Be Sure to Check the Label

Greetings and welcome back to the Yellow River Chronicles, an authentic and genuine article scribbled on the shores of the Huang Pu River in Faire Shanghai.   Thanks again for your notes and reviews, they are much appreciated and we read them aloud at YRC staff meetings.

On to today's topic.  You will find it to be chewier and saltier than the usual frothy mirth we serve up here at YRC, because we are going to a very unfamiliar place....reality.  Many of you have written that you would like to know more about "daily life" in Shanghai.  So, we thought we would take a whack at the topic "Faking It In Shanghai".  

To start, there are two things that the Shanghainese love to do when they go out:  eat and shop.  And shop they do, and well.   FACT TIME!!! The PRC recently became the world's second largest and fastest growing market for luxury goods.   The US of A is number one, and Japan is now number three.  Designers swarm here like well dressed carpetbaggers to elbow each other with grace and form for a bit floorspace in the main shopping districts.

According to the McKinsey Quarterly, China will command about 20 percent, or 180 billion renminbi ($27 billion), of global luxury sales in 2015. Even during the global recession in 2009 sales of luxury goods in the mainland increased 16 percent to about 64 billion renminbi.  This was down from the 20 percent growth of previous years but far better than the growth in many other major luxury markets.  This means Chinese consumption will double in about five years and they will easily become the number one market in the world.  This is why EP and I often refer to this time period in the PRC as the "Bling Dynasty".

HuaiHai Lu at Night

You may be pleased to know wealthy Chinese have developed a taste for international, well-known brands.  When you stroll down HuaiHai Lu or Nanjing Lu, the two BIG shopping streets in Shanghai, there is every major international brand.  In fact, in the space of a mile, the parade of designers will repeat, Zegna, Cartier, Omega, LV, Rolex, Tiffanys, Prada, Coach, and Yada Yada.  The malls scattered along HuaiHai and Nanjing are frenetic hubs of Chinese purchasing fury, seven days a week.  

Now, brace yourself for one of the YRC's blinding Statements of Truth!  When you buy luxury goods in China they cost significantly more than anywhere else in the world.

In fact, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (we read their stuff avidly here at YRC)  did a price survey  of 20 luxury brands including watches, suitcases, purses, clothes, wine and electronics.  Their conclusion:  due to import duties and "distribution structure"  prices of luxury goods in Mainland China are 45 percent higher than those in Hong Kong, 51 percent higher than those in the United States, and 72 percent higher than those in France. C'est des conneries!

The Fake Market

Now, a moment of piercing irony. When international visitors arrive, rumpled and creaky from the 12-hour plan ride from anywhere, they check into one of the big International hotels lining the river in PuDong and then scurry past the dozens of designer stores to dive into one of Shanghai's famous "fake" markets.

There are two large ones in Shanghai.  One is a vast underground complex built below the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum (Truth??!!!)  The other is on Nanjing Lu.  Every brand in the world is feverishly copied and then offered for discrete sale at prices dramatically below the original, because they are...fake.  The Chinese do not shop there, the visitors do. And, the visitors also bring mountains of designer clothing that they want to have copied in the fabric markets (usually near the fake markets).

The Tailor's Market

Hundreds of tailors wait to copy any and all garments at a fraction of the price of the original.  These originals sell in a store across town to a Chinese paying a +50% premium over international prices for an original.   So on the metro, there will be a Chinese couple with shopping bags from Fendi, Prada, and Gucci.  They are happy and proud of their ability to own such fine items.  Sitting right next to them will be a furtive British couple with shabby looking plastic bags filled with fakes of the exact same designer bag for friends and neighbors back home.

Fake IPhone, anyone?

While the wealthy love the major brands, this is not so for all consumers here in the PRC.  Fakes are widespread here, generally irritating but they are sometimes even hazardous.  These are the dangerous fakes that are not just copies, but are counterfeit.  Different or harmful ingredients are often used so the product can be produced cheaply.

Over time, we here at the YRC  have changed our focus while shopping for even for the most basic of items, such as shampoo.   When we first learned, usually by an unpleasant rash or other debacle, that what we had purchased was yet again a complete fake, we began to study the shelves in the stores looking to make sure we could spot the fakes.  We avoided street markets, vendors and fake markets.  

After several abject failures, including the purchase of a FAKE Beatles CD with FAKE Beatles singing real Beatles songs, we adopted a new, healthier approach:  we now carefully search for that which is not fake.  

We now know anything sold on the street is generally a fake -- it does not have the same ingredients or parts as the original.  Antiques are fakes or poor copies.  Jade is generally glass and any electronic device purchased in a fake market will generally emit a loud buzzing sound and burst into flames a few days later.   

In the "dangerous fake" section, there are counterfeit medicine and health care products.  There is fingernail polish that will cause nails to fall off and other horrors.  The food contamination stories here are legion.  Recently, a farmer became the focus of Chinese media after his field of watermelons exploded due to improper chemical use. Can you imagine that at the church July 4th picnic.  How's the apple pie, Agnes??....BOOOOOMMMMM!!!  Melon shrapnel!  In fact, a local webzine, the Shanghaiist, has a special section called "Chinese Food Scandal"  bingo.

Many of you will now scan the article in hopes of some sort of answer....why?   This is reasonable behavior when confronted with so many atrocities.  EP and I have meditated on this at length and we can only offer the following observation after hours of debate and discussion:  We don't have a clue!

What we can offer is this:  we now have a true appreciation and wonder for that which is what it is supposed to be,  the rarest of all items...the genuine article.  Our advice?  Go to your grocery store, pick up a bottle of salad dressing and be joyous of your certainty.

Banana Pancakes, Anyone?

Hello and welcome back!  Time to put on your Birkenstocks because today we shoulder our backpacks and head to idyllic Guangxi province, my favorite place in China, to date.

Next time you're buying a big bag of baozi, check your yuan-notes.  They always have a picture of Chairman Mao on the front (the same picture, from his good side) and on the back, an scenic vista or important government building.  Ironically, on the 50-yuan note (the second-highest denominated note) you will find a picture of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet.  Wandering thoughtfully away from that issue, we turn to the subject of our adventure, the 20-yuan note.

The famous vista you see on the note is the karst formations on the Li river, which flows through Guangxi, one of the most southern of Chinese provinces. Guangxi, an Autonomous Region, has a long border with Vietnam and that Southeast Asia climate and vibe.  The highlight of the area is the scenery, rice terraces, biking and rock climbing around Yangshuo, a small town on the Li River.

The Mighty Li River

Yangshuo is in the Lonely Planet guidebooks, so it is officially on the Banana Pancake Trail.  For those of you not familiar with the ways of Southeast Asia backpackers, there is this from Wikipedia:

YangShuo Bananas

"There is no firm definition of the Banana Pancake Trail, as it is a metaphor to describe the ever-developing travellers' trail going through many different places in Southeast Asia rather than an actual route or road (much like the Silk Road). However, the term is used to describe, amongst others, Goa, Pushkar and Varanasi in India, Halong Bay, Hoi An, and Hanoi in Vietnam, Vang Vieng in Laos (with its rites-of-passage river tubing), Sihanoukville and Siem Reap (Angkor Wat) in Cambodia, Bangkok (with its famous Khao San Road), Pai, the islands of Ko Pha Ngan (with its world-infamous Full Moon Party) and Ko Phi Phi in Thailand, and Penang, the Perhentian Islands and Melaka in Malaysia. In Indonesia Lake Toba,Yogyakarta, Mount Bromo and the islands of Bali, Lombok and Gili Trawangan are considered to be on the Banana Pancake Trail.

As the tourism expands, the Philippines has become part of it as well, and the Trail's stops in the Philippines are thought to include the island of Boracay, Siargao Island, the dive centers of Puerto Galera in Mindoro island, the islands of Palawan, the surf spots of San Juan La Union, plus the Cordillera mountain regions that include the spectacular Batad and Banaue rice terraces, and Sagada.  The Banana Pancake Trail also seems to have a northern extension into China with Dali, Lijiang, and Yangshuo as the major centres." (Wikipedia)

Guilin lights up at night

So there you have it!  We have crossed paths with our intrepid backpacker friends in Bangkok and Malaysia and, as it turns out, also in the PRC.  EP and I spent a long weekend wandering the area, biking, climbing rice terraces and rolling on the Li.  And while we had crossed the Banana Pancake Trail, we were not backpacking.  Noooooo.  We were learning the ways of a guided tour in China.  The Chinese "improved" Guilin for tourism by installing neon, of course, and an evening river cruise with a music show. The river Li, while absolutely dreamlike in its beauty, is also packed with a long armada of river cruise boats.  Dozens of boats careen down the channel at full speed, jostling for position in the turns and passing each other in the straightaways.  Passengers watch the scenery cruise by, take pictures when instructed to by the tour guide and take a break only to duck below decks to "noodle up" at a lunch buffet. Guilin partially prepared us for the Beijing Death March and Pee-Pee Boy, which I will cover in a future YRC.

Li River Cruiser. Note chef in back...

Neon Caves!

Famous Elephant Trunk Hill!

Back on topic!! As you probably have perceived in the YRC, China is not a place where you go to....relax.  No, even as you step off the plane in Shanghai for your first visit, you will feel the tension rising, your pulse will start to jackhammer and by the time you clear customs you are READY TO ROCK!!  The adrenaline turbines wind up, synapses start to crackle with energy and it's CRANK IT ALL THE WAY UP TIME in the 'Hai as you blast into town.

Guilin was like that, too.  There were the traditional "photo spots" where people stood in line to take the "perfect" picture, gifts shops, tourist areas and Elephant Trunk Hill,  the Pink Bridge of Guilin.

The YuLong River

On the other hand Yangshuo is pristine, mellow and it feels like you are, well, not in China. The un-frantic YuLong river is framed by awe-inspiring scenery and there are small bamboo rafts that are poled down the river, rock climbing and some great bike riding. We stayed in a rustic mountain lodge that had...you guessed...no neon and no ditches to fall into.  Our intrepid travel partners Steve "Sharpie" and Kristi "Sly" Shea traveled for a week down there and came back with a very un-Chinese glow of mellowness.  I'll bet it was the pancakes...

The Pink Bridge

Welcome back to the YRC!  Last week's "Dragon" elicited some of the best comments yet, including Gregg Shaw's interpretation of classic Chinese poetry and helpful naming conventions from Amjad and Johnny Velcro.

Today we head to the Pink Bridge!   Bridges, in my humble opinion, hold a certain fascination, a certain allure.  They are engineering wonders, landmarks of historical significance and even feature prominently as symbols of transition, change, risk and bungee jumping. For example, in "Apocalypse Now" (note the additional reference to the movie as we build tension for the Ho Chi Minh City trip) there is the fighting around the Do Lung bridge.  The bridge is built during the day by the Americans and destroyed at night by the Viet Cong.  This serves as the ultimate symbol of the futility of war.  "The Bridge over the River Kwai" is also built (yuk yuk) around this central notion.

It should also be noted that many great cities have bridges that are central to the history of the city. For example, London and the Tower Bridge, Paris and Pont Neuf, Rome and the Bridge of Castel St. Angelo, New York and the Brooklyn Bridge, and of course, the famous Tridge in Midland, Michigan.  An example in mythology would be the trolls that live under bridges, a frequent reference to barriers to progress and middle management.

To wedge China into this discussion, they have recently completed several long bridges which clearly establish themselves as the Great Bridge Builders of the 21st century and proud we are of all of them.   Such is the power of bridge imagery and lore.  I am sure we could go on like this for hours, but I am going to wrestle this topic back to the subject of our wanderings today...the Pink Bridge.

Typical Market Street

So, on to the island nation of Taiwan, the Republic of China, not to be confused with the People's Republic of China.  We can muse on the irony that the Republic of China is an actual democracy, while the People's Republic...well, you know what I mean.

On with it!  EP and I were in Taiwan in search of mystery, adventure and grilled squid.  Well, once again, she was on a business trip and I was traveling limpet-style to carry her luggage.  While she worked hard attending business meetings,  I wandered the city.  I found Taipei to be a healthy hybrid of East and West with a strong coffee culture.   The entire population of the country (22 million) is about the same as the city of Shanghai.  Taiwan has open borders and information flow, so it felt much more open and friendly than your average mainland city.

In search of amulets, I visited Taipei's most famous temple, The Mengjia Longshan Temple.  Longshan is Taipei's oldest temple and is located in Taipei's Wanhua District, the oldest part of Taipei city. It was built in 1738 by settlers from Fujian, China.  The Temple worships a mixture of Buddhist, Taoist, and folk gods such as Matsu, Chinese goddess of the sea. There are more than 165 Chinese gods that are enshrined here and it seems most of them accepted offerings of food and incense.  It was also bombed in 1949 by American bombers hunting Japanese gods, I guess.

Like most civilized cities, Taipei has an excellent Metro system and on the weekend, EP and used it to zoom around the city,  For our last day, we headed to the very northern tip of the city, the district of Tamshui.  There was reputed to be a famous fisherman's market there.  We went with dreams of squid, grouper, sea bream, and of course, the narrow-banded batfish. Though we searched quite diligently, we found no fisherman's market.  There was the standard Chinese parking lot for buses, there was the standard Chinese set of new buildings built to attract tourism and there was the standard group of stalls selling dried fish, salted beef and other delights, but no market.  However, we did manage to discover The Pink Bridge, aka, the Lovers Bridge of Tamshui.

Spanning the entrance to the harbor, the Pink Bridge provides an excellent venue to watch the sun set and is a connection between, well, really, it's hard to say, what it connects.   Like most of our fellow Pinkers in Transit, EP and crossed it from one side to the otherand back again, in search of, well, something to look at.

There was a very strong bond between all of us on the bridge, very much like feeling of being stuck in an elevator.  Well, we are here, and there is nowhere to go, so let's just figure this out. That sort of feeling.  We all seemed confused and slightly disappointed as we crossed and re-crossed the pink span, hoping to discover the source of the Pink Bridges existence and only to find, the other side, so to speak.

This is not to say we did not enjoy the visit to Taipai.  There are great night markets, good food, hiking trails, mountain/sea vistas and some wonderful grilled squid.  I mean, so fresh it tries to sucker your face while you munch on it.  The air is clean, the city atmosphere is relaxed and lots of fun.  However, we will leave you with this small satori from a year and a half of exploring in Asia.  Yes, the YRC may seem so glamourous and full of drama.  Yes, there are exotic places with beautiful men and strong women.  Yes, there is mystery and adventure, but let us tell you this.  Sometimes, you reach the other side of a bridge and you wonder why you went there.

Head for the Mountains with the YRC!

It's Friday and time for another rollicking Yellow River Chronicles. Here at the YRC we know how busy Fridays are for our readers as they frenetically get ready to rest on the weekend, so we truly appreciate the visit!   We hope you will be pleased that you stopped by because today, just like the old beer ad, we Head for the Mountains.

We're bound for Silver Dragon Village located on the borders between Zhejiang and Anhui provinces, southeast of Shanghai. It's about a four hour drive and we rolled PRC style in a bus. It was loaded with Shanghai-weary expats, beer, hiking gear and mountains of tasty but mysterious Chinese snacks.


Zhejiang, (which means "winding river") province is about 70% mountains and Anhui has the famous Huangshan mountain range, so the area is in stark contrast to the flat lands of Shanghai.


I will continue this episode of the YRC with the usual amount on candor and clarity.  The highlight of the weekend trip for some was the fact that while stargazing and cocktailing on a moonless night, I fell in the ditch shown on the left.  The details of my entrance into said ditch will only bore you, so my testimony reads as follows:  it was dark, I took a right out of the doorway to avoid a group of beer-ponging ne'er-do-wells blocking my route to see Cassiopeia (the constellation), In the inky darkness of the Inn at Silver Dragon Village, I stepped off the stone bridge and plunged into the ditch.


As you may remember, the editorial staff here at YRC make an extreme effort to avoid travelogues, factual narratives and hard physical labor.   Our contribution to the literature is to look for the connective tissue that seems to bind all cultures together.  So, it seems that in all cultures represented at this event, Pakistani, Chinese, Irish, English, Dutch, Indian, German, Canadian and American, it is considered to be extremely funny for someone to drop headlong into a ditch while carrying a vodka tonic and discussing astronomy.  We are glad of this unifying discovery and we will now leave the topic behind us.  No one was seriously injured in the making of this topic.

Do you remember the amazing Coppola film "Apocolyse Now"?  During the famous  'napalm in the morning' scene, as justification for taking a beach in the Mekong Delta, Colonel Kilgore (played by the admirable Robert Duvall) utters the line "Charlie don't surf!"  


After spending a long weekend hiking the beautiful hills and valleys of this are, I think I can say with confidence, Well, the Chinese Don't Hike!  They are fond of climbing sacred mountains. For example all of the Five Sacred Mountains have many paths to the top. But to walk in the back country for recreation is something low on their list, close to mountain biking or waiting in line.   My impression is, why do something for fun that you have to do anyway?   Let us leave it at that for the time being and I promise to report back when I have deeper observations. 

Family Tomb

Amjad, left, Farmer Chang, right.

Rice pasture

The trip was organized by the redoubtable Amjad as part of his EsXape Shanghai tours.  We stayed at the inn/hotel/hostel constructed recently by the equally redoubtable Farmer Chang.  Mr. Chang led us on the hikes while cheerfully puffing on a cigarette and gathering wild flowers for the ladies on the tour.  In the off-season, rumor has it he grows tea and rice.


Quick Facts:  China's population density is 362 people per square mile (compared to 4 per square mile in Mongolia, 72 in the United States, and 1,188 in South Korea).  China's density is three times the world average of 91 people per square mile. In Shanghai there are almost 100,000 people per square mile, which makes it one of the top ten cities in population density in the world, and a tough place to get a table in the good restaurants.


Silver Dragon was a dramatic and thankful shift from the frenzy that is the 'Hai.  In contrast to Shanghai's virulent growth, one has the sense that Silver Dragon village is winding down, and gradually receding back into the Tang Dynasty.  Like many other parts of the world, the young are leaving and moving to the cities, leaving the old ones behind to fend for themselves.  Farmers plant rice, pretty much the way they have for the past 100 years, using direct seeding and raking the soil with wooden rakes.    It's the kind of place that inspired the traditional Chinese poet Li Bai: 


Thousands of feet high towers the Yellow Mountains
With its thirty-two magnificent peaks,
Blooming like golden lotus flowers
Amidst red crags and rock columns.
Once I was on its lofty summit,
Admiring Tianmu Pine below.
The place is still traceable where the immortal
Before ascending to heaven made elixir out of jade.
Now you embark on your journey there alone---

Silver Dragon Falls.  Actually, I don't really know the name...