Shanghai

As mentioned in my previous post, holidays have passed Harbin a week ago. In the honour of the Chinese national day (1st of October) and the Mid-Autumn festival also known as the Moon festival (6the of October) the 'reds' gave everyone a week off
This for me happened to be an excellent occasion to escape the city that had been torturing me with chinese characters for almost 5 weeks!! Destiny: Shanghai.
In the 'Paris of the east' we visited a Norwegian friend of mine that i had met during my stay in Singapore. She, lisa, was so kind to let us (me and Sven) stay in her appartment the entire week; thanx a lot for that lisa. the couch was super comfortable !!
The trip started at the Harbin train station. Me, sven and Bettina went on the train together for a rail trip of 30hours (costs: 55Euro, distance: approx. 3000km). We had beds in the train. very comfortable. The trains actually are quite modern. There is hot water taps so you can make your own tea or 'cook' your own noodles. All in all i kind of enjoyed the experience and time went by very fast.
So in no time we arrived in Shanghai. Got on a taxi and met Lisa at her place. After showering and getting rid of our bags we went to a thai restaurant for dinner. The funny thing here was that it was filled with white people. Something that i had not seen for a while. it immediately demonstrated how 'western' this city in fact is. After that lisa got us into a party at a german guy's appartment. met some cool people and had some cool beers. All in all a cool nite.
The rest of week was definitely very good as well and looked a bit like this:
SUN. visited the 'bund' which is the area where you have an excellent view on all the skyscrapers. as it was the chinese national day it was packed and we had to go on the photo with a lot of chinese people.
MON. visited the urban planning museum which shows how shanghai will develop in the next 20 years. very impressive. In the evening we climbed (actually took the elevator) Jin Mao tower (320m);it is the 4th highest tower in the world. And yes my friends i can reveal it now: this tower is nothing compared to our Holland highest mountain. The latter namely measures the incredible hight of 322m!!!!! eat that. In what a small country can be big at!!
That nite we watched mission impossible3 in itself maybe not so exciting. However, parts of it had been filmed in the skyscraper area that we had just visited that day.

TUE. this day we visited Hangzhou. It turned out to be a road trip with 10 people organised by lisa. we had our own van and driver. nice. Hangzhou is supposed to be one of the most scenic spots in china. Touristy it was. Hell yeah. so many people. However it was just a lake. It being nature made it quite nice for chinese standards. but for me it was a bit of a disappointment.
This trip proved once again that to enjoy nature parks in china one has to arrive with low expectations.

WED. went to some bars in the evening. in one of them coincidence wanted that i met a girl Cathleen who i had met before in Singapore. She had not been a very good friend but i recognised her and she recognised me as well. Its a small world after all.

THU, FRI, SAT consisted of drinking in quite a few bars. One of the funny things was the nite we literally had dinner on the middle of a road crossing. Cars were passing us at 1 meter distance.
Another highlight was my 'purchase of the year'. Bought my own megaphone. I had been wanting to buy one ever since the moment i had seen a tourist guide with one in wudalianchi. So in Shanghai me and sven happened to stumble upon a shop that sold these classy things. So i could not resist it. That nite i used it extensively to yell at people from our cab while driving. My favourite question to the people on the street: Tushuguan zai nar? or in english:Where is the library! hehe. It was pretty much the only sentence i knew in my drunken state of mind!!
Another Shanghai thing is entering the bars. In the best club of town (rouge bar) you get free entrance if you have a table (which means you have to spend a certain amount of money on drinks). In practice however you gain free entry if you are able to mention the name of someone who has a table. At our first try we just tried to walk; the playing innocent game. 3 out of 6 got in. They asked a name of one of the tables. Second try: we mention this name. However the guy now wants a last name as well as he had just seen us and realised we did not have a table. Another phone call later we are supplied with a last name and so at the third try we get in for free. Of course only because we are westerners. a bit bizar. but good for my budget :d

SUN we returned home by plane as the ticket hassle had not been succesfull. Right after coming back in Harbin it immediately struck me how dark Harbin is compared to Shanghai. The latter is completely alive at nite with billboards and light commercials everywhere. Harbin on the contrary is completely dark and dead at nite.
So now i have been in Harbin for a week again. I am trying to catch up with my chinese course and have the intention to do my homework everyday. Actually i am kind of forced too cause the pace in our course is so high that slacking one day results in incrompehesible characters appearing in the book immediately.
thats it for now again. zaijian.Marc.