Struggle Gets Oriented

I recently spent ten minutes explaining to a café waitress in the Shanghai Pudong airport the concept of an iced coffee. Really? REALLY? Has NO one ever made that request before in this entire NATION? Is that possible that in a country that includes all four seasons, no one, craving both a  refreshing cooling experience and life’s best and most legal drug, has asked politely to combine coffee and ice in order to create a more perfect union? Or is it, as I suspect, that people have asked, oh, how they’ve asked, begged, cried even, in all the languages of ever spoken from Babel and beyond, and the People’s Republic just doesn’t care. I bet you a dollar (that’s 6.8 RNB, by the way) that Mateo Ricci  and Marco Polo were both like, Por Favore, café con ghiaccio, por el amore de dio! The British probably pleaded, the Dutch demanded, the French sneered, the Spaniards gesticulated, but China has stood firm. Coffee with ice in it? That’s just crazy talk. White devil juice. None of that for desendents of Khan.

So if you ever find yourself in the Shanghai Pudong Airport I would advise you to get some coffee beforehand. Not only will doing so aid you in avoiding an awkward interpretive dance enacting the term "ice", but you will have something to console you as you wait in the inumberable lines that seperate you, the traveler, from your gate. Or, like me, you will find yourself with a 10 dollar paper cup filled with hot coffee and rapidly melting ice while laughing Chinese people eagerly watch you to make sure you are (finally) happy. In such a case, it's best to just fake it, reguardless of how disgusting the drink is. Trust me on that one.

And so, horrible cup of coffee like substance in my hand, I departed from Shanghai and, 14 hours later, arrived in a much stranger and more strugglesome place (is such a thing possible? Oh, wait for it, folks!). That's right, people. I went to Los Angeles.

Now, I firmly believe there are people out there who love and delight in Los Angeles. I believe there are people who enjoy equestrian paintings and crocs and t-shirt's that say "Your Boyfriend Bought Me This Shirt" and the music of Justin Bieber. I believe these things are real and out there and that there are people who treasure them, and are grateful for their existence. I even believe that there are people who when told: Death is not an option and are placed in front of the Twilight Saga DON'T immediately scream "Death is ALWAYS an option!" and jump out the nearest window. I am just not among them.

I think I've made my feelings about Los Angeles pretty clear in the past, but just for all those who have joined us late in the game, I point you to the nearest Woody Allen film. Well, that's not quite fair. After all, Los Angeles has truely excellent food, and the weather is really nice. And if there is any other good quality... I personally have yet to find it. But Strugglemano lives there, and as I wasn't wild about extending my trip across the Pacific ocean to include a cross-country flight, I dragged my bags, still dusty from the sand blowing off the Gobi desert, into my brother's car and, scowling in the sunshine like the East Coaster I am, observed the most common Los Angeles view there is, that is, the one framed by a car window.

The thing about flying from China to the West Coast is that you gain 15 hours of time, so in many cases you find yourself arriving about an hour before you left the day before. For some people this might have seemed like a perfect opportunty to hit the sights and check out the museums. but having spent the last 5 months of my life doing exactly that, I was honestly eager for some downtime, and if you can't count on the United States to find places to stuff your face, where the hell can you? So, in deferance to my wishes, Strugglemano set out to find me the best of the best of the worst possible foods for you. And here is something I noticed on our gastronomic journy, and I have to say, maybe it's our arrogance, or our ignorance, but when it comes to dining we in the US sometimes act like we are inventing the wheel. We are always "discovering" things like cupcakes or couscous or chicken and then carrying on like no one has ever heard of this item before. This year seems to be the year of bacon and whiskey, despite the fact that the Chinese consider it to be the year of the tiger. Sorry, China, tiger meat is just too expensive these days, though apparently whale is just fine...

So in keeping with these exciting new food discoveries, Strugglemano and I made it our mission in my first 24 hours back on US soil to consume them both in large quantities. Starting with the bacon-maple donut from the Nickel Diner in downtown LA ( I know it sounds disgusting, but I have to tell you, it was glorious, every articlogging bite of it) and moving on to murkey but delicious burbon Derbies at the speak-easy style Edison (has to be one of the coolest bars I've seen in a while, it's not every day you get to sip bootleg gin surrounded by silent movies and turn-of-the-century machinery). We ended the day stuffing our faces at Animal, a resturant specializing in little plates of delectably prepared meats. I guess America has found meat this year as well. Thank goodness, too, it coincides with our recent discovery of fire.

I will say this much for Los Angeles, when I walked into a coffee shop, be it the painfully hip Intellegetnsia or the bubble tea house in a mall complex in the San Gabriel valley, they knew what I wanted when I asked for iced coffee. It's almost a shame, really, I was getting really good at miming.

Sino-Strugglet Relations

Everyone talks about travel as an education. And by everyone, I really mean the people I meet who don't travel very much at all. They ask me what I'm doing and I tell them I've been traveling for the past year and they say, oh, how wonderful, what and experience, that's so amazing, I wish I could do that, and all of it comes out in the tone of voice that let's you know that these people would be lost like Gilligan if they ever ventured anywhere outside of Blackberry wireless service and Starbucks range. And while some people might then spend the time after that revelation wondering if they are a Ginger or a Mary Anne (personally I think I'm a Professor...) I decided that I didn't have time to invent a coconut radio, and so, phone-less (let alone Blackberry-less), and uncaffinated (I, well, I don't know how to order coffee in Chinese. It's an issue), I stepped out into the world. Or at the very least, into the China.

But of course, when you visit a major city in any nation, from Kenya to Kuwait, it's always going to be a little easier then anywhere else. The thing about cities is that they are magnets for people, for immigrants, for languages and for English Menus. Traditionally cities were built on major waterways, take, for example, Egypt, as evidence, or the Roman Empire, or however the Vikings made it past the frozen tundra of Scandinavia and into our hearts and minds. But a fun fact about Shanghai is that while these days it may be one of the two cities people can actually remember exist in China (The other one is NOT Hong Kong. Come ON people, is history just something you learn from The Tudors? Please don't answer that..), if you think back about 80 years ago or so, Shanghai was a one horse town filled with ex-pats, opium dens, and young ladies from the east who wanted to look more like they were from the west. These days however, well, I mean, subtract the horse, add thousands of cars, bikes, and poorly designed scooters, and, frankly, keep the rest of that definition, and you have Shanghai in 2010. And while Shanghai these days may be mad, bad, and dangerous to know, it's not so very different then it was less the a century ago. It's bigger, richer, and more important, but it's got no fewer foreigners (if anything, it has MORE), and it's still a place where a girl can get herself around and, despite more then a few misunderstandings, make herself understand. But you know where that's NOT possible? Beijing. Or to be more specific, it's not possible on the 13 hour train ride that connects Shanghai in the south to it's more northern facing counterpart, the Big Dragon. (I don't think anyone acctually calls it that, but I'm going to make it a thing. Spread the word.)

Now, given that the trip between these two cities is so long, and given that if you go to China, you go Great Wall or you go home (to be fair, you go home either way, the People's Republic isn't a fan of long stays, residence permits or anything that would keep subversive Western ideas like "human rights" or "seated toilets" in the country), one might think that the methods to get to Beijing from Shanghai would be large and various. Not so, my friends, no so, let's not forget, this is China,
and China is a country where they figured out the least efficient way to do things and just decided to model everything on that. So you can book a flight from Shanghai's Pudong airport, if you like, and you plan it in advance, or, if you want to be a complete struggle (which I obviously always do), you take an overnight train. In an ideal world such a train would be comfortable and reasonable, and you would spend the evening sleeping away as the countryside breezes by outside, unobserved and unsung. But this is not an ideal world, to be fair, and it's made an even less ideal one by a little thing I like to call the Shanghai Expo. The expo is supposed to be a cultural event opening the city to the world but what it actually is is a huge pain in everyone's collective buttocks, raising prices everywhere and, if in any way possible, actually making traffic worse. And it hasn't even offically begun yet. So I couldn't get a bed, and I settled for a seat, figuring, well, it's wouldn't be the first uncomfortable night I'd had in my life nor the last. How bad could it be, right?

Well, not entirely wrong, Bad would be a misnomer for my 13 hours spent in a seated position, clutching my bags on my lap to deter potental passport thieves, and confronting the stares of the entire train car. Amazed by my pure dazzleing differentness, my fellow passangers spent the entire long and sweaty evening watching my every move, some covertly, some blatently, all curiously. When one of the ventured to give me a hesitant "hello", my rejoiner of "hello" caused ripples of reaction spreading out through the car, possibly through the entire train. Maybe they were suprised that a white person had taken one of the cheap seats. Maybe I look wildly hot as I drool onto my seat cushion at 4 in the morning. I really couldn't say. All I know is, when I was awoken at 6am by the dulcet sounds of Chinese pop-power ballads and the call of the wheeled congee cart, the stares were still there. Oh, well, so was my passport, so I really can't complain. Every part of my body aching from the ride, my clothing and hair emitting the sweet odors of the chili-beef ramen and green tea that had been consumed by my seat mates during the trip, I finally found myself blinking in the hazy dirty light of the Beijing afternoon.

Better enjoy standing up while it lasts, I thought to myself, in three days, you have to get back on the train and do it all again. And this time, I reminded myself, you really need to try and dress better. Apparently people are watching.

A Struggle is Worth A Thousand Words: Shanghai Edition

China is the future, people, and not just because it's at least 12 hours ahead of the Continental United States. No, China is the future because it's huge, inexplicable, the people dress like chaffing is something that happens to other people, and no one knows what the hell is going on. Ever. And if you've ever seen an episode of the Jetsons, I think you'll find this is pretty much exactly what we all thought the future was going to look like. OH! And everyone has a maid. So, yeah. Welcome to the future, hope you know how to eat with chopsticks, because they will MOCK you if you don't, and you wont even understand them, or worse, you will, and in your flustered embrassment almost knock over an entire box of sausage stuffed onion buns when all you wanted to DO was get a CUP of COFFEE. Or something. Not that I'd know.

And so if China is the future, Shanghai is the capital of what is to come. I had always hoped the future would hold jet packs and flying cars and mandatory silver uniforms to make my morning outfit battle easier. What a fool was I, therefore, to expect anything other then struggle. I'll say this for Shanghai, though, in the future, the struggle moves at the speed of light.

Struggle Gets Shanghaied

Let me tell you something you might not find surprising about the Peoples Republic of China. Now, to be fair, there are indeed many things that ARE surprising about this here country, it’s visa fees, the fact that you have to register with the police upon arrival, it’s curious lack of other ethnicities… but that’s enough of that (and people may be reading this, so…). And besides, when you go to visit your friend who has moved to China because of all “opportunities”(Hi Lisa!) because there just aren’t enough real jobs  at home, you have to expect a certain amount of crazy, if only because as a US citizen you don’t feel super great appearing in public in pajamas (one of those pesky little puritanical rules that sticks with you). But to return to my original point (feel free to scroll up, I tend to wander) this place is not easy to get to, and I will be more then happy to tell you just how not easy it can be.

Those of you who have been playing along at home will recall that my last port of duty was a small and remote little town that the locals call London. I spent a bit of time in this London place after my stay at the not-Yale that is Oxford, indulging in amazing Indian food with my friend Andrew (Hi, Andrew!) and watching amazing disturbing Italian melodramas  and dodging French tourist while staring at Mesopotamian artifacts in a British exhibition case. You have to love a post colonistic country, they have the best of everything. They should, after all, they stole it.

So, having watched the sun indeed set on the British empire, (and, to be honest, it looks like when the sun sets everywhere else. Please don’t tell India, Rushdie will be SO out of a job) albeit from the Gatwick aiport, I boarded a plane to Dubai, on United Arab Emirates Airlines. Let me tell you a new life rule, if you have the chance, ALWAYS, and if I didn’t make myself clear, ALWAYS take United Arab Emirates Airlines. The air hostess outfits alone make this trip worth it, but the combination of halfway decent food (the best you can hope for on a plane) hilarious safety demonstrations, movie selection and free booze make this trip the best that 15 hours with a stop in Dubai could possibly be. Having done my best in my 3 hours in the Dubai airport to marry rich (hung out in the duty free, helped several asian tourists buy cigarettes, left without a ring, you tell me the modern age has no great tragedies), I boarded another plane to Shanghai, and after an addition few hours (or 8, or 9, or so…) I finally reached the beginning of the Silk Road, from whence all raw materials begin. That is to say, as western visitor, I couldn’t help but create my own sphere of influence. In other words? How do people who are not from China look at China in anyway other then predatory? Our money, for the time being, is worth more, and this is indeed the place to buy, to buy whatever you want, whatever you can conceive, whatever is made by hand it made in China. You can’t get a glass of wine here for a reasonable price, and bread is like some kind of precious gem, but silk made gowns or slippers, ceramic bowels or rubber shoes, cotton, linen, hair ties and glasses, rugs and watches, fake designer, well, whatever, shoes, ties, bikes and wallets, my friend, you want these things for cheap? You want these things from China. And darlings,  let’s be real, these things from China? I’m buying them.

Today, Lisa and I, and by the way, this Lisa character I keep talking about? She is a saint. She speaks this lingo (and who else really does, I mean, a pictogram based language? COME ON), and, well, we went to a fabric market. I had, at Lisa’s recommendation, brought a favorite blouse of mine to get remade by Chinese tailors. We picked out a few bolts of silk (as once does in China) and bargained (she bargained) the saleswoman down to the lowest possible price to get things tailor made for me in what seems to be the garment district of Shanghai. I am now, by the way, the proud possessor of a bathrobe, 5 boxes of cookies and 3 imaginary but assumed shirts. I really think this is how I’ve always imagined China to be. Irresistible, but full of imaginary things. Let me assure you, this is not untrue. Come to Shanghai. It’s worth the Struggle.