Dec. 16th, 2006 10:26 am
suzhou, shanghai
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toastykittenSo every tour guide told us how to cat-call in the Suzhou dialect, and told us that Suzhou was known for both being a "land of pretty girls" and a really romantic city in general. Many go to Suzhou to get their wedding pictures taken because it's so scenic. We did not get a pretty girl for our tour bus, but the other tour bus did. Our tour guide was a baby faced guy with glasses named Ah Jun, who had an equally babyish voice. It was a bit disconcerting.
During our long tour bus ride, Leslie opened up a little about the harsh realities of Chinese life. Leslie just about fell over when he learned that Americans don't pay for public school education at all. He mentioned that he knew one of his friends who got pregnant and decided to abort the baby, even though it would have been a boy, because she couldn't figure out a plan to pay for the child's education. Every year costs about $10k renmenbai. The average, lucky person with a steady job makes about $2k renmenbai a month.
He also told us that if a person needed surgery in China, the family would save to give a $5k renmenbai red envelope to the doctor. He was careful to say that you didn't have to do it, but you'd just feel a lot better if you did. Of course, he horrorified the majority of us with this small detail, because we were so used to having our doctors just follow the law and not take bribes or things that would seem to be a conflict of interest. He then changed the subject, saying something like, "well there are lots of things to like and dislike about China, just as there are in America", and the topic changed to stars that Chinese people love and hated.
Chinese people LOVE Andy Lau, Anita Mui, Roman Tam, etc. He named a number of people that were already dead and I think Andy Lau was the only person who was alive on that list.
Chinese people really hate Zhang Ziyi because they think she's so arrogant. And she has the nerve to go and ACT in ENGLISH movies when her English is so TERRIBLE!
I'm sorry - the Chinese hate for Zhang Ziyi amuses me a lot.
Oh, I should probably talk about the personalities of the tour guides more. Kelvin had an MBA and a law degree, and was very talented at infusing his historical descriptions with humorous asides. He also talked a lot about "yuen fun", the Cantonese term for something I think of as "fate". A lot of Chinese people, my parents included, believe that everything happens for a reason, and that there's no such thing as bumping into someone you know somewhere far awy as "just a coincidence". We may not even know why those things happen in this life, but the fact that it happened is enough. So he talked about how the world is a lot smaller than we think and in his goodbye message said he looked forward to meeting us again.
Leslie, our Nanjing guide who stayed with us through the end, was a friendly, cute guy who was a year older than me. He talked a lot about how much he loved his "mommy", and if I translated the stuff he said in English, it would sound really creepy to American ears, but makes all Chinese parents proud. For example, at one point, he talked about how he wanted his mother to move in with him when he gets married because he didn't want his mom to end up in a nursing home. "If my wife doesn't like it, then I'll just get rid of her. I can always get another wife, but there will only be one Mommy!" My sisters and I had to try really hard to keep from rolling our eyes. He was also working towards a law degree in his spare time.
Every single guide also seemed to like pointing out to us that if a female was above the age of 25 and wasn't married yet, then it would be impossible for her to ever get married. Leslie was in shock when he learned that my older sisters were in their thirties and single, and fine with being single. "Wow, that could never happen in China." My sisters: "Well, in America it doesn't matter."
In the morning, we went to another pearl factory that got its pearls from Taihu. Lunch and dinner were accompanied by some female singers playing lutes (I think), probably the better to showcase the "pretty girls". Not that I could tell the difference. The afternoon was spent at a "house" from the Qing dynasty, whose owner was a judge or magistrate. It, too, was very pretty and looked exactly like the movies.
There was also a short boat ride in the canal right next to the judge's house. It was pretty, but full of mosquitoes. We also got another boat ride in the evening, which still had many of the original houses right next to it. People still lived in those houses and did their laundry in the river. It was a mostly quiet boat ride, with one really stanky part (the stanky part was right next to a bathroom), more mosquitoes, and a couple of nice bridges.
I was a bit disappointed in our Shanghai portion, mostly because it was raining and we didn't do much besides vist a couple of shopping streets and some landmarks. To me, it felt like being trapped in the tourist portion of Chinatown and not being able to escape. There was Nanjing Road - the shopping street where we saw that McDonald's had an advertisement for green bean pie, a street where we could get xiulongbao, a view of a famous TV tower, and after dinner a visit to one of Shanghai's most modern boulevards. It was actually a place I saw on the James Spader-narrated documentary about China - an entire block was stripped and remodelled to look like an updated version of 1930s Shanghai. It contained a lot of upscale shops and many Hong Kong stars such as Alan Tam owned restaurants there. It was one of the few places where the salespeople spoke English (and that was really fucking unnverving) and it was full of white people. Most native Chinese people probably couldn't even afford a beer there.
The first place we went in the morning was not Shanghai itself, but a silk factory on the way. I learned that real silk is not flammable, and that some people eat fried silkworms for breakfast. If you have a real silk stuffed blanket, you don't have to wash it ever, and just air it out every once in a while and it'll last you like twenty years. Silk covers have to be washed with shampoo and not laundry detergent. My parents bought a couple of blankets. Unfortunately at the end of the year, Americans will no longer be able to buy directly from the factory itself, so there was a bit of a feeding frenzy. My one thought was that it was such a shame that they had such a beautiful material and they made such ugly prints out of it. I mean, seriously, do you want a real silk pillowcase with a knockoff print of Snoopy on it? (Ok, I know some people who do, but still.) All the elegant, royal prints that you see in places like the Forbidden Palace were missing.
I briefly wondered if the fact that the factory was closing to U.S. customers was a response to the American tariffs? But I forgot to look that up.
At night we were treated to a short cruise where we could see Shanghai at night, because "if you haven't seen Shanghai at night, then you haven't seen Shanghai at all". Shanghai at night was really pretty. Unfortunately we also got treated to the lamest magician show EVER. It was so lame that none of the little kids bought it - we're supposed to be amazed that she pulled flowers out of her sleeve?
Leslie, our Nanjing guide who stayed with us through the end, was a friendly, cute guy who was a year older than me. He talked a lot about how much he loved his "mommy", and if I translated the stuff he said in English, it would sound really creepy to American ears, but makes all Chinese parents proud. For example, at one point, he talked about how he wanted his mother to move in with him when he gets married because he didn't want his mom to end up in a nursing home. "If my wife doesn't like it, then I'll just get rid of her. I can always get another wife, but there will only be one Mommy!" My sisters and I had to try really hard to keep from rolling our eyes. He was also working towards a law degree in his spare time.
Every single guide also seemed to like pointing out to us that if a female was above the age of 25 and wasn't married yet, then it would be impossible for her to ever get married. Leslie was in shock when he learned that my older sisters were in their thirties and single, and fine with being single. "Wow, that could never happen in China." My sisters: "Well, in America it doesn't matter."
In the morning, we went to another pearl factory that got its pearls from Taihu. Lunch and dinner were accompanied by some female singers playing lutes (I think), probably the better to showcase the "pretty girls". Not that I could tell the difference. The afternoon was spent at a "house" from the Qing dynasty, whose owner was a judge or magistrate. It, too, was very pretty and looked exactly like the movies.
There was also a short boat ride in the canal right next to the judge's house. It was pretty, but full of mosquitoes. We also got another boat ride in the evening, which still had many of the original houses right next to it. People still lived in those houses and did their laundry in the river. It was a mostly quiet boat ride, with one really stanky part (the stanky part was right next to a bathroom), more mosquitoes, and a couple of nice bridges.
I was a bit disappointed in our Shanghai portion, mostly because it was raining and we didn't do much besides vist a couple of shopping streets and some landmarks. To me, it felt like being trapped in the tourist portion of Chinatown and not being able to escape. There was Nanjing Road - the shopping street where we saw that McDonald's had an advertisement for green bean pie, a street where we could get xiulongbao, a view of a famous TV tower, and after dinner a visit to one of Shanghai's most modern boulevards. It was actually a place I saw on the James Spader-narrated documentary about China - an entire block was stripped and remodelled to look like an updated version of 1930s Shanghai. It contained a lot of upscale shops and many Hong Kong stars such as Alan Tam owned restaurants there. It was one of the few places where the salespeople spoke English (and that was really fucking unnverving) and it was full of white people. Most native Chinese people probably couldn't even afford a beer there.
The first place we went in the morning was not Shanghai itself, but a silk factory on the way. I learned that real silk is not flammable, and that some people eat fried silkworms for breakfast. If you have a real silk stuffed blanket, you don't have to wash it ever, and just air it out every once in a while and it'll last you like twenty years. Silk covers have to be washed with shampoo and not laundry detergent. My parents bought a couple of blankets. Unfortunately at the end of the year, Americans will no longer be able to buy directly from the factory itself, so there was a bit of a feeding frenzy. My one thought was that it was such a shame that they had such a beautiful material and they made such ugly prints out of it. I mean, seriously, do you want a real silk pillowcase with a knockoff print of Snoopy on it? (Ok, I know some people who do, but still.) All the elegant, royal prints that you see in places like the Forbidden Palace were missing.
I briefly wondered if the fact that the factory was closing to U.S. customers was a response to the American tariffs? But I forgot to look that up.
At night we were treated to a short cruise where we could see Shanghai at night, because "if you haven't seen Shanghai at night, then you haven't seen Shanghai at all". Shanghai at night was really pretty. Unfortunately we also got treated to the lamest magician show EVER. It was so lame that none of the little kids bought it - we're supposed to be amazed that she pulled flowers out of her sleeve?
During our long tour bus ride, Leslie opened up a little about the harsh realities of Chinese life. Leslie just about fell over when he learned that Americans don't pay for public school education at all. He mentioned that he knew one of his friends who got pregnant and decided to abort the baby, even though it would have been a boy, because she couldn't figure out a plan to pay for the child's education. Every year costs about $10k renmenbai. The average, lucky person with a steady job makes about $2k renmenbai a month.
He also told us that if a person needed surgery in China, the family would save to give a $5k renmenbai red envelope to the doctor. He was careful to say that you didn't have to do it, but you'd just feel a lot better if you did. Of course, he horrorified the majority of us with this small detail, because we were so used to having our doctors just follow the law and not take bribes or things that would seem to be a conflict of interest. He then changed the subject, saying something like, "well there are lots of things to like and dislike about China, just as there are in America", and the topic changed to stars that Chinese people love and hated.
Chinese people LOVE Andy Lau, Anita Mui, Roman Tam, etc. He named a number of people that were already dead and I think Andy Lau was the only person who was alive on that list.
Chinese people really hate Zhang Ziyi because they think she's so arrogant. And she has the nerve to go and ACT in ENGLISH movies when her English is so TERRIBLE!
I'm sorry - the Chinese hate for Zhang Ziyi amuses me a lot.
