alexisthemovie

The next morning, we woke up pretty early. We had some great breakfast from a place across the street from our hotel… Actually when I say “we”, I mean they went and brought me back some food since I stayed up late the night before.

Then I realized that I was out of clean briefs and socks… and it was 15 yuan to wash EACH article of clothing. Fuck that!

…we were right next to a huge wholesale shopping center. A lot of the world’s stuff is made in China, so the stuff from the source is DIRT CHEAP. It’s Chinese new year soon so naturally many shops were pushing random new year’s celebration stuff.

The place on the right is where I ended up buying my socks… 12 pairs in total. I LOVE the fact that you can bargain here. It always makes you feel like you’re getting a bomb ass deal, even if it’s just average. Ended up being about 10 bucks, which is not bad, but later on, we found a place where it was less than HALF that!

More shops…

It is of course the year of the tiger…

Here you can see everyone’s transportation parked outside.

…and here we are inside the packed wholesale market. There is every article of clothing imaginable and lots of common household items like nail clippers, chopsticks, etc. The more you buy, the better deal you get.

These were actually pretty interesting… stretchy tights that were made to look like jeans. If you want the ultimate skin-tight jeans look, then these are for you. I’m surprised that skater boys in America aren’t wearing these yet… guess they haven’t trekked across the ocean yet.

…hit up a hat shop too

and i just had to buy this cap because it had flappy ears! how COOL is that?!

…all kinds of tools

Finally, we escaped and met up with another one of my mom’s friends. I spotted this cute little dinky car.

Here’s a shot from outside the supermarket (FUYOU Street Merchandise Mart)

We then went down into another shopping district that Shanghai is famous for (can’t remember the name)

Bunch of nice “higher end” chopsticks… I know right? A shop JUST for chopsticks

Random obama sighting

Deep fried shrimp, quail, and crab on a stick (didn’t try these, had them before)

Tang-yuan on the street

More quail

A canal ran through the place… this is actually all really old. It’s places like these that are protected and people aren’t allowed to build large skyscrapers over.

This was a little stand selling small turtles among other things (not as food). Letting them turtle…

Check out the old designs in the wall

Candy stand…

…we couldn’t resist and bought candy cranberries on a stock (this place is famous for these)

Awkward bhudda thing that was always looking at you from every angle.

More classic chinese design

My mom decided to buy some of her old favorite snacks. She went to college around here and has good memories of eating these.

Interesting aisle of art. Each stand had something different. Here we see little figures made of straw (all 100% by hand)

This guy cuts paper into a shape/picture of you.

Little small dough figures of you

Tin can craft and drawings by hand

Metal calligraphy and caricatures

Obama mart? random

This might weird you out. Little hens on a stock and on the right, some beef soup. Yes, that is a cow’s skull.

The 3 females together. Mom’s friend was 5 feet tall at best. She was a really sweet host though.

Made entirely out of soda cans…

Candy!

Dried everything: from fish to beef, and everything in between. This stuff is actually some of my favorite, I’ll probably have some when I get to Guangzhou.

Finally it was time to eat lunch. We were actually pretty full from breakfast and the candy cranberries. We had to eat at the famous steam bun place.

Here’s the line outside for carryout.

We ate inside. There’s an interesting social hierarchy in this restaurant. There are 3 floors and the same food is served on all 3, but the top floor is nearly twice the price of the first floor and the 2nd floor is in between. The difference is that the top floor has better chairs, more space, less people. The 1st floor is REALLY hard to get a table at and is chaotic for being a restaurant. It was also more “authentic” so we ate there, to say the least.

We first sat down on the 3rd floor before moving down, here you can see outside is completely overcast. They haven’t seen blue skies in a LONG time. It’s a combination of the humid weather and air pollution that has literally blocked out the sky.

As we headed down to the first floor, I got a snap of the 2nd… there was still waiter service here.

On the first floor, you don’t get menus, you only get bowls if there are any available, and you have to go up to order… Excellent.

The food was pretty good.

We got going after that to see more of urban Shanghai. That will be in the next post. I don’t want to have hundreds of images in one or it’d take forever to load.

Out

Okay, let’s see, I last left off while we were at the museum in Shanghai. I’m going to skip the rest of those shots and continue on the story… we did so much it’s hard to remember already!

Most of Shanghai is BUSTLING! The Chinese government have protection acts on a lot of the older buildings and streets to preserve the old look and feel of the country. With so much money, the country is building at an unbelievable rate, but it’s also important to preserve the history. Here you can get a glimpse of what Shanghai is like. Lots of buildings and lots of trees. The main city portion is all modern, you need to step a bit aside to find the older stuff.

This is what most taxis look like. They’re almost all Volkswagen Santanas… aka the Passat. They’re all built locally in Shanghai.

There were also Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin, and Maserati dealerships. There are a few rich people living in this part of the city.

This car is ugly as hell.

We had a couple hours to kill before dinner with my mom’s friend so we decided to pop into a bakery shop since it was cold and we were slightly hungry. The random stuff we ate was pretty good and we stayed here for an hour or so before heading back out onto the street.

Crappy lens and nighttime don’t work out so well!

We taxied over to the restaurant for dinner. Taxi rides are cheap here. It starts at 12 yuan and it’s about 1.5 yuan for each extra kilometer (1 US dollar = 6.8 yuan)

The restaurant was REALLY beautiful! I think it was the “highest class” restaurant in Shanghai. Ironically the food was mediocre to us (we don’t really have the right appetites for Shanghai food.

1 pair to get your food, 1 pair to eat your food…

One thing that weirds me out still is smoking inside the building, which is allowed in some places like this restaurant. Here’s a random image of me tired and full.

The city is really alive at night. Everything is lit up.
(taken from the taxi)

We went to Bu Xing Jie which is basically Shanghai’s version of 3rd street.

This place has great nightlife and there are some really high end spots for people to eat and hang out at.

This is the building where a meeting was held and China became a communist country…

Continuing on…

We sat down at some really nice place for some dessert/drinks

…but it was too cold so we ended up inside Starbucks
We had java chips because they don’t have chai tea here :<

…and when we finally left, it was late and we were tired, ready for bed.

Part 1 of my vacation to China. Written for my girlfriend, Jazmin.

Day 1, noon. Getting off the plane from Japan, we immediately noticed the very slightly warmer weather (but still really cold!). It was also extremely overcast and humid so it looked a bit foggy. We met up with my parents and took a 30min bus ride to the vicinity of the hotel and then took a taxi the last couple blocks.

Below are views from the bus…

Here you can see the current construction progress for the World Expo. It’s only a couple months away and they’re still far from completion! China is throwing money at everything. There is construction going on everywhere to try and beautify and modernize the cities. The older/traditional housing is still preserved.

If you look up renderings, you’ll see just how insane/amazing it’s going to look.

Random buildings. People here live insanely close to each other. This is the only way for a country so populated…

High rise buildings in the city

The temperature difference outside and inside the bus created a lot of condensation.

View from our hotel room

View of our room (with dad and sister)

Going down the elevator (we were on the 12th floor)

The street our hotel laid on.

Guy cleaning his pots?

Most business owners live above their shop.

Shanghai has a LOT of trees, even in the most urban of all urban places.

Driving here versus driving in LA is really different! Chaos is one word to describe it.

We were heading towards the museum

Had to wait in a long line and got bored

Inside the museum

Old ceramics were in portion

This is an old pillow… speaking of hard things to sleep on, my bed in the hotel is like sleeping on a slab of stone!

Everything here is nearly priceless and old (BC), however I hear that people still counterfeit the items regardless and at those “what is my item worth” conventions, if a fake is determined, then the piece is smashed on the spot no questions asked.

BC teapot design



^ look at how old everything is!

Anyways I’m about to pass out, so IMG_7096 is where I leave off for tonight, more tomorrow.