Sunday, August 26, 2007
Shanghai felt so much better at 4 in the morning than it did at 4 in the afternoon. How would I know? Because that’s when my plane landed. From a bird’s eye view, there was a gray semi-opaque cloud that masked everything beneath it. I lugged my carry-on toward the baggage claim. As I passed by the automatic glass doors, Shanghai gave me an unforgettable welcome. The gray semi-opaque cloud embodied me with its hot, humid haze. It made my skin turn to glue.
I flew in with Michelle and Patty. The three of us were studying abroad together, except I was in a different program. We crashed at the airport until 7AM when their host university’s staff came to picked them up. My program, unfortunately, sent no one. So I took a cab to the hotel at East China Normal University where they were attending for the semester.
It didn’t take me long to get settled after I checked in. The bathroom had a funky odor but overall it was clean enough. I stepped out at 10AM with the intention of buying breakfast. But when my face hit the haze I thought to myself, “I think I’ll get breakfast, lunch and dinner.” I explored the area a little and ended up in food heaven. The supermarket was filled with aisles upon aisles of food in brightly packaged plastic. There was one problem. I couldn’t read Chinese. I didn’t know what was what. The only thing I could be sure of was cup noodles. So that was what I bought for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
On my way back to the hotel, I stopped by a phone stand to buy a pre-paid card.
那个…可以..打出美国？, I asked. (Which one… makes calls… to America?)
He responded with his native tongue, which sounded 50 times faster than mine. I didn’t understand a lick of it.
五十块可以, I said. (Fifty dollars enough)
As soon as he caught on to my broken Chinese, he tried to hustle me for a more expensive phone card. Apparently, the rates were better but the lowest denomination he had was 100 kuai. Uh, no thanks. I’ve been to Chinatown. I know how this works.
I spent the rest of day watching Chinese soaps and brushing up on my elementary Mandarin. Every time I used the bathroom, that funky smell grew stronger and stronger until it kind of smelled like cup noodles. And then I figured it out. There was a leak in the pipe. All the water from the noodles leaked out and was molding in the corner of the bathroom. I looked around for a towel and that’s when I noticed that there was no shower stall, just a shower head and it was fixed directly above the toilet seat. I don’t know who came up with the idea but it was certainly less than genius. I had to stand on top of the toilet seat cover to shower. Yea, welcome to Shanghai!
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