Oriental odyssey- Part 2

On a lazy Saturday morning, when I had plans to step out of the hotel room and see San Diego, a bout of flu reminded me that I had yet not completed my odyssey with China. So I give San Diego old town a miss (some other time!!) and with "History of Gluttony" playing on the history channel, I am here in front of the screen remembering what I saw in Shanghai and more importantly, what I missed (keep reading to find out what! )

A trip to China would be incomplete in its description without the travails of a vegetarian in a foreign land. I must say I was forewarned and I made sure to warn my office folks of the troubles they would have to go through to help me find food. I must say I could not complain. As difficult as it was made to sound to find vegetarian food, I was pleasantly surprised to see Indian vegetarian food everyday for lunch (I will not detail on the taste....would have been too much to ask for!!!). Anyways, I think as is customary in the corporate world (or so I think), the visiting team is generally taken out for a "team" dinner. The knowledge of two vegetarian colleagues in the team, led to the choice of the dinner place (I am sure much to the disappointment of others). The dinner menu was pretty much pre ordered (jittery though I was, I was reassured that all should be vegeatrian). What came to the table (after the obviously vegetarian jasmine tea), shocked me....duck, pork, beef!!!!!!! Come on people... I knew there is confusion many times as to what is vegetarian but this is taking it a bit too far!! And they name their restaurant "Vegetarian Lifestyle"......

Ya ok I know I am dramatising it too much....all the food there (though named weirdly) was made out of Tofu (Soy Paneer!!!). I was pleasantly surprised (while the first few dishes were being rolled in). After a while it became mundane...they could have gone really creative but they stuck to Tofu!! Anyways, I will not be a cynical person....the dessert did the place full justice. And then..... I stole the menu card from the restaurant!!!! (not alone...of course with help from a local team member!!) I was too intrigued with the dishes and this was the first time I had been to a place like this (apparently lot of people knew bout a concept restaurant like this). And the folks back at the restaurant realized that a menu was missing (it was a big bulky and pretty looking booklet). One of the guys hid it in his jacket and we made a run for the car. So in the end I might be caught at the airport during luggage check in for stealing the menu card...but for the time being it was thrilling!!

And so ended the Oriental adventure of the wannbe foodie!

My office was in one desolate cormer of Shanghai (I am not even sure it was Shanghai or was it some Gurgaon equivalent of Shanghai where we used to travel to everyday). So we had to make sure that we did not miss the office transportation lest we have to spend the night drinking 3 in 1 coffee in the office.

Shanghai boasts of Dilli like traffic and at times can show Delhi-Gurgaon toll a thing or two about trafiic jams. So we used to leave office by 5 in the evening and covered a distance of about 20 kms in 1.5 hrs to reach the hotel by 6:30 (any later apparently we would have taken 2-2.5 hrs!! )....way to go Delhi (proud of you!!! )

After the wallet episode, I was wary of stepping out of the hotel (not that I had anything to lose anymore). But being in the hotel by 6:30 was a little too much. So me and my colleague, decided to walk Shanghai streets and see the non touristy side of Shanghai. Turns out that in the non touristy side, Shanghai looks like a Mandarin speaking Delhi, with street side shops and people barganing to get the best deal. And every 10 steps there was thrown in an aquarium look-alike shop selling all kinds of fish, crabs, octopuses (or is it octopi??). I had seen it in Singapore, but in Shanghai, it looked like such a way of life (too many "L"s there!) , that I could not get myself to step into a bakery either to eat one those delectable cakes!! :-(  what we could have was the forever reliable Starbucks. but reliability was not the reason we decided to choose Starbucks coffee as a walking companion. My colleague had never tried the brand and so it was more of Starbucks 101 for him.

Anyways come Saturday, we were all set to fly back to India in the night. What we had were 8 hrs to scan Shanghai as a tourist. On the prior evening , I had gone through some of the tourist brochures and the now trusted website lonelyplanet.com to shortlist places that one could see in Shanghai.Turned out that you could see the tip of the iceberg if you wanted to make some time for shopping (which ofcourse I had too!!)

We started around 10 in the mroning with a cue card with the major tourist attractions written in Mandarin script. Well you see, unlike India where the taxi drivers are uber tourist friendly and manage to decipher the intended destination of the passenger (much to their advantage), the Chinese taxi drivers were not that English savvy :). So we jumped into a cab and headed to the Shanghai museum.

If you look at the website of the museum (make sure you find the only english looking word on the site "ENGLISH" in between the maze of Mandarin words (God...these people need to talk the universal language...high time!!!), you would see the displays as a floor dedicated to Bronze, Paintings, Calligraphy, Jade, Coins, Seals each.

Took me back to the childhood days of walking through the museums reading through the information. I must say that the layout was designed extremely well. I have seen a lot of museums (if European museums (except Louvre) can be called that...they are so small :) ), and the Shanghai museum was by far the largest. So large that it got overwhelming (as anything so grandiose does).

One should have seen the number of seals that were there in the museum spanning across all major dynasties in Shanghai (I borrow from the museum site to state some names of dynasties Zhou, and the Qing dynasty). I have a few samples here to show (actually I have many many samples I shot, but then it would become boring :) )

Out of the museum was the most panoramic view one could hope to see with the high rise views of "Manhattan of China". (Ok this post has a lot of pictures, but I am too lazy to manage a photoblog and a text blog!!)

 Well it was already 2 PM by now. We had till 7 to see as much of Shanghai as possible, so the next stop was the next most recommended thing "Jade Budhha Temple". Though not competing with Indian temples in age, this was nonetheless a pretty old temple, having been founded in 1882. It cost us 20 RMB per person to enter the temple!!! With an invitation from the neighborhood pearl store to come shop for "reasonably priced" pearls after the temple visit, we stepped into the temple. Would have helped if I could have studied the layout of the temple before embarking on the visit, cuz the whole place was a colony of small small temples scattered all over the place. An eager guide was quick to guide us to the first mini temple (remember the picture I had posted on the Part 1??) That was the first temple, commonly called as the Chamber of the 4 heavenly kings. I read later when we had time to kill before the flight that these 4 heavenly kings were pretty much similar to Hindu mythology (interesting read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Heavenly_Kings).

Even before we could step out of the temple, the guide was there, waiting to escort us to the next chambers, which we proceeded to like naive tourists. Normally the gift shops are laid out at the end of the tourist site. Not here, there were more gift shops in Jade budhha temple than temples themselves!!! So as you would have understood, we stepped into an insanely priced gift shop where the guide/slaesman tried to sell to us jade statues, wodden artifacts and what not. Its nice that Indians can switch to being stingy at the drop of the hat. The guy then reduced his level and started selling bracelets and key chains as souvneirs! However, one thing caught my eye. There was an artisan sititng and painting on paper with nothing but the side of his palm and black ink. We were told that there were only 5 artisans of his calibre in the whole of Shangahi (ya right!!!!) and that the painting would cost us 250 RMB. Bargain...bargain....and we got the painting for 100 RMB (well we still got duped....as we would realize later, there was not such elite group of 5 artisans...there were people were literally sitting on streets and making those paintings for a bargainable 20 RMB!!!!). In my defense, every tourist can get duped in a foreign country!!!

Anyways, so much so for the temple visit.

We then proceeded to see the rest of the temple and entered the Grand Hall. This hall consisted of innumerable statues which as I understand belonged to 3 golden budhhas,  statues of Gods of the 20 heavens, 18 Arhats ( read more about them at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arhat) , and to the 53 teachers of Guanyin.

Unlike Indian temples, the people wore their shoes inside the chambers

(I guess owing to the weather conditions)

And then there were more gift shops, but this time we were not even looking at the key chains. Everything in this shop was made of Jade and so even a key chain was to the tune of 9000 RMB!!!!! I am not exaggerating!

Here we saw a marble statue of sleeping buddha. Now this is where my initial regret of not having seen the layout of the temple before hand came into picture (though not till much later). We took this statue (which was dinated by Singapore Govt) to be the Jade budhha statue and happily walked out of the place in search of food!! :)

We figured, that with the time on hand, we could either go look up a garden (really???) or go shopping to the famous Nanjing Road (yeah!!). I did not ask beyond a polite question to my colleague and we jumped once again into a cab armed with chips and cokes as our lunch (no we were not taking any risk....they had chips for such god forsaken things that I read through the contents of potatoe chips twice before picking them).

We did not know what to expect at Nanjing market (though I pictured something like Janpath). We stepped out of the cab and a 20 something fellow came up to us and started asking if we wanted to buy bags or shoes or any other leather stuff....well yes I would not mind looking at that. He asked us to follow him and we did expecting the shop to be at the end of the narrow street running in from the main street. But where we were headed, did not seem like a place one would go to buy leather bags....it was spooky and shady to actually make me contemplate turning back. Justy as we were about to do that, a lady came up from behind us and spoke in English (as much as she could manage) that is was safe!! (oh yes I believe you!!). I kept walking secretly hoping that my collegue had trained in kung fu or something of that sorts or atleast be a slower runner than me should we need to do that (mean!!!). I think as much as I talk or so it seems to me, cuz by the time I though all this we were in a dingy looking shop glittering with all the brands I could think of....bags, pens, suitcases, shoes....u name it they had it. But I did not want to even look at anything there and just wanted to get out. When my colleague showed some interest in a few bags for his wife and I signalled a dislike, the lady at the shop gave me the looks which could have burnt me down if we were living in the Ramayan type world (how could I pull away a prospective customer!!!!). Anyways, we escaped (yes that's what it seemed like!) and were on the main street once again, only to realize that right across the road was a mall which was THE Nanjing market.

Now close your eyes and picture Palika Bazaar (if you have even been to Delhi, you would have visited or atleast been suggested that you go here). Nanjing market was an above ground version of Palika being run by Chinese people. Shopkeepers would be pulling you into their shops from every corner punching numbers on calculators quoting their intial price (the calculator was being used as a translator!!!). If I thought even for a moment that the similarity would end there and that bargaining would nto be possible to the tune of Palike, I was to be proven wrong. I will give you an example....We stepped into a store selling bags...the lady there quotes a price of 850 RMB for a really smart bag. I am definitely buying something that costly specially when I know it is not the real thing....so I tell her I am not interested and I will not give anything more than 50 RMB (oh please....she will not come down to that level.....ya sure :) ). Her next jump is directly to 200 RMB....A person from any other country would have thought that 200 was a really cool bargain, but Indians??? nay....I stick to 50....we punch on the calculator a few more times and I walk out of the store with a 50 RMB bag in my hand!!!

After 2 hours we step out of the market feeling like winners!!!

We had just about enough time now to grab something to eat (the ever so reliable Subway) and head back to the hotel to rearrange the luggage with the increased load of shopping, all the time looking at the other major landmarks of Shanghai on the way (so that we can quote that we saw those too!!!)

By night fall I was at the airport, luggage checked in, awaiting for the flight to take off to conculde the Oriental odyssey.

再见上海 (Good Bye Shanghai)