a recipe for disaster

6: Went to Nanjing

7: Went to Yangzhou

8: Sat at home and watched movies

9: Probably going to be the same

Detailed post later. God, I’m lazy.

My oldest cousin came over! And he brought his girlfriend.

Yeah, that’s about all that happened today.

Da Yi Ma (First Aunt. My mom’s oldest sister) took us to Cheng Huang Miao (The Cheng Huang Temple?). Despite its name, it’s not a temple. It’s like this gigantic market full of random stuff. Pretty awesome, actually. It’s pretty there, but the market bustle is kind of annoying, I guess. It’s totally different from what I remember. Most likely, I’m going back sometime later.

But, lunch. Tiny ZongZi and xiao long bao. with fish. Yum.

Yeah, theres a toothpick next to that zongzi for scale. I swear, I’ll start taking pics of something thats not dimsum. Eventually.

Overall, the miao was pretty awesome.

This was part of the pond in the middle of the miao. It’s got a ton of these brilliant red carp in it. They sell fish feed for kids to throw to the fish.

I took the first photo at an angle that cut out most of the market activity below. The second photo shows the … “commercialization”

I’m writing this post about 3 days after the fact, so yeah. My writing skill is absolute shit now.

We went to Xi Hu by train. It took about 3 hours to get there, from Shanghai.

To understand this post, you probably need to understand the geography of Xi Hu. Supposedly, a famous poet became the governor of this place, and he found that there was a drought and water shortage issues because of the negligence of previous governors. So he built/rebuilt the dam/dyke/whatever its called, and helped save the village. And the dam/dyke/whatever became a causeway connecting two parts of the shores. Then the guy ordered a bridge to be built connecting the causeway with this island, and now we have the Bai Di Causeway. A while later (200 years or so), more problems arose because of plant overgrowth at the bottom of the lake. Weeds clogged irrigation canals, so the farmers suffered again. So they ordered the lake to be dredged. They piled up the mud and made another causeway.

Uh, actually, here, just have a map.

See the land bridge at the top? We started there, hired a rowboat to take us to the island with the little lakes on it, spent time on the island, and went to the big island bit of the land bridge.

I didn’t take too many photos at the minilake island. :/

This is probably one of the better ones of that island.

So, once we got to the big island bit, there was pretty awesome stuff. We ate lunch there, at this 150 year old restaurant. It’s got the most amazing “vinegar fish”, which is like this fish in this sweet/sour sauce (Don’t confuse with American-Chinese food D: )The fish meat was tender and just crazy good. Supposedly, this is because they starve the fish for 3 days to get rid of any “muddy” taste that the fish might acquire from living in the lake. It’s also the reason that you’d never get to eat fish this good in America. Anyway, we devoured it before I had a chance to take photos.
Later, we walked around, climbed up this mini mountain thing. It’s hard to describe, and I’d do it with photos, except my mom took my camera and took terrible photos. I did take this nice photo of the view at top though.

While walking back, we were accosted by tour guides. This is a lesson about China. If you’re at a tourist destination, there will be some dude that volunteers to drive you around for money. Anyway, it was deathly hot and humid, and when he told us that his car had AC, we were sold. He charged 10RMB/person, which is an obscenely low price. In any case, we drove around the lake, and up Tiger Mountain, where the Long Jin (Dragon Well) is located. Despite its fame, Longjin is rather small and unimpressive. We drank tea at some farmers house, during which time, she threw her sales pitch at us. And here is another lesson about China: the salespeople are very, very persistent. First, they’ll talk about the quality of their product. And then, the workmanship. They will offer two grades of the same product, one cheap one, and one expensive one. They’ll tell you that the cheap one is no good, and etcetera. If you still haven’t caved, they will then tell you that you don’t understand quality, and there is a difference to be tasted, and so on. So, we walked out of there with 200 RMB worth of tea. At least it’s damn good tea.

And here is lesson 3 about China. Tours and tour guides are cheap because the money they make comes from what you, the tourist buys. If you buy something at some tourist-oriented store, the tour guide person will walk in afterwards, and tell them that if he (the tour guide) didn’t bring the customers there, that store wouldn’t have any customers, therefore he deserves a cut of the purchase. Almost everywhere a tour guide takes you will operate this way. In fact, the negotiating probably doesn’t happen. The tour guide just walks in, and the people give him money. How awesome. I learned this on my previous China trip, when my dad’s old classmate took a bunch of us to some tourist spots. After we haggled down prices and bought stuff, he went in and came out with at least 20% of our money back. This tea, supposedly grown by the family that served the tea to us, probably got our tour guide at least 30, 40 RMB. Tour guide man then took us to a silk selling place. He spent the drive there telling us how awesome silk blankets are. The sales pitch began way before we even went inside the store. Anyway, everything was overpriced, so we bought nothing. Bad news for the driver.

He dropped us off at this park place, the name of which I didn’t catch. I think I’m just going to shut up now, because my writing skill is apparently that of a 4th graders now. Here, have some photos.

Train ride sucked. More bug bites and my neck is still sore.

PS: Driving cars in China is awesome beyond awesome. I wanna be a taxicab driver in China

It’s 5 AM. I’m still jet lagged. This post will be updated throughout the day.

Breakfast: Ate at Xiao Zhao Xing. Pictures to come once the Canon site decides to cooperate.

Went to the Wai Tan, and walked around. Took photos of the Dongfang Mingzhu Dianshita. Overall, I felt pretty touristy. There was a beggar with a festering stump for a hand. In the underground passage to Nan Jing Lu, there was another beggar missing a hand. Her face was deformed (looked like burn scars), and everyone avoided her. Like, she was the center of a 6 foot radius that no one else put so much as a toe in. It felt really awkward. It’s no fault of her own that that happened to her. It’s not like she said one day, “Hey, I wanna be deformed. Mom, give me that torch.” or something. And through this accident, or whatever, she lost her humanity or something. Perceived humanity? It’s like in Heart of Darkness, where the traders basically ignore any possible trace of humanity in the slaves. But Kurtz, who lost his humanity, is considered the most distinguished/cultured person by everyone else. Marlow perceives Kurtz as being human even though he isn’t. Or something. Maybe I’m overthinking this. But yeah, no one even threw her coins or something. Not even a pity glance. Are we so caught up in our own lives, our own successes, that we can’t afford to associate with the less fortunate? I’m not sure where I’m going with this.
In any case, there was a cool shop with lots of cloth. But expensivvvee. (In retrospect, its a lot cheaper than the same cloth in America. D’oh.) Found stores with food and other such things. Yay for preserved fruit.
Yeah. I found out my cousin is going to be a dolphin trainer, not a car mechanic. I’m really wondering what kind of job he’s gonna get with that. I’m also wondering what the job market for dolphin-trainers is. o_O. This was discussed at the dinner table, and my mom proceeded to try to convince him to become a car mechanic. I kind of wish she’d just leave him alone. I mean, theres a reason he chose dolphin trainer over car mechanic, right? Maybe he really likes dolphins or something. It’s really not my mom’s choice to make, but she tries to pressure him into being a mechanic. I dunno, it just doesn’t sit right to me.

I have 3 horribly swollen bug bites and 2 not so swollen ones.

I’m going to Hangzhou tomorrow!

Xiao Long Bao! <3

Interesting “Commercial Boat” . Floating TV Screen @_@

Most noticable bit of Shanghai’s skyline