Day 6 (retroactive)

Our train left for Shanghai at 12:05, which wouldn't have given us much time to run around the city and prepare for our journey if we hadn't woken at 6:30 AM. We arrived at the train station with more than a half an hour to spare, but we were slightly dismayed to not be able to trade seats so we could sit next to each other.

I spent most of the train ride listening to Beach Boy songs on my iPod, while Andy tried to sleep, a car away. The train is exceedingly pleasant as the "dong" trains have begun to run between Nanjing and Shanghai on an hourly basis. These trains are electric, and run at speeds as high as 250 km per hour (we think-- we were watching the meter pretty closely, and that's the highest we saw it get). The seats are comfortable and reversable, so you're always facing forward.

Our train arrived in Shanghai a mere two hours later, even with three stops. Still, we had to run to check into our hostel and go to the bank before we met with Emma at 5:30. We did have an excellent experience using the Subway, which was very conveniently located near our hotel (once we read the map correctly!)

We met Emma on West Nanjing Road, close to the epicenter of the city, right by the only Taco Bell I've seen in China. Mexican food does not seem to translate well into this culture.

Emma took us to an authentic Shanghai seafood place, and ordered mussels. Mussels! I'm generally not finicky about Chinese food, but I don't eat mussels in the United States, under the basic justification that they are nature's filth filters. Still, I choaked one down, and it was surprisingly good--cooked in a steaming egg broath that boils the mussel and solidifies into a tasty gelatin-like substance. She also ordered twice-cooked beef, one of my favorite dishes in Shanghai, so I was more than happy. The food was excellent and I had a great time catching up with my best friend in China.

Dinner ended a little early for our tastes, though. We were to meet Pingping at nine for KTV (karaoke), but needed a place to kill some time. So at first we walked through People's Park, which was largely abandoned. It was beautiful to watch the cityscape rise above the shrubbery of the park, and I got another glance at Barbarosa, the club at which so many of my golden memories of Shanghai took place.

Still, as beautiful and unusually deserted as the park was, it was no place to spend two hours, so we left and went to the Starbucks located at its gates. There, I drank two venti skim lattes and set the stage for a long, long evening by consuming such high doses of caffeine.

At nine o'clock we left for KTV and met up with some of Pingping's friends from the last semester of CIEE Nanjing: Chris, Christine, Stephanie, Max and a Shanghai kid named Jeremiah. We had only booked two hours at the KTV place, so we left at eleven to go to a club that I was unfamiliar with--MUSE.

MUSE was a fairly flashy two-story club that had apparently been started by a Hong Kong pop star. The cover charge was 100 kuai ($12) and included 1 free drink. This free drink did not extend to water, however, as I was dismayed to learn. 48 kuai later ($6), I was in possession of a six-ounce bottle of Evian. One dollar an ounce. *sigh*

Still, I had a wonderful, if slightly dry, time dancing. We headed up to the second floor, which had a live hip-hop band, clearly imported from the United States. It didn't quite fit in with the Jailbreak theme that the club was hosting that evening, but no one seemed to care as they oggled the gyrations of various imported go-go dancers, clad in tight latex cop uniforms.

By two o'clock, though, things at the club were winding down, and half of the party wished to go home. Andy was pretty fatigued, not tired from dancing, but tired of pretending to enjoy the music, and would have gone home, if they hadn't suggested going to C's, a club familiar to us both.

C's is a magical place. It clearly was, at some point, a Mexican restaurant (which, as I mentioned earlier, is not a recipie for success in Asia). The walls are covered in stucco, and some have been repainted in a heavy coat of lucky deep pink, perhaps light mauve/brown, but those that remain from the early days are painted with murals of bullfights and flamenco dancers. Still, most of the walls are a muddy color and liberally splattered with English graffiti. Last time I was here, I took many photos of the sometimes odd quotes, my favorite of which was, "If I lived in China, I would adopt a Chinese baby!!!" Andy prefers the quote, "Andy, you'll never wank alone!"

C's is also located underground, in a seedy hotel, which gives it a shady air, one that it completely deserves. Drinks are anywere from 10-15 kuai ($1.25-1.87), and slightly watered down. If you really want a hard drink there, your best bet is to order a bottle of Smirnoff, which they will open at your table with a dramatic gesture, straining to twist the cap, thereby proving that it was sealed before it arrived.

But none of us were in the mood to get drunk. Instead, we each (except me, of course) nursed a drink through our stay there, which was surely several hours long. I know that we left sometime after four.

What did we do, sitting at a table for nearly three hours? It's a reasonable question to ask, if you didn't know who was at the table.

It was Emma, Pingping, Jeremiah, Chris, Andy and I. You're familiar with me and Andy, of course, but I should introduce you a little to the other characters that joined us that evening. Emma works for a competitive cosmetics firm and is in training for a high management position. She is beautiful and very graceful, and strikes an often difficult to negotiate balance between detirmination and retiring feminity. Pingping does not worry so much about this balance. It is clear that she has chosen to be strong, and is, at heart, a modern Shanghai woman. If she would only admit this and relocate! I cannot speak to the characters of Jeremiah and Chris as accurately, as I had just met them, but as the evening wore on, we felt like old friends as we delved into deeply philosophical conversations---about drugs and sex.

Haha! I can't tell you too much more about what we discussed, because I'm afraid it would reveal personal secrets, but let me assure you that I have been part of few such stimulating conversations.