Almost time to leave - part 2

A day later than promised, but better than usual given my blogging habits. So here we go, the things I won't miss about China:

• The environment. Some days it can be pretty nice (today was sunny and clear), but those are rare.  Generally it's grey and murky and dusty (due to construction below).  When I first moved over here I had a lot trouble running as my lungs just couldn't handle the poor air quality. I've gotten much more used to it...but I don't think that's a good thing.  There have been plenty of days throughout the year where the visibility was no more than a kilometre in any direction due to the haze and smog.  Not good. 

• The construction. I understand that the 2010 World Expo is happening here next year so the infrastructure needs to be improved, but it's absolutely ridiculous. Roads being ripped up all over the place. New freeways and ring roads being installed.  Footpaths being paved, ripped up, paved again, modified for trees, tree implanted, trees being removed, repaved again - enough already!

• The spitting. Obviously it's part of life here, and is a big cultural difference as it seems to be widely accepted (although not necessarily encouraged).  As my friend Shotty said when he left China after visiting me: "I'll be happy if I never have to hear someone hock a loogie again"

• The traffic. Running red lights, going up the street the wrong way, near-misses with buses - these are all things that I have experienced during my time in China.  The roads are horrendous in some places, and with the complete lack of a police presence drivers often do whatever they want.  Also not a fan of being at a pedestrian crossing with a green signal and having to wait for cars to go past.  Grrr.
  

• The weather extremes.  Up to 40 in the summer and -5 in the winter in Shanghai (much worse in Beijing though, so I'm happy I'm not there).  The humidity in summer is a killer, as you just get soaked in sweat whenever you're outside.  In the winter there's always a cold breeze blowing, which probably takes a few degrees off due to the wind chill factor.

The good definitely outweighs the bad.  I've had a really good time living in Shanghai - I can see why some expats come over intending on staying for a short time and end up living here for years.

Almost time to leave - part 1

That's right, in exactly one week from today I'll be on a plane heading back to Melbourne. Via Sydney, which sucks a bit, but that's what has to be done when you fly Qantas these days.  I get back to Melbourne at 2pm on Christmas Eve...barring any unforseen weather circumstances, of course.  Back in December 2006 I experienced my first ever cancelled flight...which was going from Shanghai to Melbourne.  Let's hope it doesn't happen again.

It's been a pretty interesting year living in Shanghai. I've seen more of the country (Xi'an and Beijing being the best trips), had some old friends come over and visit (probably the most enjoyable times for me), and made some new ones locally.  After initially going out to a bunch of bars and clubs on my own, I've got to say it's a lot more fun when you're with other people!  

There are a number of things that I'm going to miss about living here:

• Cheap and delicious food.  A big bowl of tasty noodles for lunch for $AUD1.50.  A can of coke for $AUD0.40. The best dumplings I've ever had. Amazing vegetable dishes that are so much better than anything you can get in Australia. Going out to a hot-pot restaurant and eating/drinking as much as you can between 5 people for only $AUD10 each.  Admittedly the cost of western food is horrendous (and sometimes the quality is pretty average), but that's understandable given there isn't as much of a demand for it. 
  

• Easy bar-hopping. Aside from the premium clubs, there are no bouncers at any of the bars.  And there are bars everywhere.  Show up to one place and don't like it, it's only a few minutes to get to the next place.  And it doesn't matter how drunk you are, you'll walk straight in.  That, plus the regular $AUD15 all-you-can-drink nights make for some massive hangovers.
  

• Cheap taxis.  No matter where I go out in Shanghai, I always end up getting a taxi home because the subway only runs until 10pm or so.  But I don't think I've ever paid more than $AUD12 for a taxi fare, even though I've been on some pretty long trips.  The taxis are cheap and plentiful, which is the way it should be.
  

• Walking to work. A brisk 2.5km walk to work every day is great...except when it's 38 degrees and extremely humid outside.  The summer was not a fun time to be walking to work, but the rest of the year it's a good bit of exercise.
  

• A clean, efficient public transport system. Light years ahead of Melbourne's offering.  There are lines all over the city (with new ones being added almost yearly), and the trains come along every 5 minutes for most of the day (I think the longest I've ever waited for one was 8 minutes...and that was only because I just missed one).  Wouldn't mind living a little closer to the station, but being able to travel anywhere on the entire system for about $AUD0.50 makes up for it.
  

• Living in an apartment complex.  The gardens inside the complex are very well maintained and it makes for a pleasant walk every morning and evening (and a good running track when I've only done a short course).  Living in an apartment has been great - plenty of room, no yard to maintain - it may be the way to go in the future.

Tomorrow - things I won't miss about living in China.

A night out at Sin

Last night I went out with the guys I play basketball with to a club named Sin.  It's one of the newer clubs in Shanghai having only opened about 6 months ago, and is one of the higher end places (being owned by the same guy that owns Barbarossa, which I think I've mentioned in this blog before).  We booked a table for 6 at 9:30, and I caught the subway there after first going home from work and having some dinner. 

The club was on the top floor of a building a few hundred metres away from the subway station.  Initially I almost walked into a hotel which was right next door, as the markings weren't too obvious.  While I was mulling over my choices I was approached by a guy on a bike asking me if I wanted pretty girl.  Somewhat tempted to say yes to see what would happen, I politely declined and made my way into the correct building.  I went up to the 23rd floor and was shown to our table, where only one of the guys was waiting for me - Sherwin.  Sherwin's the youngest of the bunch, and is the only one of us that actually grew up in China. He had come straight from work, so still had his laptop bag with him. I mention that because it will feature later.

The other guys (Ben, Mike and Eric) rocked up at around 10pm.  Initially the place was pretty quiet, but picked up quite nicely within the next hour.  I was pretty happy with the place in general - good atmosphere, nice furniture, a place to dance, decent music - much better than some of the other clubs that I've been to over here.  We had some problems to deal with however - the waiters were refusing to let us use the voucher that we had for a free bottle of vodka.  It had been given to us a few weeks earlier by a promo girl at another establishment (Barbarossa), and was the only reason we'd actually decided to go to Sin in the first place.  We asked for the bottle and showed the card to our waitress, who shook her head and said we couldn't use it.  After a bit of questioning, we got her manager to come out who explained that since a big party was happening that evening, we weren't allowed to use the voucher.  This was complete crap of course, and even if it was true, there were no conditions of use printed on the voucher - it was definitely valid.  I think it was a bit of a bluff to try to get away from giving us a free bottle - not a great way to influence our opinions about the place?  Luckily, Mike argued passionately for us, and after 5 minutes or so the manager relented and we got our bottle.

From there is was on to toasts, shots, and more toasts.  We split the bottle of vodka between the five of us, had a few tequila and southern comfort with lime shots (they actually taste better than they sound), plus some other ones that I can't remember the names of.  Before we knew it we were onto our second bottle of vodka.  Another group had joined our little enclave and were sitting at the table next to ours - I heard an Aussie accent in there so went over to introduce myself...and found myself staring at three guys and their 5 accompanying...'ladies of the night'.  Had a quick chat to the guy that I'd pegged as an Aussie (from Melbourne, been living in Shanghai for 4 years) before going back to my group.

By this time it was past 1am and Sherwin was looking a little average.  He was slumped down in a chair with his jacket and laptop case over on the couch with the rest of us.  We'd finished off the second bottle of vodka and someone decided to order some whisky for some reason.  I protested and bought myself a few coronas at that point.  By 2am we were ready to move onto the next place...but noone could find Sherwin.  After looking for him for 20 minutes (noone had noticed him leaving), we realised that his jacket and laptop bag were still there, so I grabbed them and we went on our way.

The group split up at this point - Ben and Eric went home, but Mike and I and another of his friends that had shown up moved on to Mint.  However, after getting past the door security (one of the few places in Shanghai where you need to have a table pre-booked or be on someone's list), we didn't stay very long. For one thing, it was absolutely packed, and for another, I was carrying my own jacket, Sherwin's jacket, and a laptop.  It was not a good situation.  After a single beer I decided to hit the road, and was home in bed by 3.

The next morning I awoke to find a few messages on my phone from Sherwin (his phone wasn't working the night before so we couldn't contact him that way).  Turns out he had gone to the toilet...and fallen asleep in the cubicle!  Classic.  Anyway, he woke up at 3 and everyone had gone, and he didn't know what to do - so he went to another bar looking for us (we'd mentioned it as a possible alternative). Finally around 4 he gave up and went home, and then got in contact with me to see if I had his stuff.  I handed it over to him at about 11am, and he looked extremely hungover, but very happy to get his stuff back.  All in all, a great night out!

No, the trip didn't happen

A week and a half ago I posted about a dinner with clients, and a possible trip to the Xiangtan steel plant this weekend.  Well, it didn't happen.  I'm not too surprised - that's the way things go when a client makes drunken promises during a big night out!

General weirdness

Obviously China is a very different place than Australia. Having said that, there are a number of randomly weird things that I've witnessed while living here that I thought I'd write down:

• Passengers holding umbrellas on motorbikes.   When it's raining, rather than getting some wet weather gear on, I've seen a driver on a motorbike be protected from the rain by his passenger holding an umbrella over both of them. Hilarious.

• Girls raising their voices to a high level on the phone/speaking like an old woman. A couple of my female coworkers have very soft, pleasant speaking voices. Except when they're on the phone.  Then they raise the pitch of their voices and screech like an old woman.  I don't think they're even aware that they're doing it.  I'm not sure how widespread this is, but I've seen other women do it outside of work as well.

• Both men and women getting out and about in their pyjamas.  Seen this on many occasions - someone just going for a wander over the road to the supermarket still dressed in their pyjamas.  Dressing gown usually included, fuzzy slippers, the works.  Something I don't think you'd see anywhere else.  Well, maybe Broadmeadows.

• Animals wearing clothes....even in the summer. Chinese people seem to love dressing dogs up in clothes to make them look cuter. At least that's what they seem to think - I feel sorry for them whenever I see them walking around with jumpers/vests/hoodies on.  I can understand it in the winter when it's freezing outside, but in the summer as well?  Not cool.

• You can't pump your own petrol at a petrol station. I haven't been to many petrol stations since I've been in the country, but every time I've gone, it's taken ages to fill up the tank.  This is because the stations are all manned, a la 1957.  Only the attendants are allowed to pump petrol, and there aren't enough of them. So they scurry from one pump to another while lines of motorists form up.  Not the best way of doing things.

• Guy on one motorbike pushing guy on other motorbike with foot. I've only seen this once, but I'm sure it happens a lot.  It's the motorbike equivalent of a tow - one guy driving, the other guy in front and just to the side steering a dead bike - being guided by the foot of the guy on the bike behind.  It actually looked quite impressive, although extremely dangerous of course.

• People on motorbikes carrying things they have no business carrying. Motorbikes are by far the most popular form of transport over here.  As a result, it is inevitable that people try to transport goods via this transport medium that really shouldn't be.  Giant crates stacked on top of each other, half a dozen huge water bottles, a massive stack of cardboard - those funny pictures you see on the internet with the crazily overloaded motorbikes are real, and a lot of them are probably from China.
  

• The call of nature in public. I've lost track of the number of times I've seen this.  Out running, in a taxi going out somewhere, even walking home from work - there over on the side of the road is someone answering the call of nature.  Most of the time they (always men of course) get mostly out of sight or wander behind a nearby tree, but sometimes it's just been right out in the open. Bizarre.

• Pictures with westerners. On a couple of occasions (Beijing-Tianenmen Square and Shanghai-Science Museum) I've been approached by a group of complete strangers asking if they can have a photo taken with me.  It also happened to the friends that visited me throughout the year.  I don't know what the attraction is or why the photos were requested, but it's funny every time it happens.

I'm sure there's more, but that's all I can think of for the moment.

 

Fact: dinner + clients = hangover

Last night I went out to an impromptu dinner after work with the Director of Sales and the CEO of the Chinese branch of MOX, the company that I'm working for over here.  It sounds strange when I say it out loud (or type it, as the case is here obviously), as I would never interact with that level of management in my own company back in Australia.  But over here, I'm the foreign expert that everyone loves...or at least, wants to show off to customers.  So when a client is in town that has bought (or is thinking about buying) the software that I help to write, I'm inevitably invited along to a dinner during the week to interact with them on a social level.

I have no problems with this whatsoever - the dinners are usually great fun, and it gives me a chance to practise my (extremely limited) Chinese in a social setting.  Last night's dinner was no exception.  We were located in a great spot, on the top floor of the Super Brand Mall which is right on the bank of the Huangpu River in Pudong.  Actually, this dinner was a little different, as there were only 7 people at the dinner (normally there are 10 or more) and two of the attendees were old friends of the CEO (they all went to University together). 

This revelation was shared with me pretty early in the evening, and it of course meant that there was going to be a lot of drinking and reminiscing.  When the food was ordered, I was asked what I would like to drink, and immediately said 'pijou', which is Chinese for beer.  The rest of the guests at the dinner went with a fiery Chinese rice wine which is a lot more potent.  At this point, I was given a challenge by the CEO: 

"Andrew, we will all drink one bottle of wine each over dinner. This wine has more alcohol than the beer you are drinking.  That means you must drink five bottles of beer!" 

"Five bottles?" I said incredulously.  "How big are we talking?" 

The bottles were brought out and to my relief they were only 500ml.  However, in dinners like this the problem is not so much the alcohol content, but the sheer amount of liquid that you are consuming over a pretty short period.  As I have mentioned in previous posts, Chinese dinners are all about showing your respect to the other guests by toasting them.  This meant that I was in for a tough time, as I was drinking about 200ml of beer for every toast, while the other guys were only drinking about 50ml of wine.

Not being one to pass up a challenge, I entered proceedings with gusto and before I knew it had polished off a couple of bottles in quick succession.  The food arrived and was quite delicious (peanut based dishes are a fun challenge with chopsticks after you've had a few drinks).  One of the customers was from the Xiangtan Steel company, a city which I've been to before (twice) to help them fix some problems they were having.  We hadn't met on my previous visits, but we got along so well that he invited me to go along next weekend for the formal site acceptance testing process, and then offered to take me to see the birthplace of Chairman Mao, which is about an hour's drive away from the city.  I was also promised 'spicy food and spicy girls', as the Hunan province is famous for both.  So that should be interesting if it happens.

Anyway, after numerous rounds of toasting, I had finished my five bottles of beer...and the others still hadn't finished their wine.  So a sixth bottle was brought out for me to continue the toasting.  By the time the dinner had finished at 9pm, I had drunk 3 litres of beer...in the space of only 2 hours.  I was pretty tipsy by this stage, and ridiculously full of liquid.  Sometimes we'd head out to a karaoke place or continue drinking at a bar after a dinner, but the other attendees had flights to catch early the next morning, so we wrapped it up.  Which was probably a good idea, as I don't know how else I could have physically fit anything into my stomach.  I had a terrible night's sleep and woke up feeling extremely average.  Not the worst hangover I've ever had, but worse than I was expecting to feel on a Thursday!

If I end up going on the trip next weekend you'll be able to read all about it right here. Stay tuned.

 

Trip to the doctor

Yesterday I went to a hospital to get a doctor to have a look at my knee. For those of you that don't know, years ago back in high school I had a couple of knee reconstructions.  It's been pretty good since then, and I've been playing a lot of basketball on it this year in Shanghai.

About 6 weeks ago, I landed awkwardly on someone else when going for a rebound during a game, and felt something crack inside my knee. I was fairly sure it wasn't major damage, as there wasn't much pain (if you tear a ligament in your knee, it is AGONY), but over the next few days it got swollen so I gave it a bit of a rest.  Since then, it hasn't really gotten any better. I've gone through periods of a couple of weeks with very little activity (such as when I went back to Australia), but it hasn't really made any difference. During normal activity such as walking (or even running) it doesn't seem to hurt, but occasionally when sitting it gets a bit stiff, and can swell up a little after I've been exercising.

I was getting a little worried that it hadn't fully healed by now, so did some research online and found an international medical centre at a hospital here in Pudong.  I made an appointment for yesterday, and decided to walk there since it was a nice day (and only 5km away).  The doc gave me knee a once-over and said while there doesn't seem to be any ligament damage, I may have injured something else, and suggested an MRI.  So I'll probably book one of those in the next couple of weeks once I get my insurance details sorted out (it costs more than $AUD1000, so I'm not that keen to pay for it).

Anyway, after the appointment I did a bit more walking around down near the river and took some photos.  I've uploaded a few since you rarely get to see the Shanghai skyline with blue sky in the background.

The 'bottle opener' soaring over the top of all other buildings in Shanghai

Bottle opener up close

 The Oriental Pearl tower

The Pudong skyline

The Puxi skyline. Not quite as modern or inviting, but the lighting conditions didn't help.

A couple of days at a steel plant in the middle of nowhere

I spent the last few days at the Shougang Steel plant, one of the 10 biggest steel plants in China.  I was asked to go there for a few days to investigate some problems that they've been having with the software my company provides.  So I jumped on a plane on Wednesday afternoon along with one of the local employees and made my way to Beijing.

Up until a few years ago, the steel plant was located on the outskirts of Beijing. But the government decided to close it down due to pollution concerns and had it moved to a new location around 3 hours east of the city - right on the coast of China. As a result, we were up bright and early at around 6am on Thursday in order to get there at a reasonable time.  We stayed at a hotel that was next to the Avic Aerospace company - they had a J-10A fighter plane on display out the front of the building, complete with (non-functional) missiles. Very cool:

The drive itself was nothing special until we got to the coast where I was able to see a number of offshore oil rigs. It was pretty strange to be driving on a four lane highway only 100 metres or so away from the sea.  We passed through a bunch of toll booths on the way (most of the major roads in China seem to be tolled) and at one we actually caused a big traffic jam.  When you enter a highway you get a ticket, and you then hand over that ticket and pay your fee at the other end.  We got up to the toll booth and were unable to find our ticket...which meant a bit of chaos while we frantically searched all over the car for it. Eventually we were told to reverse out of the line and allow the other cars to go through - there was an absolute storm of beeping going on when we pulled over to the side of the road to do some more searching.  We ended up having to take apart part of the dashboard to find that the ticket had fallen through the compartment and gotten lodged in a hard-to-reach place.  Not the best design!

Anyway, we finally arrived at the plant at around 10am - it was pretty nice, as far as steel plants go. I've been to three now (all in the top 10 biggest in China) and they're all pretty grimy and dirty.  So it was quite different to see one that seemed pretty clean and had quite a nice layout with grassy plains, a pond and even a small stream flowing between the control building at the food plaza.  I guess it's all pretty new which is why everything looked reasonably good, although the atmosphere was extremely grey and murky due to the masses of smoke being produced by all the smelting activities.

I spent the whole day on Thursday going through problems with the lead operator, and we then made our way to the closest town with a hotel - a good 40 minute drive away.  The town was pretty small, and seemed to contain all of the dirt and grime that I was expecting to see in the plant itself.  It was absolutely full of trucks carrying loads of dirt, concrete, steel, you name it.  We stopped to fill up with petrol at one of the many petrol stations nearby (strange that there were so many in a small town and yet I rarely see any around Shanghai or Beijing) where I came across another local oddity - in China, you are not allowed to fill up your own car with petrol.  We had to wait for one of the two attendants to get around to us after they had filled up all of the other waiting vehicles.  I was going to say 'cars', but there were a couple of pretty strange looking vehicles getting refueled - an example of one is below:

Not sure I'd want to drive a vehicle where the fuel tank is directly in front of the steering wheel!  The attendants carry cash around with them, so you don't have to go inside the station at all.  However, with 4 pumps but only 2 attendants, it was a slow process.  We were there for about 10 minutes and only a minute or so was spent actually putting the petrol into the car.

Friday brought more of the same - back to the plant, more investigation of problems...we fixed a few big ones but there's still a bunch to look into.  Since the plant is so large, it needs a lot of staff to keep it going.  A lot of these staff come from Beijing, but rather than commuting every day they arrive on site Monday morning, stay at accomodation on site until Friday, and then go back to Beijing for the weekend.  Just after the lunch break a whole fleet of buses appeared - ready and waiting to take the eager employees back home to their families for the weekend.

Before I knew it it was 7pm and time to go. The other guys deemed it too late to drive back to Beijing at that point, so we made our way back to the small town and had a meal and a few beers.  During this meal I did something I've never done before - I put ice cubes in my beer.  In China when you ask for beer you need to specify whether you want it cold or at room temperature.  When the weather is cold, Chinese people don't like drinking cold drinks.  Therefore, I got a few surprised looks when I asked for a cold beer with dinner.  They didn't actually have any beer in their fridges as they assumed noone would want to drink it, so their solution was to provide the room temperature bottles and a bucket of ice cubes with some tongs for me to use.  It was a dilemma - warm beer or watered-down cold beer?  I went with the ice cubes, and it was drinkable, although not exactly tasty.

We left for Beijing early Saturday morning, and after a bit of a wait at the airport and then some further delays in Shanghai waiting for luggage, I finally got back to my apartment by 6pm.  Sometimes it's good to be back in Shanghai.

A day at the JZ music festival in Pudong

On Saturday I went to the JZ music festival. The festival is now in its 5th year, and was taking place in Century Park, a very large public park which is only a couple of km away from my apartment. I run past the park all the time (or at least I used to, when I was running more regularly than I am now) but I'd never actually been inside to see what it was like. I was looking through a website on the Friday night about some upcoming events in Shanghai, and it mentioned the festival so I figured I'd go along and check it out.

A lot of other people evidently had exactly the same idea that I did, because there were hundreds of people making their way there when I wandered up to the front gate to buy my ticket ($AUD20 for a single day pass). After a very odd security inspection (where I had to line up with a whole bunch of other people that were having their bags inspected even though I had no bag), I was let through and headed toward the music.

The festival went from 1pm to 8pm on both Saturday and Sunday, and there were multiple stages set up with different types of bands playing on each stage. The first stage I came across was empty, so I meandered down to the next one and found a big crowd of people spread out on the lawn listening to a dixieland jazz band (think 1920s style music). They were pretty good, but unfortunately I'd gotten there towards the end of their set, so I only heard one or two songs and then they finished. At this point I moved over to the their and largest stage, where I found a funk band from the USA grooving up a storm. There were even more people listening here, but once again, this band were just about to finish, so I didn't stay there for long.

I spent the next few hours flitting (for want of a better word) back and forth between the stages (normally migrating when a band finished), soaking up the fantastic sunshiney weather and partaking in a few relatively cheap beers. I finally got out of there at around 6pm as it was dark by that stage and being dressed in only shorts and a t-shirt, I was getting a bit cold (it's that time of year over here where the days are nice and warm but the mornings/evenings can get chilly). On my way out I noticed that the first stage had been populated with some DJs who were playing some dance music (definitely not jazz!) - they had a pretty decent crowd up people starting to dance near the stage, so I stayed and watched for a little while before going home. I think a few of those people had been consuming some substances other than alcohol during the day, if you get my drift.

Some pics of the day:

The first act during the day - a dixieland band

Perfect day for it. 25 degrees and sunny.

This was the main stage where the non-jazz acts played. And were loud.

The MC for the jazz stage. Love that suit.

This band was made up of musos from all over the world

The lead singer of the band was gorgeous...but wearing a dress that made her look twice as large as she actually was. Great singer.

Lots of people there throughout the day

The last act I saw before I left. Only three guys, but they were great!

Retroactive posting

Got back from a quick (and unexpected) trip to Australia on Monday, and decided that I should get off my backside and get back to some semi-regular posting about my activities.  I've only got 10 weeks left in Shanghai before I go back to Melbourne for good, so I'm going to try to make the most of that time.

I've still got stories about some of my activities in recent weeks (and earlier in the year) that I haven't uploaded, so I'll try to add some retroactive posts in the next few weeks which fill in some blanks.  The way I see it, this blog is acting as a record of a lot of my time in China - I should be filling in as much as possible so that I can look back in the future and actually remember some of it!  It'd be a damn sight easier to do it if the stupid great Chinese firewall didn't block the site, but I guess there's not much I can do about it.  To all of you reading this everywhere else in the world - count yourselves lucky that you are not viewing a censored Internet.  It's a gigantic pain.

AFL Grand Final day in Shanghai

On Saturday I was able to experience my second AFL Grand Final outside of Melbourne.  The first occurred back in 2007 when I was over in Honolulu - my co-worker John and I finished up early on the Friday afternoon and made our way to one of the only places on the island which was showing the game...and proceeded to be extremely bored by the absolutely thrashing that Geelong dealt to Port Adelaide.  It was good to be able to see the game, but there weren't too many other Aussies there, and the atmosphere was a bit lacking.

Saturday was completely different.  The local AFL footy team (the Shanghai Tigers) have been organising a Grand Final day event in Shanghai for the last few years.  This year it was held at a pub named Big Bamboo, which I've blogged about before.  The game was due to start at 12:30pm local time, and the event began at 11am, so it was an early start for me.  I arrived to find the place already extremely full of Aussies - they were everywhere!  I paid my entrance fee ($AUD40 for free beer until 6pm and free BBQ lunch), got my complimentary stubby holder and made my way inside.  I ran into a few people that I knew almost immediately and sat down at their table.  Quickly dispensing with the VB that I'd been given at the door, I moved onto the Pure Blondes and watched with interest as more and more patrons came in through the door.

By the time the telecast started, there must have been around 200 people in the bar; 98% were Australians.  We watched with pride as John Farnham, Jimmy Barnes and Mark Seymour performed (You're The Voice with all three of them - awesome!), and when the Australian national anthem was played the entire crowd stood as one and sang our hearts out.  It was fantastic!  Indeed, aside from being at an actual game at the MCG, it was the biggest group of people I've ever watched an AFL game with.

At half time there was a brief interlude while everyone got some food (delicious BBQ) and the organisers drew raffle tickets and gave out door prizes - I actually won a gift voucher for a meal at a fairly fancy restaurant worth $AUD150 or so - not bad!  Haven't used it yet but it's still valid for another month or so.  The game itself was extremely exciting and stayed close for the entire 4 quarters. Disappointed that Geelong one (my Dad is a Saints fan) but the quality of the match was excellent considering the conditions. 

The day finished at around 6pm local time, when the free beer stopped and the bar reverted to it's normal layout in preparation for the evening crowd.  By this stage the majority of patrons that were there for the Grand Final had left, but a few of us continued on.  I ended up migrating from there to Xintiandi to get a meal, and then hopped from bar to bar along the strip there until the wee hours of the morning.  Finally got home exhausted by 2am - it was a long day, but heaps of fun.

End of an era: goodbye to The Shed

As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my favourite places to gas on in Shanghai, The Shed was due to close soon.  Sadly, it came to pass on Saturday.  Fate had favoured us with a beautiful sunny day in Shanghai - about 25 degrees, not a cloud in the sky - in short, perfect conditions to spend all day drinking inside a bar smaller than most living rooms.

 Word about the closing had spread far and wide, and by the time I rocked up at 1pm the place was already packed.  They had a very reasonable deal for the last day of operation: 20rmb ($AUS3) per beer or 100rmb for all you could drink.  The words had not even left bartender Steve's mouth before I had handed over my hundy, gotten my first beer out of the fridge and proceeded to swig half of it down.  From there, I settled in for a big day, and was not disappointed.  

Men, women, and thankfully no children (not the best environment for the kids) passed through the door that day, and when there was no room left inside, they simply spilled out onto the deck.  There was a pie warmer complete with meat pies and sausage rolls, of which I consumed many.  They had a laptop hooked up to the television to broadcast some horse racing from back home in Aus, which didn't excite me too much but it was a big deal to plenty of other patrons.  Eventually the AFL started and we proceeded to see Geelong whip Collingwood, which is always good to see.

As the day progressed things got rowdier.  At a certain point someone decided it would be a good idea to start carving up pieces of the bar to take away as mementos of the occasion.  I was handed a hacksaw at some point (by one of the owners so it was perfectly sanctioned) and put in a solid bit of work sawing away.  I still have some blisters on my hands from helping disassemble the woodend structure.  Craziness.

Before we knew it the footy had finished and things wound up at around 10pm.  A guy that I'd met during the day (Phil) suggested we take the party to Windows Scoreboard. Always happy to continue consuming relatively cheap beer, I agreed.  Upon arriving we sat down with a few beers, but didn't last long there before Phil decided we needed to go to the other Windows establishment (which I had never heard of) named Windows Too.  We got a taxi and got there pretty quickly (from what I can recall, I was fairly drunk at this stage) to find the place was about four times bigger than Scoreboard and absolutely full of people.  

We took some seats at the bar and proceeded to do some shots of god knows what - I just drank whatever showed up in front of me.  A couple of girls sitting nearby invited us to play some dice with them, and we agreed - not remembering that every time we lost a roll of the dice we had to take a drink.  As you may imagine, I did not roll well in the state that I was in, which just helped me get drunker faster.

After a while the girls got bored of winning all the time and moved on.  It was at this point that Phil decided to get it into his head that he wanted to fight someone and picked out a German guy nearby that was 'looking at him funny'.  I had to do some fairly fast talking to change his mind about it (the German guy seemed fairly keen to have a go as well - why do some people get so violent when they drink?) and finally convinced him that it wasn't worth the trouble. At this point he got extremely upset and said that he had 'lost face' in front of all of the other people in the bar (of course he didn't know a single one of them) and left.

This gave me no reason to pause whatsoever, and I proceeded to spend the next couple of hours drinking with a number of random other people that I met just wandering around.  Gotta love the nightlife when you're drunk in a foreign country.  Finally went home at around 3am and amazingly didn't feel like I was going to die on Sunday. Yes, I'm shocked too.

Fact: an 18 hour session on Saturday leads to a Monday off from work

Last week I found out that a small bar named 'The Shed' was closing in a few weeks.  The Shed lives in a fairly arty district of Puxi, and was originally created as an office by two guys named Matt and Steve - who just happen to be the founders of www.justbeer.cn, the company that imports most Australian beer into China.  

They started the company a couple of years ago, and they needed an office. So they rented out a reasonably-sized room at the top of an old residential building in a little laneway along Taikan Rd.  Since they were selling beer into China, they decided that they needed a couple of fridges full of cold beer for potential customers to try.  In order to drink the beer, they decided they needed a bar - and so, The Shed was born.  It's a tiny place - can probably seat less than 10 people at the bar itself, and probably another 10 or so could squeeze in around the edges.  It's only opened when the owners feel like it (every weekend during the AFL season) and is usually full of friendly Aussie faces.  I went there for the first time a few months ago after I met Matt and Steve out at an event they were sponsoring, and have been back a few times since. 

Anyway, after finding out it was closing down (the government is redeveloping the whole area so a lot of businesses are getting kicked out), I decided I'd better go along on Saturday and have a few beers.  I made my way over at around noon (an AFL game was starting at 12:30) and knocked on the door...only to get no answer.  Obviously I was a little early, so I wandered around a few of the laneways nearby to have a look around. Great place for art lovers as there were a lot of display galleries around, and a number of stores selling all sorts of trinkets.  I stopped into a cafe and had a delicious chicken pasta and some even more delicious Coronas (it was pretty hot), and after an hour or so made my way back to the bar to find that Matt had opened it up.

I immediately got stuck in the Pure Blondes, and before long a few more people had wandered in.  People kept appearing in fits and starts throughout the day, and at one stage it was pretty much capacity - obviously word had spread about the place closing down.  I ended up staying there all the way through until the end of the night at 9, when everyone left to either go home (the smart option) or go out somewhere else (the Andrew option).  Total cost for 8 hours of drinking - $AUS20.  Nice one.

As I mentioned, I foolishly decided I would go out somewhere else after everyone had gone.  After a quick trip home to have a meal and get changed, I went out to Hengshan Rd, and an old favourite - Zapatas.  Got in and the place was packed - I can't remember if I've been there on a Saturday night or not, but I'd never seen it so busy.  I grabbed myself a beer and before too long I was out on the dancefloor moving and shaking.  A couple of guys 'encouraged' me to get up on the bar...and before I knew it, that's where I was.  My memories of being at University and dancing at the Icon Bar came flooding back at this point.  I spent the next few hours dancing on the bar, getting off to get a drink, getting up on the bar again, repeat.  At one point I ran into a guy who is a mini-celebrity here in Shanghai - he's an Aussie guy that's on a number of TV shows on one of the two english language channels - ICS.  I didn't really talk to him much, but I remember he was an excellent dancer and showed me up by doing the splits a few timers whilst on the bar.  I think I attempted it and almost fell off/did some damage to my groin.  

Eventually I grew tired of Zapatas and went off in search of more entertainment.  At this time I made my way to Tongren Rd, home of the City Diner (mmm...food) and a lot of extremely dodgy bars filled with working girls...and some working guys that look suspiciously like girls.  Anyway, I went into Judy's Too, a place that I knew stayed open until the wee hours of the morning.  I ran into an English bloke in there and we spent the next few hours drinking, laughing and dancing on the podiums like idiots.  Before I knew it, it was 6am and I decided it was time to call it a night...I mean morning.  I'd been going for 18 hours, and it was time for sleep.

Unfortunately, my stupid body clock didn't really let me sleep very much.  I was up before 10am on Sunday, and a world-class struggler.  I had some short naps on the couch during the afternoon, but by the time Monday came around, I was still hungover and not prepared to go to work.  Took a much needed day off and was back to normal by Tuesday, thank god.  Note to self: 18 hour sessions are not the answer.

Back in Shanghai

Well, I arrived back in Shanghai almost two weeks ago and am only now just posting about it. I had an awesome time in the USA, but consumed far too much beer and food (delicious, fattening, giant-portioned food) so am now exercising like crazy to try to lose some of the weight I put on over there. Basketball is making up the majority of my exercise plans - I'm playing 4 on 4 for two hours at least 3 times a week. Last night I managed four hours before making my way home exhausted. Great fun, but I'm just not as young or fit as I used to be, so it's hard keeping up with the guys that I'm playing with who are mostly 7 years younger than me.

Life in Shanghai is pretty much exactly the same as it was when I left it - still heaps of work to do (although we are further along than when I left which is a good thing), still plenty of places to see, still stinking hot. Thankfully the summer is almost over, because I'm getting tired of being dripping with sweat by the time I get to the office in the morning. Once it cools down a bit, I'm planning on doing some more travelling around China - I think I'll make some day trips to some of the locations nearby like Suzhou and Hangzhou since I haven't managed that yet. The year is slipping away quickly!

I had a chat with my boss in Melbourne last week and it looks like I won't be staying on past Christmas. I'm scheduled to leave China on December 24, and while there is absolutely no way that the job I'm working on will be finished by then, my Australian company is putting its collective foot down and stating that I am not to return to live here next year. This suits me just fine - I am enjoying my time here in China, but am definitely missing life in Australia. I imagine I'll make a few trips over here next year, but they'll only be for a couple of weeks at a time, which is much more appealing than staying here for an extra 6 months or so.

Off to the USA!

Made it back to Shanghai from Xiangtan on Sunday, and have spent the last few days getting prepared for my holiday! Yes, I'm off to the USA for a month - going to South Carolina (beach week with relatives, two weddings to attend), then Maine and New York (visiting relatives and sightseeing), then back to South Carolina (my brother Daniel's 30th birthday), and then finally to Las Vegas to finish the trip.

So, I probably won't be blogging very much over the next month as a result. Of course, given my track record, that's no surprise :)

USA baby, yeah!

Steel plants, Facebook and stir-fried dog

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm stuck in the small city of Xiangtan at the moment doing some troubleshooting work at a steel plant here. Xiangtan is about 1000km southwest of Shanghai, and is in the Hunan province. It's only got about 1 million residents, so is quite small compared to the other cities I've visited during my travels here.

I spent most of my trips to China in 2006 and 2007 working at the Jigang steel plant in Jinan, and I'd forgotten what it was like. I've been here for only two days, and it's all coming back to me. Getting to work at 8am and leaving at 7pm, everything is dirty, dusty and hot hot hot (you can tell I'm a sheltered programmer used to working in air-conditioned comfort, can't you?). I'm staying here until at least Friday night - the way things are going I'll be here for part of the weekend as well, as they've got a lot of problems to sort through. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but as I'm heading off to the USA on one months holiday next week, I'd kind of like to get back to Shanghai to prepare for my trip.

I'm here with a couple of other engineers from the company that I'm working for. It's funny coming to places like this because unless you can speak Chinese very well, you're basically coddled. I get picked up in a taxi each morning, taken out to a nice restaurant for lunch, taken to exactly the same restaurant for dinner, and then dropped off back at my hotel in a taxi afterwards. Yes, there seems to be only one restaurant they're willing to take me to, and don't trust me to be able to get a taxi from one place to another even though I have a card with my hotel written in Chinese on it.

I shouldn't complain too much about the food here, because it is very tasty (although eating at a different place before I leave might be nice). Hunan is a spicy-food province, and lots of the dishes I have eaten have been covered in different peppers and chillis, which I love. One thing I didn't love was the option to eat 'stir fried dog with potato and green peppers', pointed out in the menu this evening. I politely declined, though I promised my colleagues that I'd happily eat some donkey the next time it was on the menu (I had that back in 2007 and found it was actually pretty good).

On a completely unrelated note, Facebook has been blocked here in China due to the civil unrest going on in Xinjiang (I'm sure you've seen it on the news). Surprisingly, it's on the news here as well - normally the authorities like to sweep this sort of stuff under the rug as much as possible (by ushering out foreign journalists) but in this instance they don't seem to be doing that. It's mentioned on the local news, although I'm getting most of my details from the BBC, who have pretty good coverage thanks to their reporters being allowed to stay near the action. At any rate, even with my special program to bypass the dodgy Chinese firewall, access to both Blogger and Facebook is extremely slow/suspect for the time being.

A distinct lack of posts

Yes, I've been slack. It's been a month since my last post, which is appalling. However, I did spend 8 days in Australia during that time (no way I was going to be posting then due to all the eating/drinking/catching up with people that was happening) and have just finished a stint where I had some visitors stay with me in Shanghai for 11 days. So there are legitimate reasons.

Anyway, I'm currently in the city of Xiangtan in a hotel with little to do in the evening other than blog about things, so look out for the final updates to the Shotty/Cookie mayhem visit, and a start on the more recent fun including another trip to Beijing and one to Xi'an, the home of the Terracotta Warriors.

Confucious says: man who walk backwards clapping hands looks...well...silly

As the weather gets warmer and warmer over here, I'm noticing more and more people out exercising in the mornings on my way to work. I'm sure that there are even more people exercising in the early hours between 6-8am, but there's no way I can ever force myself to get up at that time to be one of them. The weather here during summer definitely does not seem conducive to a lot of outdoor exercise - it's currently 9:30pm and it's still 25 degrees outside. I guess it's slightly more bearable in the morning...but only just.

Anyway, aside from using the outdoor gym equipment that dots the landscape of my apartment complex, one of the main things that I notice people doing during their exercise routines is walking backwards slowly whilst clapping their hands both in front of their stomach and behind their back. I'm assuming that it has some health benefits (aiding coordination perhaps) but it looks extremely strange. It certainly seems to be favoured by the older people - in fact I rarely see anyone younger than 50 doing any exercise at all. The guys I play basketball with on weekends are all in their early-mid 20s, so it seems like there's a big gap between 30-50 where exercise just doesn't seem to be a priority. Either that, or there a lot of gym memberships getting some decent use.

I suppose one other way that people are keeping active is dancing. A few times I've gone out running in different directions to see what was around, and have gone past some big courtyard areas where there are 50 or so couples all dancing away hand in hand. On a couple of occasions there's been some boppy Chinese techno music going - it was quite surreal to see some elderly couples grooving away to the 'choons! Definitely not pulling out the nightclub moves, but moving around nonetheless. Awesome stuff.

Back online - finally!

Ah, the good old Great Firewall of China strikes again.

For almost the last month, I've been unable to post anything on this blog because it's been blocked over here. The only reason I'm online now is because I shelled out a little coin for a VPN service. For those of you not technically inclined, it's some software that runs on my PC that 'tunnels' all of my internet traffic via the USA...where I get access to all the sites that aren't blocked. Hurrah!

Now I can proceed with some long overdue updates. I think I'll backdate a few of these so it doesn't look like there's such a big gap in the month of May.

Watching AFL in China - yes, you can see it over here

A few weeks ago I found out about a place named Big Bamboo, which is a bar over in Puxi which shows AFL matches via satellite. They're only delayed by about 2 hours, which means that they usually start here at about 8:30pm local time. I went over on a Friday night and watched Collingwood beat North Melbourne. Not the most exciting game to watch, but hey, it was AFL and I was just happy to see a game for the first time this year. I sat at the bar next to a couple of poms for most of the game and had a great time trying to explain all the rules to them. They admitted that it was a lot more enjoyable to watch when they actually understood what was going on.

Anyway, last Saturday night Essendon and Richmond were playing, so I thought I'd go over and check out the game. The Big Bamboo website said that the match started at 8:30, so I timed my run to get there at about 8:45...and found that the match wasn't up on any of the TVs.

Unperturbed, I figured I'd grab a tasty beverage and that maybe one of the other sporting events they were showing had gone over time and that they'd switch to the AFL in the next half an hour or so. I was mistaken. At this point, the single only other Aussie (Michael) in the entire bar had gotten hold of the manager to ask what was going on. I noticed his accent so introduced myself and tried to get the story. It turned out that the game wasn't actually being shown until 11:30pm - the website had shown the wrong time. Michael decided to go do something else for a few hours, and if I was a smarter man, I would have gone with him. Instead, I decided to tough it out and just keep on drinking.

Unfortunately that meant that I had to sit through the only other two sports being shown - soccer and rugby. I went with the lesser of two evils (rugby) and it actually turned out to be a pretty good game (Queensland versus Wellington or someone). Anyway, 11:30 finally came around, and the AFL came on. Michael and I spent the game cheering for the same side (he's a fellow Bombers supporter) and we were happy to see them come away with a win. The fact that it stayed quite close for the first three quarters was good, as it kept things interesting. During the game, we sampled the different Australian beers they had stocked - I tried a Crownie, a James Boags, a Coopers and a Pure Blonde. I skipped the VB, because noone in their right mind drinks VB if there is anything else to drink. How did they come to have Australian beer stocked in the fridge? More about that in a future post.

After the game finished a bit after 1, Michael went home but I was keen to kick on so wandered up Tongren Rd a little ways to see what was happening. I stopped in at The Spot, but it was completely empty so I walked a little further to an American bar named Mallone's. The band was still kicking along there and there seemed to be a decent crowd, so I stayed for a few more beers. Once that place closed at 3 I walked a little further along the road and stopped in at another bar...but I don't remember what it was called. I think I ended up staying there until 5am before finally coming to my senses and getting a taxi home.

On Sunday...I paid for it. Didn't wake up until midday and had one of the worst hangovers ever. Unfortunately, I'd agreed to go play pool with one of my co-workers and an engineer who's here from Australia for the next week or so. I walked over to his hotel at 3:30pm, head pounding and mouth dry. The guys spent the next couple of hours laughing at my sorry state (although I actually did do pretty well on the pool table) before we had a quick meal and they let me get back to the solace of my living room couch. Very happy when that day was over, let me tell you.

Proper basketball shoes - they make a difference

I've been on a bit of a fitness kick recently, and have been running 9-10km almost every day. Well, not the days when I'm hungover, as on those days it's all I can do to walk from the couch to the kitchen and back again. Thankfully hangover days have been pretty limited since Shotty and Cookie left :)

In addition to all the running, I've been playing heaps of basketball - usually 3 hours on Wednesday, then another 3 hours on both Saturday and Sunday. Unfortunately, with all that exercise and the crap condition of some of the surfaces that I've been running/playing on, my extremely comfortable pair of New Balance shoes has fallen apart on me. After only a month of wear and tear, most of the sole came off the right shoe on Wednesday night.

I was extremely happy with those shoes even though they didn't last very long, so on Friday night I went over to the Raffles City shopping centre at People's Square in Puxi to get some new ones. I bought exactly the same pair as my last ones, but figured with all the basketball I'm playing, I'd better buy a more suitable pair of shoes to play in. I went into the flagship Nike store on the ground floor, and had a quick look around. They have a 'build-your-own' section there where you can design your own pair of shoes, which is pretty cool but pretty pricey too. My eye was caught by a pair of vintage Michael Jordan's, but those were more than $AUS400 (!), so I gave them a miss. I finally settled on a decent pair of Dirk Nowitzkis (he plays for the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA but I just bought them because I liked the look of them) for a little over $AUS100.

I took them out for a session on both Saturday and Sunday, and they held up very well! They're much more supportive around the ankle area for the quick turns that are made on a court, and are definitely a better fit for basketball than the running shoes were. Here's hoping that my New Balance's will last longer this time since I'll only be using them for running.

11 days of mayhem - day 10

Tuesday the 14th of April, the second last day of Shotty and Cookie's visit.  I went off to work during the day, and the guys spent the day wandering around some local shops and taking the opportunity to do some almost-last-minute shopping.  Once I got home from work, we decided to go have a look at the 3rd tallest building in the world - the Shanghai World Financial Centre.

Located on Century Avenue (a pretty major street in Pudong), the SWFC building rises above all others in Shanghai...and looks like a giant bottle opener.  Seriously.  They even sell bottle openers inside the building that are shaped like the building.  Amazingly expensive or I would have bought one.  Still might if I go back again.  Anyway, we made our way there and were truly impressed by the size of the place (makes we wonder how mind-boggling the Burj Dubai is up close since it's almost twice the size of the SWFC).  We paid our fee (around $AUD20 or so) and went into a waiting area for the elevators.  Once inside, we were treated to soft white pulsing lights and some ambient almost video-game-ish music - very cool.  The ride up to the 94th floor or so was extremely smooth - it didn't even feel like we were moving other than the tell-tale ear-popping associated with the change in pressure.

We quickly moved from floor 94 up to the highest observation platform in the world on the 100th floor - 474 metres up from the ground.  We were treated to an excellent view of both sides of the city (very happy it was a clear night!) and took a bunch of pictures, although a good number of those suffered from window glare.  After spending a bit of time looking around we went back down to the 94th floor to have a look at some of the (overpriced) merchandise, but ultimately decided against buying anything and went back down to the ground.

At this point we decided that since we'd been to the highest observatory in the world, we should probably have a drink at the highest bar in the world - conveniently located in the same building.  The highest bar in the world is named 100 Century Avenue, and is actually part of the Park Hyatt hotel which is located in the SWFC.  We had to go through a different entrance to get there (via metal detectors) and up a different (much less funky) elevator.  Eventually a couple of stops later, we were on the 93rd floor and drinking beer in the highest bar in the world.  

We didn't stay there very long as there actually weren't very many people around.  The guys discovered the Japanese style toilets (the building was designed by a Japanese architect) so used them a couple of times before we left and made our way to Windows Scoreboard for a few more beers before calling it a night. 

11 days of mayhem - day 9

Monday the 13th of April we got up at around 10 (slightly hungover from the surprising amount of beer we drank the night before) to find the best day of the trip (weather-wise) had arrived. It was around 27 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.

We checked out of the hotel (which I'll definitely be going back to since it was in such a convenient location) and left our bags there to pick up later. Our flight was at 7, so we figured we had most of the day to wander around the two remaining places we wanted to visit - the Temple Of Heaven and the Forbidden City. We started off at the Temple Of Heaven - a short taxi ride away and no problem at all to get to thanks to the handy cards that the hotel gave us which had the names of places in English and Chinese next to each other. After grabbing a quick pastry from a nearby bakery, we made our way into the temple area.

We ummed and aaahed about getting mp3 players to give us an audio tour, but ended up deciding to to walk and see what we could see. I was given a map and delegated as the guide to the area by the other two lads who really weren't up to the task. The first thing that we noticed is that the ToH area is very big - 2.73 sq km to be precise. The guide started out by telling us that the main temple, the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest is the most famous temple in the world. Well, none of us had ever heard of it, but there's no surprise there. The complex was built between 1406 and 1420, but was extensively restored in 2006 in preparation for the Olympics, so the facilities were pretty good and the garden areas looked immaculate.

e made our way past some of the smaller areas first. The Imperial Vault of Heaven is a series of three buildings containing the tablets of the God of Heaven, which were used in worship ceremonies. It was surrounded by Echo Wall, a big circular wall where you can supposedly speak in a normal voice at one point and have someone hear you on the other side. There were far too many people yelling at the wall for us to try, so I'll just have to assume that it's a bit of a crock. We finally made it to the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, which is admittedly quite impressive (link), and spent a bit of time wandering around taking photos and being, well, tourists. After a couple of hours in the temple grounds, we decided to leave and make our way to the Forbidden City.

The Forbidden City was back over near Tiananmen Square, so we hopped into a taxi and were there in no time at all. Once again we decided to forego the audio guide and simply wandered around ourselves. This time we couldn't find anywhere to get a good map like at the ToH, so we just had to make do with reading the signs on each of the buildings that we went past. It was built around the same time as the ToH (1406), and had some extremely impressive buildings. I noticed quite a few large copper pots around the place, and towards the end of the visit found the reason for them - they used to be filled with water and used to fight any fires that broke out inside the complex. There were more than 300 of these pots, and although they are pretty big and could hold quite a bit of water, I wonder how effective they would have been if a really big fire had broken out.

We wandered along taking pictures of the different buildings (names like 'Hall of Supreme Harmony', 'Hall of Preserving Harmony', 'Hall of Central Harmony' - I'm sensing a theme), statues and stones. There is one stone inventively named 'The Large Stone', which is a huge stone ramp with a number of dragons carved on the front. It weighs around 200 tonnes and is the largest such carving in all of China. All in all, we were suitably impressed by everything the Forbidden City had to offer, and ended up finishing our visit in a couple of hours.

At this point we stopped to get some lunch, and then went back to the hotel to get our bags and made our way to the airport. We had figured that traffic would be a lot worse (being a weekday), but we still got out there in less than an hour, and in fact had arrived too early to check in. So we sat down in KFC and utilised the free wifi for a while before getting on our plane and getting back to Shanghai. We were fairly buggered when we got home (at 10:30pm or so) so we had only the second night on the entire trip where we didn't have a single beer. My liver was very happy.

11 days of mayhem - day 8

Sunday the 12th of April was the day we climbed the Great Wall of China. We got up at around 9ish and were quite happy that we had left Club Banana at a reasonable hour the night before. We skipped breakfast (silly move in hindsight) and made our way downstairs to find our driver Edward (the one that was recommended to me) waiting for us. He took us to his car (nice sedan with the all important air-conditioning) and we got underway.

I had intended on asking him to stop somewhere to get some breakfast, but there were no immediately obvious options. We asked Edward a few questions along the way, but he had some problems with our accents, so we ended up with some answers to questions we hadn't even asked, which was quite funny. The trip to the wall ended up taking about 90 minutes. Once we arrived, Edward organised some tickets for us and said he'd be waiting for us in the car park whenever we were done. After that, we were on our own.

There are a number of different sections to the Great Wall that can be visited - we went to the Mutiyani section, which has a cable-car which would take us up part of the way and we could then hike in either direction for as long as we wanted (or until we ran out of wall - some sections are closed off as they are too dangerous for the public). We bought ourselves some bananas for a snack, stopped off at a restaurant and had some noodles and beer to keep us going, and then got underway.

The cable-car trip up to the top was uneventful, though I wouldn't have liked to do it if I was afraid of heights. The cars have been in operation for a long time and supposedly have never had an accident, which was reassuring I guess. Anyway, after a pretty quick trip we were on the wall. It's pretty hard to describe how awe-inspiring the wall is when you're actually on it. It took centuries to build, has been around for a couple of thousand years, stretches for more than 8800km, more than 2 million Chinese died during its construction - and we were standing on it! As Shotty and Cookie put it when I asked them what they thought about it: "it's pretty great" (pun completely intended, I'm sure).

We had been shown by Edward that we could walk to the west for a kilometre or two before we would run into a section that was closed off, so we got underway. The condition of the wall was pretty good (had obviously been repaired/restored in parts) and there were plenty of other tourists to keep us company along the way. There were also a number of enterprising locals that were selling drinks and snacks on the wall itself, although they didn't really detract from the experience as you might expect. We took it reasonably easy, soaking everything in and stopping at each new section to take in the surroundings. The walk itself didn't seem too difficult until we got to an extremely steep part right near the end, when it became fairly hard work. Once at the top we were unable to continue any further, so we stopped for a bit of a rest and marvelled at the fact that we were actually climbed the Great Wall of China.

We made our way back and a slightly faster pace, and found ourselves back at the base of the wall within about 2 hours. At this point we noticed a toboggan slide that went down a different part of the wall, and figured we'd give it a try. We paid the fee and got into a different cable car to go up to the section where the slide began. Unfortunately, we found that a lot of other people had exactly the same idea as us, and it took quite a while to get to the front of the queue. Once we finally did, we hit another hurdle - we were told start shortly after the person in front of us had departed. This meant that if that person was slow, we would catch them in no time, and have no real chance to get any speed happening. As luck would have it, that's exactly what happened. A girl and her mother got on right in front of us, and took it vvveeeerrrrryyyy ssssllllooooowwww down the entire course. Shotty, Cookie and I had a bit of fun almost smashing into each other, and we did completely apply the brakes in a few instances so that we could get a bit of distance between us and the people in front of us, but it still wasn't anywhere near as fun as it could have been.

At this time we made our way back to Edward, who was waiting for us near the car park. He suggested that we stop to get some food on the way home, and we were hungry enough by this time to agree. A number of villages are near the Mutiyani section of the Great Wall, and one area that we went through was famous for its fish. Edward picked out a restaurant for us, and after sitting down we noticed that we were right next to a pool of fish swimming around lazily. He motioned for us to pick a couple, and a waiter with a net deftly captured our purchases as soon as we pointed them out. Less than 10 minutes later, the fish had arrived on our table (along with a number of other dishes) and it was absolutely delicious. We stuffed ourselves there for almost an hour before getting back in the car and falling asleep on the trip back to Shanghai.

The walk along the wall (and the kilometres of walking we did the day before) had taken its toll, because after getting back to the hotel around 4, we all decided it would be in our interests to have an afternoon nap. We snoozed for about two hours before getting up and deciding upon a place to get beer and food. We figured we should get some Peking Duck since we were in Peking after all, so made a quick trip down to the local internet cafe to try to find a place. The first few places that I found ended up being dead ends (phones just rang out) so we decided to go back to the hotel and ask them to recommend a place. They circled a street on the map where we could go, and within 10 minutes we were sitting down in a restaurant. We got our Peking Duck (I'm not a fan, personally) amongst some other tasty dishes, and settled down to a cold refreshing beer.

The cold refreshing beer ended up tasting pretty damn good, so we decided it would be in our best interests to go find some more. We visited a couple more bars during the evening and ended up consuming far more than we had originally expected. Still, we ended up getting home by 2 since we still had one day left of sightseeing in Beijing.

Hot pot and beer usually spells a big night out

Friday night I had a fairly big night - I went out for dinner with 4 other co-workers after work. We tried to go to my favourite hot pot restaurant (Little Sheep), only to find that they were closed for renovations. Devastated! Luckily, we knew of another option that was only about 1km away, so we made our way there. It was a good thing we had some locals with us because unlike Little Sheep, this restaurant didn't have an English menu, so there is no way I would have been able to order anything.

Anyway, the food was good, but not up to the LS standard. We ended up drinking about 12 longneck bottles of beer between us and consumed an astonishing amount of food...for the grand total of $12 each :) I've said it before and I'll say it again - the value you get for Australian money over here is astonishing sometimes.

After the meal one of the other guys was keen to kick on, so we went over to Puxi to an English bar named the Bulldog to meet up with some of his friends (two Poms and a Yank). I've mentioned the Bulldog in a previous post when I went there and saw Manchester United vs Arsenal. Well, this time there was no soccer on, and it was much quieter as a result. We stayed there for a couple of pints and then moved on to another bar named 'The Shelter', which was a pretty funky underground bar in what seemed to be an actual bomb shelter.

It took a bit of finding - I seem to recall that the door kind of appeared out of nowhere, and was not well marked at all. After paying a $5 cover charge (a rarity in the bars that I've been to over here) we walked down an extremely steep set of stairs, then down a claustrophobic's nightmare hallway, and out into a bunker-type area. The bar stretched out on the left, and a number of people were dancing in-between some massive concrete pillars that seemed to be dotted around the place holding the roof up. It was bizarre, but kind of cool. Probably would have been better if there had been more people. That and the fact that the music was average (hip-hop crap) meant that we only stayed for about half an hour before migrating to Zapatas, another bar that was close by.

We went to Zapatas for the fabled '1am Popcorn Party' - at 1am on certain Friday nights, they unleash a sea of popcorn on the dancefloor. We got there about 10 minutes before 1, and took up our positions on the side of the (packed) dancefloor and waited....and waited...and waited...and it didn't happen! We had thought it was every Friday, but maybe it only happens on the first Friday of the month or something. Anyway, we stayed there for a few hours and moved on to our final place of the evening, but I can't remember what it was called (was pretty pissed by this stage if you hadn't already guessed). Had a few beers there before calling it a night just after 4am.

Remarkably, considering the amount I drank, I woke up feeling pretty good on the Saturday. In fact, I was even well enough to go out and play basketball for a couple of hours in the afternoon. In 32 degree heat. This was perhaps a little optimistic in hindsight, because I got home afterwards and absolutely crashed. I had been intending on going out again on the Saturday night, but ended up falling asleep in front of the TV at about 9pm.

Happily, this meant that I woke up as fresh as a daisy on Sunday. I guess there are some side benefits to having a quiet night in after all.

11 days of mayhem - day 7

So we got up on the Saturday and dragged ourselves out of bed at around 8am. Three hours of sleep is definitely not recommended when you've got to make an early flight. We threw our clothes into a couple of bags, flagged down a taxi and got out to the Hongqiao airport in reasonable time. The 2 hour flight went past pretty quickly, and before we knew it, we were in Beijing.

Well, at the airport anyway. The airport in Beijing is a goodly distance out of the city itself, so we had a 30 minute taxi ride or so to marvel at...well, not much. It's one of the few places in China that I've been to where there weren't buildings lining the road for the entire trip. Seriously, I've been to places about 2 hours drive away from Shanghai, and the entire drive just felt like we were going through the suburbs at 100km per hour.

I had been responsible for choosing the hotel when I booked the flights online, so I had the address of our hotel in Chinese, so the taxi driver knew exactly where we were going...but we didn't. We took quite a few turns and went down a number of side-streets before we finally turned into a little alleyway which had a name that I recognised - it was the street that our hotel was on. We were a little taken aback at first, as this street was filled with kids running around, street vendors selling their wares - we weren't sure what I had gotten us into. However, after being dropped off at the hotel (and getting past some initial confusion about our names), we got our 3-bed room, and were quite happy with the facilities. We dropped of our bags, picked up a map from the helpful girls at the front desk, and went off in search of something we would recognise.

It didn't take long. The ShaTan Hotel that we stayed at was only a kilometre or so away from the Forbidden City. We walked around the moat that surrounded it, stopping to take pictures here and there, and had a quick discussion about whether we should go in or not. We decided to move on, as we still had two days left to come back and see that area. We wandered further down the road and found ourselves at Tiananmen Square.

Tiananmen Square is massive. I didn't realise how big the place was until I laid eyes on it - it really is extremely large. It was originally built back in the 1600s, but only came to be it's current size back in the 1950s. We took a few pictures in front of the gate with the big poster of Chairman Mao, and then wandered around the square itself. In the middle of TS is the Monument to People's Heroes, which is a big pillar dedicated to all the people who died fighting in the revolutionary struggles of China during the 19th and 20th centuries. Unfortunately we were unable to get anywhere near it, as the steps leading up to the monument itself were guarded by a couple of soldiers. We walked past the monument and the multitudes of hawkers trying to sell us watches or cameras, and up Chairman Mao's mausoleum. This imposing structure is the final resting place of Chairman Mao, and would have been interesting to visit...but it was already closed for the day. The security arrangements were also quite strict - you needed to leave all cameras, bags, phones, wallets etc at the entrance, and you required official ID (e.g. passport, which we didn't have with us) in order to gain entrance.

After a quick bite to eat (not very many places to get food or drink around the entire TS area) we wandered past a few of the other major buildings (Great Hall of the People, National Museum of China) and decided we'd seen enough of the area. Our next stop was the Bird's Nest stadium and the Olympic area. We looked vainly for a taxi for about half an hour before giving up (terrible layout for tourists - massive 6 lane one-way roads surround the entire area, and there are fences blocking access to the roads, so even if you could manage to flag down a taxi, you'd have no way to actually get into it) and finding the nearest subway station. We had to take three different subway lines to get to the Bird's Nest stadium, but it ended up being extremely cheap (40c AUS to go to any station on any line) and didn't take too long. The stadium itself had it's own station (obviously built for the millions of people visiting during the Olympics), and only five minutes after getting off the train we were at our destination.

The Bird's Nest is an amazing piece of architecture - a stadium that has a unique appearance, it's the largest steel structure in the entire world and cost almost half a billion US dollars. And just like Tiananmen Square, I was amazed at how large it is. We were interested in going inside on a tour, but we all the gates were locked and we couldn't find anyone that could tell us if tours were even on offer or not. At any rate, we had no opportunity to go inside, so we simply took a bunch of pictures and moved on. We wandered down the rest of the Olympic Green (lots of open space as you would expect with so many stadiums and Olympic venues around) and had a look at the Water Cube before sitting down and relaxing for a bit. At this point I called Edward, a guy whose number I had gotten from someone I met in Shanghai. Edward is a Beijing local that hires himself and his nice car out for trips to the Great Wall. We arranged a time for him to pick us up the next day, and ater a few more photos and a quick cup of noodles for Cookie, we decided it was time to get back to the hotel.

After a quick shower and change at the hotel, we were ready to head out and get some dinner and have a few beverages. We didn't really have any plans on a place to eat, so we just went to the Workers Stadium, a large soccer stadium which supposedly also had a bunch of bars nearby. Upon arriving we found a half a dozen bars within a short distance...and an Outback Steakhouse restaurant. For those of you that haven't been overseas and had the pleasure, the Outback Steakhouse is a restaurant that claims to be 'Australian'. In the past, they've had dishes like 'Kookaburra Wings', and 'Roo burgers'...things that we obviously don't eat in Australia. Add that to the fact that they don't actually stock any Australian beer, and the place is a bit of a joke. However, we were hungry, and they do sell some decent burgers there, so we went in and chowed down on some grub. After a few quick beers, we decided we'd try out one or two of the nearby nightclubs to see what they were like.

The first thing that turned me off was the fact that each place had a cover charge - never like having to pay to get into a place. We went down into a place named VICS, got a funky ultra-violet stamp on our wrists, and entered...to the booming sounds of R&B music. For those of you that know me well, you'll know that I hate that particular genre of music, so I was not impressed, to say the least. The atmosphere seemed ok, although the place was pretty empty (it was about 9pm or so) and we ended up only staying for a couple of beers before leaving. We tried out one of the other bars (MIX), which was right next door and had an extremely similar decor and style of music. At this time I suggested we go looking for a club that I'd read about during my extremely brief investigation of places to go in Beijing - Club Banana. This proved to be more difficult than we had expected.

We got into a taxi and I showed him the address (in Chinese) that I had written down. He initially said 'ok', and started driving, but after a while he asked to see the address again and that's when the problems started. He drove us to a major road that he seemed to think was the place, and couldn't find any buildings which matched the number. He then stopped the taxi and rang someone on the phone (I couldn't get through to the club on my mobile to get directions) to try to find the place. When they didn't know where it was, he stopped at a nearby taxi rank and asked another driver for directions. When they didn't know, he gave up. We ended up going right back to where we started, and while it didn't cost us much (only $AUS6 in total), it was a pain in the backside. We were going to give up and walk around to try to find somewhere else, but I suggested trying one more taxi driver...and this guy actually knew where he was going.

We rocked up at the funky-looking Club Banana a bit after 10, and were quite pleased by what we saw. It's a massive multi-floor club, with a smallish dancefloor and bars on different levels. The music was much better than we'd been subjected to earlier (much dancier which suited the three of us just fine), and the place was extremely busy which added to the atmosphere. Shotty tried to take some pictures of the place at one point, but one of the DJs on the stage got out a laser pointer and pointed it right at us, and a staff member approached us pretty quickly to ask that we put our cameras away. It was a bit odd. Anyway, we picked out a good empty spot with convenient access to the bar and a bit of space for some dancing if the mood took us, and proceeded to while away the next few hours listening to some good tunes. We could have ended up staying there until the early hours of the morning, but considering we were going to be climbing the Great Wall the next day, we prudently decided at around 1am it might be best if we went back to the hotel and got a decent night's sleep.