Chris Hansen’s blog

Well, there were no disasters today. I woke up, looked at my toe and it has already improved. And, jumping ahead, this evening when I undressed it after walking and standing all day, it was still improving. So, fingers crossed this will continue.

We went out and took a taxi to the Metro. I haven’t mentioned much about the taxis here, I believe. They are ubiquitous, clean, and well kept. Unfortunately, I’ve not been in one yet that had a functioning rear seat belt. This makes me majorly nervous, as the traffic here is wild, wild, wild. People just walk in front of cars, they jaywalk with impunity, I’ve only seen one motorcylist wearing a helmet (and I will bet he was foreign), and running red lights is the norm. Anyway, we got to the Metro in one piece. We went on an elevated train one stop to Line 2, which is below ground, and took that to Nanjing Road East. There we met our friend Jane for a walk to the Bund for some pictures.

Now, I won’t be uploading pics from the camera for a while, so no pics here. However, I did take some down there. The buildings are all 1930’s or perhaps turn of the last century, and every last one has a Chinese flag on it. The tourists are bunched like flies to honey over there, so the touts are out in force. Every few yards, a guy or (more rarely) a girl will sidle up to you (if you look like a tourist) and mutter “Watches?” As a tourist, you throw them when you answer “Bu yao” which means “Don’t want.” They then go away convinced you speak enough Chinese to understand them. There were no touts for girls, boys, or massages, which somewhat surprised me.

We walked up the main drag until we got to an (ahem!) Pizza Hut, where Jane thought we should have lunch. This was, um, interesting. There was no diet soda, so I had to have a Kiwi Mango drink, which tasted neither of kiwi nor of mango. It must have come from Zaphod Beeblebrox’s spaceship “The Heart of Gold,” where the tea machine spat out something that was almost but not quite entirely unlike tea. The pizza was OK, but I long for a US pizza, with a thin crust, oodles of peppers and onions on it, and lots of tomato sauce and mozzarella. I shall have to learn to make one, I think. I banged my head on the ceiling as I walked upstairs to the toilets. Saw stars for a moment or two. The “Mind your head” sign is parallel to the staircase and only becomes obvious as you descend.

Then we taxied to an older part of town, where there were shops galone. I bought a finger painting in blue that I felt was absolutely stunning, a name chop (Chinese signet stamp), some socks for my poor feet, a Beijing 2008 neck chain (I wish they’d take it in 2012 as well), and HWMBO bought a panda to accompany the one I bought him in 2006. We saw a traffic accident at the end of the road we were walking on, and a fistfight broke out between a taxi driver and (we believe) his passenger. The passenger’s girlfriend tried to break up the fight, and didn’t succeed. I took some pictures. The crowd was growing, and turning ugly, before we taxied away to the restaurant.

The restaurant is very substantial, with lots of very heavy wooden tables laid out as if around a courtyard. There is a grand staircase up to the balcony, which will figure later. We ordered a lot of stuff (again, no diet soda, so I had to order a bottle of Evian with which to take my pills), including some brown sticks of solidified tofu, which tasted almost but not quite entirely unlike cheese, asparagus with black fungus (the fungus was chewy, but the asparagus was OK), some steamed pork belly which seemed quite fatty to me (so little of it was consumed by me), a whole braised spicy fishhead (of which I did not partake but which HWMBO demolished–these are huge, about the size of dinner plates), Szechuan chicken, which had more chili pods than chicken pieces (but tasted quite good–your mouth didn’t burn after eating it, it tingled), some chicken and mushroom soup that was fabulous, fried rice that is the closest I’ve ever had to fried rice in US Chinese restaurants (I gobbled it up), Szechuan spicy noodles which were good, sweet potato puffs and a corn bun, which were also both good.

Then, at 7:40, the performance began. A man in costume jumped out on the balcony and began to caper about, robes and fan swinging in the air as he jumped. Wonderful; I got some pics which will, unfortunately, have to wait. Then he came around the balcony and descended the staircase. I posed with him as HWMBO was in the background and Choo Beng took a picture. That one came out really well.

Back to the balcony for some fire-eating. It was really great; got one picture which probably will need lots of Photoshop before it’s presentable.

Now in London, you’d probably pay 25 pounds a head for something like this, maybe more. We paid 295 renminbi, which is approximately 20 pounds. For the entire meal plus performance.

Then home to unpack our goodies, watch a Chinese version of Pop Idol (good looking boys), and make this entry, and thus to bed.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2007 at 02:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.