Wandering
The ordeal in MCO made me dread arriving in the Shanghai airport. I was expecting to be interrogated, maybe even searched, so I stepped off the plane a little more nervous than I would be arriving in any other country. The Shanghai airport does make a good first impression, at least in my mind. On either side of where my plane had stopped, the building extended upwards and in either direction for what seemed miles. It reminded me of the opening scene in Star Wars, when the Star Destroyer flies over the camera, and it seems like it’s going to go on forever. The airport was like a landed Star Destroyer; there were even some similarities in design. John and I walked along the outside for a while, following the crowd, until we arrived at the entrance to customs. But instead of being fully questioned, we were allowed to pass quickly. They just checked our visas and laughed at my ridiculous looking passport picture, then let us go claim our baggage. No need for a return ticket.
I spent my first night in China in a hotel room in Shanghai, about five minutes away from the airport. The hotel room was much better than I expected, and it included a sign in Chingrish, something that I’m sure I’ll see more of in the future. Miss Tao, our contact from the school, was the one who set us up in the hotel and showed us around a little bit before we all went back to the airport to pick up a third teacher who was arriving, Adam. He speaks significantly more Chinese than either John or I, which is good for us because we all travel around in a group, and he can order food or ask for directions, whereas all I can do is say hello and a few other basic phrases.
The next morning, we took a bus from Shanghai to Nanjing, in one of the scarier bus rides of my life. I’d been warned that people in China drive like maniacs, and they lived up to their reputation. At one point, the bus drove on the dotted lane line, all the while honking like crazy for the two cars in front of it to move out of the way. I spent most of the trip attempting to study Chinese, with some help from Adam on the pronunciation side. I also learned about one of the coolest things about Chinese writing: stroke order. When you write a character, there’s an order that you should write it in so that you have better chi. It usually means things like finishing the inside of a box before closing it around what’s inside or doing horizontal strokes before vertical strokes, but it can also lead to some headaches when there are really complicated characters to write, like student, which needs about 15 strokes to write. It starts to make sense, though, and when you follow the stroke order, you can write the characters more smoothly and quickly.
So far, my days here in Nanjing have been incredible. John, Adam, and I have been slowly exploring the city, and we’ve discovered a lot: a shop that sells dumplings for one yuan, which is about 12 or 13 cents; another shop that has the most incredible noodles I’ve ever tasted; what we called Bicycle City, a place our taxi driver took us when we asked where we could buy used bikes that had a main street full of bikes, as well as an area in the back that was just as full, thousands of bikes; Nanjing 1912, the newer area with restaurants that cater to Americans and six different clubs within walking distance, which we’ve gone to three out of the four nights we’ve been here; multiple shops that sell three yuan beers that are bigger than the beers I would pay a couple of bucks for in the States; a bootleg DVD store, and tons more things like that. I really do think the best part of the being here so far has been just wandering a direction and finding a restaurant that has better food than I could ever expect to find in a little hole in the wall, or seeing a guy who sells birds on a small side street.
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