standard Wangfujing-esque street ‘o’ chaos. Notable for: its pretty substantial, utterly nonsensical, almost certainly dangerous vehicle traffic; having at least three pizza huts within one mile of one another; the HJ building (Connor and Mike have very dirty minds. Plus we’d just been talking about how KTVs — usually karaoke bars — in China are occasionally “all inclusive,” if you understand); and the fact that it dead ends into the Bund.

The Bund basically consists of another mile-long stretch of buildings that some brits set up in the early 20th century. It’s one of the biggest attractions in Shanghai because it’s so damn pretty, plus it runs along the bank of the Huangpu river and consequently has an incredible view of the city skyline.

Moreover, the Bund area features a way to cross the Huangpu river called the Sightseeing Tunnel. This was the sum total of my knowledge about the thing until it was time to get on, at which point Mike asked “you remembered to take your hit of acid first, right?” God, I wish I had. Turns out the Sightseeing Tunnel is an experiment in “Personal Rapid Transit.” All well and good, except that after they load you into the little gondola-sized subway, they play techno music and flash lots and lots of lights at you and drive you past a bunch of creepy wind-flail dolls and say random shit like “Nascent Magma” and “Paradise…and Hell” in creepy English and Chinese and basically it is terrifying and ought to be avoided. Whew.

P.S., the other side of the river is also really pretty.

I like the contrast here, actually

Day 3: Started with a temple nestled quaintly under a bunch of skyscrapers, because this is China, dammit. Zoning laws are for scrubs.

After that, though, I had my first practice with lying to people in China. We were attempting to go up this building (the one that looks like a bottle opener) because it’s the tallest one in Shanghai, and is actually the tallest observation deck in the world, which is kinda cool. After our first three lines (as evidenced by the expo, the Chinese love their lines), we were able to actually buy a ticket, at which point we realized there was a student discount. For kids seventeen or under. Which would be a problem, had my Qinghua ID not been misprinted to say I was born in 1900…
Long story short, the people at the desk were presented with a six foot tall kid with like 4 days worth of scruffy beard presenting a Chinese college ID that says he’s 110, insisting in Chinese that he is seventeen years old and fervently denying that he has any other forms of identification on his person. They were, understandably, kinda at a loss for thirty or so seconds, after which the people behind me started complaining and they gave me the discount. This was a good warm up for later that night.

"...it's like a riot on an airplane"

Anyway after I believe five lines we actually made it up the damn thing, at which point Connor became really uncomfortable at the combined height and ever-churning chaos of Chinese dudes running around and yelling a lot, which is pretty standard. If you’re curious, this is what Shanghai looks like at night from the tallest observation deck on Earth. And here it is from over a urinal. Coolest pee I’ve had in a while.

Ok last story for the night, because this post is getting long: after the bottle opener building, we went back to the world expo. Unfortunately it was about 9.30 by this point, and the expo stops selling tickets at 8 and stops letting people in at all at 9. Of course, we only learn this after we buy tickets from a scalper (an expo parking lot attendant) who promises that the doors are open until ten. We buy his tickets, and go to a random exit of the fair to make sure we can get in. The guy tells us the actual entry times, which is disappointing. So we turn around, and have made it about twenty yards when I turn to Connor and say “F*** it, this is China, lets bribe them.” Mike freaks out a bit and retreats, which sucks because his Chinese is better than mine. Connor’s all for it, though, so we go up to the entry guards and I tell them how important the expo is to me (in chinese of course) and offer the two of them 200 kuai. Considering that it was $30 US, that’s not very much of a bribe. They refused the money, sadly, but they were happy enough with me for trying to take me to their buddies at the actual entrance. So he walks me over there, and the entrance people are like “hell no, doors closed forty five minutes ago.”
So I start lying.
A lot.
“I’m going back to Beijing tomorrow,” I say. “I promised my friends I’d take pictures, and the swindler (new vocab word!) who sold me the tickets said I could get in! I’m very sorry about this, but the expo is very important to me, and I’d like to see it just once” This stream of lies continues for maybe a minute, at which point they cave and go ask the police officer if it’d be ok to let us in.
The police officer is having none of it, at first. But then I start complimenting China, telling him how this expo is famous all over the world, and how important it is for the country and how much I want to show China off to my friends. He liked this. We got in. It was definitely the best Chinese I’ve ever used; Connor told me afterward that he’s never heard me that fluent before. I suspect this is because my real first language is deceit instead of English — when I was trying to lie to the officer, I was way more concerned about making the lie convincing than I was thinking about the actual Chinese, which just came automatically.

We rounded out the evening by getting some beer and Irish cream in the pub next to the Ireland pavilion — naturally the very last building on the grounds to close — and running around the Expo at night. A lot of the groundskeepers were actually really cool about letting us poke around their pavilions a little bit, so even though most things weren’t open the trip was definitely worthwhile.