A Saturday in Shanghai

• Wake up at 9:00 am, a bit groggy.
• Take a shower, only four minutes of hot water left, darn you cole!
• breakfast is an: overripe orange, china yogurt, and a glass of tomato/strawberry juice (much better than it sounds).

(A short addendum about the overripe oranges. On Wednesday afternoon, Helen, the person in charge of us foreign teachers, calls up the office, and asks all of the male teachers to come out to help her move boxes of oranges. So, there are only three of us: Josh, Chris, and me. "Boxes of oranges?" I ask Josh. Shrug. Ok...when in china. When we get outside, a thin worker is bicycling a mountain of boxes on the back of his bike. All of them are full of oranges. "They're for you!" Helen says with a big smile. "Why?" we ask. And she explains that the sister city of Shanghai, an island that I didn't catch the name of, was in economic trouble because no one was buying its oranges and they were about to go bad. As a favor, Shanghai bought all of the oranges and was distributing it among its teachers.

"Some people sell it to the teachers for a low price," Helen tells us with a look of disapproval, "but we are giving them to you for free!"

We thank her and eventually get around to trying the oranges and they're....well, most of them are past the point of edible. Hmm, a box of rotten oranges. I eat six of them anyway to prevent scurvy). (in current real time, sunday night) a fat fruit fly just meanders pass my line of vision. maybe time to get rid of oranges.

• Pack up grading and head over to Xujiahui for lunch.
• Lunch is pork cutlet curry for me, and vegetable ramen for cole. Pretty good.
• Proceed to Pacific Coffee, home of free internet (also free in the sense that it doesn't come attached with school firewalls), and reasonably priced snacks. Cheaper than Sahtarbuckoos too.
• 6 hours of test grading commences. I try to stab myself with an unsharpened pencil, but miss and only manage to smudge my shirt. A pool of drool collects near my socks.
• A waiter comes up to check on us approximately ten times during our stay. Hey, we paid 24 rmb for our stuff, a bit more than $3, we can sit as long as we like.
• The afternoon passes and the sun sets. Outside the window, three men set up white-wire reindeer on top of fake snow and blue lit trees. They love Christmas here. Shopping and blinking lights, what more could they ask for? They carefully position the trees and reindeer for an hour, and then, the moment comes. They plug it in, and another corner of Shanghai is engulfed in China Christmas spirit.
• Finally, at 6:30 pm, we leave. I can't feel my legs. I resign myself to amputation.
• Cole and I get home and collapse on the couch. Two episodes of Naruto Shippuden clears our head. We pass out for ten minutes, and then it's time to leave for a concert.
• The concert is in Yuyingtang, and the band is Hedgehog, a Chinese indie rock band that sounds pretty good via myspace and youtube. I'm excited, even if I can't quite remember my own name.
• We meet conks (aka rebecca), and steph at 8pm by the school gates.
• Dinner is at Kung-Fu, a fast-food place in Shanghai South Station that has images of Bruce Lee stamped on everything.
• I order pork and tofu over rice (meh). cole has mushroom chicken (slightly better than meh). conks orders broccoli, lettuce, and rice (ok). steph gets tofu and rice and pokes at it suspiciously.
• After dinner we hit up the 1 line, and transfer to the 4 line. "Yuyingtang is right outside of the subway stop," conks tells us. Good, because I didn't wear a jacket.
• We get out and....no yuyingtang. Where is it? We wander left, we wander right. I ask for directions in two stores. In the first store the girl I ask laughs at me, either because of my stilted formal beijing taught accent, or because of my stilted formal cantonesed beijing accent. In the second, the guy stares at me like I'm insane, and then points to the right, just like the girl did before him. Right is the consensus.
• We go left.
• And it's not there. Conks goes off on a two mile jog in search of the club, because she feels responsible for our lost state.
• cole, steph, and I go to a starbucks.
• ten minutes later, conks returns. bad news, no yuyingtang. It's 10pm now, an hour after the start of the show. It's looking bleak for Hedgehog. The solution?
• We walk into the nearest McDonalds and order two deep fried pineapple pies (one for conks, one for me), a sundae for cole, and a fish fillet for steph (she was still hungry). The night just got better. Everyone in the McDonalds watches us eat. Free entertainment.
• Outside the smell of stinky tofu permeates the air. Boo.
• We make one last gasp effort to find the club. During our walk through a park, we find street karaoke, late night rollarbladers, and more stinky tofu, but no club. Alas.
• In a desolate strip of closed stores, we come across a plain, unadorned door. "Jetlag" it says on the awning.
• "I want to go in," steph says, and she opens the door. There's some kind of light....
• "It's a bar!" she tells us. We ask a waitress about the club, she doesn't speak English. Might as well go in, steph decides. Ok.
• We go inside. "Moshi, moshi!" they greet. Huh? Where am I?
• We sit down, and the server says something to me. But it's not Chinese, or English. In front of us, a large group of women are drinking cocktails and sitting on the floor. Wait, no, on mats. "Kampai!" they shout while clinking tall frosted glasses.
• We are definitely in a Japanese bar.
• The menu is only in English and Japanese. The prices are high.
• Cole and I order plain water, and eat the free cheese. We start to wonder how we went from McDonalds to high-end Japanese expats only bar in the span of five minutes.
• The service is impeccable. Cole and I can't stop starting our sentences with "In Japan..."
• The check arrives, and it's 180 rmb!! for a gin and tonic (steph) and pineapple juice (conks). For perspective, 180 rmb is enough for most Chinese people to eat on for two weeks. Turns out there's a 50 rmb sitting fee if you order a drink. Oops.
• Around 11:30pm, we cab it home in a sketchy, broken, peeling, rusted red cab.
• 12:00 am home.
• 1:00 am, pass out.
• Saturday is over.