Where
Am I NOW??
We have finally made it out of
the freezing cold by taking a flight from Harbin to Shanghai. Shanghai is great, but we’re heading south
this week (something that will make next week’s map more complicated). Hopefully we’ll be able to wear shorts down
there.
Five Things I’m thinking about This Week:
This Better Be Worth It
I know I use the Christmas
analogy a lot, but if you were a little boy on Christmas Eve, and you could see
your presents if you turned around, would you do it?
I ask the question because as I
write this I am sitting in the lounge of the hostel with my back turned towards
a television: a television that is playing Avatar. But to fully understand my struggle, I have
to back up to yesterday morning. . .
. . . After going out somewhat
hard (read about that below) on Friday night, my alarm went off at 5:30 AM on
Saturday morning. It was time for me to
wake up. It was time for me to get my
tickets to see Avatar. Being the movie person I am, I determined
that the one thing I HAD TO DO in Shanghai was see Avatar in 3D IMAX. As soon
as we got to Shanghai I started to ask people questions about how to get
tickets to movies and quickly figured out that Avatar was the hottest ticket in town.
To get tickets to the show, I was
told that I would have to line up outside the theater early in the morning two
days earlier than when I wanted to see it.
This meant that at dawn on Saturday morning, still drunk from the
previous night, I was standing in a line full of Chinese people listening to a This American Life podcast and waiting
for the tickets to go on sale.
For two hours, not much
happened. I stayed in line for a bit,
once I felt comfortable I walked around and looked at the rest of the line for
a while, and things were pretty relaxed.
The problem that I noticed, however, was that two branches of the line
had been formed after the beginning.
I knew that this was going to
turn chaotic, very soon.
Sure enough, when 8:45 AM rolled
around and it was time for the theater to open, things turned crazy. Immediately when it looked like the theater
was opening the gate at the front, the line turned into an enormous Chinese
mosh pit. People started mobbing the
door like they were giving away a million dollars inside and I was caught in
the middle of it all.
For 45 minutes I was crammed in
the middle of a Chinese mob. With one
hand on my wallet and another hand holding my camera in the air, I was crushed
into the mob from all sides. At times I
thought that I could almost fall asleep standing upright with all the other
bodies keeping me standing. I couldn’t
fall asleep, however, with an arm in my back and cigarette smoke blowing in my
face, so I just stood there wondering when I could get my tickets.
After long enough mobbing, with
the mob occasionally chanting Avatar
in Chinese, the police arrived and broke it up to organize things. They huddled with a man that appeared to be
the theater manager and eventually moved everybody into lines. In time I made it to the front of one of
these lines where they had me go under the half-opened gate and into the movie
theater.
I was there.
After a four hour ordeal of
standing and waiting, pushing and standing, I had my tickets to see Avatar.
The first movie that I ever felt would be worthless to see on DVD, and a
movie that the world is going crazy for right now.
So now I sit here in the hostel
lounge, with plenty of people looking past me towards the television as I wait
for tomorrow morning where I see one of the most anticipated films of the past
year for me.
I just hope the film isn’t dubbed
into Chinese.
I Hate Clubs
Even in China, I am still asked
how old I am at clubs. They suck.
My Favorite Things
A couple days ago I lost my ATM
card. Yea, I know, I’m an idiot. Luckily I have my support team back home
(thanks Mom) that is shipping a new card to a city I might be in ten days from
now.
The funny thing about ATM cards
is how important they are, yet how meaningless they are. I’m not angry that I lost my ATM card, I’m
just annoyed. When you go long-term
travelling like we are, you have to take a lot of stuff with you, and my ATM
card was honestly NOT one of the more important things I have with me. Sure it will be a pain to obtain a new one,
but at least I CAN obtain a new one. With
that in mind, here is the list of the top five things that I currently have
with me, that would be most devastating to lose or have stolen:
5) My Notre Dame Student ID
I’ve probably saved 50 RMB
already just by getting student prices on things, but I would gladly pay that
amount to retrieve this ID if it was lost.
I’m really proud of the fact that I still have the same ID that I was
given on my first day at the University of Notre Dame, and I definitely can no
longer get this thing replaced. Even if
I was still a student, the current form of the student ID is long gone. I’d hate to lose it.
4) My Journal
I’ve got a Moleskin journal that
I have been keeping track of my travels in.
While I am several weeks behind in my journaling, it would really suck
to lose this. I even have a reward
listed in it for 200 RMB, and it has NO value to anybody else. I’ve got a lot of stories recorded here, a
lot of stories that will only have value if I write them.
3) My T-Shirts
While my most treasured article
of clothing is my 40’s Jersey, I am relatively certain that if I lost it the
guys in 4a would have a replacement for me by the next time I got to
campus. My favorite t-shirts, however,
are limited edition. I am travelling
with my red God, Country, Notre Dame
Shirt (that was worn when we collected money to support Katrina victims at a
football game in 2005); my 2005 Leprechaun
Legion shirt (which I like A LOT more than any other Legion shirt); my The Mob is Taking Over shirt (an O’Neill
Hall Pep Rally Shirt), and my Saint
Mary’s Swimming and Diving t-shirt.
It might seem silly that these
shirts would be more important to me than an ATM card, but they are also things
I could never replace.
2) My Passport
As much as it sucks to get a new
ATM card, this would suck a whole lot more (and keep me from venturing into
Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, or Macau).
1) My Laptop
This is where the magic happens .
. . in all seriousness, I have a lot of important documents saved on here that
I have done a lot of work on, and it would be impossibly time consuming to
recreate them. I’m in love with this
laptop, and I couldn’t live without it.
Out of the Freezer and Into The. . .
A week ago we were in Harbin, a
city that was so cold a water bottle would freeze upon walking outside. Walking down the street there we would be incredibly
excited for the prospects of soon being in the heat of Shanghai. As it turns out, Shanghai does not actually
have that much heat this time of year.
Sure it is significantly warmer
here: I don’t have to wear a hat all the time, I only wear one pair of pants, I
can wear my Cons without always fearing frostbite, two pairs of gloves are far
from a necessity—but it isn’t really that warm here. Since I’ve been in Shanghai, I have worn my
winter hat a lot of the time. I have
worn gloves sometimes. I have worn both
parts of my coat the entire time.
Yet, I still feel like it is
really warm here, and that definitely says more about how cold it was up north,
then about how warm or cold it is in Shanghai.
The Eyes of Texas are in Shanghai
As I walked into the
American-style sports bar here in Shanghai where I would watch the National
Championship game, I was somewhat surprised.
While there were plenty of people there (like I expected) I was
surprised to see that everybody in this bar was wearing the burnt orange of the
Longhorns. Sure, I was going to root for
the Longhorns (after 2005, they are forever my Big XII team), but I thought
that a random foreign city would have more representation.
When I thought about it, however,
it made complete sense that Alabama didn’t have any fans in Shanghai. Not because their coach is evidently an
emotionless robot, but because it is Alabama, and what could possibly bring an
Alabama alum to China.
Meal
of the Week:
One cool thing about being in
Shanghai is that we can get a lot of different types of food. We’ve indulged a bit this week and got some
American meals that were amazing (my breakfast during the UT-Bama game was the
best I’ve had in months), and also had some meals from other Asian countries.
Our Japanese dinner was
definitely the best, however.
On Friday night we went to a
Japanese restaurant that was all-you-can-eat, all-you-can drink for 160 RMB
(roughly $25). Being one of those
restaurants where they cook the food in front of you, we were able to order a
lot of meat, some fish, and some fried rice.
My two favorite dishes of the meal were a fish that the guy grilled
right in front of us, cut open, and marinated with some garlic, wine, and other
things; and a beef dish that was similarly marinated and came with onions (yes,
I eat onions now; but wouldn’t you all expect that seeing as they have no color
to them).
Because the meal was also
all-you-can-drink, we also had a lot of beer and sake. It was all excellent and we made sure to
close down the restaurant. Later that
night I definitely passed out in a cab so that the driver had to wake me up,
and I still managed to wake up the next morning to get my Avatar tickets.
Me: “Being from New Zealand, I
have a question for you . . .”
Henry from New Zealand: “Have we
heard of Flight of the Concords?”
Picture of the Week:
This
is what it takes to get two tickets to Avatar in IMAX 3D in Shanghai (note,
that I was in the middle of it all when I took the picture, also note the police
in the middle of it).
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