Muslim Quarter Mishap

I'm sick of writing about China but I want to tie up a few things first, so this will be my last blog for this trip, and a little scatterbrained.  Please bear with me if I go on any birdwalks.  I got into Shanghai two weeks ago last night, and went to JoAnn and Michael's for some catching up and dropping my stuff off.  And then I was out the door again.  My flight to Xi'An was at 7:30 the next morning, over in freaking Pudong, and I've become terrified of missing flights since last summer's debacle (which I didn't write about, it seems...basically my alarm failed and the taxi either didn't come or didn't call up, and so I missed my flight back to Iowa, a mistake that cost me $1,200).  So I saw them off to bed before walking to the New Star Sauna, an authentic Korean bath house down the street from my old school, where I spent about 3 hours going from the hot room to the hot bath to a cool shower.  Rinse and repeat.

Unfortunately, I had a pretty bad headache the next day, and my Korean friends would have told me it was from the toxins released from the hot/cold treatment.  Whatever the case, I got to Xi'An and was not in the best mood.  I tried to get a taxi from the airport to stop by Emperor Jing-Di's tomb, but he tried to tell me it would cost 600 kuai running the meter.  I hadn't done as much research on this point as I should have, but I was pretty sure that was bullshit, so I got out of his taxi and went to buy a ticket for the bus instead (and it turned out I was right - the taxi the hotel called for me when I went back to the airport only cost 150 kuai).  When the bus stopped it was in the heart of old Xi'An, and I really didn't care.  I wanted to get to my hostel - a good one called Qixian - and leave my stuff.  I wanted a meal that did not consist of a red bean bun (I don't eat red bean anything - it was the last thing I ate before I got violently ill my first Christmas in Korea, and even the smell of it kind of makes me want to hurl).  And I wanted a damn aspirin.  Eventually I got to the hostel and got something for my headache, but had failed to find anyplace I wanted to eat.  But as I started wandering the old town, I decided I could live without a proper meal for now.

I had all sorts of things I was going to go do.  I wanted to bike along the city wall and see the drum tower and the bell tower and the Forest of Stelae.  But I just couldn't be bothered.  I guess it's possible to get China fatigue even when you don't live there.  Instead I wandered my way through side streets until I reached the Muslim Quarter.  I've lived and traveled in the Middle East, and was really curious to know what it would look like in China.  There are actually a couple of different Islamic minorities in China - Xinjiang province is much better known for it, but these are a different people, the Hui.

I've always found Xinjiang cuisine to be the expected outcome of mixing Arabic food with Chinese food, and the mosques in Xi'An were the same, except with architecture.  If you took Chinese buildings and tried to build a mosque out of them, you'd get something that looks like the mosques of Xi'An.  I was fascinated by them, because while they looked Chinese, if you know what to look for in Islamic architecture, you'd see those things as well.

Islam forbids the depiction of any creature with a soul.  This over the centuries has resulted in beautiful geometric patterns as well as floral decorative motifs.

The Qu'ran, of course, is important.  You will see it prominently displayed in mosques, as well as depicted, as it is here.

I found it interesting and funny to consider that Chinese Muslims can read and speak two of what I consider to be the most difficult languages in the world - Arabic and Mandarin.  Arabic phrases are also carved into the decorative motifs.

And then there is the matter of one of the most recognizable aspects of Islamic architecture: the minaret.  A minaret is where the call to prayer is given from (five times a day...starting at times at four-freaking-thirty in the morning, so if you are considering living in the Middle East, I hope you are a heavy sleeper, or living on the right side of the building!), and is usually a tall tower at one or more corners of the mosque.  The minaret at the Great Mosque of Xi'An looks like nothing so much as a 3-floor pagoda.  It's clever, and is just another example of the amalgamation of the two cultures that created it.

Well, while wandering and finding the two mosques (there is a smaller one that I stumbled on - the first few pictures are from it) I passed some really delicious street food.  I don't eat very much street food.  Sometimes it just looks unappetizing, and you don't have to tell me that it comes with risks.  I'd eaten it once with Meen in Shanghai, and occasionally I'd get my favorite Taiwanese breakfast sandwich thing outside the fabric market there, and having had no bad experiences with it, I decided to try these delicious things.

 First there was the shwarma thing.  Instead of flatbread it came in a bun thing.  It was delicious.

Then I tried some noodles.  I only had like, two bites, because they were cold - I thought they would be fried, and was seriously mistaken.  They also came served in a bag, so they were hard to eat and walk.

My favorite was probably the fried, spicy tofu.  It was cooked with cilantro - mmmm!  Have I mentioned how much I love tofu?  Because I do.  They gave you a little skewer to stab them with.

Also my favorite (I can have two, because this was sweet, and thus, a dessert) was the fried banana on a stick.  I love hot bananas, and it got bonus points for calling to mind Arrested Development's banana stand.

And, because I'd heard Five and Domestic Goddess raving about the sugar cane juice I never tried outside the fabric market, I decided I'd wash it all down with that.  I didn't care for it.  It is sweet, but not too sweet, and has an organic taste to it.  Give me a pure chemical coke anytime!  Anyways, I just don't think of China when I think about juice.  Thailand, of course, and the Middle East as well (there are days when I'd kill for the banana-orange juices I used to order from the Yum Yum Tree in Bahrain).  I shouldn't knock China's juice, but...yeah.  Not my favorite.

Well, like I said, street food does have its risks.  This point was driven home particularly clearly when I woke up at five in the morning with all the food I'd eaten in the last 24 hours coming out of one end or another.  It is not the worst case of food poisoning I've ever had (see the above reference to red bean...I thought I was going to die), but it was definitely the most inconvenient.  I pulled it together and made it to the terracotta warriors anyways, but I didn't end up seeing the bell tower, or the drum tower, or the city walls (other than as I was passing through them), because I went back to my room and fell asleep as soon as we got back, and holding it together that long was trying.  And strangely enough, I'm kind of okay with that.  I've seen enough city walls, and towers of one kind or another, and museums and temples and such that I don't feel cheated.

I still would have liked to see Jing-Di's tomb, but sometimes you just have to write things off for a loss.  Damn taxi drivers.

Qin Shi Huang's Revenge

A long time ago, in a country not too far away, I had a friend named...let's call him Lick (that's a Korean joke).  Lick went to Beijing, and he got amoebic dysentery while he was there.  Being unwilling to miss out on all the things he went there to see, he tried not to let this stop him.  But while he was out shopping one day, he really, REALLY had to go, and the result was catastrophic.  Let's just leave it at the fact that you don't want to have explosive diarrhea when a squatty potty is your only option.

This little memory ran through my head as I was attempting to get myself together last Monday.  I didn't want to be the girl who went to Xi'An and DIDN'T see the terracotta warriors.  I also didn't want to be the girl who "redecorated" the bathroom at the site of the terracotta warriors.  And it's a big site - this was the biggest of the three pits, and there is no bathroom in any of the buildings.  So I felt like this was a legitimate concern.  Did I let it stop me?  Obviously not.  However, I didn't get much out of the other things we saw - Banpo neolithic village or Emperor Qin's tomb, and I only ate a little rice at the lunch, which was part of the price of the tour, and that was a shame since we had to drive over some really sketchy roads to get there.  I honestly wasn't that interested in them, so it wasn't that big a loss.

On the trip over, our guide - who went by the English name "Coffee" - asked if we knew that the terracotta warriors were in pieces.  He then went on to relate that nobody knows who broke them, but that there is speculation that it was done after he died by a rebel general, Xiang Yu.  I asked if he wouldn't have had to dig the warriors up to do that.  Poor Coffee didn't have an answer to that, and awkwardly moved on with his lecture.  Yes, yes, shame on me.

Peppermint was pretty impressed by the warriors and asked me to take her picture with them.  She was looking a lot better that day than I was, and I figured one of us deserved to have a commemorative photo.  Nobody asked me what I was doing this time.

You probably have heard all about the warriors.  You know no two are alike, although the bodies were very similar in a lot of them.  What can I possibly say to add to your knowledge?  Not a whole lot.  And unfortunately I was too sick to come up with any witty comments or snide remarks.  Once we made it to the site, I went off on my own from my tour group - I wanted to follow the advice of Lonely Planet and work my way from Pit 3 backwards to Pit 1.  I didn't quite manage it; what I thought was Pit 3 was actually the on-site museum, which had some neat stuff, including the two bronze chariots they unearthed here.  Oops.  Pit 3 was supposed to have been the "command center" and so I was kicking myself a little for not getting to see it, but hell, at least I made it there.  Also very cool to see was the restoration experts at work.  They reminded me of all my puzzle-loving friends and how much they might enjoy working here.  Belynda would, at any rate, if her comments when we were looking at ruins in Egypt are anything to go by.  Anyways, it was another China moment crossed off my list, and I was ready as hell to get to Shanghai.

Under the Big Top

I'm not really a circus-goer.  When we were walking to the circus here in UB two and a half weeks ago, we discussed when we'd last seen the circus, and I couldn't remember (later I did - it was the North Korean circus at Geumgangsan.  How about those bragging rights?)  But EVERYONE has told me by now how great ERA is.  First a colleague at SUIS Gubei, but then no one wanted to go see it with me.  And then after I left, apparently all my friends went without me.  Even Domestic Goddess said it was good.  So I went off on my own last Thursday to experience it for myself.

It was...eah.  Don't get me wrong, the performers were very talented and it was well orchestrated.  However, it was a bit of a letdown from the international circus I saw here.  Also, I'd seen a LOT of the acts performed in one performance or another in Harbin or Chengdu.  For the price I paid - and I paid more than the minimum $50 seats - I was expecting more.

It had a kind of time-based theme, and they tried to interpret a movement through time in China.  The guy in the top picture wheeled his bike out with this giant pot, out of which came four contortionists (who knows how the hell they all fit in there???)  He sort of broke up or refereed a gang fight between these guys, who battled it out via jumping through hoops.  The guys China sent to the circus here that did this act were better than these guys, though.

I did find myself impressed by some of the acts.  Anyone gutsy enough to do the above stunt is pretty fricking awesome in my eyes.  I mean, seriously, you could kill yourself doing that.  I would, at any rate.

And at least one of the acts would NOT have been legal in the States.  I've never seen motorcycles in a cage.  Hell, I've never even seen ONE motorcycle doing this, let alone the seven they had going.  I may have been convinced these guys were going to die, and I was glad I wasn't in the splash zone.  Because seven motorcycles in a globe would have caused some bloodshed.

Having come from Xi'An earlier in the week, their costumes impressed me almost as much as their stunt.  If you can't tell, their design is based on the armor that the terracotta warriors wear. 

ERA is on line 1 (the red line) at Shanghai Circus World.  None of the signs tell you which exit to take, but if you take a look around once you're out, you'll figure out where it is pretty quickly.  Tickets were 300, 400, and 600 kuai, and I had no problem showing up and buying a good seat.  I did, on the other hand, have a hard time finding a restaurant that sold coke where I could go and have a sit while I waited for the show to start. 

Grub Club: Le Triskell

Last night Fearless Leader chose Le Triskell for this week's grub club, a creperie that Five has previously tried to talk me into but I've never gone for.  I've eaten crepes before - in Paris, no less - and I just wasn't convinced that they make much of a meal.  However, in the history of Grub Club, I've only missed one dinner, and as I've already had one good experience with the French this week, I figured it was a Sign. 

I imagined all the food was going to be crepes, and I couldn't have been more wrong.  Domestic Goddess, being on a quest to eat her way through the animal kingdom, decided to try the rabbit.  I can't imagine where they found a rabbit in Mongolia, but the waitress assured us that it was local.  Go figure.  The phrase, "It tastes like chicken," was used, as well as the phrase, "Gamey chicken."  I'm pretty sure I've eaten rabbit before, what with growing up with Shaggy, so I let her and Five keep it all to themselves.

It is possible that crepes do not make much of a meal.  We wouldn't know.  If you've wondered why bread is called the staff of life, you've obviously never eaten French bread.  Our server brought out a couple of these baskets of sliced baguettes, still warm, complete with butter, and we devoured them like a plague of locusts.  And asked for refills.  Twice.  Note: refills aren't free.  Also note: we were all happy to pay.

I chose savory crepes for myself, the "complete" which included egg, ham, and cheese.  It was delicious.  It also came with a bit of salad, which was also yummy, but not as yummy as the french fries that came with whatever it was that Geek ordered.  I could've stolen all her fries and not regretted it for a second.

However, dessert was the best.  Domestic Goddess wanted a sampler platter, and some genius (me!) suggested everybody order a different one, and then just pass them around.  The same genius knew what she wanted and didn't want to share, and I'm pretty sure as people were eating the crepe Five ordered (also what I was having) she was wishing she'd done the same.  Most of the club agreed that ours - the "Triskell" which had caramel and ice cream - was the best, although there were a couple of dissenters in favor of the caramel and salted butter.

Le Triskell is north of Sukhbaatar Square, if you take the street running along the east side (the ballet side).  It's on the left as you go north, less than a block past the French Bistro.

OH, and I just realized that I forgot to tell you one of the most amazing things about them, and had to edit this - the owner saw us standing outside to hail taxis, and offered us his driver to get us back to Zaisan.  How awesome is that?

Dreamer's Ball

I've been dreaming of going to see the jazz combo at the Peace Hotel for many, many moons.  As I mentioned last fall, I've seen jazz a time or two in my life.  Socrates may have been right; he said that for most people it would be pretentious, but that he had a feeling I genuinely appreciated it.  As for that, I don't know.  My tastes in music are eclectic, to say the least, but I actually don't listen to that much jazz, unless it's live, and for that, I blame Paul Senzee, who took me and Christa to the Majestic as impressionable young freshmen.  Ah, memories.

One way or another, I decided the Peace Hotel was on my hit list for my revisitation of Shanghai, and JoAnn and her hubby volunteered to come with me, being musicians themselves, not to mention my host-es with the most-es this week.  I was thrilled to have the company, especially since each table has a minimum order of 750 kuai.

The Peace Hotel was built by Shanghai bighead Victor Sassoon as the Sassoon House, which included a variety of offices as well as the Cathay Hotel, in 1929.  It was the most prestigious hotel in Shanghai until the communists had their say.  It is also famous for its beautiful Art Deco architecture, which you can still see.  After we found our way to the bar, I went back and took photos of the fixtures, which were dazzling.  Someday, I might have a house.  If I do, there's a very good chance I'm gonna decorate the hell out of that sucker, and put magic art deco swirls all over it, like the art deco fairy got violently ill all over it (or maybe just in one room - I may have plans for other rooms).  Either way, there's just something about that style that appeals to me, for the same reasons that I love reading fantasy...this world is just a little too mundane for my liking.

They've had jazz there nearly as long as it's been open.  According to the blurb on the menu, originally the musicians were brought in from other countries, but before long Chinese musicians caught the fever and became the staple performers...for as long as it took the "new management" to decide jazz wasn't part of their dogma and shut it down.  Years down the road the jazz bar was reopened and to this day the original performers are there every night at 7, belting out jazz standards and a few that aren't.  Apparently you can request songs at 30 kuai a pop, and this is supposed to improve the experience, but I didn't realize that until just now.  Also improving the experience would be to not go with a couple of musicians, who definitely enjoyed the ambiance and the history but found the music to be quaint, and the musicians "sweet."  I love JoAnn and Michael, and wouldn't have traded them for the best listening experience in the world, FYI.

But at the same time, you have to respect the hell out of these guys, for the passion they have to keep making music, and for what they must have gone through, being jazz musicians in the time of Maoism.

We invited Socrates to come with us.  I wasn't sure I wanted to see him while I was back, because I can't always count on him to play nice, and as he's been offered a job in Africa this seemed likely to be the last time I saw him, possibly ever.  I didn't want my last memory of him to be a negative one, and it turned out that it wasn't.  We had a nice chat and he wound me up a little with his view of marriage and I probably annoyed the hell out of him with my unwelcome honesty, but I did miss him.  (If he is reading this, yes, I threw the title of this post in here for you - I assume you can figure out why it's an apt reference.  I already used "All that Jazz" for a previous title and was at a loss - I like to think I'm witty and this is the best I could come up with).  After the Peace Hotel Michael suggested a few other live music venues, but only the first one, Oscar's, panned out, and it ended up being an early evening, which suited me fine, since unlike UB, Shanghai hasn't banned smoking in public and I've been fighting getting sick since before the vacation.

(shang)High Lights

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  My two years living in Shanghai were an even bigger roller coaster of emotions than the typical expat experience.  I learned and grew a lot in those two years, but learning and growing is not necessarily a pleasant experience.  And I kind of hold that against Shanghai.  Don't take that to mean that I otherwise would have loved the city and its people (far from it), but I can recognize that my feelings about Shanghai are tainted by what I went through there.

So.  Why the hell did I go back?  Most of the time I have almost nothing good to say about it.  Almost.

Short answer?  These kids made me promise.  Not these ones, specifically - this is an old photo because I was an idiot and I didn't take any photos while I was visiting the school - although these girls were in my belly dance ECA and are particularly dear to me.  But the kids I used to teach DID ask if I would ever come back, and I said maybe I'd come for a visit.  And although I love my older students, I've missed the heck out of my little ones, and worried about them.  The transition to a new art teacher has been rougher than it has any business being, and while I appreciate the vindication, I wish for their sakes my replacement had been so good they all forgot about me within a month.

There were lots of things I wanted to revisit while I was in Shanghai, and most of them I didn't get around to.  I made it to Ikea for new pillows, and Marie's for screen printing inks, and ate at Whisk (and had the Coco Cabana for dessert, since, as Roisin always said, you can count it as a serving of fruit) and ordered in a Brooklyn from New York Style Pizza.  And I did all the touristy things I'll write about in another day or two.  But as I was walking down the street to catch the subway to Tianzifang, after telling Siobhan I wouldn't meet them for lunch, I looked around the street corner where I used to live, and realized that the shopping and the food wasn't my life for the last two years.  They were good, no doubt about it, but they weren't what Shanghai meant to me.  The essence of Shanghai could be summed up with just these few photographs.  My students, of course.  My street, above.  I walked down Hongquan Lu through the heart of K-Town several times a day.  Our school was there.  I was in that grocery store constantly.  The smells of Korean food, and the safe and peaceful feeling I got from the surrounding apartment buildings, like they were sheltering me from the more tumultuous moments in my life.  The sound of the bell ringing at 7-11, which I could hear from my apartment and which kept me company when I was illustrating after midnight; I didn't feel like the only person alive in the world.

And, of course, my friends...these two bitches most especially.  Gemma and I were roommates that first year, and she put up with my passive-aggressiveness, my moods, and people who took advantage of me and still lets me hang out with her, in spite of the fact that she is MUCH cooler than me.  And then there's Siobhan, who is one of the nicest, most genuine people I know, and has supported me and encouraged me, even though I don't think I give much back to her (other than answering some pretty embarrassing questions about being Mormon).  And I was going to ditch them to go to Tianzifang?  Screw that.  I ended up doing the last of my shopping in Qibao's old town.  Which meant that I had to smell stinky tofu one (looooong) last time, but I think that's a fair price for a little more time with my girl friends.

(And here is what I had to go to Tianzifang for...I promised to bring Lit a coin purse back like the one I had that said, "Money is fucking my favorite."  They no longer carry that one, but I found a decent replacement...I'll let you wonder which one I got...)

Long, Strange Trip

I can honestly say I've never been so pleased with a trip that included food poisoning and a flight delayed 13 hours after already spending 9 hours in the very, very cold Beijing airport (I'm not kidding about the cold...having no other option I bought a bottle of water, drank it all, then filled it with scalding hot water.  That did the trick).

I had big plans for yesterday.  I was going to busily upload photos to facebook and start blogging about the trip - starting with the food poisoning!  (That post is to come).  I figured I'd be in my apartment before noon, fix myself a delicious bowl of pasta for lunch, maybe go get things in order at school so I could kick out all my reports.  Instead, at 11:30 I was being shunted from one place to another...I think we were either being ushered back through immigration or waiting for a second shuttle bus.

See, apparently it was windy in UB.  There were lots of conspiracies floating around - that the wind wasn't that bad, for example, and they just didn't want to send off a flight that wasn't full - but today there are four or five teachers out whose flights were completely canceled, and the flight home was probably the roughest I've ever been on, so I don't doubt it anymore, and therefore, all the vitriol aimed at the Air China representative was probably misplaced.  I didn't yell at anyone, for once.  When I was talking about the fact that this would be great blog material with my new friends, I was warned to avoid bitterness, that nobody likes a bitter blogger...well, I know at least one of my six readers looks forward to my angry blogs (right, Emily?) but I ended up finding the whole situation remarkably copacetic.  I just wanted a blanket or a hotel room or something, because DAMN that airport was cold.

I did mentally complain a little about the loss of the time to unwind and unpack, but I couldn't get too upset about it.  Because in the process of being led off to the hotel in the airport, and then to the hotel outside the airport, and then back again through immigration, et cetera, I got to know a couple of my fellow travelers - a French guy and an Israeli/American one who live here.  I NEVER do this.  I usually find talking to the people I'm stuck on a plane - or in an airport - with awkward and pointless, but these guys were cute and interesting and so I spent a lot of the day talking to them and ended up trading numbers with them.  Whether or not we end up meeting again in UB (which I would like) I was really grateful to have met them yesterday, because it meant that instead of writing this as one of those bitter, angry posts, I'm telling you about another rainbow.  And as much as I would have liked to be at home in my bed, now that it's over with, I don't think I'd trade the experience.  Which is not to say that I'm going to start chatting my seatmates or anything, because I still stand by the fact that people are annoying - one only has to go to China to figure this out.  But more on that later.