the china chronicles 3 -- hangzhou to shanghai, day 1

we checked into the hyatt hotel, with my dad claiming that the company booked a room for us. but apparently they spelled his name wrong, or at least his last name. not like we're not used to this. so we went through about thirteen different permutations of our last names and finally the one that was right was one that only my art teacher about 9 years ago. super. cool.

before going to sleep that night we went to see a show on the west lake which was one big lake in the middle of the city and the main tourist landmark of the place. i can't say much about the show except that it was a generic sort of chinese show that involved singing, dancing, and pseudo-cultural references to some mythical love story.

it turned out that the next morning i did have a minor cold since the a/c wouldn't stop blaring on me the whole day. but by then we had to start on a long chain of sightseeing different temples and buildings. now it is really hot in hangzhou and we did a lot of walking so i think i did my best to block that out of my memory.

the next day we shipped out to shanghai by train, which involved a crowded train station, the threat of being pickpocketed, and walking all the way from the back of the train to the front where our seats were. the train was one of those high-tech WHOOSHWHOOSH a hundred kilometers an hour because they don't speak miles in china.

the train tracks went RIGHT THROUGH some people's backyards and they watched us go by. there was especially one house with a dirt front yard and two women were doing the washing outside in a bucket. even at 120 km/hour i could see them stop their work to watch us pass. they looked really depressed -- like oh, there goes the train out of this dump of a place and i'm NOT ON IT, WHICH IS THE PROBLEM. it would be easier to care if these people weren't everywhere in china.

the train was so fast that i didn't even have time to finish the temple level in Phantom Hourglass before we got to shanghai, where my dad's friend [purple shirt, jeans, black converse, which makes him super cool, okay] proceeded to pick us up in his gray BMW with a chauffeur. i told my dad to get some poor friends.

we were staying at hotel called the swissotel grand and here was where i met the rest of the party. by party, i mean my friends who were all hanging around a pillar in the lobby. so i met up with them, said hey what's up. they had just flown down to shanghai from chinacamp, which i did not go to.

we got room assignments. one of my friends and i were roommates. like, w/out the parents. [both girls, okay, nothing scandalous here.] the hotel room was nice except that the wall between the bathroom and bedroom was clear and even when the curtain was put down, it was still a little see-through. awkward. so we just decided to not look in the bathroom when someone was showering. logical choice there.

then we looked out the window expecting some beautiful view. not. there were six large fans and a pathetic little garden about five stories below us, and a huge yellow building across from us. but that was all that was bad. the beds were comfy and it was clean and all 5-star-hotel-y. and the toilet sang [or played audio from whatever channel was on tv] which made my friend very happy.

we then went out in hunt of lunch and happened on this restaurant. we [parents] decided to let's go right on in. we ate. it was decent. our parents caused trouble for the waitstaff. the bathroom was mad weird. you know, the usual. end of story.

we were supposed to take a cruise on the shanghai harbor that night and so we set out in the afternoon to get on the ship. so we did. and so we took a cruise. i have an obsession with city skylines, and it was like YES. MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF CITY SKYLINE. the boat was mad loud but it went around and around and ooh, look at the pretty lights. i didn't even get seasick. or harbor-sick, which would have been extremely pansy of me.

we couldn't find a ride back to our hotel. a guy with an unmarked white van by the side of the road offered to drive us back... for a price, of course. SKETCH. CITY. but since we had 11 people [including 1 grown man and 3 grown women, 2 teenager guys at least one of which who could take out a sketchy taxi driver, 3 girls who could also probably take out a sketchy taxi driver together, and 2 little kids who could alert the cops with their screams of dying], we decided it was safe. the taxi driver couldn't possibly rob 11 of us at once.

it was still really sketchy. i'm glad the police in china are completely incompetent at their jobs.

we got back to the hotel un-robbed and then it was sleepy time. but not before one more drama.

my roommate was out taking a shower in her mother's room while i showered in our room. i finished first and she still wasn't back so i turned on the tv and got out my sketchbook [the usual]. but then this giant bug falls from the ceiling onto the headboard of my bed.

HOLY. FORKING. MOTHEROFJESUS.

it was this ---------------------------- big, i kid you not, and from across the room it looked like a cockroach. so what do i do? i call room service. in chinese, of course, even though both my language skills seem to have deserted me at that point.

hello, good evening, room service, how may i help you?
good evening, uh, there is a, uh...
yes?
THERE IS A COCKROACH IN MY ROOM HOLY JESUS SEND SOMEONE UP NOW OHMYGOD.
oh, that -- WHAT?

so they assured me someone would come "immediately."

ten minutes later, they came. the whole time i watched the bug like a forkin' hawk on steroids so i didn't look like an idiot when room service came and i had to say OH OOPS IT CRAWLED AWAY. there was a lady in the maid uniform and a manager in his dapper suit and phone, ready to call pest control. then the lady looked once at the bug which was hanging on the wall and was like

oh yeah. that's not a cockroach. that's a [chinese name here that i don't remember] and it's related to the firefly.

i was like you mean the terrorist cousin of the firefly just invaded my room. the lady sprung into action, grabbing my roommate's shoe and attacking the bug viciously. like, she pounced on that bug and i wouldn't have expected it out of a 4 foot 5, 50 year old lady but she KILLED that thing like a BUG ASSASSIN. the guy looked relieved at not having a cockroach infestation and a really upset customer and offered to change my sheets so i could sleep knowing there were no bug-germs on my bed. coolthanks man, it means a lot to me. i stopped flipping out by now. i generally don't stay flipped out for long. i even doodled the bug onto one of the pages of my sketchbook.

after the bug was dead and the lady was in the middle of changing the sheets, my friend came in all happy from her shower and was like WHUT. so [in english] i told her the story, had a little freak-out session again, and then settled down. the manager looked considerably startled at discovering that i could not only have hysterics in chinese, i could do it in english too. yeahbilingual.

so all the drama was done with and we finally got into bed and watched V [which is like MTV but in chinese and much, much better. they actually did play american artists but they were only really famous ones].


my roommate promised she would scream if another bug landed on her face in the middle of the night and with that reassuring promise we went to sleep.

hangzhou to shanghai, day 1 END.