One, Two, Three, Four

One, Two, Three, Four

15 September 2010

Shanghai, China

I’m going through wild spasms of indecision among four alternatives. They relate to the coming Chinese National Holiday, which runs from 1-6 October, but effectively for me it begins on the 28 September. The facts of the case are that everyone is going somewhere, and it is highly advised that the somewhere be outside of China, since approximately 1,300,000,000 Chinese people travel around China during this time. This is arguably less emphatic a rule if you are going to a western autonomous region, like Tibet or Xinjiang or even Inner Mongolia, because, let’s face it, they’ve got space to spare.

1. Indonesian Pet. Fly into Kuala Lumpur or Singapore or Jakarta and bust around Indonesia.

2. Tibet. The Indonesian Pet will cost as much as Tibet, so why not just throw my towel in with the group going from CEIBS?

3. Flight Optimizer. Bangkok to Nanning, China. Fly into Bangkok (only $250) and travel by land through Thailand, Laos and/or Cambodia, and Vietnam, and fly back from Nanning (<<$100 flight back to Shanghai)

4. Homebody. Maybe I should just stay in Shanghai? Except option #3, this all looks like it will cost a good grand. Wouldn’t that be better spent on Mandarin lessons? And I could do some Zacks (my remote part-time job writing about financial anomalies). And get my blog in order. But I would certainly be the only person I’d know in Shanghai during the break…

Tonight Gerald and I had dinner with our sublessors, Chris and Hannah, and their friends, Monica and Shawn. We ate at a yummy and cheap kebab restaurant just off Nanjing Xi Lu where everything is served as a kebab: from meats to potatoes to asparagus. Then we went by Monica’s flat before going to Xintiandi to a bar called Brown Sugar, where it was ladies’ night. This meant free fizz for the ladies and dancing to great live soul music. (Finally it started to get bluesy with “I Got a Woman” but I was crushed when they cut into another song early. The lead singer said he was from LA, but upon further questioning I found he was from Alabama.)

Brown Sugar was also a good chance to play “I Spy a Chinese Prostitute,” though this scene did have some very endearing normal Chinese groups as well as lots of potential expat friends. By the end of the night I had five potential new friends’ phone numbers. Two comments on that: 1) I was clearly sending out the wrong vibe because only one of these was a guy. 2) In Shanghai it is incredibly easy to meet people. It’s like English-speakers are on an expat island. “You speak English! You think China is incredible! You are here for some indiscriminate amount of time between a month and a few years. Wow, we have so much in common! Let’s be friends!”

Picture: Shanghai Metro travel on a normal day in; kebabs for dinner