STO: EXPLOring Shanghai

On Monday July 5th, I put a couple of shirts and shorts into my backpack and headed to the subway to take the airport express en route to Shanghai's Hongqiao Airport. The airport express costs 25 kuai, as opposed to the 2 kuai for every other possible subway transit throughout the municipality, and seems to be an almost perfect copy of its Hong Kong counterpart. I looked on the map beforehand and saw that it first went to Terminal 1, then looped back to Terminal 2 which was my destination. However, I had a great scare when after not alighting the train at its Terminal 1 stop, the train retraced its steps and reversed back through the tunnel we had just come. It turns out that the terminals are a full 15 minutes apart but I had no idea and was worried we were going back to Beijing, a 25 minute journey that would have surely caused me to miss my flight. Luckily I did end up at my terminal and made it to the gate with no further adventures, although I was asked to correct an airport menu's English translation along the way.

So my dad works in Shanghai and my visit was to see him and go to the Expo with him. Hongqiao is conveniently located on the same subway line as my dad's apartment, a lot closer than the larger Pudong airport. The next morning would be an early wakeup because though the Expo didn't open until 9, this was China, and crowds would be lined up way before that. Want some fun facts about the Expo? Of course, that's wh

at I'm here for. The World Expo started in 1851 in London and has since run more or less continuously ever few years. Nowadays large internationally recognized exhibitions are held approximately every 5 years, with other lesser exhibitions occurring randomly in between, with another big expo in Milan in 2015. Anyways there's one in Shanghai in 2010 with 192 countries participating. Shanghai actually spent more money preparing for the Expo than Beijing spent preparing for the 2008 Olympics, clearing out a ton of space right in the city on both sides of the Huangpu River and drastically expanding the subway. There's no real American equivalent to this kind of large scale public urban

redevelopment.

Like I said, crowds are big in China. The photo on the left gives a kind of idea of the wait when I arrived at 8:15am, at just one of several entrances to the Expo. All in all though it was pretty well organized and once doors opened at 9am, the lines moved relatively fast. In a culture that doesn't do lines, that's actually saying a fair amount. So we got in probably around 9:30 and went straight for the Chinese pavilion. The pavilions are actually somewhat located based on geography, with different continents in different areas. The planners used this as an excuse to have the PRC pavilion tower over the neighboring Hong Kong and Macau buildings and across the street (or straits) from Taiwan's smaller pavilion. Anyways the line at the Chinese pavilion was already absurd and I decided that rather than wait something like 6 hours for that one place, we'd go see some other attractions that'd have much shorter waits. I had been properly informed about how long some waits would be and how disappointing the inside of pavilions could be. Still I was stunned to see that all the cool pavilions I had heard about - Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia to name a few - had hideously long waits. Here's a picture of the Saudi Arabia pavilion, which does indeed have palm trees on its roof and had a line that stretched for as long as 8 hours. Ridiculous.

So I went and saw places like India, Iran, Timor-Leste, North Korea, Mongolia before heading over to Europe and getting lunch at the French pavilion. Pavilions with restaurants gave you the opportunity to cut the lines if you were willing to eat their food - and pay their bloated prices.

So yeah we walked around and saw the outsides of all the pavilions were seeing, and the insides of many of the pavilions not worth seeing. None of the exhibits were particularly memorable or even educational. My dad stated that the World Expo was an outdated concept, a relic of a world in which international communication and cultural diffusion was much rarer. Then the Expo was a special event with much cultural and technological sharing. I'm not sure what the real purpose of the Expo is now, as I doubt it really generates revenue. Unlike the Olympics, the crowds at the Expo was not particularly international. While Shanghai has reported a 12% increase in tourists this year, I'd be willing to bet that most of those tourists are domestic. Few people would travel international to Shanghai just to see the Expo, but a lot of people might take trains to see what the whole deal is. And it certainly is a spectacle worth checking out if you were say, spending a summer in Beijing.

The rest of my few days there were spent eating good food with my dad (great Japanese food and Xiao Long bao) and seeing the few friends that I had in Shanghai. There were no sketchy cougar bar adventures this time, only good street shopping and long discussions about the differences between Beijing and Shanghai.

STO: Chinese Exhaust

It's been a tiring past couple of weeks. I'm not being a very diligent blogger this summer and so I have to try to cover a lot of time at once. But some events stick out more memorably than others, none more so than 4th of July weekend.

The 2nd of July was a Friday that coincided with the arrival to Beijing of Georgetown Ultimate captain Tim Huether, who was in town on vacation for a couple of days. Tim is a tall white guy who has never studied Chinese and thus provided a break from the people I normally hang out with, a.k.a. shorter Asian girls and awkwardly sized white guys who speak better Mandarin than me. We manage to arrange to meet up at Paddy O'Sheas, the premier Irish pub in Beijing, to watch the Brazil-Netherlands world cup game that night. I was having dinner near BeiDa with Vivian at the time. We decide to share a cab which would drop her off in Wudaokou to hang with other friends, and take me to Paddy's.

We reach the vicinity Wudaokou with no trouble, but on this Friday night, Wudaokou was inexplicably epically congested with traffic. We were probably stuck at the same light for 20 minutes. Finally Vivian goes out and walks. Alone, I try to strike up a conversation with the taxi driver. He gives very grunt, noncommittal answers to my queries, and I finally get the feeling that he is very frustrated, understandably so, by the traffic. To our right is a bus lane, extra wide so that buses can pull over and pass each other. The lane dies though and I saw a sedan trying to merge into our lane, between a bus and our taxi. He and my taxi driver clearly are aware of each other, but nonetheless unwaveringly proceed at a crash course for each other, only they proceed at the snail's pace allowed by our traffic. I am fully aware of the inevitability of a collision and sit there just stunned that these people are being so stubborn. So the contact comes, and yet they still both push forward together, essentially wedging the sedan. Finally the cars can go no further and they stop. Utter silence ensues for 10 seconds. The sedan driver breaks the standoff, asking my driver "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" My driver responds with something along the lines of "You started it. I have the right of way. You're just being stubborn." The next few exchanges were full of explitives. I don't even know that many Chinese swears but I understood these and I was scared. The driver gets out and assessses the damage, calling his taxi company. This whole time these guys act as if completely oblivious to the fact that they're clogging two lanes including a freaking bus. Now other people, including people on the bus, start yelling and the sedan driver backs up to make way for the bus. I give up hope that this driver will take me to Paddy O'Sheas and try to him, but he graciously refused payment. I don't fully understand the dynamics here, but I have a theory that the taxi company will compensate him for this accident more than a few hours of working would. Perhaps he deliberately got into the crash. More likely though, it was a case of road rage where there were no winners.

Surveying the crowded Wudaokou scene, I made the regrettable decision to jump on the subway towards Xizhimen, with the idea of getting away from the traffic and finding a cheaper cab ride. I was quite frustrated at this point though and definitely felt rushed while waiting 10 minutes for the subway. By the time I got to Xizhimen, the game was well underway. Running out of the station, I saw a cab letting off a passenger from across the street. I sprint to it and immediately run into a thick metal wire that was being used to lock a bike. Doubling over in pain as my shin started to bleed, I was effectively disabled for 10 seconds. By the time I looked back up, the taxi had disappeared. I subsequently spent the next 20 minutes looking for another cab to hail and utterly failed. If I went too far down the road, people would jump ahead of me and cut me off. If I went up the road, full taxis would pass me by before dropping their passengers off right where I had just come from. Finally I aggressively beat a girl to a taxi and was so frustrated I didn't even feel bad about it. I tell the driver to take me to Sanlitun and he doesn't quite understand where I want to go, which is odd cause everybody knows Sanlitun. Then he tells me that he's going the wrong way and can't take me. I sit back stunned. Taxi drivers in Beijing don't like to turn around, but there was a wide intersection right up ahead where he could U-turn. Besides, we were actually facing south, the right direction, although he wanted to go a bit north to catch the ring road. So I yell at him that I've been looking for a cab for the last half hour, that I'm really late for my meeting, and that I'll pay him double. Amazingly he remains obstinate. I plead for about 5 minutes before giving up and swearing at him in English. Leaving the cab, locals were waiting right outside to jump in, like vultures waiting for a prey to die.

It takes me another 10 minutes to catch a cab on the other side of the street, and luckily this driver knew where I wanted to go. The only problem was I didn't really know where I wanted to go because Paddy's is located right before the entrance to Sanlitun. I spot it a tad late and tell my driver to pull to the right. He has to cross two lanes to make this happen and I nearly experienced my second car crash of the night. I finally make it to Paddy's and meet up with Tim and his friend Eric. We witnessed the feisty Dutch team come back from 1-0 to beat Brazil and met up with fellow Georgetown Ultimate player Danny Mahoney. We then went bar hopping in Sanlitun, which I had not done since an epic night 2 summers ago, and gave Tim a very thorough view of nightlife in Beijing. We ended up at this hidden Belgian Beer bar / pizza joint called the Tree before I packed it in near 3am. The thing was that I had work the next day, a makeup day since I would be going to Shanghai later in the week. Stephanie had laughed when I said I'd try to be there by 9:30am and she proved prophetic, as I slept through alarms and woke up at 11am, feeling pain in both my head and my shin. All in all it was a rather embarrassing ordeal.

After getting off work though, I took just quick nap and a ramen dinner before meeting up with my friend Wendy at, of all places, the Tree. Vivian and Joan were also coming to Sanlitun in order to watch the heavily hyped Germany-Argentina match. My cab driver was very friendly this time and we had a good discussion, although I was confused when he asked me if I was going to see Zhou Jielun. I didn't recognize the name and thought he was telling me about what kind of Chinese music I listened to, which was next to none. I told him that I knew a little about Cantopop and the 四大天王。 Wendy was with her program friends which included Emily Haskel, whom I had met through Joan at a hotpot dinner. The Tree had no TV so we left for the Saddle Cantina, where Vivian and Joan awaited. I had forgotten that Joan and Emily knew each other (same elementary school) so when they ran into each other at Saddle, things got a little crazy. The Cantina, located in a sizable compound with a courtyard, was packed, courtyard included. Standing room was hard to find. All in all there may have been 200+ people, an even split between locals and expats, watching that game. It might have been the largest crowd with which I've ever watched a game on TV. Filipino-American friend Beatriz was also there and she made friends with the Filipino manager. This friendship procured her a few drinks, but evidently she also bought a few herself and showed all the symptoms.

Unfortunately Argentina got their butt kicked. We went off to Latte, a club past Mix and Vic's and the Worker's Stadium. Incidentally the Worker's Stadium was lit that night and Vivian told me that Jay Chou was performing there that night. Suddenly I remembered my taxi driver and realized that he was referring to the Taiwanese superstar Jay Chou. This belated understanding.... well I thought it was cool. Anyways Vivian, Joan and Beatriz, who collectively look quite Asian and were well-dressed, went into Latte first. I was part of a later group that was both more White and less well-dressed. The club had security like an airport and when we all went in, they actually ushered us aside. We argue our case when it becomes apparent that they do not intend to let us in. One girl berates the security people in Chinese, accusing them of being racist - I humorously stayed out of this encounter, but did also argue my case saying that "my wife was inside." For some reasons my comments were ignored. At one point some people in our group simply ran past the bouncers, and I later politely requested to go in and they finally relented.

That encounter took place in the wee hours of July 4th. The next day, Vivian had organized for 40 people associated with Global China Connection to go to an outdoor event thrown by the American Chamber of Commerce. The event was in prime real estate and had good food and atmosphere. The whole event felt like it was in the US. However the weather was brutally hot, right around 100 degrees, all of which we spent outside. We hung around long enough to hear the band play, walk inside an art gallery and paint some pandas before Vivian, Joan, Beatriz and I cabbed it out to San Li Tun - which if you're counting at home, was the 3rd time in 3 days I ventured to that famous street. I believe we ventured from a Starbucks to a bar to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner. While everyone was bemoaning the heat and our collective exhaustion, I ordered one of the best drinks ever, a Vietnamese coffee. I rarely go to a Vietnamese restaurant without getting their condensed milk iced coffee. Halfway through the drink, as everyone else was making plans to cab it home right after dinner (6pm) I declared that I was going to stay out. The girls looked at me as if I was crazy but granted me autonomy.

I texted all of my friends to see what they were up to. Amy said she was coming to Sanlitun to have dinner in an hour. So I bummed around Sanlitun Village, which is quite a hip place. I took photos of my panda in cool places and walked into expensive clothing stores and feigned interest. Dinner with Amy and her friends was fun although I didn't eat because I didn't feel the need for a second dinner, even on July 4th. Afterwards we went out to this large Jabulani soccer ball that Adidas had erected and I asked a random Chinese passerby to take a group picture of us. After she finished, she asked Amy in English if she went to HKIS. Stunned, she said yes, and we learned that this random passerby's nephew also went there and she somehow recognized Amy. This would be the first of many small world moments I would encounter in the coming weeks, but wow, what are the odds of that?

Then I walked 15 minutes to the subway, took it to Tiananmen Square, and walked around for over half an hour before I got ahold of Tim and made it to his hotel. We got some beers and discussed July 4th, China, Russia and bros before parting ways after 1am. All said and done, I undoubtedly spent more waking moments in Sanlitun than at home that weekend. The next day would not offer much rest as I flew to Shanghai....

SPO: The LeBronathon

LeBron James is going to the Miami Heat. See that wasn't so hard, it didn't take an ESPN special to type. His highly publicized and closely scrutinized decision went along the lines of my earlier explanations although with less emphasis on global stage and more emphasis on basketball, glamor, and friends. I still thought that LeBron might choose one of the New York markets but it became clear that this whole free agency choice thing was really a ploy. There is no doubt that this whole LeBron, Dwyane, Bosh convergence has been talked about since the 2008 Summer Olympics within a few miles from where I currently sit. While they certainly hadn't settled things then and probably didn't even agree to a specific team, when it became clear that the Heat and only the Heat would be able to sign all 3 free agents I think the decision was locked in place. In my opinion, this whole week of pandering and visiting various teams and pretend anguish makes these guys, but especially LeBron, look very bad. The one hour television show was particularly absurd, and while I didn't watch it over here, it didn't seem like a very interesting watch.

LeBron could have gone to Chicago and arguably had a better chance to win a championship, and one that would be more rightly his. The difference between Chicago and Miami is that Chicago is cold, South Beach is a blast for a 25 year old multimillionaire bachelor, and the talent on the Bulls roster wasn't his good pals. Will this move pay off? Maybe, because those 3 are locked in Miami together for at least 4 years and probably at least 6. In that time they could become a dynasty for the ages. I honestly do believe they will succeed, and while I do see first year struggles with their current nonexistent supporting cast, I wouldn't rule out a championship this year. LeBron may have proven to be narcissistic and selfish as a human being, but he is surprisingly not like that as a basketball player.

If people didn't believe my theory that "LeBron is from Akron, not Cleveland," how else do you explain his television announcement? Cleveland was destroyed by the decision, and the high publicity instantaneous transmission of that decision made the rest of the country keenly aware of Cleveland's reaction. The best Facebook status quote that I've seen came yesterday from my friend Joelle Thomas: "It is raining in Cleveland today. The city is crying." I'm in the camp that LeBron didn't intentionally stick this knife in that city's back - he simply didn't realize the dynamics of this town from which he grew up 40 miles away and played 7 years in. Unbelievable.

I think the Heat are going to be fun to watch and very good, but I'm rooting quite hard against them. I hope they lose to the Cavaliers, the Celtics, the Knicks and even the Lakers. I hope the 3 superstars fight and squabble and embarrass themselves. It probably won't happen though.

I'm exhausted off the heels of 4th of July weekend and a 2 day excursion to Shanghai. There are tales to tell and shots to show, but like always I want to humor myself and talk about a couple things. First, if you haven't heard about Paul the Octopus, google him immediately. The octopus, who lives in a German zoo, correctly predicted every single game Germany participated in this World Cup, culminating with choosing Spain to knock them out. So he went 6 for 6, a 1/64 chance if we assume that this octopus is just guessing (or 1/8 if we assume each leg is just guessing). But he also went 5 for 6 in Euro 2008, so basically what we should do is give this guy a couple of NBA teams and whoever he chooses is where LeBron James is going to go. We don't even need this 1 hour ESPN special tomorrow.

Also a humorous story I never informed this blog occurred in my initial flight to China, from IAD to PEK. My dad and I sat exit row, directly across from a male flight attendant whom I ascertained to be Chinese-American. I later heard him walking down the aisle alternating between English and Chinese. Eventually at the end of the flight we talk to him and learn that he was from Hawaii with a mixed but mostly Chinese background but only learned Mandarin in high school, college, and a few years in Beijing. He asks about us too, and as we land at the airport, my dad tells him that I just graduated from Georgetown. Our flight attendant cracks up and unexpectedly says, "I graduated from Georgetown too." Yep, SFS '91 or something. And he says "look at me now working on a plane." Not that I'm judging, he gets free flights almost whenever he wants it. We had a good bonding moment over that.

Another random thing I've been thinking about ever since my trip to the Lugou Bridge is about the best bridges in the world. Bridges are important especially in ancient times, where large rivers were hard to cross and stable bridges were hard to build. There have probably been more bridges destroyed than currently exist. Bridge is also such a strong English verb, a core strength exercise and a card game! With that, in rough order of how much I like them, I think the best bridges I have been to: Charles Bridge in Prague, Tower Bridge in London (way better than the more famous London Bridge), the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, the Zakim Bridge in Boston, the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, the aforementioned Lugou Bridge (Marco Polo Bridge), the Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong and O'Connoll Bridge in Dublin. I did some research and apparently I've been to the Sydney Harbour Bridge which is pretty awesome but don't remember it. Other bridges I want to see include the Magdeburg Water Bridge in Germany, the Oresund Link between Denmark and Sweden, the Octavio Frias de Oliveira Bridge in Sao Paulo, and the Kintai Bridge in Japan.