DINNER IN SHANGHAI

Wednesday evening was my scheduled dinner with the office manager.  All week Dave from San Diego had been trying to get me to go to this "underground" shopping area where deals were to be had by those who would have them.  He had visited a clothier there on Sunday and purchased a bunch of shirts and a jacket that would all be properly altered by Wednesday, and invited me along to pick them up.

I was intrigued, and indeed wanted to both see and experience this place, since the way Dave described it made me think of black markets I'd seen on TV.  “It’s not knock-offs, but brand name stuff, only with the brand logos removed,” he’d say.  “Sounds legit,” says I.  Hearing my undertone of sarcasm he says, “no, really, this is all just stuff that came out the back door.”  Yep.  Legit.

I needed a spare kidney anyway...

So to get to this super-secret place you go to the metro and get off at the stop for the science museum.  That’s it.  You’re still underground, having done the metro, and you’re there amidst shops.  Now, not all of the shopping areas are equal.  The stuff surrounding the train station is pretty normal looking – it’s like being in a mall.  But enter the deeper corridors of this underground shopping center and you soon find yourself in a maze of booths and shops where you can’t walk more than 10 paces without someone noticing that you don’t have a watch and likely are in need of one.

“Watch?  WATCH?!?!?  Why you not want watch!??!”

Had I possessed the funds and desire, I could have walked out of there with 2,000 watches.

Dinner was at a location chosen by the office manager after consulting with me as to what I’d like to have.  “Meat” I say.  And meat we got!  He ordered for the table and then one by one came dishes of chicken, pork, duck, a fish served China-style with its last frozen look of horror that it was able to muster before dying a most likely horrible death, and what I think may have been fried dinosaur.

All of the food is shiny.  We do not ask why.

The stuff in the bowl toward the center is pork, only this pork is about 10% meat and 90% fat.  And I mean thick, jiggly, translucent pork fat.  I was told that the proper way to eat this did not include cutting the fat off the meat, unlike what common sense and 40 years of "fat = bad" training would lead one to believe.  The mere prospect of sticking what would amount to be a cubic inch of pure fat into my mouth with each morsel made me queasy.  I did not want to be the guy who asked for meat and failed to eat it, though, so I took a deep breath, steeled myself for imminent gagging, and popped a chunk into my pie hole.

It is hard to describe the sensation.  Shame.  Guilt.  Feeling soiled and dirty.  All that combined with joy, happiness, lust for more and a general feeling of “holy jiggling fat cells, that stuff is GREAT!”

I cannot imagine that I ate anything less than about 9000 calories just out of that bowl.

The fish was really good, too – here are before and after shots.

Try not to think of something a whale might have burped up.

Who's a good little fishie???

LUNCH - SHANGHAI STYLE

The schedule while I was here was pretty much back to back meetings, one after another with individuals or teams.  The scheduled breaks were often filled up by meeting overruns, except the lunch breaks.  At least for those all had a vested interest in staying on target schedule-wise.

Monday’s lunch was to be in the SAP cafeteria.  I was given a special access card that also functions a bit like a debit card which allows me to procure lunch here.  For this day I had the office manager and his #2 (X) accompany me down to the cafeteria.  I could feel the tension and pressure of them wondering what Scott was going to have for lunch.

The cafeteria is arranged such that there are many lunch lines, each of which have a large sign hanging over the entry, announcing the general category of food one might expect out of that line.  There is traditional Chinese, vegetarian, sandwiches, a la carte and, happy day, a “western” line.

Since today I was with these two folks and they wanted me to experience all of China at its best, I reluctantly agreed to head into the traditional Chinese line.  Now to be fair, they showed me a display that showcased the various foods available in each area, and there was a chicken and rice dish that looked safe enough, so I set my mind to procure me some of that fancy Chinese food.  It was somewhat reminiscent of kung pao in appearance, giving me a false sense of security as I headed into line.

As we got closer and closer to where the actual food was being dished out by lunch ladies (and a few gentleman) with surgical masks and/or spittle guards covering their mouths, I noticed that the average lunching employee ahead of me would fill his tray with various bowls and plates of all manner of things.  Clearly variety was the habit of these folk, but as I looked at the variety present in my immediate future, I decided that habits were bad and I would not adopt theirs.

I got the chicken with rice.  I got another bowl of plain white rice.  They threw a few other bits on my tray that I felt would be bad form to give back.  And I moved on up to the cashier.

The cashier saw my confused, scared American look and indicated that I should put my debit card on the sensor.  I did so, and the light turned bright red, which in America would spell trouble but here in Red China I think that just means I was recognized as “one of the people.”  She then gestured to a smattering of drink bottles and boxes.  Most of the folks ahead of me were getting the boxes and so I pointed to the only thing I recognized: a sprite bottle with Chinese characters on it.  She then also grabbed a handful of 3 candy bar things and threw them on my tray and then gestured in a way that clearly meant “move along.”

Ok, so let’s discuss chicken in China.  I thought he was joking but as we were getting closer in line to the food, the office manager told me that “here in China we do chicken a little differently – we don’t waste anything.”  Indeed that seems to be true, as my first bite of the chicken with rice immediately revealed that in addition to the very little meat that seemed to be in this morsel there was bone, cartilage and some other stuff I did not choose to think about too deeply.

I then did the only thing a civilized American can do.  I looked around to ensure I was not being observed too closely, took one of my tiny napkins and pretended to wipe my mouth while spitting the stuff out into the fold.  I then got up, went to the nearest counter and grabbed a knife and fork.  So equipped I then began to seek through the morsels distributed throughout the rice, find the bits of meat that were accessible, and use the knife and fork to cut them off.  My colleagues were polite enough not to say anything but I could see them watching with amusement.

Finally I asked, in response to their bemusement, “so what do experienced Chinese people do when they get a piece of bone in with their chicken?”

The office manager reaches over with his chop sticks, grabs a morsel that I’d not yet butchered, and pops it in his mouth.  He then chews it thoughtfully and swallows it.

“You swallow the bones and all the other stuff?!?!?” I ask with raised eyebrows and unfeigned incredulity.

“No, I just got lucky,” he replies and then continues eating his meal.  Totally unhelped by this, I continued with my knife and fork.

It was only as we were putting trays on the “done” conveyor (presumably to recycle unused parts back into the chicken dishes for next days’ lunches) that I happened to glance over at other tables and see experienced Chinese eaters spitting bones back out.  Ah HA!  I see the trick now.  You use your teeth and tongue to do what I was trying to do with the knife and fork and then, like a snake regurgitating the bones of its digested victim, you spew the refuse like vile weeds from your mouth.

The next day’s lunch was a restaurant in a mall next store.  This was with a larger group of maybe 8 or 9 people.  The only other non-indigenous person was a guy from San Diego who also happened to be visiting this week.  Dave was a veteran Shanghai visitor and loves the food here, which made me yet again the zoo exhibit as folks would rotate the lazy susan thingie in the middle around with a “did you try this yet, Scott?”

There were some things that were clearly safe like slices of meat but in many instances even the safe-looking things were not quite as they seemed.  I tried something that looked a little like fried calamari and found it to be ok, then I was told it was fried jellyfish.  Ok, good to know.  I tried a bit more of it to be sure that new knowledge wouldn’t affect my opinion, and felt like I was blending in by doing so.

Then the next selection rotated into range and my blending skills fled.

That day for lunch I don’t know all of the weird things I tried, but I focused on the meat things that were presumably friendly to my Americanized and sensitive digestive track.  There were some bits that stood out like this chilled leafy plant thing (it had frost on it and was served over ice) that you dipped in a brown sauce.  The sauce turned out to be a spicy peanut sauce and the chilled leaves would practically melt in your mouth.  Pretty good.

Day three (Wednesday) was a cafeteria day again, this time with some other colleagues.  It turned out that it was some kind of “special cuisine” day and the place was mobbed.  We stood in the western line at my recommendation, then abandoned it for the “sandwich” line since it was about one tenth the length of any of the others.  While I remembered the age-old wisdom that “if no one is using it, there’s a reason” I figured that sandwiches are hard to get wrong, so I braved it.

I suppose you could get a sandwich wrong.  Still best not to go with the vegetarian option, though.

Imagine a Subway (the sandwich place) where the bins of stuff they would put on your sandwich are for the most part full of unidentifiable vegetable or meat matter.  Here, there were some containers that were friendly like lettuce and tomatoes, the two (could have been three but it really was difficult to be sure) meat buckets were suspicious looking.  “What is that?” I asked, pointing to something that could have been slivers of meatloaf or some kind of stringy tofu.  My question was answered by the lunch lady putting that on my sandwich.  Ah ha.  “Cheese?” got me a slice of some kind of cheese that reminded me of the fat free stuff we no longer get from the grocery store since after eating it we decided that it was better used to help slide furniture more smoothly over wooden floors.

The sandwich was ok – I think the meat I got was pork but it was difficult to tell.  I ate 1/3 of it and called it quits.  When it takes effort to enjoy something enough to chow down on it, your appetite is often the first thing you’re willing to surrender.  My lunch colleagues seemed concerned that I was not eating enough, but clearly my BMI makes a strong case on its own that I'm not hurting in this regard.

Thursday I ventured down on my own to the cafeteria.  This time I was committed to put the western line to the test.  Only I could not find the elusive western line.  It’s location from the previous days was hidden behind a stage upon which I’d later be presenting my talk and all of the lunch counters behind the stage were decommissioned for the day.

I walked around that entire cafeteria 2x looking for the alternative location, as there was an enticing sign that said it was serving something that looked a lot like beef and potatoes.  I finally gave up and went to the a la carte line and about 5 minutes into that noticed deep in a far corner out of sight was tucked the western line.  Happily I surrendered my position to take up the tail end of the line heading into a smorgasbord of western delights.

Upon finally getting around to the actual serving counter, I pointed to the beef and potato pot and was given a dish with that in it.  It looked good but I was not going to throw caution to the wind and get my hopes up.  As I inched forward in line there were 3 other lunch ladies serving up indescribably non-western-looking vegetable selections.  They would each start to hand one of them to me and I’d give use universally understood sign language (scrunch your nose, turn your head away and wave your hands in a stand-offish posture) along with saying “no.”  It brought back memories from the days from grade school.  A shy little nerd vigorously shaking his head, refusing to eat the worm the bully is shoving toward his mouth.  These lunch ladies each gave me a look of bully-like scorn and disappointment, making me feel ashamed and guilty for not taking any of the vegetable matter.  As rational being, however, I refused to be swayed by such feelings.  (Or, if you like, I was feeling fear more strongly than shame and guilt.)

When I finally got around to a table to sample my goodies, I discovered that the beef was in fact beef – but like the chicken there were bones and other parts along with it.  I toyed with the idea of separating the meat from the non-meat like a professional (using my teeth and tongue) but ended up knife-and-forking it.  I’m only human.  And American.  There were other bits in the stew that were quite mysterious, kind of like bones with insect-eaten cavities through them, but they could have also been hard noodles, or cartilage, or sponge-like creatures from outer space.  It was hard to say since I opted out of giving them the taste test.  The potatoes, though – those were awesomely pure in their potatoeness.

Friday I looked at the cafeteria showcase and saw that there was a “fried chicken with orange sauce” which made my heart soar with renewed hope.  My stomach also soared but in a way so as to warn me that hope is a slow poison by which men die hungry in the midst of “plentiful food.”

Chicken, chicken everywhere and not a bite to eat.

Cautiously reckless, I inched my way up the a la carte line and saw my prize: fried chicken in orange sauce.  Now, fried chicken where I come from actually looks fried.  Here in Shanghai, it looks pan-cooked without any manner of delicious fats, oils and breading that an experienced American KFC patron might expect.  But that’s a sin easily overlooked given that it was chicken without being hidden or obscured with other unidentifiable bits.  The sauce, sure enough, was orange, but upon smelling it right then and there in front of the concerned lunch ladies, it was not in any way a citrus-based sauce.  So, they didn’t lie to me: it indeed was orange.

Having attracted the attention of the lunch lady crew with my smell test, I decided I would not be caught with looks of shame and embarrassment from only having a single meat dish this time.  There was another one called “spicy tofu.”  I grabbed that plus a bowl of rice and while I avoided the vegetables I also avoided looking at the women doling them out, not wanting to lock eyes in some cross-cultural combat of will, assuming that just like the ravenous bugbladder beast of traal, they might assume that since I could not see them, they could not see me.

The fried chicken in orange-colored sauce was actually quite good – it was a buffalo kind of sauce which proved to be friendly enough and went well with the rice.  The spicy tofu was edible but tofu has never found favor in my eyes, what with its perpetual attempt to emulate meat by missing its taste and texture all but completely.

SHANGHAI REFLECTIONS

My stay in Shanghai was mainly limited to the hotel, the ride to the hotel, the office, and back.  There were a few exceptions, of course, and I’ll get to those in due time, but first I must clear out the random observations and reflections from this week.

China boasts of two great walls.  There is of course the great wall built of stone, but then there is the “great firewall,” a virtual wall in the internet built by the communist party government to protect its citizens against outrageous and inflammatory sources of outside information.  This “Golden Shield” effectively stands in the middle between all communication in and out of the country.

This is what the Great Wall looks like.  Cool, right?

In addition to blocking various sites deemed infectious, the great firewall must also inspect traffic in order to identify subversive and otherwise offensive material so it can block that which it is not already configured to block.

And in order to do this, the great firewall must necessarily slow down traffic and in many cases simply refuse it in order to make sure that nothing untoward sneaks past its nosy software.

All that amounts to one major problem for those righteous internet users just trying to get an honest job done: the internet here is a steaming pile of slow and inconsistent connectivity.  Sometimes a web site you just accessed suddenly stops responding… for a minute or two.  Sometimes you can’t access something, thinking it is blocked, and then mysteriously it is back minutes or hours later.  Some web sites that you might think are innocuous like wordpress blogs are completely blocked and then others, such as the blog you’re reading now, not blocked at all (at least not until I said this).

This is what the Golden Shield looks like.

Worst of all is human communication.  Skype, Lync, VOIP, etc. all fail miserably.  When they aren’t failing now, it’s a renewed gamble each minute that your call will finally fail.  It’s not if, it’s when.  And cell calls outside of the country, what few I made, were wrought with massively obtrusive static and electronic noises which I assume is the Golden Shield doing its best to dissuade me from knocking it or its homeland.

But I digress.

I’ll say a very small bit about the office and what not, since that is my purpose here and it stands to reason that someone may find it interesting if not relevant.  The office is but a 5 minute drive away, and a colleague there, Jianzhong by name but whom I’ll call X to allow me to type easier, volunteered to pick me up and drop me off every day.  I was quite grateful as this meant not having to deal with taxis, which would have entailed hailing said taxis, describing my destination without using words that we both understand, determining acceptable means of payment, and wrestling once again with the whole “tip” topic.

Along the way between hotel and office during rush hours it is clear there are a lot of people trying to get around by car, motorcycle, bicycle or simply on foot, and that the general rule of the road is this: whoever does not give up in the perpetual game of chicken has the right of way.  Example: at a stop light, when you’re going straight, and the light turns green, those across the intersection who want to turn left will immediately turn left in front of you.  It doesn’t matter if you beat them to the punch on the get go from the stoplight – it is a mandatory game of chicken, and my driver X, being kind and respectful of others, let me down by not being aggressive enough to teach the others a lesson and give me any good traffic stories to tell my grandchildren.  On the other hand, we survived a week without being hit or hitting anyone else, so I’ll call it even.

The same seems to be true of pedestrians crossing the street.  In fact I’d often get dropped off on a corner near the office where I’d have to cross a busy street and I learned quickly that you don’t wait.  You “frogger” yourself across the road.  When there are a large number of people crossing, the first car that stops or slows down (as X often would) starts a stampede of pedestrians which continues sometimes for up to a minute or two.  I’d see other vehicles inch their way slowly forward into the rush of non-vehicled street crossers and once the flow started to divert to go around the back of the intruding car, it would be free to push forward and continue on its way unimpeded until the next blockade.

I think that thing next to the red shirt guy is a robot.

Incidentally this is not too different from Bangalore except that here there is a little more order and caution involved in the participants here in Shanghai.  However, it occurred to me early this week that there seems to be a general trend in both societies that people don’t wait out of courtesy whether in vehicles in traffic, people around you or especially in elevators and metros.  While I had the pleasure of riding a metro only once when it was not too crowded, I have heard that you must be aggressive in your intentions there or risk being stuck inside never to get out again.

Why is this? Because in both metros and elevators there are bottlenecks through which traffic must flow.  Americans, not known for their innate courtesy, seem to have accepted that if those outside the doors wait long enough for those inside to get out, the whole process just works smoother for everyone, and so we Yankees reluctantly adopt this practice of courtesy.  Not so in Bangalore and Shanghai.  Without fail, if I were in an elevator and the doors open at my floor, I would take a step toward exiting only to have to fight my way through the jammed bottleneck against all of the other outsiders insisting their rite of passage.

Why is this?  I had a conversation later in the week with X along these lines where he pointed out that in countries like these where there are an immense number of people, the competition for resources can be very high and aggressiveness and quickness are key survival traits.

Resources in this sense are not limited to money or valuables as we capitalist pigs tend to think of them.  It is anything from a spot in traffic to a position in a queue to presence in a people mover to parking spots.  In fact, parking around the office was a lot like a treasure hunt.  X would drive around a large radius of parking options for sometimes as long as 10 minutes until an empty spot was found.

Ok so the offices are composed of three towers forming a triangle where each tower has the same exact floor plan, paint scheme, general demeanor and even posters on the wall more or less.  They are connected at the bottom by a large cafeteria.  The cafeteria exits into these towers have been intelligently designed such that two of the exits are exactly the same in layout and appearance.  I was warned but still failed to prevent the occurrence of exiting the cafeteria and going into the wrong building, only to not realize the fact until you admit that the people in room you enter are not the people who should be there, and the smirks on their faces are because they know you’re one of the few foolish ones who have failed to enter the correct building.

Other than that the office spaces are nice, modern and seem comfortable to those used to temperatures of 25-26 C.  77-79 F might not seem too difficult to endure but you must realize that for the last few years I’ve worked in my basement office where the temperature hovers between 69 and 72 F with an AC vent that blows down on my head.  I’ve become acclimated to arctic conditions and so Bangalore was tantamount to torture and Shanghai was merely uncomfortable to the likes of Scott.  (Who on numerous occasions has said to Megan, his wife, "Wouldn't it be cool to do a vacation where we were able to walk on Antarctica?  Or visit Siberia?  How many of your friends can say they've done those things???")

As for the people I was there to meet and work with, they are awesomely friendly and were I stationed in this area I’d be happy to continue working with them (once I reset my internal thermostat).

LUGGAGE!

At 11:25pm as I lay just having fallen asleep in my bed, the hotel phone rings.  It is the front desk informing me that my luggage has just been delivered and may they bring it up?

You bet your bottom yuan you can!

I hurriedly throw on clothing worthy of such a reunion (and whoever will be bringing my bag) and wait.

And wait some more.

What can be taking them so long?!?!?  Are they toying with me?  Are they all down there chuckling to themselves about now calling me up and asking if I have Prince Albert in a can?

Just as I’m about to give up hope, a knock at the door reveals an eager and yet still-not-looking-for-a-tip bellman with my long, lost luggage.  The suitcase is deformed slightly but intact and ready for me to tear into.

Except that some clever minion of the airlines has kindly used a plastic quick-tie lock to secure the zippers.  I have no means by which to sever this plastic bind until I find the corkscrew that has a bit of an edge to it.  After what seems like 5 minutes of sawing I am able to break the plastic and get to the juicy insides of my prize.

While the contents have shifted during transit, they are all there.  Another hour of ironing and then it’s back to sleep before my first day at the Shanghai office.

SCHRöDINGER'S LUGGAGE

For those not familiar with Schrödinger, he was a physicist during the early quantum mechanics days of the 20th century who is famously remembered for his thought experiment aptly called “Schrödinger's Cat.”  Put succinctly, this thought experiment was designed to illustrate that in the world of quantum mechanics the act of observing necessarily changes the thing you’re observing, such that before you observe that thing, you must consider it to be not in an unknown state but in all possible states with varying levels of probability.  If you’re curious how the cat comes into the picture, best to read up on it yourself.  It’s not my job to instruct you in the ways of kittens and science.

So what does this have to do with my luggage?

My luggage which at the time of departing India was located but not making it to the plane is now for all practical purposes lost.  Meaning that the department responsible for finding and reuniting me with my luggage seems does not seem to know where it is.  Although that’s not their official description for the state of my luggage, I’m concerned that since they aren’t attaching a euphemistic bureaucratic phrase like “Luggage Location Irregularity” that it may very well be in the super-secret “don’t tell the customer” status of “we have no idea where to even start looking.”

How did I come into such forbidden knowledge?

This morning (it’s Sunday) I went to the hotel front desk to ask the folks there who speak and understand both English and Mandarin fairly well if they would call the info line I was given and use their exceptional Chinese language skills on my behalf to get a status.  After 15 minutes - maybe 20 - they hung up and said that the airline says my bag is in Shanghai and that it will get me my luggage sometime in the next two days.

I found that to be an oddly imprecise and perhaps even unacceptable answer, but this was not the right person to put pressure on even if I was going to attempt such.

I figured that I can survive another day but I really, REALLY would like all my business clothes and other bits in that suitcase.

Later that afternoon I get a call on my cell from a lady from the "Property Irregularity Department."  Oh good, I think - they must be calling to arrange a time to deliver by luggage.

She starts asking me for information to identify the bag.  I think she is just making sure that I am the proper owner.  Questions like what color is it, what brand is it, and what other facts I can give them to help identify the bag.  After that last question I'm suspicious.  "Do you have the bag?" I asked.  No, they are still looking for it.  "Do you know where it is?" I ask.  "Not yet but we’re looking for it" is the summary of the answer they gave me by using many more words than that in an attempt to calm and pacify me.

They have their best people on the job, looking for my lost luggage.

They will call me when they have more information, she says.

I'm going to start stapling "Have you seen me?" posters around Shanghai tonight.

SHANGHAI - FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Cars have their drivers sitting on the LEFT side of the car.  And they drive on the RIGHT side of the road.  And best of all… they stay in their clearly-marked lanes – more or less.  More so than India anyway.

The trip from airport to hotel was a lot of highway through parts of the city.  As far as I could tell there were not many indications other than Chinese characters on the signs (sometimes with small-print English translations, but not always) that I was in a Chinese city.  I had expected most buildings to have artistically curved and pointed rooftops and dragons and other designs all over them.  Turns out Shanghai is a relatively new city, and more to the point, on the east side of the Huangpu river which divides Shanghai, the area is for the most part completely new development from over the last 15-20 years.  Most of the buildings on both sides are fairly modern looking with little influence of traditional Chinese architecture, although there are exceptions of course.  Some of the newest builds are very modern and would look right at home in Las Vegas as examples of “build tall and extravagant.”

On our arrival it was pretty clear that smog was a significant problem in the city.  While the weather was clear (and was so all week) it was a bit like looking through severe haze or even light fog when trying to view distant sites/buildings.  In fact, as we exited the highway and continued through city streets to the hotel, probably one out of every ten people I saw walking or riding bikes wore surgical masks.  At the time, I figured that this was likely due to this area having a higher-than-average percentage of germophobes and I begin to wonder where I could get some of these, perhaps with pretty decorative Chinese designs so as to also turn them into Christmas gifts this year once I got home.

Yeah.  Like I would ever give up some germ-filtering masks to other people.

Now in India it was often that you’d see something on the road that would surprise you as something you’d never expect.  So I was keeping my eyes peeled for what might be unique to Shanghai.  Alas, the roads here are full of Fords, Buicks, Audis, BMWs, Mercedes, VWs, Cadillacs and of course motorcycles, scooters, bicycles and ubiquitous taxis.  The only odd thing I saw was this and frankly it was from a distance and so I can’t really be sure I saw what I think I saw.

As we get closer to the hotel, I realize that I’m not sure what the payment situation here is like.  Do I need to pay the driver?  There’s no taxi meter here so I can’t tell if I’m going to be ripped off or not.  And even then what is the situation for tipping?  I quickly re-check through my phone what Chinese tipping practices are like and the answer I get from multiple sources confirms what I seem to recall in the past: Chinese don’t tip nor expect tips – in general.  That “in general” part is of course a pain in my brain but I figure that I’ll just see whether I start getting the expectant stare I got from Eyesh in India and cross that bridge then.

When we get to the hotel, the driver gets out to get my carry-on bags out of the trunk.  Still no indication he’s expecting payment.  I go around to the back of the car to get the bags from him – my wallet out and ready to do action.

He does not hand my bags to me but instead beacons me to follow him into the hotel.  Ok, maybe he’s angling for a bigger tip?

He takes me up to the registration desk.  Fortunately these folks speak English quite well, and we go through the check-in process with the cab driver standing right there next to me.  He’s NOT staring at me though, so what is he waiting for?

I begin to fear that he wants to take my bags up to my hotel room for me.  That just doesn’t seem right much less comfortable to a paranoid first-time China visitor.  Perhaps he is part of the Chinese Triad organized crime group and is going to make me pay for my carry-ons?  I begin to wonder if maybe he is responsible for my checked luggage being “missing.”

Soon he and the ladies behind the desk begin a dialogue in Mandarin (ok, I don’t know – could be any Chinese dialect) that lasts for about 30 seconds.  I’ve no idea what they said.  I’m trying to see if there are any words spoken or body language clues that would lead me to suspect that I will soon be visited by a group of “officers” from one of the many, many Chinese crime syndicates.

But then he turns to me, smiles in a non-threatening way, shakes my hand and walks away, leaving me and my bags here to wallow in baffled confusion.

I’m given my room # and a bellman grabs my carry-on to take me to the room.  I had requested a room “away from elevators and ice machines” and sure enough, my room is far from them.  Very far.  Like so far at one point as we’re walking through the halls (turn right here go to the end, turn left here, go to the end, turn left again, go to the end…) the bellman turns to me and says “long walk” and laughs at his English joke.

I don’t care – the room is nice and clean and doesn’t smell at all like it has any problems.  It is brightly lit, well appointed, and lacks the stains, dust, mildew, rattles and overall oppressive Stephen King-ish aura that the Moldy Orchid offered as standard fare.

The bellman puts the baggage down and graciously leaves without so much as an uncomfortable stare or other sign that he expects any sort of reward for doing his duty.

At which point I immediately sit down and take off my shoes and socks.  My feet are sporting some pretty amazing blisters, even on areas covered by healthy callouses.  Lesson is: don’t wear new un-broken-in shoes for 24 hours straight while also doing a mad dash that is part run, part walk through airport terminals and gates.  I look at these blisters, only one of which has opened up (and another of which has turned into a blood blister – not sure what to do about that ugly sucker) and recall the message the universe sent me.  “Hahahaha…”

Here I am, having gone where no Scott has gone before, treading new and mysterious lands with unknown sanitary standards with open sores into which the as-yet-undiscovered life which is NOT my mission to discover can now bypass my previously unscathed epidermal defenses and go straight into my antibiotic and vaccine-strengthened bloodstream.

Who will win this epic struggle for dominance?  I dare to dream that my temporary super-boost to immunity will prevail.  What else can I do?

The rest of Saturday and Sunday is a mix of sleeping, working and doing whatever I can to keep clean and healthy.  I’ve a long week ahead of me that I don’t want spoiled by lack of rest or viral incursion.

As such, I’m gratified that the restaurant here at the hotel has a menu (inconveniently placed on thick, heavy android-based tablet devices) that has a convenient “western” mode for the likes of me.  It will be only a couple of days before the restaurant staff recognize me and pre-configure the menu to “western” before handing it to me.

And what does the “western” mode offer?  There are certainly choices which would fall outside the zone of safety and sanity which I could choose, but the pictures for each are more than adequate to dissuade me from adventuring down such paths.

Incidentally, I think Yoda was also one of the selections in that menu.

My first night I do the burger.  It’s not your average run of the mill burger, so I did push the comfort zone a bit.  It has a fried egg on it as well.

Other choices that will fill my week: steak, pork, duck breast, the “dark vader” burger which is not the same as night #1.  I do venture out into vegetable land with a Caesar salad though, and of course the burgers come with lettuce and tomato which I consume as well.  So it’s not all unhealthy.  More or less.

ARRIVAL IN SHANGHAI

Assuming you’ve been reading of my adventures in chronological order, you’ll recall the exciting conclusion to my Indian Epic, having received a message from the airline that my luggage “didn’t make it.”

So close.

After digesting that and saying “no matter, nothing I can do about it” I soon thereafter got a message from the universe.  While something may have gotten lost in translation, it went effectively like “hahahahahahahahahaha!”

So arriving in Shanghai, I figured my mission would be fairly simple: deplane, find customs/immigration, then the ever popular and friendly luggage assistance office.

All goes according to my master plan but when I do get to said luggage help desk, the lad there tells me that there is no record of my bags being delayed or missing the flight, so I should get my butt back out there with the rest of the cattle grouped around the luggage carousel and wait for it.

In slightly more helpful terms, he tells me that it is carousel 10 that I should be huddled around as though one of the rest of the swine, packed together waiting for delectable slop to be doled out.

Humor me – I was tired and the change of news was both encouraging and dubious.  I did not want to get my hopes up, but then again, I did not want to go on without my luggage.

So I go over to carousel 10 but, being a proud elite traveler I refuse to squeeze in between the other 300 people.  After all, the sign on the carousel shows several other flights’ bags are here but not yet my flight.  This is typical – bags coming from a newly arrived plane often take a long time, presumably because they must first be throw, dropped, kicked, stepped on, crushed, squeezed, manhandled and otherwise put through various means of torture prior to release to their anxious owners, and all this takes time, you see.  If something is worth doing, it is worth doing well, and certainly this is the motto of baggage handlers world-wide.

On the long walk from the plane to where I am now, I had noticed that my feet were not feeling as nice and comfy as they usually are.  Standing in place waiting for luggage with little else to do, I notice my feet are getting somewhat insistent that something isn’t quite right.  I debate whether I should sit on the floor and remove my shoes and socks to investigate but it has been a while since I did have those shoes off, this is a foreign land, and were my actions to evoke concern or even panic it would not help me reclaim my luggage, and so I thought it best to keep potential foot funk locked safely away for the time being.

Soon I notice that the crowd is thinning rather quickly.  While the signage about flights’ bags hasn’t changed I do notice that the noisy women sitting in the same row as I suddenly get up and grab their bags.  So clearly I am being misinformed by the carousel flight readout.  This once again raises hopes – surely if they can get THAT wrong, they could be wrong about my bags not being on that flight.  I creep closer to the carousel.

30 minutes later I’m the only one left, now trying to remember whether one of the remaining parcels or bags that has gone by me is the same one I think I recall from the last circuit.  Once so convinced, I head back into the luggage office to fill out a form.

These forms, incidentally, have the helpful title of “Property Irregularity Report.”  I must say that the means by which the system degrades the urgency of your “where the hell did you lose my underwear?!?!?” with ambiguous descriptions such as “property irregularity” is quite ingenuous.

Instilled with the confidence that all will be ok now that bureaucracy is focused intently on my problem, I begin my exit of the airport.  Next mission: find the driver who has been allegedly procured by SAP Labs to drive me to the hotel.

Exiting the controlled baggage reclaim area, I next find myself walking the gauntlet toward the exit.  There are people on both sides of a somewhat narrow cordoned-off lane that one must bravely parade through in order to find true freedom at the exit.  I took a picture of the guy in front of me who seemed to have lost his luggage as well.

It was just like this, except different.

Of the 100s of people situated along the sides of this lane, many have signs.  Some of these signs are readable to me, and some are in scripts and calligraphy that I cannot interpret.  I’m hoping that the driver is (a) here and (b) using a language I’ll understand to signal his presence.  And indeed, he does, using a combination of English and HTML.  I wish I had gotten a picture of this – it made me chuckle at this blatant indicator of how technology doesn’t always simplify communication.

The sign, in hastily-scrawled, hand-written letters that were arched down as they made their way across the page, probably because they were written on the paper as it was draped over the driver’s leg in the car while he was driving is the following: “Hamilton, Scott ”

For those who do not know, the   is code for non-breaking space, used most often in HTML.  Someone must have highlighted my name in a web page, copied that to the clipboard, then posted it into some other messaging media like SMS text or text-based email and sent to the driver a little extra info without noticing.  The driver, probably thinking that these crazy foreign names can take all shapes and sizes, likely had no idea whether it was legit or not.  And since he didn’t speak English, there was no way to confirm or deny my suspicions.

With driver identified, it was a quick trek to his car, and then began our ride to the hotel.