Monday, March 15, 2010
Inaugural Asian Tour Pt.4
The flight to Shanghai was fairly uneventful, but I did manage to put away the best part of a bottle of decent California cabernet with dinner, much to the steward’s angst and all the time enjoying The Commitments, which I was very surprised to see NWA had in their video library.
Upon landing I had about a 15 minute wait for immigration but poor Dave had a much longer wait. While waiting I found an ATM and looked about transportation into Shanghai, which is approx an hours taxi ride and maybe two hours on public transport. The newly opened Maglev train which runs at an incredible 275mph only operates between 9am and 5:30pm so would not even be of any use to us on our return as we had to be at the airport next Tuesday at 8am.
I checked out the taxi line and while there were plenty of them they were very small looking Volkswagens, Back inside the terminal I was approached by a young guy in an official uniform who inquired which hotel I was going to and that he could arrange transportation in a large sedan for 500 Yuan ($60).I knew the taxi fare should be in the range of 200 Yuan but being tired from the flight and knowing Dave had been squashed in the back the thought of an hour cramped in the back of a small Volkswagen was not very appealing, so I said yes and told him to hang on till my friend came through.
When Dave came out we told him to bring the car around and we see whether it was worth 500Y and it was, nice silver Acura. Not only was it comfortable but he got us to our hotel in 40 minutes, we thought he was trying out for the race on Sunday but little did we know this was tame compared to what we would encounter in the next few days.
As it turns out the Maglev train and New York’s train to the plane have a lot in common, both go to the airport and neither goes downtown. Just like N.Y. you have to take a subway to the airport train albeit a state of the art German engineered magnetic levitated train which has a top speed of 275 mph but what good is that when you are schlepping bags up and down stairs and escalators.
We checked into The Metropole Hotel, an old colonial building just a few blocks off The Bund, which was the heart of the Tai-Pan’s economic zone during the nineteenth century. Tai-Pan’s were the CEO’s of mostly British, French, Portuguese and Dutch companies that traded all the goods out of China to Europe
After throwing the bags in the rooms naturally we headed out for a few libations thinking we would just find some place and not bothering to ask at the desk, adventurous, yeah. Well it was rather dark outside, they do not have great street lighting, but we pressed on towards Nan-Jing Rd. There was a Mickey Dee’s on the corner which had rather a large crowd both inside and out. This did not look good, people gathering at McDonald’s at 10:30pm as a social hangout.
We pressed on a few blocks and then made a right turn, back in the direction of the hotel, this street was even darker and al of a sudden a couple of guys came out of the shadows offering to take us to bars, the first guy offered us a girlie bar but we said no, and the second guy offered to take us to a beer bar, so we followed him, but it turned out to be a girlie bar or to be more exact a brothel. We graciously declined and headed back to the hotel, grabbing a couple of cold beers on the way at a 711 (Lawson’s), we were tired and figured we have an early start in the morning.
I had read in the Shanghai Daily on the plane, that getting to the track last year had been a disaster. Only the night before the race had it was decided to provide free public buses, but nobody knew about them, so every body drove. This year they organized the buses well in advance and announced that they would leave from 4 central locations around the city. We showed the locations to the desk clerk in the hotel and asked her to write the address of the nearest in Mandarin so we could get a taxi.
Wow what a ride we had in the taxi, people think New York taxis are mad, they have nothing on these guys, and in fact the whole traffic situation is just plain chaos. Then when we got up on the elevated highway, more wow’s, the skyline was just spectacular, everyway you turned there was just more spectacular buildings and it went on and on into the suburbs.
When we got to Shanghai Stadium there was an incredible amount of buses but virtually nobody getting on them, we walked right on to the first bus and it left half empty. Once we got out of the city we were on virtually empty highways but it was a long ride, ninety minutes later we finally got to the track, it is in the middle of nowhere but at the rate that China is building it will be a suburb of Shanghai in a few years.
The track is absolute state of the art, this being only the second race at the facility, but there is one major flaw; they gave the catering contract to an American company, Aramark. Hamburgers, hot dogs, ham & cheese hero’s and one concession to Asian cuisine, chicken curry which did not look to appetizing. All the soft drinks were Coke Cola products and Fosters the sole beer supplier. In the Fosters tent behind the main grandstand it was very funny; when you walked up to the bar 10 little Chinese girls would all shout Ga’day, very cute. All in all, a disastrous culinary experience.
The second major disaster was the inflexibility of the police and security. During Friday and Saturday practice/qualifying you were only allowed to enter the facility through the gate marked on your ticket and could only sit in your designated seat. One of the major attractions of coming to the track on Friday and Saturday is the fact that you can wander around and experience the cars at various viewing points which can in turn influence your future purchase of tickets.
As a case in point the first year of a grand prix at the Indianapolis Speedway, 1999, Steve and I purchased seats in the southwest vista just before the final turn onto the main straight and at the entrance to the pit lane. Right away on Friday afternoon we hated the views and started looking for alternatives finally ending up at the other end of the track at the northwest vista which had views of the first six turns and we have been in those seats ever since. Looking down the track on race day, the southwest vista stand is totally empty.
After practice ended we decided to head back to Shanghai pronto as there was no point in sticking around, they would not even let you into the main grandstand after the cars had retired for the day.
Hopping on a bus in the same parking lot as we had disembarked we assumed it was heading back to Shanghai Stadium. After a very circuitous route through some very poor and dubious neighborhoods it was dark when we got back to the city and we did not immediately realize we were at a different stadium. We tried to walk around it, but it soon became obvious that was not an option and that was when we twigged it. Of course it was six o’clock on a Friday evening and like any busy city there was not a taxi to be seen anywhere. We had no clue where we were and lucked out when we saw a subway. This was a lot luckier than you would think in a city of ten million; they only have four subway lines, one each, north, east, south and west. This was the north one and we were able to get a train to Shanghai Railway Station which I knew was not that far from our hotel area.
Outside the main station it was murder trying to get a taxi, unlike the Japanese people who queue orderly, the Chinese are very rude and pushy, so when in Rome, do like the locals and give as good as you get. Within minutes we were on our way. Now I thought we had seen some amazing sights on the bus but they were nothing compared with some of the back alley’s this driver took, it was like going back 300 years and then he turns the corner, goes up the freeway entrance ramp, and you are back in the heart of a 21st century city, unbelievable.
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Safely back at the hotel and after a quick shower it was time to see Nan Jing Road, Shanghai’s version of Time’s Square. Well it did not disappoint, enough neon to rival the best of them, Time’s Sq., Las Vegas and Shinjuku. As we walked up the street everybody wanted to sell us a Rolex watch, some wanted to sell CD’s and DVD’s and a few even wanted to sell their sisters!
After about twenty minutes of this crap, but what seemed like an eternity, we were gasping for a couple of cold beers and realized we had not seen one bar or anything even resembling one. Finally we spotted a bamboo tikki bar and dived in just to get away from the watch sellers whom were as eager as the African boys in Shinjuku at plying their trade.
Upon getting a couple of beers we realized in keeping with the tikki hut theme the place had no windows and all the watch sellers were congregated outside. Now in the front window were about 10 English guys who were being barracked by them, but one lad was taking charge and announced to all the watch boys that they would buy one watch in turn from each of them and if it passed their tests they would then purchase all that sellers watches.
Fair enough, all the boys agreed and the first Rolex was bought without any haggling for 100 Yuan ($12.50), the guy immediately dunks it into a pint of beer and declares the watch a failure, throws it back at the seller and shouts NEXT. The next lad offers his Rolex, gets his unquestioned 100Yuan and it receives the same treatment with the same results. A couple of the lads wander off knowing their watches don’t stand a chance but a few remain. The next watch gets the same treatment with again the same result and of course you would think this is the way it will go on all night until either the Brits fun kitty runs dry or they just tire of the game.
Well one young boy was still proudly offering his Rolex and it was dually bought and dunked, but low and behold it pasted the beer test. Everybody immediately sat up including us, the emcee started banging it on the table and it still kept going. Next he put it on the ground, stood up on his chair and jumped on it It still kept going so he took it outside on to the street and threw it as high as he could in the air, it came down with a thud but it was still working, amazing. Well a deal is a deal he declared and took out a large wad of notes to buy all his watches but the poor kid only had 2 , he could have sold 50 right there and then.
Now that was great street entertainment
Time now to go in search of some dinner and I really wanted some crispy duck and just around the corner was a restaurant with huge pictures of golden crispy duck outside, well this had to be the place and in we went. Immediately we were impressed, there was not a foreigner in sight, just families sitting around big tables digging into glorious food but alas they were out of duck. Well everything on all the other tables looked so good we stayed and it was well worth the 600 Yuan we splurged on gorging ourselves. I’ve always liked Chinese food but this was spectacular, how would I ever be able to eat it stateside or in Europe again and we washed it all down with a couple of bottles of Great Wall cabernet, which wasn’t bad.
On the way back towards the hotel we looked for someplace to have a nightcap but there was none so we settled again for a couple of cans from Lawson’s and I decided to try a small bottle of Sake, wow, an arsonists delight, pure mentholated spirits, 100% flammable. Needless to say I did not even taste it, straight down the sink.
Saturday morning we again took a taxi to the National Stadium but knowing the length of the ride we did not jump on the first bus but waited for a more luxurious one of which there were plenty scattered amongst the hard seat city types. Getting on the bus we received a package containing various advertising crap and a map showing the four departure locations and the major roads surrounding Shanghai and the track so I was able to work out the routes. Three of the locations were using the same route and the only one that differed was the one we had taken home last night to Hongkou FC stadium, now I could work out our strategy for getting home after the race, getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with a 150,000 people it not the way I want to spend Sunday evening. Last week we had gotten real lucky in Suzuka in that our grandstand had been the closest to the train station.
After qualifying which the Renault boys dominated we made a dash for the Pudong area buses, as I calculated they would have to pass the Bund where we were staying and if we got lucky we could jump off around there. As the bus came over the cross-town expressway a guy from the back seat went down and had a word with the driver and came back smiling. I just instinctively knew he had asked to get off early and told Dave who had been dozing to be alert as he had the aisle seat. The exit ramp took us straight into the tunnel under the river but as soon as we came out the other side the bus pulled over and about half the passenger scampered off.
Sometimes things just fall into place perfectly and this was one of them, right across the street was a Citibank, for some much needed cash and just a few blocks away the Pearl Tower, which we were planning to visit on Monday and could now knock off at 4pm on Saturday afternoon.
Now it was a nice sunny afternoon and Pudong has some amazing architecture, but when we got up the top of the Pearl Tower you could hardly see a thing with the smog.
Going out for the evening we asked the front desk for recommendations firstly for a bar and then somewhere to get good crispy duck. The girl directed us to the Bund Brewing Company which was located in a small street very close to where the guy had taken us to the brothel on Thursday night, so near and yet so far. Next she said we should return to the hotel restaurant for the duck.
The brewing company was full of Europeans eating Chinese food with knives and forks, how pathetic, we almost turned and walked out but the hostess at the door was really really cute, a Chinese version of Sandra Bullock so we sat down and had a couple of the local version of Paulaner Weiss which was very nice. After a few liveners we headed back to the hotel for some much anticipated duck only to find that the restaurant was closing up at 8:30pm, damn, where am I supposed to get some duck!
On the way back we had passed an Italian, a French bistro and a local place called “Grandmothers”, well with a name like that we just had to give it a shot. It was very basic, formica top tables and plastic chairs but hey sometimes these little places can be gems in the rough, and oh how glad we were this was one of them., the eel, the duck, the shrimp the crabs, everything was great and we washed it all down with a couple of bottles of Dynasty cabernet and the happy smiles of grandma’s grand-daughter’s (waitress’s), all for 160 Yuan ($20).They were a very friendly bunch and only the hostess spoke a few words of English. This was dinner sorted for the next couple of days, why bother going in search of anything else.
After dinner we went for a walk along The Bund, I particularly wanted to see The Peace Hotel, legendary in Tai Pan Folklore. It has a magnificent marble lobby with chic restaurants and bars, but it was the roof bar I wanted to see, which has staggering views of the city, but is legendary, in that it is not well sign posted, a fact I was aware of, or we would never have known it existed. The views were stunning and as we enjoyed a couple of glasses of Great Wall cabernet, I was thinking it must be awesome to be posted here from some stuffy London bankers or insurance house with all expenses paid. A few moments later, a young man asked if he could share our table, “of course we said”. We got chatting and he was from London, I told him of my thoughts just before he sat down and low and behold he was living that dream. He worked for a London based insurance company and they had sent him here, all expenses paid, on a two year contract. He had been here three months and become so comfortable with everything he now rode a bicycle through the chaotic traffic to work. His younger brother had just flown out for a weeks vacation but was now sleeping off the jet-lag, they would be at the race.
Sunday morning, race day, we decided we had better get an early start to the track and having assessed the various departure points we decided that leaving from the most westerly area and returning via the northern stadium was our best plan of attack...
The girl at the desk when asked to write the International Gymnastic Center was perplexed and had to make a phone call, she wrote the instructions on a piece of paper which we gave to a cab driver and off we went. Well he seemed to go a different direction when we got off the east-west expressway which I expected but we ended up at the same stadium as the two previous mornings. I think I have since figured this out, that is where all the school children were being bussed from and they therefore did not want any westerners witnessing this.
When we got to the track and tried to walk anti clockwise to our grandstands we encountered thousands and thousands of school children of every age being shepherded into the outer grandstands. We had seen a few classes of children attending the previous day’s practices but nothing of this scale; it was obviously to fill the grandstands for the world television audience, as very few local people could afford the ticket prices.
After watching the early morning warm-ups and with 3 hours to wait for the main event we decided to retire to the Fosters tent and be entertained by the Ga’day girls. We grabbed a couple of ham n cheese hero’s with a couple of cold ones and settled in under a nice shady table just outside. Our friend from the Peace hotel, the previous evening came by with his brother and we had a nice chat, we told him about our encounter with the watch boys and the Brits on Nan-Jing rd., which really amused him, he had not done many of the touristy things yet.
The race itself was a rather non event; the two Renault’s made it into turn one ahead of the field, Fisichella held back the McLarens of Raikkonnen and Montoya while Alonso took off to secure Renault the manufacturer’s title, game, set and match.
After the race we headed as fast as we could for the Hong Kow stadium buses as we figured they were the fastest way back to the city and we were right. Unfortunately we were sat in front of one of those, know it all, expat women, that seem to be in the shadows of all those old colonial movies, when the British Empire ruled the world, “anyone for tea”. I felt sorry for the poor people stuck with her, I think they were work colleagues, every time they tried to change the subject it just lead to another field of her expertise.
They had obviously taken a different bus out to the track and had no idea what part of the city they were now in but she persevered, that she knew the city well and they would be alright. As the bus pulled up opposite the stadium she started to change her tack and announced this must be one of the slummier parts of the city she was not familiar with, I took great joy in turning around and telling her that there was a subway around the corner that would take them to the central Shanghai railway station.
At the main station I was quick to commandeer the first taxi I saw and had to fight off two women that appeared from nowhere and tried to grab, it but I was having none of it, we weren’t in Japan anymore! To the drivers surprise I jumped into the front seat and put on the seat belt, well he took this as a challenge to scare the shit out of me, but I was looking forward to the chaotic ride and he did not disappoint. After about ten minutes of ducking and diving up and down off the highways and under various structures we stopped at a light and Dave shakily inquired from the back seat if I had any idea where we were? I said and indicated that the hotel was about 3 blocks to our left, the cabbie looked at me in disbelief and made the left turn, sorted.
While Dave went off for a wander I had to go and write my column for Home & Away which would be fairly brief owing to the dull nature of this final race and the bland atmosphere of the track. While writing I tuned in Q104.3 radio station from New York on the internet, it was the Sunday morning “with The Beatles” show and to my surprise the DJ starts talking about a Beatles benefit he had attended on Saturday night, organized by Jason Shela. It freaked me out, Jason is a good friend of mine and here I am sitting in a hotel room in Shanghai listening to some deejay in New York prattle on about one of my mates. The world is getting to be a very small place, you can run but you cannot hide, scary stuff!
After getting the ol column out of the way, I was gasping for a taste of the old amber nectar, so after meeting up with Dave in the lobby we headed to see darling “Sandra” at the Bund bar for a few well deserved Weiss beers and then on to Grandmothers and the smiley waitresses to sate our hunger pangs.
As per the previous night, everything was great, the food, the wine and especially the service, we could not stop congratulating ourselves on such a fantastic find. The down side to this is, that now that I am back in New York, writing this some two months later, I can no longer eat New York Chinese food, it’s bland and tasteless.
As Monday was to be our only real sightseeing touristy day we hit the sack early Sunday night to get a running start in the morning.
Well we didn’t get quite as early a start as we had hoped, the track had really sapped us the day before. When I called Dave around 8:30ish it was ARRRRRRRRRGH I’ll see you in an hour.
One great thing in the mornings, you did not have to go looking for breakfast, they left these (2) little egg cakes in your room. It was an almost hard boiled egg inside a little sponge cake, very tasty with a green tea.
Anyway we met up in the lobby and decided to take the subway to Pudong and then the Maglev to the airport. What a train, well it looks like a train but there are no wheels and no rails, it levitates on a magnetic track while doing 275 MPH, unbelievable. Sitting down inside if you do not look out the window you would not know it was moving, mind you, you cannot see much outside anyway, it is all a blur.
We got back into Shanghai around noon and decided to try and find a floating restaurant called the Seagull which we had heard Miss Knowitall talking about on the bus yesterday. It was just over the small bridge at the end of the Bund behind a hotel on the water front. It was not exactly a floating restaurant but gave the impression it was. The whole place was set on an open deck, the large bar set in the hull of a boat with a bamboo roof and all the tables were set in the hulls of smaller boats and individually glass enclosed with bamboo roofs. With the river as a backdrop it was very impressive but unfortunately it was closed and did not open until evening. We vowed to return.
As we returned to The Bund we encountered the usual watch sellers but this guy had something different, Mao Tse Tung watches, his arm going back and forth in a wave, cute, so we decided to buy a couple as they would make cool gifts. He wanted Y200 a piece so we offered him Y400 for 4 and he took it.
It was now time to start thinking about lunch and I had read in the Zaget guide that celebrated chef Jean George who operates a couple of great restaurants in New York that costs an arm and a leg, if you can get a reservation, had opened a new place here on The Bund, that had a prix fixe 3 course lunch for Y188 that was not to be missed.
It was located at 3 The Bund, a fantastic old Victorian building that housed a very up scale mall and it was just around the corner from our hotel. We made 2:30 reservations and went back to our place to freshen up.
When we got back the place was fairly empty as the main lunch crowd had departed and we got a prime table over looking the river. The food was out of this world, I had the Foie Gras appetizer and roast duck entrée, absolutely superb, I might have to return to Shanghai just for lunch.
After lunch we had a wander up back up to Nan-Jing Road as we had only been there at night and we wanted to see if there were really were any bargains to be found. Most of the stores we looked in were full of your typical western crap and priced at what you could find in any big department store like Walmart or Target.
Further up the road as Dave had walked ahead I was approached by a young couple who professed to be starving artists, who had studied in San Francisco and New York. Being very skeptical I asked the young girl who spoke perfect English various questions about New York and she was very chatty and nostalgic when I explained I lived there. They were trying to get people to go look at their art which was being exhibited in a local gallery and I agreed, Dave had returned now and was also very skeptical but I said I was going so he tagged along.
They took us in through a shopping mall full of small stalls, mostly selling clothes and up in the elevator to an office floor where there was a small gallery. We were introduced to a little man with a long grey beard and hair, ala, the master in the old Kung Fu show.
Most of the art was of typical Chinese settings pagoda’s, waterfalls, crouching dragon’s etc., but I was drawn to an oblong floral painting which I immediately knew Leslie, my godson’s mother would really like, and it so happened to have been painted by the young girl who had enticed me in, sold. Dave also purchased a small painting which I think was for his dear mother in Dublin.
Back out on the street we were elated with our very original purchases, far superior than the tourist clap trap being offered in shop windows. We were not the target however of all this drivel, far from it, we were vastly outnumbered by Chinese tourist from other parts of the country and it was these country bumkins that the watch boys and other touts were actually after.
We stopped into another couple of shopping malls but there really was nothing worth buying until I glimpsed a long black coat that was cut perfectly straight down to mid thigh with a high stand-up collar. I tried it on and it fit, I’m not sure where I can wear it but for $28 I was having it.
After a quick walk around peoples square it was time to head back for a few beers at the Bund Brewing Co. with the lovely “Sandra Bullock”. Being early Monday evening the place was quiet and all the waitresses were hanging out at the end of the bar. Sipping our beers we noticed they were all in a huddle, tittering and giggling and when one of them noticed we were looking the tittering got louder and two of them pointed towards me! I thought maybe it was red England Beckham shirt I was wearing ( he is so big in the East) and indicated so by pulling on the sleeve and pointing to the back but the older bartender said no between laughs, it was my platinum silver hair was the source of their admiration and amusement
Flattering as it was to have all these sixteen and seventeen year olds fawning over my hair we left to dump the shopping at the hotel and go revisit the floating restaurant and see what they had to offer. By the time we got there it was dark and easy to see why they did not bother opening during the daylight hours. The bar and all the individual boat hulls were lit with paper lanterns and strands of fairy lights connected all the structures. Out on the river real floating restaurants, dinner cruise boats all lit up in neon, cruised up and down in front of the magnificent Pudong skyline backdrop, it was an awesome sight to behold and totally blows away any myth that Manhattan is the most spectacular skyline.
We sat down ordered a couple of beers and perused the menu! Well I don’t know what Mrs. Knowitall ate when she found this place but it was obviously for locals and visitors with an extremely educated Chinese cuisine palate. Not that we were going to eat anyway, it was after all our last night and we had to dine with the girls at Grandmother’s and have a nightcap at the Bund bar.
Our flight on Tuesday morning was at 10am so we had to be there by 8 so we had to check out of the hotel at 6:30, an ungodly hour to be ending a vacation on, but it was a long way home. We got a regular cab and it was nowhere near as comfortable or as fast as the car we had hired coming in and it was only a few minutes before we rued not getting his number.
Check-in was a rather easy formality but I must say this was the only time I have ever enjoyed going through security. Naturally my knee implant set of the metal detector, it was 2 young girls manning the gate and led me off to the side where I expected them to call a male colleague for the pat down, but surprisingly they started to perform it themselves, all the while smiling and blushing, I think they enjoyed it as much as I did!
At the duty free we spent all our remaining yuan on silk presents which were an excellent value, then I dived into the first class lounge for an eye opener before the pre flight champers on board.
On board I had the pleasure of being seated beside a beautiful and very smart young Chinese girl who worked for Dell computers, she was on her first trip out of the country going to Austin, Texas. She wanted to know all about New York and I wanted to know more about the rapid growth of Shanghai and their love of American fast food, I had never seen so many Kentucky Fried Chicken’s and she explained that due to them Pepsi had out sold Coke in 2005 for the first time and she seemed quite proud of the fact. She also explained that they sell a lot more than just chicken and it is considered a treat for the whole family to go there for an afternoon and they are also very popular date venues, go figure.
Sadly she was switching to American Airlines at Narita, I would have really liked her company to Detroit.
On our way out of Narita I had spotted a beautiful blue kimono which I said I would pick-up on the return so I headed straight for the duty free zone. It was still there although I’m sure not the same one but anyway I started to try it on when an assistant came over to see if I need help, I said I don’t think so, these come one size fits all, right? Yes she replied, is she a large woman? Woman! I was buying this for myself, oh she said and blushed very brightly…..the men’s are down here. She pulled out a few and they were all just cotton and only black and white with very dull designs, but I felt very self conscious now about the so called woman’s gown, so I bought nothing. Reflecting on it later I should have just bought it, it fit and was a beautiful royal blue with a golden dragon on the back, good job I’m already booked to return next year, I’ll say nothing and just buy the one in the package.
The flight to Detroit was very uneventful and I was very disappointed NWA ran out of Japanese meals. I managed to stay awake the whole way and consequently when I got home that evening I went to bed early and after a 12 hour sleep I was right back on New York time.
Upon landing I had about a 15 minute wait for immigration but poor Dave had a much longer wait. While waiting I found an ATM and looked about transportation into Shanghai, which is approx an hours taxi ride and maybe two hours on public transport. The newly opened Maglev train which runs at an incredible 275mph only operates between 9am and 5:30pm so would not even be of any use to us on our return as we had to be at the airport next Tuesday at 8am.
I checked out the taxi line and while there were plenty of them they were very small looking Volkswagens, Back inside the terminal I was approached by a young guy in an official uniform who inquired which hotel I was going to and that he could arrange transportation in a large sedan for 500 Yuan ($60).I knew the taxi fare should be in the range of 200 Yuan but being tired from the flight and knowing Dave had been squashed in the back the thought of an hour cramped in the back of a small Volkswagen was not very appealing, so I said yes and told him to hang on till my friend came through.
When Dave came out we told him to bring the car around and we see whether it was worth 500Y and it was, nice silver Acura. Not only was it comfortable but he got us to our hotel in 40 minutes, we thought he was trying out for the race on Sunday but little did we know this was tame compared to what we would encounter in the next few days.
As it turns out the Maglev train and New York’s train to the plane have a lot in common, both go to the airport and neither goes downtown. Just like N.Y. you have to take a subway to the airport train albeit a state of the art German engineered magnetic levitated train which has a top speed of 275 mph but what good is that when you are schlepping bags up and down stairs and escalators.
We checked into The Metropole Hotel, an old colonial building just a few blocks off The Bund, which was the heart of the Tai-Pan’s economic zone during the nineteenth century. Tai-Pan’s were the CEO’s of mostly British, French, Portuguese and Dutch companies that traded all the goods out of China to Europe
After throwing the bags in the rooms naturally we headed out for a few libations thinking we would just find some place and not bothering to ask at the desk, adventurous, yeah. Well it was rather dark outside, they do not have great street lighting, but we pressed on towards Nan-Jing Rd. There was a Mickey Dee’s on the corner which had rather a large crowd both inside and out. This did not look good, people gathering at McDonald’s at 10:30pm as a social hangout.
We pressed on a few blocks and then made a right turn, back in the direction of the hotel, this street was even darker and al of a sudden a couple of guys came out of the shadows offering to take us to bars, the first guy offered us a girlie bar but we said no, and the second guy offered to take us to a beer bar, so we followed him, but it turned out to be a girlie bar or to be more exact a brothel. We graciously declined and headed back to the hotel, grabbing a couple of cold beers on the way at a 711 (Lawson’s), we were tired and figured we have an early start in the morning.
I had read in the Shanghai Daily on the plane, that getting to the track last year had been a disaster. Only the night before the race had it was decided to provide free public buses, but nobody knew about them, so every body drove. This year they organized the buses well in advance and announced that they would leave from 4 central locations around the city. We showed the locations to the desk clerk in the hotel and asked her to write the address of the nearest in Mandarin so we could get a taxi.
Wow what a ride we had in the taxi, people think New York taxis are mad, they have nothing on these guys, and in fact the whole traffic situation is just plain chaos. Then when we got up on the elevated highway, more wow’s, the skyline was just spectacular, everyway you turned there was just more spectacular buildings and it went on and on into the suburbs.
When we got to Shanghai Stadium there was an incredible amount of buses but virtually nobody getting on them, we walked right on to the first bus and it left half empty. Once we got out of the city we were on virtually empty highways but it was a long ride, ninety minutes later we finally got to the track, it is in the middle of nowhere but at the rate that China is building it will be a suburb of Shanghai in a few years.
The track is absolute state of the art, this being only the second race at the facility, but there is one major flaw; they gave the catering contract to an American company, Aramark. Hamburgers, hot dogs, ham & cheese hero’s and one concession to Asian cuisine, chicken curry which did not look to appetizing. All the soft drinks were Coke Cola products and Fosters the sole beer supplier. In the Fosters tent behind the main grandstand it was very funny; when you walked up to the bar 10 little Chinese girls would all shout Ga’day, very cute. All in all, a disastrous culinary experience.
The second major disaster was the inflexibility of the police and security. During Friday and Saturday practice/qualifying you were only allowed to enter the facility through the gate marked on your ticket and could only sit in your designated seat. One of the major attractions of coming to the track on Friday and Saturday is the fact that you can wander around and experience the cars at various viewing points which can in turn influence your future purchase of tickets.
As a case in point the first year of a grand prix at the Indianapolis Speedway, 1999, Steve and I purchased seats in the southwest vista just before the final turn onto the main straight and at the entrance to the pit lane. Right away on Friday afternoon we hated the views and started looking for alternatives finally ending up at the other end of the track at the northwest vista which had views of the first six turns and we have been in those seats ever since. Looking down the track on race day, the southwest vista stand is totally empty.
After practice ended we decided to head back to Shanghai pronto as there was no point in sticking around, they would not even let you into the main grandstand after the cars had retired for the day.
Hopping on a bus in the same parking lot as we had disembarked we assumed it was heading back to Shanghai Stadium. After a very circuitous route through some very poor and dubious neighborhoods it was dark when we got back to the city and we did not immediately realize we were at a different stadium. We tried to walk around it, but it soon became obvious that was not an option and that was when we twigged it. Of course it was six o’clock on a Friday evening and like any busy city there was not a taxi to be seen anywhere. We had no clue where we were and lucked out when we saw a subway. This was a lot luckier than you would think in a city of ten million; they only have four subway lines, one each, north, east, south and west. This was the north one and we were able to get a train to Shanghai Railway Station which I knew was not that far from our hotel area.
Outside the main station it was murder trying to get a taxi, unlike the Japanese people who queue orderly, the Chinese are very rude and pushy, so when in Rome, do like the locals and give as good as you get. Within minutes we were on our way. Now I thought we had seen some amazing sights on the bus but they were nothing compared with some of the back alley’s this driver took, it was like going back 300 years and then he turns the corner, goes up the freeway entrance ramp, and you are back in the heart of a 21st century city, unbelievable.
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Safely back at the hotel and after a quick shower it was time to see Nan Jing Road, Shanghai’s version of Time’s Square. Well it did not disappoint, enough neon to rival the best of them, Time’s Sq., Las Vegas and Shinjuku. As we walked up the street everybody wanted to sell us a Rolex watch, some wanted to sell CD’s and DVD’s and a few even wanted to sell their sisters!
After about twenty minutes of this crap, but what seemed like an eternity, we were gasping for a couple of cold beers and realized we had not seen one bar or anything even resembling one. Finally we spotted a bamboo tikki bar and dived in just to get away from the watch sellers whom were as eager as the African boys in Shinjuku at plying their trade.
Upon getting a couple of beers we realized in keeping with the tikki hut theme the place had no windows and all the watch sellers were congregated outside. Now in the front window were about 10 English guys who were being barracked by them, but one lad was taking charge and announced to all the watch boys that they would buy one watch in turn from each of them and if it passed their tests they would then purchase all that sellers watches.
Fair enough, all the boys agreed and the first Rolex was bought without any haggling for 100 Yuan ($12.50), the guy immediately dunks it into a pint of beer and declares the watch a failure, throws it back at the seller and shouts NEXT. The next lad offers his Rolex, gets his unquestioned 100Yuan and it receives the same treatment with the same results. A couple of the lads wander off knowing their watches don’t stand a chance but a few remain. The next watch gets the same treatment with again the same result and of course you would think this is the way it will go on all night until either the Brits fun kitty runs dry or they just tire of the game.
Well one young boy was still proudly offering his Rolex and it was dually bought and dunked, but low and behold it pasted the beer test. Everybody immediately sat up including us, the emcee started banging it on the table and it still kept going. Next he put it on the ground, stood up on his chair and jumped on it It still kept going so he took it outside on to the street and threw it as high as he could in the air, it came down with a thud but it was still working, amazing. Well a deal is a deal he declared and took out a large wad of notes to buy all his watches but the poor kid only had 2 , he could have sold 50 right there and then.
Now that was great street entertainment
Time now to go in search of some dinner and I really wanted some crispy duck and just around the corner was a restaurant with huge pictures of golden crispy duck outside, well this had to be the place and in we went. Immediately we were impressed, there was not a foreigner in sight, just families sitting around big tables digging into glorious food but alas they were out of duck. Well everything on all the other tables looked so good we stayed and it was well worth the 600 Yuan we splurged on gorging ourselves. I’ve always liked Chinese food but this was spectacular, how would I ever be able to eat it stateside or in Europe again and we washed it all down with a couple of bottles of Great Wall cabernet, which wasn’t bad.
On the way back towards the hotel we looked for someplace to have a nightcap but there was none so we settled again for a couple of cans from Lawson’s and I decided to try a small bottle of Sake, wow, an arsonists delight, pure mentholated spirits, 100% flammable. Needless to say I did not even taste it, straight down the sink.
Saturday morning we again took a taxi to the National Stadium but knowing the length of the ride we did not jump on the first bus but waited for a more luxurious one of which there were plenty scattered amongst the hard seat city types. Getting on the bus we received a package containing various advertising crap and a map showing the four departure locations and the major roads surrounding Shanghai and the track so I was able to work out the routes. Three of the locations were using the same route and the only one that differed was the one we had taken home last night to Hongkou FC stadium, now I could work out our strategy for getting home after the race, getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with a 150,000 people it not the way I want to spend Sunday evening. Last week we had gotten real lucky in Suzuka in that our grandstand had been the closest to the train station.
After qualifying which the Renault boys dominated we made a dash for the Pudong area buses, as I calculated they would have to pass the Bund where we were staying and if we got lucky we could jump off around there. As the bus came over the cross-town expressway a guy from the back seat went down and had a word with the driver and came back smiling. I just instinctively knew he had asked to get off early and told Dave who had been dozing to be alert as he had the aisle seat. The exit ramp took us straight into the tunnel under the river but as soon as we came out the other side the bus pulled over and about half the passenger scampered off.
Sometimes things just fall into place perfectly and this was one of them, right across the street was a Citibank, for some much needed cash and just a few blocks away the Pearl Tower, which we were planning to visit on Monday and could now knock off at 4pm on Saturday afternoon.
Now it was a nice sunny afternoon and Pudong has some amazing architecture, but when we got up the top of the Pearl Tower you could hardly see a thing with the smog.
Going out for the evening we asked the front desk for recommendations firstly for a bar and then somewhere to get good crispy duck. The girl directed us to the Bund Brewing Company which was located in a small street very close to where the guy had taken us to the brothel on Thursday night, so near and yet so far. Next she said we should return to the hotel restaurant for the duck.
The brewing company was full of Europeans eating Chinese food with knives and forks, how pathetic, we almost turned and walked out but the hostess at the door was really really cute, a Chinese version of Sandra Bullock so we sat down and had a couple of the local version of Paulaner Weiss which was very nice. After a few liveners we headed back to the hotel for some much anticipated duck only to find that the restaurant was closing up at 8:30pm, damn, where am I supposed to get some duck!
On the way back we had passed an Italian, a French bistro and a local place called “Grandmothers”, well with a name like that we just had to give it a shot. It was very basic, formica top tables and plastic chairs but hey sometimes these little places can be gems in the rough, and oh how glad we were this was one of them., the eel, the duck, the shrimp the crabs, everything was great and we washed it all down with a couple of bottles of Dynasty cabernet and the happy smiles of grandma’s grand-daughter’s (waitress’s), all for 160 Yuan ($20).They were a very friendly bunch and only the hostess spoke a few words of English. This was dinner sorted for the next couple of days, why bother going in search of anything else.
After dinner we went for a walk along The Bund, I particularly wanted to see The Peace Hotel, legendary in Tai Pan Folklore. It has a magnificent marble lobby with chic restaurants and bars, but it was the roof bar I wanted to see, which has staggering views of the city, but is legendary, in that it is not well sign posted, a fact I was aware of, or we would never have known it existed. The views were stunning and as we enjoyed a couple of glasses of Great Wall cabernet, I was thinking it must be awesome to be posted here from some stuffy London bankers or insurance house with all expenses paid. A few moments later, a young man asked if he could share our table, “of course we said”. We got chatting and he was from London, I told him of my thoughts just before he sat down and low and behold he was living that dream. He worked for a London based insurance company and they had sent him here, all expenses paid, on a two year contract. He had been here three months and become so comfortable with everything he now rode a bicycle through the chaotic traffic to work. His younger brother had just flown out for a weeks vacation but was now sleeping off the jet-lag, they would be at the race.
Sunday morning, race day, we decided we had better get an early start to the track and having assessed the various departure points we decided that leaving from the most westerly area and returning via the northern stadium was our best plan of attack...
The girl at the desk when asked to write the International Gymnastic Center was perplexed and had to make a phone call, she wrote the instructions on a piece of paper which we gave to a cab driver and off we went. Well he seemed to go a different direction when we got off the east-west expressway which I expected but we ended up at the same stadium as the two previous mornings. I think I have since figured this out, that is where all the school children were being bussed from and they therefore did not want any westerners witnessing this.
When we got to the track and tried to walk anti clockwise to our grandstands we encountered thousands and thousands of school children of every age being shepherded into the outer grandstands. We had seen a few classes of children attending the previous day’s practices but nothing of this scale; it was obviously to fill the grandstands for the world television audience, as very few local people could afford the ticket prices.
After watching the early morning warm-ups and with 3 hours to wait for the main event we decided to retire to the Fosters tent and be entertained by the Ga’day girls. We grabbed a couple of ham n cheese hero’s with a couple of cold ones and settled in under a nice shady table just outside. Our friend from the Peace hotel, the previous evening came by with his brother and we had a nice chat, we told him about our encounter with the watch boys and the Brits on Nan-Jing rd., which really amused him, he had not done many of the touristy things yet.
The race itself was a rather non event; the two Renault’s made it into turn one ahead of the field, Fisichella held back the McLarens of Raikkonnen and Montoya while Alonso took off to secure Renault the manufacturer’s title, game, set and match.
After the race we headed as fast as we could for the Hong Kow stadium buses as we figured they were the fastest way back to the city and we were right. Unfortunately we were sat in front of one of those, know it all, expat women, that seem to be in the shadows of all those old colonial movies, when the British Empire ruled the world, “anyone for tea”. I felt sorry for the poor people stuck with her, I think they were work colleagues, every time they tried to change the subject it just lead to another field of her expertise.
They had obviously taken a different bus out to the track and had no idea what part of the city they were now in but she persevered, that she knew the city well and they would be alright. As the bus pulled up opposite the stadium she started to change her tack and announced this must be one of the slummier parts of the city she was not familiar with, I took great joy in turning around and telling her that there was a subway around the corner that would take them to the central Shanghai railway station.
At the main station I was quick to commandeer the first taxi I saw and had to fight off two women that appeared from nowhere and tried to grab, it but I was having none of it, we weren’t in Japan anymore! To the drivers surprise I jumped into the front seat and put on the seat belt, well he took this as a challenge to scare the shit out of me, but I was looking forward to the chaotic ride and he did not disappoint. After about ten minutes of ducking and diving up and down off the highways and under various structures we stopped at a light and Dave shakily inquired from the back seat if I had any idea where we were? I said and indicated that the hotel was about 3 blocks to our left, the cabbie looked at me in disbelief and made the left turn, sorted.
While Dave went off for a wander I had to go and write my column for Home & Away which would be fairly brief owing to the dull nature of this final race and the bland atmosphere of the track. While writing I tuned in Q104.3 radio station from New York on the internet, it was the Sunday morning “with The Beatles” show and to my surprise the DJ starts talking about a Beatles benefit he had attended on Saturday night, organized by Jason Shela. It freaked me out, Jason is a good friend of mine and here I am sitting in a hotel room in Shanghai listening to some deejay in New York prattle on about one of my mates. The world is getting to be a very small place, you can run but you cannot hide, scary stuff!
After getting the ol column out of the way, I was gasping for a taste of the old amber nectar, so after meeting up with Dave in the lobby we headed to see darling “Sandra” at the Bund bar for a few well deserved Weiss beers and then on to Grandmothers and the smiley waitresses to sate our hunger pangs.
As per the previous night, everything was great, the food, the wine and especially the service, we could not stop congratulating ourselves on such a fantastic find. The down side to this is, that now that I am back in New York, writing this some two months later, I can no longer eat New York Chinese food, it’s bland and tasteless.
As Monday was to be our only real sightseeing touristy day we hit the sack early Sunday night to get a running start in the morning.
Well we didn’t get quite as early a start as we had hoped, the track had really sapped us the day before. When I called Dave around 8:30ish it was ARRRRRRRRRGH I’ll see you in an hour.
One great thing in the mornings, you did not have to go looking for breakfast, they left these (2) little egg cakes in your room. It was an almost hard boiled egg inside a little sponge cake, very tasty with a green tea.
Anyway we met up in the lobby and decided to take the subway to Pudong and then the Maglev to the airport. What a train, well it looks like a train but there are no wheels and no rails, it levitates on a magnetic track while doing 275 MPH, unbelievable. Sitting down inside if you do not look out the window you would not know it was moving, mind you, you cannot see much outside anyway, it is all a blur.
We got back into Shanghai around noon and decided to try and find a floating restaurant called the Seagull which we had heard Miss Knowitall talking about on the bus yesterday. It was just over the small bridge at the end of the Bund behind a hotel on the water front. It was not exactly a floating restaurant but gave the impression it was. The whole place was set on an open deck, the large bar set in the hull of a boat with a bamboo roof and all the tables were set in the hulls of smaller boats and individually glass enclosed with bamboo roofs. With the river as a backdrop it was very impressive but unfortunately it was closed and did not open until evening. We vowed to return.
As we returned to The Bund we encountered the usual watch sellers but this guy had something different, Mao Tse Tung watches, his arm going back and forth in a wave, cute, so we decided to buy a couple as they would make cool gifts. He wanted Y200 a piece so we offered him Y400 for 4 and he took it.
It was now time to start thinking about lunch and I had read in the Zaget guide that celebrated chef Jean George who operates a couple of great restaurants in New York that costs an arm and a leg, if you can get a reservation, had opened a new place here on The Bund, that had a prix fixe 3 course lunch for Y188 that was not to be missed.
It was located at 3 The Bund, a fantastic old Victorian building that housed a very up scale mall and it was just around the corner from our hotel. We made 2:30 reservations and went back to our place to freshen up.
When we got back the place was fairly empty as the main lunch crowd had departed and we got a prime table over looking the river. The food was out of this world, I had the Foie Gras appetizer and roast duck entrée, absolutely superb, I might have to return to Shanghai just for lunch.
After lunch we had a wander up back up to Nan-Jing Road as we had only been there at night and we wanted to see if there were really were any bargains to be found. Most of the stores we looked in were full of your typical western crap and priced at what you could find in any big department store like Walmart or Target.
Further up the road as Dave had walked ahead I was approached by a young couple who professed to be starving artists, who had studied in San Francisco and New York. Being very skeptical I asked the young girl who spoke perfect English various questions about New York and she was very chatty and nostalgic when I explained I lived there. They were trying to get people to go look at their art which was being exhibited in a local gallery and I agreed, Dave had returned now and was also very skeptical but I said I was going so he tagged along.
They took us in through a shopping mall full of small stalls, mostly selling clothes and up in the elevator to an office floor where there was a small gallery. We were introduced to a little man with a long grey beard and hair, ala, the master in the old Kung Fu show.
Most of the art was of typical Chinese settings pagoda’s, waterfalls, crouching dragon’s etc., but I was drawn to an oblong floral painting which I immediately knew Leslie, my godson’s mother would really like, and it so happened to have been painted by the young girl who had enticed me in, sold. Dave also purchased a small painting which I think was for his dear mother in Dublin.
Back out on the street we were elated with our very original purchases, far superior than the tourist clap trap being offered in shop windows. We were not the target however of all this drivel, far from it, we were vastly outnumbered by Chinese tourist from other parts of the country and it was these country bumkins that the watch boys and other touts were actually after.
We stopped into another couple of shopping malls but there really was nothing worth buying until I glimpsed a long black coat that was cut perfectly straight down to mid thigh with a high stand-up collar. I tried it on and it fit, I’m not sure where I can wear it but for $28 I was having it.
After a quick walk around peoples square it was time to head back for a few beers at the Bund Brewing Co. with the lovely “Sandra Bullock”. Being early Monday evening the place was quiet and all the waitresses were hanging out at the end of the bar. Sipping our beers we noticed they were all in a huddle, tittering and giggling and when one of them noticed we were looking the tittering got louder and two of them pointed towards me! I thought maybe it was red England Beckham shirt I was wearing ( he is so big in the East) and indicated so by pulling on the sleeve and pointing to the back but the older bartender said no between laughs, it was my platinum silver hair was the source of their admiration and amusement
Flattering as it was to have all these sixteen and seventeen year olds fawning over my hair we left to dump the shopping at the hotel and go revisit the floating restaurant and see what they had to offer. By the time we got there it was dark and easy to see why they did not bother opening during the daylight hours. The bar and all the individual boat hulls were lit with paper lanterns and strands of fairy lights connected all the structures. Out on the river real floating restaurants, dinner cruise boats all lit up in neon, cruised up and down in front of the magnificent Pudong skyline backdrop, it was an awesome sight to behold and totally blows away any myth that Manhattan is the most spectacular skyline.
We sat down ordered a couple of beers and perused the menu! Well I don’t know what Mrs. Knowitall ate when she found this place but it was obviously for locals and visitors with an extremely educated Chinese cuisine palate. Not that we were going to eat anyway, it was after all our last night and we had to dine with the girls at Grandmother’s and have a nightcap at the Bund bar.
Our flight on Tuesday morning was at 10am so we had to be there by 8 so we had to check out of the hotel at 6:30, an ungodly hour to be ending a vacation on, but it was a long way home. We got a regular cab and it was nowhere near as comfortable or as fast as the car we had hired coming in and it was only a few minutes before we rued not getting his number.
Check-in was a rather easy formality but I must say this was the only time I have ever enjoyed going through security. Naturally my knee implant set of the metal detector, it was 2 young girls manning the gate and led me off to the side where I expected them to call a male colleague for the pat down, but surprisingly they started to perform it themselves, all the while smiling and blushing, I think they enjoyed it as much as I did!
At the duty free we spent all our remaining yuan on silk presents which were an excellent value, then I dived into the first class lounge for an eye opener before the pre flight champers on board.
On board I had the pleasure of being seated beside a beautiful and very smart young Chinese girl who worked for Dell computers, she was on her first trip out of the country going to Austin, Texas. She wanted to know all about New York and I wanted to know more about the rapid growth of Shanghai and their love of American fast food, I had never seen so many Kentucky Fried Chicken’s and she explained that due to them Pepsi had out sold Coke in 2005 for the first time and she seemed quite proud of the fact. She also explained that they sell a lot more than just chicken and it is considered a treat for the whole family to go there for an afternoon and they are also very popular date venues, go figure.
Sadly she was switching to American Airlines at Narita, I would have really liked her company to Detroit.
On our way out of Narita I had spotted a beautiful blue kimono which I said I would pick-up on the return so I headed straight for the duty free zone. It was still there although I’m sure not the same one but anyway I started to try it on when an assistant came over to see if I need help, I said I don’t think so, these come one size fits all, right? Yes she replied, is she a large woman? Woman! I was buying this for myself, oh she said and blushed very brightly…..the men’s are down here. She pulled out a few and they were all just cotton and only black and white with very dull designs, but I felt very self conscious now about the so called woman’s gown, so I bought nothing. Reflecting on it later I should have just bought it, it fit and was a beautiful royal blue with a golden dragon on the back, good job I’m already booked to return next year, I’ll say nothing and just buy the one in the package.
The flight to Detroit was very uneventful and I was very disappointed NWA ran out of Japanese meals. I managed to stay awake the whole way and consequently when I got home that evening I went to bed early and after a 12 hour sleep I was right back on New York time.
Labels: Shanghai
