Hidden Treasures...

Welcome back!   The journey continues here at Yellow River Chronicles.  2011 is shaping up to be an epic year!  We've been traveling so much our passports are getting sore.  You can expect reports from Vietnam, the Philipines, Moscow, Mongolia and good old Naptown this Fall and Winter, and we still have Taiwan, Japan, Guilin, Jianxi, Nantong and the epic Silver Dragon Village trip to review for your reading pleasure.  So stay tuned and stay frosty while we take a breather this week to find some hidden treasure around faire Shanghai.

A typical lane off of ChangShu Lu

One of the true pleasures of living in the oh so colonial French Concession is discovering the small gems hidden down the "lanes".  Most of Shanghai's old neighborhoods are built on a grid pattern with a latticework of lanes connecting to the streets that form the "outer walls" of the neighborhoods.   Stores, shops, markets, restaurants line the streets while the folks live inside the squares with houses facing the lanes.   Very few houses have doorways that open onto the street.  Many of them house four families that share a bathroom and kitchen. If you wander down one of the lanes, you have chance to step out of modern Shanghai into "China".

"What are you doing here, Lauwai?"

Lanes have a spooky, lost vibe to them, and sometimes you will have the irrational fear that Hu Jintao is going to jump out of a doorway and demand "What you are doing there?  This is a CHINESE place!"

But luckily, for our last expedition, the Premier was too busy to chase us out of the lane that led us to the serene and beautiful Blue Calico Museum.

Before we go any farther, let me give you some perspective on serenity here in the 'Hai.  There is none.  Walking down a city street in Shanghai is a cross between dodging across a super highway swarming with turbo-charged clown cars and fighting your way through a no-holds-barred Chinese Army yard sale. Serenity is as rare in Shanghai as safe lunch meat or an orderly ticket line.

Following the silence and our guidebook and a few twists and turns back into the lane, we found The China Nan Tong Blue Calico Museum.  Blue calico is one of China's traditional printing and dyeing craftworks and originated from the Tang (618-907 AD) and Song (960-1279) dynasties.

The Sign for the Museum

Drying Textiles

Hidden courtyard

Yes, this is in Shanghai

The Museum Workshop

The museum has a workshop where the textiles are still produced and on a fine, sunny day, you can enter the courtyard and see the textiles drying.  You can also buy shirts, jackets, drapes, and other items made from the material.  This is Shanghai, the evolving shopping center of the Universe after all. We needed help from a guidebook to find it, even though it's only three blocks from our apartment.


Having discovered the Museum, you begin to wonder...(well, I do anyway).   Way back, in the many square miles lanes, alleys and streets, what else might you find where almost no one goes anymore.  Traditional Chinese medicine shops in the old part of the city?  Fortune tellers using the I-Ching?  Lucky amulets?

EP and I roam the streets as often as we can.  We have lived here for a year and a half and we have walked hundreds of miles.  We plan to explore many more, but we will only discover a microscopic portion of this city of 23 million.  The truth is this:  many of the treasures are destined to stay hidden.

You Look Funny....

Hindu Temple, KL

Welcome back!   It's time to study The Mysteries of the Far East here at the Yellow River Chronicles.  Many thanks for reading and sending your pithy reviews and commentary.  Based on your honest feedback I will sit up straight and try to fly right as we visit faire Kuala Lumpur and the nearby city of Malaka.

This spring, EP and I headed to Kuala Lumpur (known as "KL" in the region) in search of medallions.  As you may remember from our last adventure, EP and I now collect amulets from the temples we visit as a way of staying "lucky".  EP was also attending a business meeting, and I took the opportunity to search for good satay and other spicy street food.

Old Town, KL

Kl, as it turns out is a treasure trove of: a) great snacks and b) a diverse and complex mix of nationalities, cultures and architecture.  While Malaysia is a Muslim nation, there are Hindu temples, Christian churches, Muslim mosques and Buddhist temples located across the street from each other.  

Chinese Temple, Malaka

Malaka, an ancient coastal city near KL was founded as a sultanate in 1400 and has seen the Chinese, the Dutch, the Portugese, the British, and the Japanese all claim ownership at a point in time.  The extra room was always occupied in Malaka, it seems, until recently when they finally got the region back to themselves.

Malaka Day Trippers

And a fine country it is, by the way. The Muslim/Malay culture is very strong, well-mixed with a Chinese and an Indian influence.  Both have their respective "towns" in KL that are large tourist draws, strangely enough.  Why someone would go to KL to visit a Chinatown or Indiatown is a mystery to me.  I am looking forward to "Foreign Town" opening in the 'Hai so I can work there selling authentic American crafts like beer-can wind chimes, NASCAR t-shirts and Michael Jackson statuettes.


However, back to KL.  Women clothed in saris walk next to Chinese mainland princesses and folks in traditional Muslim garb and nobody seems to pay much attention to anyone else.  In KL, nobody looks....funny.  We were able to wander the streets, ride the monorail, score medallions at temples, unnoticed as part of the chaotic, hot, multicolored hive that is KL.

Street Scene, KL with diversity

Street scene, Shanghai

What made this all the more startling was...well, the Han factor back in the People's republic.  China is a mono-culture in comparison.  If you look at the digits, it is +90% Han, and more concentrated in the big cities.  Faire Shanghai is actually 99% Han. This means it has the relative cultural diversity of a James Taylor concert.  It also means if you are not Han, you will look funny in the chaotic, hot, uni-colored hive that is Shanghai.

There have been many situations where EP and I have been stopped by a group of Chinese tourists visiting Shanghai and asked to take a picture.  When we attempt to take the camera so we can photograph the group, after a comical camera wrestling match, we learn that, no, they don't want us to take their picture, they want a picture of us with them.  So EP and I have stood next to Grandpa and Grandpa Li, Mr. and Mrs. Wang, the Zhang family and others, doing our best to look funny.

Afternoon heat in KL

We returned from Malaysia impressed with their history of "getting along", a great curry buzz and with some very potent amulets of my favorite Hindu deity, Ganesh.  I have noticed a major increase in good fortune and a strong desire for Indian food.


Looking funny aside, by comparison our mainland friends are strong on "unity" but do not always view diversity in a positive light.  This sometimes has consequences for those citizens who are in the non-Han 10%.  We will leave it at that here behind the Great Firewall.  Thanks again for reading and we'll chat next week.

As Luck Would Have It....

Wat at Night Bike Tour of Bangkok

Hello and welcome back to the shores of the Huang Pu river on the Dark Side of the Earth.   Today we are going explore the pervasive and significant concept of Luck.  Luck is a big deal in Asia.  Much energy is focused on securing and attracting the Auspicious, including lucky signs, numbers, habits, birth dates and the famous "Get Lucky Me" t-shirts.  You even pay more for "lucky" cell phone numbers, for example.


To fully document an adventure in Luck that EP and I experienced recently, we are going to visit the legendary Thai city of Bangkok!   As part of our "Where Are We Now?" anthology of Asian travel, EP and I spent a week in Bangkok during the winter holiday exploring temples and searching for....amulets.


Amulets?  EP and I did extensive research before we went to Bangkok.  We bought a Lonely Planet guide and threw it in the suitcase.  Then we read John Burdett's Royal Thai detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep series (highly recommended) and realized we'd better go back and read the guide.  After that, we trolled many of the travel websites.  

Armed with hard facts and good directional sense, we hit Khao San road and had Padd Tai and Singha Beer while watching backpackers look for, well, weed.   Yes, we hit Soi Cowboy, in honor of Jitpleecheep, home of his mom's....um....house of happiness.   I almost got a tattoo there, but that is another story.

Soi Cowboy

Khao San Road

Amulet Market

Now, alerted to the reality of Bangkok,  we realized that if we were going to survive Krung Thep, the "City of Angels," we would need some protection.  Of the spiritual kind, that is.   And, as it turns out, you can find it there in the form of amulets.  Amulets have varying degrees of power and purpose, sort of like batteries.  There are amulets for protection, good luck, to attract wealth, for ummm...potency, for health, and a thousand other uses.

River Taxi

Adjacent to Wat Mahathat, between Maharat Road and the river, is Bangkok's biggest amulet market so we hopped on a river taxi and headed there.  We were ready.  We understood bargaining. We understood fakes, and we understood....scams.  Yes, Bangkok is a beehive of tricks and if you Google "Bangkok Scams"  you will be startled at the diversity, number and cleverness.   We had already avoided many of them, including the famous "The Temple is Closed but Here is A Better Place to Go" scam.    EP and I had the advantage of dealing with dozens of scams in Beijing.  The tea house, the silk store, the jade store, the pottery store, the gem store, the fresh water pearls and the Chinese medicine scam.  In Shanghai there is the "Shoe Shine" scam, the "Street Food" scam, the "Tea Ceremony" scam, the "Lost Visitor" scam and of course, our favorite the "You Are Not Chinese  and Therefore Are Targets" scam. 


So we were focused.  We were frosty.  We were well hydrated and ready to rock.  We had dodged the scams and were at the amulet market.  And sure enough, after purchasing a few, we hit an incredible string of luck.  The power of the amulets were at work.  We were scoring a few amulets from a vendor when a Tourist Policeman warned us about our backpacks because of pickpockets.  He then mentioned that we should be sure to see the Royal Gardens because they are only open a few days a year.  He waved us into a tuktuk, sternly told the driver to not rip us off and we chugged over to the Temple where we were personally escorted by a very kind guard who showed us around.  Our luck was on a roll.  The guard showed us around the lovely temple and educated us on Thai architecture, religious habits, because as it turns out, he had been a monk in his earlier days.  And, he was wearing a shirt full of amulets, mostly for luck. The temple was serene, the architecture was beautiful and clearly off the dreaded tourist path. 

The Kindly Guard

We even met the supervisor, who commented on how lucky we were and mentioned that it was special day to go see the King's Palace because it was only open a few days a year.  And, it would close in an hour or so.  Annnnnd,  lucky for us they were offering special prices on many beautiful things that only lucky people like us would receive because we were now moving in the same circles as in the know locals.   We thanked them, ducked into a waiting taxi and headed out to continue our roll, waving a friendly goodbye the the Monk and his boss.

Mr. Chen, the friendly Supervisor

The Serene Temple

The driver taxi driver cheerfully rushed us over to the King's Palace and dropped us off at the front door with our profuse thanks.  We turned, entered the building and walked into....The Famous Gem Scam!    Lucky day!  We were soooo worried we would miss the most basic and well known of the scams and our luck had led us right into one!
And, it felt very.....Chinese.   We knew the drill!  A well spoken host collared us before we could bolt out the door.   The "Royal Jewelry Store", open 365 days a year, 12 hours a day, was a one-way arrangement where we could only get out by working our way through the thousands of cases of, well, things we did not want. 


However, now humbled, chagrined, and somewhat amused we were very comfortable asking all of our new friends to cram their discount trinkets where the Buddha never goes, as we wandered out.

Guardians of the Wat

The amulets have been a big hit with friends and EP and I wear them almost every day.  As the saying goes, "Luck never made a man wise".

The Warriors Come Out To Play

Welcome back to another 24 bars of smoking hot repartee, innuendo, balderdash and funky chatter.   The summer heat is upon us and Shanghai is preparing to start the weekend by shooting off fireworks, beeping horns and talking loudly on cell phones.  The energy is cracking like a jing of xiao long xia hitting a red hot wok!

Shanghai crayfish

However, no xiao long xia for you!  This week we are going to leave the Big Hai behind and head northwest to a land of ancient history:  the city of Xian, in the province of Shaanxi.   The area contains Mount Hua, one of the five spiritual peaks of China, plus, the location of Lantian man, estimated to be between 500,000 and one millon years old, and the site of many tombs, including the first full emperor of China.   According to Wikipedia, "After the Warring States Period, China was unified under the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BCE) for the first time, with the capital located at Xianyang, just northwest of modern Xi'an. The first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang ordered the construction of the Terracotta Army and his mausoleum just to the east of Xi'an almost immediately after his ascension to the throne."

Evil Princess and visitors (yes, visitors1  <shrieeeek!>)  Sly and Sharpie headed north on the night train from Shanghai to Xian.  It is a $79, 14-hour trip in a 4-bunk sleeper and you arrive in downtown Xian refreshed and in your pajamas like a Shanghai local. 

The attached is from one of my favorite websites in the world, The Man in Seat 61, probably one of the best travel sites on the web, if you like train travel, that is. (A note on train travel.  It is, in my opinion, the very best way to travel.   It is not always the cheapest way, it is rarely the fastest way, it is not the most convenient way, but I love riding on a train.)

Xian train station waiting area

Xian includes the only intact city wall in China.  Most of the city walls in China were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution or during the wild-paced development here.  You can actually walk all the way around the inner city or even bike it if you are in the mood.  The city itself includes much history and a atmospheric Muslim quarter with great food and fun markets.

Muslim quarter

Xian City Wall

On to the Warriors.   Oh warriiooooorrrs.  Come out and playaaaaa.  Warriors, come out and playyyyyeeeeee.  (Name the movie reference and win a FREE foot massage on Anhu Lu!)


Yes, we saw the awe-inspiring Terra Cotta warriors.  I gave it my best shot to be attentive and learn something.   We hired a driver and went without a guide.  What do you need a guide for?  I'll tell you why...protection from other guides.   If you do not have a guide, then unattached and vigilant guides will swarm you and get in your iced tea.  Then they will point you in the wrong direction and you will wander listlessly past hundreds of stalls selling figurines of the Terrible Cotta Warriors.  You will only find the entrance by following people WITH guides.  You will then visit the three pits in the right sequence.  Pit One, the big show, was like visiting a giant warehouse filled with row after row of well, sort of like those roadside places that have dozens of concrete bunnies, and hundreds of concrete bird baths, and thousands of concrete gophers.  Only here, there were thousand of ancient Q'n dynasty garden gnomes.  On the way out, we ate at Subway.

Archer Gnomes, Aisle 3

This is not to smash a cultural pie into the face of Chinese history. Nooooooo. Xian is a fascinating place. It was the end point of the famous Silk Road and is surrounded by hundreds of burial tombs and sites of major importance. Shortly after the Gnomes, we visited The Mausoleum of Liu Qi, a emperor of the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-220AD), and his empress, Empress Wang (quit smirking). It was built in the year 153 AD and covers an area of 20 square kilometers. It is also the first underground museum in China. Burial objects include pottery figurines, chariots and horses, weapons, articles of everyday use and a large number of pottery animals. Mysterious place, it was....




The figures originally had wooden arms and clothing




The underground museum




2,000 year old pottery on display


Pet?


I left the museum feeling like I had moved 250 feet down in the earth but thousands of years in the past. Traveling in China can do that to you. Thanks for tuning in this week, and thanks to Sly and Sharpie for coming to <shrreeeiiiiiikkkkk> visit.




Sly and Sharpie head out in the Muslim quarter

Take the Yuan From My Hand, Grasshopper

Hello, and welcome back to the Yellow River Chronicles.  For your information, the YRC is now in it's third week and has not YET been shut down by the PRC authorities.  They have however, beaten my VPN (Virtual Private Network) around the head and shoulders, but so far, we are still rolling on the Yellow River.

The most esteemed Evil Princess and I are entering a period of rest and meditation during the hot season in faire Shanghai.   Geographically, the 'Hai is at the East China Sea edge of the Yangtze River Valley which means it is very hot and muggy during the summers here.

Fun Facts According to Wikipedia:  The Yangtze, Yangzi or Cháng Jiāng ( /ˈjæŋt.si/ or /ˈjɑːŋt.si/; [jɑ̌ŋtsɯ́]) is the longest river in Asia, and the third-longest in the world. It flows for 6,418 kilometres (3,988 mi) from the glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau in Qinghai eastward across southwest, central and eastern China before emptying into the East China Sea at Shanghai. It is also one of the biggest rivers by discharge volume in the world. The Yangtze drains one-fifth of China's land area and its river basin is home to one-third of China's population.^[6] Along with the Yellow River, the Yangtze is the most important river in the history, culture and economy of China. The prosperous Yangtze River Delta generates as much as 20% of China's GDP. 

There will be more travel chronicling in the coming weeks, but today we're going to chat about one of the largest, steepest learning curves here on the mainland.   No,  I'm not talking about crossing the street without becoming a parking spot for a moped carrying 50 megatons of bai shu.  Instead, today we are going to chat about learning to bargain.  To introduce this key survival skill, I will liberally steal from the Five Stages of Change/Grief/Everything Else.  The stages, popularly known in its abbreviated form DABDA, (which sounds like a 80's pop band to me),  include:

1. Denial — "WTF, dude!", or, "I don't think the heavy stuff is going to come down for quite awhile" 
2. Anger — "Do they know WHO they are dealing with??"
3. Bargaining — "Just let me finish this taco, first"
4. Depression — "I think I need to listen to Neil Young."
5. Acceptance — "Check, please!"

Almost everything, everywhere is eligible for bargaining here, particularly if it is "street".  For example, street vendors of flowers, vegetables, pharmaceuticals, clothing, DVD/CDs, fish, and particularly "antiques" will be opportunities to hone your negotiating skills.

Hong Kong Vegetable Stand

The first pass at negotiating can be a bit tough, even if you have actually learned enough Mandarin to understand the numbers.  Chinese vendors generally keep a large calculator around (the type corporate marketing types keep around because they have large, easy keyboards).  What tends to trip up the average visitor is an innate sense of fair play.  Here's how this generally plays out.

Tourist approaches one of the stalls on "Revenge for the Opium Wars" Street, piled high with little Mao statues, fake Chinese officer hats, fake swords, medals, coins, statues, fakes of fake antiques (very hard to detect), chopsticks, and Michael Jackson T-shirts.  They point hesitantly at small leather handbag (not a fake, just a handbag).

Tourist:  Excuse me, how much is the bag?

Vendor:  800 yuan.  What color do you want?

The tourist now begins applying the law of reasonable purchasing:  Any counteroffer should begin at a reasonable distance from the offering price so as not to insult the vendor. 

Tourist:  Oh, the red would be nice.  (Calculates fair price in U.S. dollars and deducts 20% or gets lost in calculation.  The brave ones will go deep.  Let's say we have a brave one here.)   Would you take 500 yuan?

Vendor:  (Sound of steel trap closing).   This is good quality.  700 yuan.

The tourist is now caught in law number two:  Once a price has been exchanged, it is an insult to leave the stand without buying something.  More calculations are made.   More small steps in price on both sides.  As this winds to its inevitable conclusion, after some further haggling, the bag is sold for around 600 yuan, or around 90 dollars.

Yu Gardens Shopping Area, Shanghai

Now, a confession.  Evil Princess and I landed in Shanghai and we must have had signs around our necks that said "CHEAT ME!!".   We were cheated buying chopsticks.  We were cheated buying bowls.  We were ROBBED buying tea.  We got massacred buying incense near a temple.   We were sold street food at 5X the normal price. We went through the five steps on a regular basis, lingering in depression when we learned how much we had been cheated.  Then, help arrived.  Not in form of a 12-step program.  Noooo, we went to one of the fake markets with a Master.  This is the way it went.  This is the truth, I promise.   The actual purchased article was different but the bid ratios are the same to protect the innocent.  While the Master was in the process of violating all of the laws of reasonable purchasing, I attempted to hide in a booth across the way where I almost paid 8 times the going rate for a green laser pen out of sheer embarrassment.

Master:      How much for this bag?

Vendor:      800 yuan.

Master:      (Incredulous).  800?   Come on.

Vendor hands the Master a calculator where he can enter his price.  Master looks at bag, thinks a moment and enters (hold for dramatic pause) .............60!  Vendor lets out a small whimper, shakes head and hands calculator back to Master.

Vendor:     Please, enter your real, final price.

The Master punches in 65.  Vendor responds with 400, final price.  Master returns bag, profusely thanks the vendor and heads down the hallway. 

Master:    (Over shoulder)  Thank you!

Vendor pursues Master a few feet.   300!

Master:   (Accelerating).  No, its okay.  Thank you.

Vendor waits until Master gets 20 feet away, goes and grabs him and brings him back to store.  I pretend to be studying some fake software, in no way associated with the Master.  "Crazy foreigner" I say cheerfully to the software store owner who is watching this closely.

Vendor:  200!  Final price.

Master offers 70 and departs.   By the time he reaches the same 20 feet away, the vendor says, "Okay!  Okay, 75!"   The Master completes his purchase and looks for fresh meat.

Shanghai Shopping Action

Armed with this training, Evil Princess and I proceeded to get thrown out of numerous stores.  Apparently, the level of discount from original offering price is different based on venue/establishment.  We had migrated from a position of uninformed incompetence to informed incompetence.  There are actually rules, man.  This isn't Nam. Here are our current rough starting points.

Street Markets:

Fake markets:          A tenth of the offering price.

Flowers:                   A third to a half.

Clothing:                   A third to a half.

Electronics:              DO NOT BUY FROM STREET VENDOR!

Vegetables:              75% of initial price.

Non Street

Stores:                     Generally full price to around a 10% discount, sometimes.

Restaurants:             Prices are published, no negotiation.

These are all subject to the dreaded Mandarin Exception Rule, which is, anything can be an exception.  The general guideline is be sure to ask and be an informed consumer.  It has been our experience that it is considered perfectly okay for a seller to ask an extremely high price if the person is wealthy enough to pay it.  Prices are wealth adjusted, so to speak.  All foreigners in Shanghai are considered wealthy, so we always get the high starting price.    But, don't worry.  If you come to visit, we will take you for negotiation training, which involves going through the five stages rapidly, staying calm and buying a watermelon for 16 cents.  And I tell you what, I am soooo looking forward to buying a car when we get back.