We had an early morning appointment with the leader of Kaifeng’s society of Jews. Our tour bus pushed its way through clogged alley ways and dropped us off at a road that was too small for cars. We all crammed in her doorway as she told us her story in Chinese and broken English. Our program director was turned onto the idea of going to Kaifeng because Kevin, my roommate from last semester, had done research on this woman and the rest of the Jewish people in the city. Most of the descendants in Kaifeng trace their roots back to a lost Persian tribe who showed up in China around the year 1000. A small portion of the Jewish population came from Russian Jews during WWII and stuck around after the war. Racially speaking, the Kaifeng Jews resemble Han Chinese but of course do not have the same cultural traits. They are a small group of believers in Kaifeng, they do not have a rabbi but they are able to sing some of the prayers in Hebrew they learned from travelers that have passed through the area over the years. In any case, the Kaifeng Jews area passionate bunch. The woman who led the tour gave a story about how she once tried to become an Israeli citizen but failed. Although they would allow her to convert to Judaism and repatriate she has refused because she claims that she was born a Jew and has no need to convert to a religion that she has already been born into.
We walked through the streets, passed a mosque and a church. It seemed that the lifestyle on the streets we walked on had not changed for 1000s of years, regardless of innovation. Old men sat on their chairs, smoking their long tobacco pipes, simply watching foot traffic. There were skinned rabbits hanging in the air and people selling giant baozi. Everyone seemed to live in a small two-story wooden apartment building with little court yards in front.
We passed through a mosque and then onto a catholic church. The mosque was very old and built in a traditional Chinese architecture style, meaning it had curved slate roofs and the paint scheme was delicately created. It didn’t resemble any conventional mosque I had ever seen in Africa or Europe. The church however was what one would expect from a church. It had high columns and it looked similar to what one could find in the west. All the Catholics in my program sat and prayed for a few minutes and then we were off.
After eating “kosher dumplings” we walked through a historic museum of sorts. I couldn’t quite tell if the buildings were remakes or they had just been left in perfect condition since the last flooding of the city some 500 years ago. The most interesting thing that I saw was a miniature rendition of what the streets of Kaifeng were supposed to look like 1000 years ago. There was almost no change to the present day except for the fact that in the 21st century cars roamed the streets. Every street in Kaifeng might be the same as it was 1000 years ago in China. And that is why this city blew me away.
Our next stop before the train ride home was at another historic park of the iron pagoda. I walked around the premise for a little while but I had no interest in waiting in line to get to the top of the monument, especially when there were only two windows in the whole thing. Instead I kept exploring and found a man made pond. It was big enough to cater to a steady amount of fishermen. One guy had a troop of body guards around him as he threw a few lines in. I walked past their militant stares and ended up at the historic city wall. There at the edge of all things Kaifeng, there were no people.
At the train station we waited for a good hour for a late train to show up. Although the train back to Shanghai took seven hours it was a great time to pass with friends. We drank beers and played cards mostly. The train, which is the same design as the Swedish X2000, was brand new and very comfortable.
Back in Shanghai, it was clear by the steel and neon that I was back in the 21st century.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Kaifeng and my birthday
4.14-16.11
I was a little bummed because Yuri was gone in Hong Kong with her study trip during my birthday but my buddies were hell-bent on celebrating the event. The night before we went to my favorite bar, club DaDa, for Motown music night. In the morning I had class and then I met up with the rest of my group to go to Kaifeng on our weekend study trip.
The forty-odd number of were booked on a hard bunk sleeper for twelve hours to the ancient city. Getting on the train we were greeted with the raw stench of a cooped up a travelers and an unclean toilet. The beds weren’t too hard anyway.
Any feelings of discomfort were soon forgotten. My compartment filled up with people and we started drinking the cocktails we smuggled in our rucksacks. When it comes to a competition of who can be more obnoxious, Chinese migrants or rowdy Americans, the college students win. I had a lot of fun. Spending my birthday on a train was just what how I wanted to celebrate!
In the early morning we arrived in Kaifeng. It was a real funny feeling stepping out into the train station at 7 in the morning; it was like I had stepped back into time, 10-20 years—maybe one or two thousand years. Kaifeng was something else. Everything was communist era buildings. The traffic plaza in front of the train station was clogged with wandering rickshaws, tricycles, bicycles, busses, human feet and cars. The town was not sleepy in the morning; it had been used to such a wake up routine for thousands of years.
We checked into our five star hotel and had a huge breakfast. When we were about to leave, people acted kind of weird, like there was something they weren’t telling me. Then out of nowhere, Michelle led a waitress wielding an enormous birthday cake to my table. We had cake and Annie put her piece in my face. On the bus Alex commandeered the stereo and put on a birthday mix of music I like. It felt really nice have my buddies pitch in for a good birthday.
The bus took us to the village of Shaolin—the bus got lost along the way for about an hour. The town that is world renowned for finding the art of kung fu is situated in between some bumpy mountains. We had lunch and then stood outside looking at a completely empty field. It was about the size of two football fields and I thought it would serve a purpose along those line but later that night I learned that the space was actually used for hundreds people practicing kung fu.
We got to the Shaolin temple and had to walk through hundreds of trinket stands to get there. We were led for a while as a group through the temple area then left on our own to explore through the various shrines. Most of the shrines were obstructed by gates and souvenir stands, at least the stands were being operated by monks.
There were a few blossoming trees that I took pictures of but I was not too interested in the temple, it was simply too nice and too well put together. I ventured on and found the cemetery. It was special because the graves were above ground and were shaped into small pagodas. Apparently this practice dates back to the Song dynansty, which is quite a long time ago. It felt a bit like walking around a graveyard in New Orleans but much more peaceful.
I walked across the monastery because I heard loud and flashy music. On a stage close to the entrance the monks were giving a presentation of their kung fu skills in front of flashing Chinese tourists and oriental hip-hop music.
That night after returning to the hotel I headed out to a street market with Steven, Alex and Annie. Steven and I had a strange hankering for either McDonalds or street food, both options were abundant but somehow street food just seemed like the thing to do. We arrived on at an intersection of two alleys. There were wooden two story buildings on the street; one was blasting Chinese opera music. The music sounded awful, with its terrible intonation but it was all fitting. With the slow movements cars, bicycles and rickshaws crawling through the streets, the horrible music and the fact that the street always had trash on it, but never seemed dirty, I felt this was probably the most Chinese moment I had yet come across.
We ate fried dumplings, lamb kebabs and some chicken necks. We passed on frogs and roaches on sticks and stayed clear of stinky tofu, which literally smells like feces. We looked at a street vendor stands but it was all junk. During our walk down the alley, people would stop us and ask us questions like where we came from and what were we doing in Kaifeng. People in this city were exceptionally nice to us and happy to see foreigners. One couple reminded us how lucky we were to be there, if they saved up for all their lives they could never travel to our country.
I was a little bummed because Yuri was gone in Hong Kong with her study trip during my birthday but my buddies were hell-bent on celebrating the event. The night before we went to my favorite bar, club DaDa, for Motown music night. In the morning I had class and then I met up with the rest of my group to go to Kaifeng on our weekend study trip.
The forty-odd number of were booked on a hard bunk sleeper for twelve hours to the ancient city. Getting on the train we were greeted with the raw stench of a cooped up a travelers and an unclean toilet. The beds weren’t too hard anyway.
Any feelings of discomfort were soon forgotten. My compartment filled up with people and we started drinking the cocktails we smuggled in our rucksacks. When it comes to a competition of who can be more obnoxious, Chinese migrants or rowdy Americans, the college students win. I had a lot of fun. Spending my birthday on a train was just what how I wanted to celebrate!
In the early morning we arrived in Kaifeng. It was a real funny feeling stepping out into the train station at 7 in the morning; it was like I had stepped back into time, 10-20 years—maybe one or two thousand years. Kaifeng was something else. Everything was communist era buildings. The traffic plaza in front of the train station was clogged with wandering rickshaws, tricycles, bicycles, busses, human feet and cars. The town was not sleepy in the morning; it had been used to such a wake up routine for thousands of years.
We checked into our five star hotel and had a huge breakfast. When we were about to leave, people acted kind of weird, like there was something they weren’t telling me. Then out of nowhere, Michelle led a waitress wielding an enormous birthday cake to my table. We had cake and Annie put her piece in my face. On the bus Alex commandeered the stereo and put on a birthday mix of music I like. It felt really nice have my buddies pitch in for a good birthday.
The bus took us to the village of Shaolin—the bus got lost along the way for about an hour. The town that is world renowned for finding the art of kung fu is situated in between some bumpy mountains. We had lunch and then stood outside looking at a completely empty field. It was about the size of two football fields and I thought it would serve a purpose along those line but later that night I learned that the space was actually used for hundreds people practicing kung fu.
We got to the Shaolin temple and had to walk through hundreds of trinket stands to get there. We were led for a while as a group through the temple area then left on our own to explore through the various shrines. Most of the shrines were obstructed by gates and souvenir stands, at least the stands were being operated by monks.
There were a few blossoming trees that I took pictures of but I was not too interested in the temple, it was simply too nice and too well put together. I ventured on and found the cemetery. It was special because the graves were above ground and were shaped into small pagodas. Apparently this practice dates back to the Song dynansty, which is quite a long time ago. It felt a bit like walking around a graveyard in New Orleans but much more peaceful.
I walked across the monastery because I heard loud and flashy music. On a stage close to the entrance the monks were giving a presentation of their kung fu skills in front of flashing Chinese tourists and oriental hip-hop music.
That night after returning to the hotel I headed out to a street market with Steven, Alex and Annie. Steven and I had a strange hankering for either McDonalds or street food, both options were abundant but somehow street food just seemed like the thing to do. We arrived on at an intersection of two alleys. There were wooden two story buildings on the street; one was blasting Chinese opera music. The music sounded awful, with its terrible intonation but it was all fitting. With the slow movements cars, bicycles and rickshaws crawling through the streets, the horrible music and the fact that the street always had trash on it, but never seemed dirty, I felt this was probably the most Chinese moment I had yet come across.
We ate fried dumplings, lamb kebabs and some chicken necks. We passed on frogs and roaches on sticks and stayed clear of stinky tofu, which literally smells like feces. We looked at a street vendor stands but it was all junk. During our walk down the alley, people would stop us and ask us questions like where we came from and what were we doing in Kaifeng. People in this city were exceptionally nice to us and happy to see foreigners. One couple reminded us how lucky we were to be there, if they saved up for all their lives they could never travel to our country.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Time to Pretend
Now my life is out of the safety of American education system, off the Fudan campus and away from my friends—most of whom have now left to go be back home. Yuri left two Thursdays and now I am alone in a new apartment building. Actually, I’m not alone, I live in a penthouse apartment at the top of an ordinary complex with seven other roommates from various different countries and cultures.
I moved to a new place where I will stay for the next two months as I do an internship downtown at a consulting company named Emerging Asia Group.
The neighborhood that I am living in is a big change from the college atmosphere that I was previously in. Yanchang and Pingxingguang road is a far more useful place, full of life, a step back into the life of traditional Shanghaiese. When I walk the streets to the metro stop, to the watch repairman, to the grocery store I cannot understand a word spoken. Everyone speaks Shanghaiese which sounds like the humming and grinding of a band saw with the cozy complexion of Japanese; a steady humzzzshshsh.
Being one of few foreigners in the neighborhood I get the usual stairs walking down the street. As usual, when I order in a restaurant or get my dry-cleaning done it is expected that I can’t speak Chinese or understand anything. Usually, I can’t understand the Shanghai dialect they speak but when I reply in Mandarine I am received with reactions of excitement and surprise. It turns out that before the communists took over it was more common for people to speak English than Mandarin.
My daily routine starts in the morning after I leave my apartment for the day. I step outside on the city streets and almost immediately I am greeted with the most intense breakfast action one can imagine. Right outside the vegetable market stands selling buns, fried dough, Chinese sandwiches and—what I always order—cracker sandwiches made like a wrapped up egg crape. I wished it smelled like breakfast but instead it’s a combination of slaughtered chickens, liquid garbage and the sweet foreign smell of roasting ducks. I push through the clogged sidewalk traffic of early morning grocery shoppers until I get to the metro line 1, ten minutes outside my apartment. I push bodies to cram on the train and it remains clogged for a few stops until the Shanghai Railway station. Listening to my iPod somehow relieves the personal space problem.
I get off at Huang Pi South Station. When I emerge to the surface I arrive in a different world from the one that I live in. I take a shortcut through a Hong Konger built skyscraper that is always immaculately clean. Street side Starbucks and Coffee Bean compete for their corner posts; there is a Mac store and a Zara. I cross the street kitty-corner in the four way cross walk and head for the Tiffany’s, at the corner of that building is the skyscraper where I shoot up to the seventh floor.
At work I spend my day researching companies that no one has ever heard of, mid-size pharmaceuticals, branches of major conglomerates, HR, financial M&A etc. I search very oblique information and try to understand how these companies could fit into China. Then I write reports about it. At about 12:30pm, the whole office leaves for lunch and we enjoy a one hour break together. The afternoon goes by with more Google searches and corporate research.
At six o’clock I get off work and head downstairs to head home. When Yuri was still here she met me a couple of times at my office and then we headed out for dinner or just an evening walk. It was fun to walk past to Porsche and Cartier shops pretending I had a real job that could afford this stuff. Because my stipend is so modest and my time at my internship is so short, it is like everything is a game of pretend, just to see if I like this lifestyle. All evening long Shanghai unnaturally puts on a light show with its florescent signs and designer neon lights.
When I don’t eat downtown near my office I head up to where my apartment where I can either have a meal for a little over a dollar or I can head to the nearest shopping mall and get a burger or some Japanese food. The neighborhood gets quite once the market closes around 6:30 or 7pm. Heading home, the interestingness of the day is over when I get to the top of my apartment to my cozy little room and the 14th and a half floor.
I moved to a new place where I will stay for the next two months as I do an internship downtown at a consulting company named Emerging Asia Group.
The neighborhood that I am living in is a big change from the college atmosphere that I was previously in. Yanchang and Pingxingguang road is a far more useful place, full of life, a step back into the life of traditional Shanghaiese. When I walk the streets to the metro stop, to the watch repairman, to the grocery store I cannot understand a word spoken. Everyone speaks Shanghaiese which sounds like the humming and grinding of a band saw with the cozy complexion of Japanese; a steady humzzzshshsh.
Being one of few foreigners in the neighborhood I get the usual stairs walking down the street. As usual, when I order in a restaurant or get my dry-cleaning done it is expected that I can’t speak Chinese or understand anything. Usually, I can’t understand the Shanghai dialect they speak but when I reply in Mandarine I am received with reactions of excitement and surprise. It turns out that before the communists took over it was more common for people to speak English than Mandarin.
My daily routine starts in the morning after I leave my apartment for the day. I step outside on the city streets and almost immediately I am greeted with the most intense breakfast action one can imagine. Right outside the vegetable market stands selling buns, fried dough, Chinese sandwiches and—what I always order—cracker sandwiches made like a wrapped up egg crape. I wished it smelled like breakfast but instead it’s a combination of slaughtered chickens, liquid garbage and the sweet foreign smell of roasting ducks. I push through the clogged sidewalk traffic of early morning grocery shoppers until I get to the metro line 1, ten minutes outside my apartment. I push bodies to cram on the train and it remains clogged for a few stops until the Shanghai Railway station. Listening to my iPod somehow relieves the personal space problem.
I get off at Huang Pi South Station. When I emerge to the surface I arrive in a different world from the one that I live in. I take a shortcut through a Hong Konger built skyscraper that is always immaculately clean. Street side Starbucks and Coffee Bean compete for their corner posts; there is a Mac store and a Zara. I cross the street kitty-corner in the four way cross walk and head for the Tiffany’s, at the corner of that building is the skyscraper where I shoot up to the seventh floor.
At work I spend my day researching companies that no one has ever heard of, mid-size pharmaceuticals, branches of major conglomerates, HR, financial M&A etc. I search very oblique information and try to understand how these companies could fit into China. Then I write reports about it. At about 12:30pm, the whole office leaves for lunch and we enjoy a one hour break together. The afternoon goes by with more Google searches and corporate research.
At six o’clock I get off work and head downstairs to head home. When Yuri was still here she met me a couple of times at my office and then we headed out for dinner or just an evening walk. It was fun to walk past to Porsche and Cartier shops pretending I had a real job that could afford this stuff. Because my stipend is so modest and my time at my internship is so short, it is like everything is a game of pretend, just to see if I like this lifestyle. All evening long Shanghai unnaturally puts on a light show with its florescent signs and designer neon lights.
When I don’t eat downtown near my office I head up to where my apartment where I can either have a meal for a little over a dollar or I can head to the nearest shopping mall and get a burger or some Japanese food. The neighborhood gets quite once the market closes around 6:30 or 7pm. Heading home, the interestingness of the day is over when I get to the top of my apartment to my cozy little room and the 14th and a half floor.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Day 3
5.1.11
I checked out of my hotel late and went toward the mid-level escalators in Soho. There you can walk up hill through different levels of bars and restaurants. This would have been the place to go to a bar or two. The restaurants were expensive and too classy for my raggedy ass backpacker mentality. I did end up in a Cuban cigar store.
Crossing Soho off my list I then wanted to buy some t-shirts in a shopping district in Kowloon. Coming out of the subway I found thousands of people clogged onto sidewalks in the soggy heat. Not what I was expecting, not what I wanted and on top of that, I was disablingly hungry. I found a back street Yunnan noodle shop that tasted nothing like anything I had ever had in Yunnan and was happy. It took me about 10 minutes of walking amongst the masses of people (the only place I had ever seen so many people in China was at the Expo) to realize that this was not my scene. I was tired and wanted a nap so I headed to Victoria Park to find a park bench or some grassy shade to rest on.
Again, not what I was expecting. This time I found that Victoria Park (it’s like New York’s Central park but a lot smaller) was invaded with South East Asian women. I mean completely taken over! I imagine most of these women are nannies or housekeepers on their day off, they were certainly having the times of their lives. Everywhere I walked I tried not to step on people or the plastic blankets they put on the ground to sit on. The women separated out into groups, probably by language and by religion—some had head scarves, some didn’t. Sometimes I could pick up on a few words of Tagalog—a Spanish crossover—or Indonesian—said to be the simplest language in the world to understand. I finally found a place outside the park in front of the harbor to collect my exhausted thoughts. Then another group of women smoking katarek cigarettes came over and joined me speaking loudly in Indonesian.
I walked around town until I found the impressive Hong Kong convention center and had an ice coffee. I walked around the largest glass window in the world and then set out for the metro. Abruptly my adventures in Hong Kong came to end, hopefully with the epitaph: to be continued.
The plane ride to Shanghai was simple and comfortable. I met some Americans, one guy who was on a holiday with his Shanghaiese fiancée and another pair of young doctors who worked at the clinic I go to. Back in Shanghai things were quiet on the May day holiday and part of me felt like I still wanted to be in Hong Kong, not heading back to my Chinese home.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Day 2
I got a prep call early in the morning before my meeting with Will Hay from mom and dad. From there I headed down town, back to Central Hong Kong. I was able to find the restaurant we were to meet at easily and I got there about ten minutes early. I went into the restroom, where once I was leaving I met Will. Soon we were sitting at the table of a Michelin one star restaurant with a view of the Hong Kong harbor.
Will’s wife joined us and we sat for two hours, at dim sum and talked about everything China. Will and his wife are very knowledgeable in the area, not only because their family has been living in Hong Kong since the mid 90s but also because they both have graduate degrees in Asian studies. After a pretty great brunch, we parted ways and I left walking, to where exactly, I didn’t know.
I headed up the hill following signs to a Catholic cathedral. Instead I wound up finding a botanical garden and zoo carved out of the mountain side. I visited with the various anthropoids and sniffed a few flowers and tried again to find the cathedral. This time I found it. It was lodged in between enormous apartment blocks that obscured it from view. I was more interested in the apartments than the normal looking church. It turns out that most housing complexes in Hong Kong are public projects funded by tariff surpluses.
Walking through some more neighborhoods I realized I was not finding what I really wanted to find: the Peak tram. Somehow I wound up following some signs in the right direction to get to the tram stop. At the tram stop I became nauseous by how many eager tourists were in front of me. I did something radical and for the next hour and a half climbed the 2km straight up. The endless amount of stairs and paved trails made me sweat buckets in the tropical heat but I couldn’t complain, the views got increasingly better. At one point I was about to give up, thinking I was lost beyond recognition and I wanted to turn around, but just at that point I saw this I saw sign pointing me to the top. Bellow the beautiful city was quiet and peaceful next to the steep green cliffs. The peak did have the best view I had come across yet but it was at a steep cost: the place was overrun by tourists. I thought the place lacked too much class so I was soon heading down toward civilization.
Back in the city I tried to find a place where I could soak up some architecture. I found it on a walkway beneath the Bank of China building, Hong Kong’s most recognizable structure. I stood above a busy intersection for about 20 minutes just tacking in the city. After the urban amazement I was considerably worn out and headed back to my room to take rest, stopping along the way for some world famous mango juice.
At night I went on a mission to find some street food. I went close to the hostel, in a mostly residential neighborhood. I finally found a place that had food in front of the woks and grill (most places had menus which I couldn’t read). I stood in front of the women making food waiting for them to listen to my pointing and food charades until a man who was sitting put his hands in the air and said in English “Ok I will help you”. He wrote down a menu card and then invited me to sit with him. It turned out he had recently retired from owning a live fish selling business in Oakland, he was very happy that I was from the Bay Area. He was half drunk and had some sort of neurological issue so he was a bit goofy but a great dinner companion all the same.
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