Shanghai!!! Hangzhou!!!

Well then, I’ve been very effectively neglecting writing in this for a long time...

The last month and a half, I’ve been living in China, and it’s been amazing. Between travelling and bar hopping, sight-seeing and eating the cheapest tastiest food ever, I haven’t had very much time to write down any of my thoughts.

Ok, that’s a lie, but at least I’m honest.

So then: China. China is beautiful and the people here are amazing. The students that I’m studying alongside are fantastic and the roommates that we were assigned are really friendly and a great help when we are doing homework! The food here is cheap, rarely makes you sick (unless you eat American food), and very tasty. It seems like no matter what I’m doing here it is something new. Just riding the public bus is sometimes a little confusing and new, even if it’s a route that I’m fairly familiar with. The constant newness is excellent because I was afraid before I got here that I would settle down into the slovenly apathetic way I live in Kalamazoo. Here, that’s not possible.

Now, it would be impossible for me to remember everything that I’ve done since the last time I wrote, so I’m going to start with our trip to Shanghai and Hangzhou two weeks ago. We got up early on a Saturday morning after a long night of drinking and dancing to catch our train. Thankfully, none of us were too hungover, so we only left 30 minutes later than planned, which put us a full hour ahead of schedule. We grabbed a taxi, which was a pain in the ass because for some reason everyone and their mother, literally, were exploring CNU that weekend. We think it might have been a family weekend or something. Anywho, we eventually escaped from the frantic confusion that was CNU and got into a cab on our way to the train station. Sadly, we didn’t have enough time to eat breakfast, so we were all pretty hungry by the time we got on the train.

On the train, we found out that Dave had packed a box of ritz crackers, a jar of peanut butter, and a jar of jam. Those mini PB&J’s were some of the best things I’ve ever tasted. After eating we slept, a lot. The trip was a total of 13 hours, so we decided to spend the majority of it unconscious. When we all finally woke up about 7 hours after the beginning of our ride, we explored the train a little. There were several sleeper cars, the eating car, and then the seat cars. We had soft seats, which were pretty much like airplane seats except with about 3 times more leg room. We went to the food car and got some of the most…interesting food I’ve ever eaten. Imagine airplane food, except a little more questionable as to what it is you’re actually eating.

When we got off the train in Shanghai, we realized that we didn’t actually know how to get to the hostel we were staying at. Nor did we write down an address, or a phone number, or anything except for the English name, which wasn’t very helpful. We knew that Dave had a confirmation email with all the information in it so we went to a travel agency in the train station and asked if we could use their computer. They basically refused to help us in any way unless we booked a new hotel room through them, so we left discouraged. We spied a pizza hut across the road from the train station, and that sounded pretty good after the train food we’d eaten a few hours earlier, so we decided to eat first and then find an internet café. However, due to my awesome Chinese skills, II happened to see a 网吧(internet bar) sign right before we got to the pizza hut, so we went there first.

After we wrote down all the information for all of our hostels we proceeded to spend far too much money on some pizza and fries and corn chowder. It was delicious. We got to the Hostel a while later, and watched an episode of Dexter before going to bed. As a side note, I want to mention that I’ve become obsessed with the Shotime series Dexter. It’s about a serial killer cop who runs around cutting people into pieces like a psychopath. Awesome.

The next morning, on Sunday, I was awoken at 6am by one of the Hostel staff. He informed me that my friend had been asking for me and was in the bathroom. I arrived to find Alana collapsed by a toilet, and apparently she’d been vomiting the entire night and had gotten one hour of sleep. So we called an ambulance and then in broken Chinese told the Paramedic that we wanted to goto an international hospital. I got to ride in my first ambulance in Shanghai, woo!! I also got to watch as the paramedic installed an IV into a crying disoriented Alana who wasn’t quite sure how she’d gotten onto a stretcher and into an ambulance.

When we got to the hospital Dave and I were immediately separated from Alana and were not able to reunite with her until the administration was sure of how we were going to pay for the services rendered. Luckily, Dave had his parent’s credit card, so we didn’t have to worry about spending all of our money on saving Alana’s life.

We got into the ER that Alana had been wheeled into. A doctor who almost spoke Chinese was there and we explained to her that we didn’t think it was food poisoning as we’d all eaten the exact same foods and that we didn’t know what could have been wrong with her. They gave her an anti-nausea shot and started her on some antibiotics while also taking a blood sample. We waited and eventually an orderly came and wheeled her away to the ICU. Almost immediately after she was admitted there, another orderly came and got her out of her bed into a wheelchair for her to have an ultrasound. The ultrasound showed nothing wrong so we came back and waited for the results of the blood work.

It came back showing that her white blood cells were abnormally high, as well as something else which I couldn’t figure out what it was but both indicated that she most likely had an infection of some sort. They gave her more antibiotics and said that hopefully she’d be able to leave before nightfall. Sadly that turned out not to be the case. I headed back to the hostel and picked up Dave’s laptop and cleacned up a little bit and then Dave and I sat for the next several hours alternating between playing card games and watching Dexter. We played Gin Rummy to 1000 points. We tied at the end at 1005 and had to play a death match winner takes all. It was epic. We ended up having to spend the night and Dave got the chair while I got the floor. I’m not sure who was more comfortable.

The next morning she was feeling much better and after a few more tests and finishing an IV, she was allowed to leave. We went back to the hostel and had a celebratory nap because none of slept well the night before. That night we decided to go to The Bund with our fellow Kzoo cohorts who happened to be in Shanghai at the time. It was damn pretty. We were going to do a cruise down it, but I ate some bad gelato and ended up having to find a toilet right as we were supposed to be boarding. Alana, as she’d just been discharged, decided that she wouldn’t board either, so we got to look at the Bund from the edge, rather than from within it.

The next day we went to the Jinmao tower, the second tallest building in Shanghai. It used to be the tallest, until a year ago when they built a new tower right next to it that is taller. To go to the top floor costs money, but the floor right below the top floor had a bar and was free to visit. When we arrived, it happened to be happy hour, so we got several martinis. The view was fantastic and the ambience was very relaxing, a nice alternative to the nasty emergency room we’d been at just a day before.

After drinking for a while, we decided to goto the sex museum of Shanghai. More of a tourist trap than anything else, this exhibit was still fairly interesting. There was a statue there that had an erection larger than Alana. I laughed hard. After that we went to the French Concession and ate a meal that was far too expensive for what we got, but was still really good.

The next morning we got on the train to Hangzhou, a city known for the giant lake at its center. Now being from Michigan, the lake there didn’t seem too big, but I guess things are different in China. It was very pretty, although I probably would have enjoyed it more had Dave not gotten sick.

I want to say now, that buying tickets in China is the stupidest most irritating thing on the planet. In order to buy any ticket, you must do it either at the station, or from a travel agent. You can’t buy it yourself online or over the phone unless you are very fluent in Chinese. Most websites charge you a ridiculous amount of money as a “service fee” or you just can’t find the ticket you need regardless of availability. The entire system is really backwards, and getting anywhere is almost impossible. That being said, we were unable to buy tickets from Hangzhou to Beijing in Beijing, so we had to wait until we arrived in Hangzhou to purchase them, and by then, most were sold out. We were VERY fortunate to pick up some soft seats, as they were almost sold out. However, it wasn’t without much difficulty that we even picked those up as we had to go to 3 different places to find them. At the station we couldn’t figure out the cryptic way to purchase tickets, and people who we asked to help demanded a ridiculous service fee. At a travel agency listed in our guidebook, they told us they only sold airplane tickets, and couldn’t help us get train tickets even though the book said they could. Sorry, had to rant.

At the hostel we played a lot of pool, and it was impressed upon me just how horrible I am at that game. There was also a little white satanic dog that bit everything it could. It was actually kind of funny. After checking out the lake, and playing even more pool we headed back to Beijing.

All in all the trip was interesting, and even though we didn’t get to do everything we wanted to because of the detour to the hospital (we wanted to goto 4 places and only ended up at 2), I can’t say that it was anything other than fun. I had a great time and got really close to Dave and Alana which makes everything worth it because they’re awesome people. And besides all that, now I know how to deal with hospitals in China, a useful skill to have I think.

Love and miss all of you and hope you’re doing well!!