back to reality

home! to E and warm evening breezes and familiar food and leeuwin estate art series. 

it's nice to be away and lovely to enjoy getting back too. 

we are grateful.

grub on the go

high speed train from wuhan to shanghai and kfc delivers as promised. burgers and wings and drink, right to our seats!

we're a pair of excited schoolkids, HOM and i, we are.

lunch

disposables, ad absurdum, surely? chopsticks spoon bowl plate cup and tablecloth.

against the odds the food is delicious.

new age tourism

old style tourism is going to a place and learning the history and key features fresh then taking a photo to remember the visit.

these days you go to the site and just instagram your visit from the correct spot with appropriate props.

tailoring service

HOM needs a hook on the back of his jacket. we chance upon a little shop in the alley of seamstresses. thirty yuan, she murmurs. hao de, HOM says. and they add on this nifty color-matched hook so seamlessly it looks like the jacket was born with it. in twenty minutes flat.

photo shoot

three couples taking in the view at east lake in 10 degree Celsius weather and summer-worthy wedding regalia. courageous and cold, is wot i say.

boozy exertions

wine from the cruise.

wine glasses from meituan.

wine bottle opener from the off license near the hotel.

wine bottle stopper produced (miraculously) from HOM's bag.

cheers!

buskers in the park

on the face of it, a bunch of uncles busking their heart out in the exercise park amongst lots of other uncles and aunties.

but oh! that rich baritone and the wailing sax! belting out nostalgic life-and-loyalty-affirming pentatonic melodies! 'twas the highlight of our morning walk today.

notes on yichang

• ease hotel yichang is basic basic. working hot water and heating firm beds and hair dryer an' all and a decent breakfast. non-existent gym despite the sign in the elevator they have washers and no plan to repair the dryer (whut!). good location and friendly staff
• the dialect is louder here. this is where i miss the quiet of the japanese public spaces
• don't get me started on the tobacco smoke
• or the hocking, which is truly horrigible 
• the connectivity is impressive, as with everywhere else in china

the yichang fish stew from sanxia yuguan deservedly gets its own post. i could eat it every meal.

three gorges tribal villages

long day today doing the tourist thing visiting the tribal villages catching performances trekking up and down watching monkeys AND ENDURING CLOUDS OF TOBACCO SMOKE.

with this surfeit of culture and humanity HOM and i decide to cancel tomorrow's plans to visit the big waterfall. we will just go to the park across the road from the hotel instead. we are clearly wimps that way.

dinner

courtesy of meituan, all snuggly in our hotel room.

the only things i intensely do not like about china, i think, are the immanent tobacco smoke and ubiquitous awful hocking.

yichang fish stew

possibly my favorite regional dish yet, i tell HOM. smooth creamy catfish swimming in smooth creamy collagen-y broth that beggars description and has us slurping up the last bits of skin during our late lunch.

it ranks right up there next to shanghai smoked fish.

chinese efficiency 2

my problem with chinese punctuality, i tell HOM, is that i have an entire childhood's long-suffering worth of enduring chinese wedding dinners which as we all know start hours after the stated time and last long after the cows go home.

but the china i've met so far...! no, sirree! they are on time to appointments! they adhere to schedule and often beat their own estimates! and they do it all without talking too much about it! all very welcome most functional and a great relief indeed.

chinese efficiency

at the top of the 365-step climb you find a vending machine for cellphone chargers and seamless mobile data connectivity. most impressive and totally appreciated.

white emperor city tour

this time i lift my head and look at the surrounds from the bus and gasp. no temple (ok, just one) same crowd but the rice painting-like scenery makes up for it all. HOM promises me similar magic when i go to huangshan.

temple tour

HOM and i find ourselves in a tour to the temple complex in fengdu ghost city. and a challenge it turns out to be, in terms of tobacco smoke group size and noise. i do feel vaguely virtuous though, on account of climbing the 400 steps to the main complex.

note to self: try to avoid such tours in the future. far more effort-effective to read about them, or to watch the video.

3 types of people in tour groups: those who are fierce those who do not listen to instructions and those who smoke regardless.

3-gorges

i've signed us up for a cruise, HOM tells me. ok i'll show up, i say, always grateful that someone else thinks and plans on my behalf. it turns out to be a cruise thru the three gorges! which, when i think about it, is the chinese equivalent of the lake districts on my bucket list!

martyrs

we visit the zhazidong and baigongguan concentration camps. 

there is an exhibit of a father's letter to his sons and his letter to his wife. i am happy to hear about your school results, he tells his sons. i have hardly seen you and already you have grown. the times are difficult but they shall improve. the letter is brief and his words are large-ish, the better for young eyes to read. to his wife he writes, i have received your letter, and the money you sent. his words are cramped and the letter is long and urgent.

i think to myself that the men who die for a cause have women who needs must live so their men may die.

round 2

marginally more palatable this time around, possibly due to the more appetizing chalice. people who say things about a rose smelling sweet regardless have probably never tried baijiu from a plastic cup.

feet so dead

we sign on for a quickie tour of the city. up hills down dales thru tunnels on trains across river and along paths we go.

chongqing is amazing. gritty proud mistily beautiful and a bundle of communist-nationalistic contradictions. they have roads and passageways on multiple levels that make you feel you enter a different world with each new level.

here's a travel pro-tip: pay for a guide. a good guide is worth his weight in many good things.

we're 35!

by sun and candlelight. and by that most mundane repast, a breakfast of coffee soy milk and eggs.

by God's mercy and generous provision.

after dinner

lovely hotpot dinner in a little spot at the bottom of a steep set of steps. the only problem being the small matter of re-ascending the same steps after dinner.

chongqing is two things if nothing else: stairs and hotpots.

baijiu

do you like it? my friend asks.

i feel like the lining of my stomach has been seared off, i tell him.

loratadine

the chronic hives act up so i hunt up some antihistamines from the pharmacy. everyone is most solicitous there. is it for an allergy? whose skin? the girl asks. take 1 a day, the cashier says. and go easy on the hotpot!

orh, i say.

stuff that stays unchanged

• tobacco. fortunately not indoors
• hocking up sputum in public
• close encounters with silent e-vehicles
• ubiquitous law enforcement giving a nice feeling of safety 

better late than never

stuff we belatedly discover as our visit ends:

• nipping downstairs for shaobing tea eggs and soy milk: convenient magic
• ordering coffee on my luckin app: easy thrill for the (erstwhile) luddite
• xianmo dounai, unsweetened: creamy smooth witchery
• tuina at the neighborhood place: this being HOM's epiphany
• egg pudding with the shell-like flaky pastry in layers: must eat in big bites!
• and that whampoa is the anglicized version of 黄埔 and not 黄浦

a day at M50

delightful morning browsing art galleries and kitsch whilst HOM assuages his conscience at a gym.

a day at the museum

nice museum, this. and by nice, i mean it is a manageable size with artifacts i can relate to (textiles! furniture! art! i wish they have jewelry too!) a reasonable distance from accommodations and with no entrance fee. this ranks up there with other favorite museums.

tea (again)

they should give a best-friends-of-luckin membership. we'd qualify in a heartbeat.

teatime

i've got HOM onto the multiple-meals-a-day habit. first supper. now tea as well.

in any case, the chocolate mousse cake from sunflour cafe is decadently good.

lunchtime

economy rice, shanghai style. yummo.

prerequisite: shanghai smoked fish from laozhengxing on fuzhou road.

airbnb

we hole up at an airbnb, thanks to Y's research, us two middle-agers more attuned to hotel breakfasts and turn-down service than to self-servicing on vacation.

here's the conclusion:

• unbeatable location in the heart of the tourist action
• nestled amongst lawsons luckins and real eateries
• all the mod cons (everything a hotel has, with more space)
• including wall art (tacky but still)
• white light and white or black everything everywhere (triple ugh)
• enormous wall projection screen (wasted on us laptop-totters)

plus i learn to use a new contraption.

laundry day

here's the dryer contraption at the airbnb. no-frills luddite-compatible totally effective warm air delivery set-up.

the washer takes a lot of guess work coupled with google translate, as usual. but the dryer inspires me to do another load soon!

mercato

excellent food lovely view great company. one of those evenings where you feel the cup runneth over.

am thankful.

tea for two

here we are at our favorite coffee joint again. a store on every block and several times a day.

thrifting in shanghai

my little pom pom hat from the thrift store! satisfying on so many levels: i appease the shopping urges at my favorite kind of store the price is such a delicious memory to keep for the years to come and the hat will keep me warm in the nyc winter (i hope). 

a.p. plaza

soul-sister to chatuchak mongkok and various other haggle-centrals in the world.

we discover there are 3 levels of prices for the goods:

• the white-skinned westerner gets premium level 
• mandarin-speaking non-locals get a somewhat moderated number 
• mandarin-speakers who pull out their shanghainese dialect get a realistic number

auto-loo

competent adult children years of formal education active contribution to the economy and some home skills as well and it takes me two days to figure out how to activate the flush function.

the best thing about this: heated seat!

the worst thing(s): auto-shutting! auto-flushing!

grand dame

back again to what feels more and more like our ol' favorite. we take the metro like seasoned geezers. we know what we want to eat and do. i visit my qipao tailor. and to the bund and xiaolongbaos we add the a.p. plaza this time around.