April 24, 2005 Archives
Got to go for dinner with my aunt Brigitte and the kids. Too many pictures to process. There's still Suzhou, Wuxi and Nanjing. Suzhou is really nice to visit, and they showed us around the newly built/building residential areas for rich people on the side of the lake/river (not sure where it fits on a map). I believe it's the high-tech boom in the Suzhou area, with IBM and the rest establishing themselves in the vicinity.
(Pictures are now classified per day. Hover link with mouse pointer for a short description.)
We got to Hangzhou in the end of the afternoon, and the bus unloaded us in front of West Lake, on the city side. I remember that last time they were just starting to pretty up the lakefront.
A convenience store. I must've missed those Western-style convenience stores last time around. I'm not sure. Seems like I missed a lot of things. But knowing bits of Putonghua makes me braver. In each city, I went into those stores. They prove to be the best, most reliable buying places for food/drinks.
There was beer served at every meal... Very popular, and cheap in Asia. They serve it to you as if it were water (not yet as cheap as water, but still pretty close). Not particularly good too, the traditional "Chinese" beer is bland, but you start seeing beverages brewed by foreign companies (Interbrew, Budweiser, Suntory) which have a little bit more taste...
Another first time in China was to take the bus. It's almost becoming routine. While taxi is not expensive (about 20RMB, or 4CAD) to take you from our hotel to West Lake, it's only a yuan in bus (15 cents).
Streets of Hangzhou, capital of the Zhejiang province. Taken from the second floor of the bus I took from the suburb in the northeast of the city to downtown.
I couldn't resist, and had a McChicken, which I barely knew how to order (of course, every possible sandwich name is translated into hanzi). The chicken patty was kinda drier than its American counterpart. Have yet to eat in a McDonald's in HK, and so far that means I've been successful in trying new things.
To my surprise, there was an exhibit on calcography, in collaboration with Le Louvre museum in Paris, in a small new city museum on the side of West Lake, near the Hostelling International Youth Hostel (which I "bumped into" by chance - and happened to me again in Nanjing). The funny thing about that museum was that about everyone at the museum was taking pictures, with the flash even. o_O
It was a rainy day in Hangzhou, and I left the hotel without my umbrella. >_>
That night we went with people from the tour to have supper ("siu ye" as you say in Cantonese). It was a sort of fondue party, at a local chain called 九佰碗 (Nine Hundred Bowls), and never had such a good time with fondue. My guess is that in HK it's just too crowded to spend all the time you want in a place of such quality without ruining yourself, and that in Montreal you simply don't have those sort of places which taste as good (I'll have to try looking in Chinatown when I come back).
That one goes into my wallpaper collection. <3 I thought I was going to miss the West Lake cruise because I wandered on my own the day before, but apparently some shit happened, and they couldn't have a boat for themselves (it *is* one of the top tourist attractions in China, so you can imagine the masses of tourists at mid-day). Therefore we went in the morning, which is more calm, not that much calm, but anyways.
Brand new Pudong airport. If I'm correct, we didn't enter through that one last time. (Pudong means "East Bank")
The Magnetic Train between the airport and Pudong, or actually to a subway line towards the southwest of Pudong proper. There is actually not much near the station, I believe it's still farmland. But I give it 5 years, and you'll have a little suburb near it. The Maglev is of German design, and the only other Maglev I know of is in Nagoya, Japan, near the World Expo 2005 site. The Shanghai one is more "useful", as it isn't a sort of intracity monorail that stops at every station (spaced out like, um, metro stations), but which really goes the speed it was designed to run at (400-500kph).
They don't look so delicious like this, but since 2002, I've been craving for a big cheap bowl of these things. B/c in Montreal they charge you 5CAD for 4 of those (without the soup inside), and in HK, I think it's only about half the price... But in Shanghai, even in a tourist place, it's 8 freaking renminbi for 16 of them (that's about 1.20CAD)! The restaurant's (a counter too - and expect to wait 30 minutes at least) called "Nanxiang" in the "Old Town God's Temple" tourist spot.
Of course, Western food chains are everywhere...
Kentucky Fried Chicken is even more ubiquitous... And a success in China, including HK. It must be because of fried chicken and some sort of Chinese connection. They've rolls made with fried chicken, shallots and "hoi sin" sauce which taste just like like Peking Duck. :D
Nanjing Road (南京路) is probably the most famous commercial street of the city.
Me on the Bund with illuminated skycrapers of Pudong on the background.
The following morning, a photo of the Oriental Pearl Tower in Pudong.
Each tour guide (and book on Shanghai) will tell you that what started Shanghai off was its past as merchant port dominated by Western powers seeking to get a piece of China. "The Bund" is the name given to the West bank of the Hangpu river which runs through Shanghai where many big companies, etc, established their quarters. It's really one of the most cool places to visit in Shanghai (they gave us 20 minutes, and I used 15 of those to change my USD to RMB >_>). There are surely a lot of things I need to do in Shanghai, and I really dislike the fact that I stayed there for only 1 day... Will try to stay longer if I can find some company to spend that time with, hm.
I wrote something, but closed the window... Basically I tried elaborating about the tour I took last week. It's called the 華東 (huadong) tour, because, I think, it takes us to the region encompassing Shanghai and surroundings which is called that way. It retraces the step of my first trip to China. Start in Shanghai for one day, and then Hangzhou for two, and then Suzhou for one, Wuxi for one and finally Nanjing for one. Hangzhou, Suzhou and Shanghai form a triangle where Sz and Sh are closer to each other (with Hangzhou about 200km southwest of Shanghai, and Suzhou, 100 km to the northwest). Wuxi is on the way to Nanjing, towards the northwest.