ISpyShanghai

The last time I locked myself out of an apartment I took a taxi to a cheap hotel, paid about 200RMB for a night in a cold room on threadbare sheets, and waited in the morning for the Ayi to let me in.

This Sunday when I locked myself out, I went to a spa for 5 hours, spent about the same money and came back looking 10 years 5 years 6 months younger slightly less like a wrinkled thumb.

The place was called Xiao Nan Guo, it’s a chain with a branch on Yan’An Lu, 11RMB in a taxi away from my house. 

When I lived in Korea I would go to saunas / spas quite a lot so I know the rules: 

• Shower before you do anything else
• Don’t go straight from the steam room to a bath. Nobody wants to bathe in sweat soup
• Yes, everyone is naked 

At this place they had a bunch of odd spa type treatments. I had 4 hours to kill before Emma came back from work so I got loads of them.

After all of the wet type stuff above, you change into the provided Hawaiian shirt and shorts set, meet up with anyone of the opposite sex that you came in with and head off to drink coffee, read, play computer games or…

Full price list

Full price list contd

The second day of my trip to Yunnan was spent entirely with a Chinese tour group. I’d asked a colleague for some advice on fun places to see around Kunming and he suggested the “Stone Forest”- a collection of weird shaped rocks about 50 miles from the city centre.

He also said he’d arrange transport, which I thought was nice, it’s probably worth hiring a mini-bus for half the day instead of trying to get taxis. Later on the arrangement became clearer:

“Please be in reception at 7am- you will be meeting a team”

I should’ve known then what I was in for- the infamous Chinese Tour Group. Following a shouty tour guide who holds a flag and barks information seems to be a relaxing way to spend a day for your average middle-aged Chinese couple.

It’s not my bag, but I figured it was too late to back out now.

The day went:

07:10 Meet up with pasty-faced youth at hotel reception, get into mini bus

07:40 Arrive at random apartment block in the backstreets of Kunming, pick up 3 other people in mini bus

08:10 Arrive at urine-soaked car park near Kunming Railway station to transfer to a bigger bus with 25 other people. I could’ve been at the Stone Forest by now.

08:30 Bus sets off, tour guide runs through ear-splitting monologue in rapid Chinese. Try to listen to MP3 player to drown out the prattle but am nearly overwhelmed by fumes from leaky exhaust under my seat

09:14 Tour guide stops talking for 45 blessed seconds as we go past a traffic accident. A car has rammed head first into a steel barrier at full speed. Driver must have died. Other team members look impressed

09:50 Bus arrives at a gift shop selling Jade and silver jewelry- other team members fight to throw money at the salespeople, I look on bewildered.

10:40 Bus arrives at random temple built next to a handy car park. Whilst praying to a thousand hand Buddha you can take a stick and have your fortune read for 10RMB. I suspect the fortune reads “A fool and his money is easily parted”

11:30 Set off on bus, drive uphill away from civilisation, towards the Stone Forest.

11:43 Are those farmers still using Ox to pull their cart?

11:51 Was that old guy smoking Opium?

11:53 That lady was definitely trying to make her baby smoke a cigarette. Yunnan is weird.

12:30 Finally arrive at gates to Stone Forest, more than 5 hours after we set off. Go to lunch.

Touching the correct rock is very important

When we finally got into the forest it was interesting enough, some rocks that look like a Cat / Monkey / beutiful woman (if you look out of one eye and squint really hard).

There are various rocks to touch which stop your teeth falling out, “have many girlfriends”, or live until you’re one hundred years old (although good luck with that one if your mother made you smoke as a baby), and of course there were lots and lots of things to flash a V-sign in front of whilst having your photo taken.

Suckers at the temple

After the forest we went for a ‘free’ tea ceremony (where people tried to sell us tea), a ‘free’ foot massage (where people tried to sell us Chinese medicine), a ‘free’ cup of coffee (where people tried to sell us coffee, coconut powder, seasame pancakes, flowers, etc. etc.) before finally escaping from “the team” and catching a furtive taxi to the airport.

Our ethnic tour guide

Tour to the Stone Forest 160RMB
including all transport, entrance & guide to temple, entrance & guide to Stone Forest, lunch.
(And side trips to 18 gift shops )

For the last few weeks I’ve had a bad neck and shoulder. Massages weren’t helping, binge drinking wasn’t helping, I was almost out of ideas.

Then on Saturday I was limping past an acupuncture clinic and decided I might as well give it a try.

We only really planned to have a quick look at the place; see if it looked clean, any dead bodies covered in broken needles stuffed in the bins, then make an appointment.
The doctor, however, had the bedside manner of a Soweto street hustler and before I knew what was what he had me in his office and was sticking a needle in my shoulder to see which bits made me squawk.

The shoulder pricks were just for diagnosis- once he worked out the problem (too much “jin” blood) it was obvious that the solution to my shoulder pain was to stick a bunch of needles in umm, my stomach, and then put a little beehive full of smouldering ashes on my belly.

It hurt, but only a bit. Little lines of muscle spasm pain that seemed to go away if I concentrated hard on relaxing. The heat from the little beehive got hotter and hotter too, I could smell my little belly hairs burning.
I’m tough, I can take it- and didn’t press the panic button once (well maybe once, but just for fun).

It’s tempting to say that the guy was a total fraud, but you know what? My shoulder feels a lot better- and at 150RMB for the session, I think it was a pretty good deal.

Thank frig Emma was there though, the doctor spoke at a million characters a minute and if you don’t speak Chinese, this isn’t a guy to be messed with.

[Sorry about the quality of the photos, I was caught cameraless and had to use my mobile phone. The quality is so poor you can barely see my rippling six pack]

Dr Lou’s Acupuncture Clinic, Xinzha Lu (a little West of the junction with Changde Lu)- 150RMB

This is the last thing I’ll write about Ireland for a while, honest. Tomorrow it’ll be back to bad Chinglish translations found on the box of snack foods.

I must mention though that I had a great time driving around the coast of Donegal with Neal, a fellow camera geek, Liam and Megumi (both of whom visited me last Spring). It’s all small deserted sandy beaches and mists rolling in off the mountains around there.
In a supermarket where we stopped to buy chicken, they had pots of home made jam, local bread, and everyone knew each other.That level of familiarity would freak me out if I lived there:

“Ah hello there now Shamus [irish for James], I see you’re buying the big bottle of whiskey today. Will I put some Lucozade Sport in the fridge for you?”
“I think you better had Tony. I’ll be in in the morning for me Sunday papers, the Lucozade and 3 packets of bacon- so I will so I will“

[That last bit was to be read in a comedy Irish accent by the way.]
[[Much like the one I kept trying to perfect all weekend- which nearly got me lynched]]

Beutiful, no?

Throughout the morning and afternoon Neal would drive around for a few miles whilst we all listened to The Smiths, then when he saw a nice view we’d jump out of the car to take photos for 30 minutes.
It was great stuff. In fact if Neal was a vibrating massage chair that could cook lemon meringue pie, I’d be down on one knee to ask for his big ginger hand in marriage before anyone could stop me.

Campbell, a fella- a proper fella.

In Westgate Mall right now (that’s the one just east of Citic Square on Nanjing Road shopping centre fans) Panasonic have a big demonstration of their massage chairs all set out.

If you imagine me in this chair, with a little drool coming out of my mouth- well that’s how it looked.
I was in there the other day buying fabulous gifts for Emma (OK OK, trying on ear-rings) when I saw tired shoppers sitting in these things, kicking off their shoes and generally making an exhibition of themselves. My initial thought was that these people had no shame, parading their socks in public for everyone to see, but then I figured what the hell, you’re only hungover 3 times a week- and tried one out.

Mercy mercy, mercy me- as soon as I turned the thing on it began to grip my legs in a leather upholstered hug, and emit waves of pleasure up and down my spine. For 20 minutes I lay in that chair, ignoring the stares of other shoppers and the requests from the demonstration staff to keep my voice down.

From the brochure- can your chair do soft shiatsu?

Basically if this thing could cook Lemon Meringue pie, I’d be looking into some kind of civil ceremony, and me and Mrs Comfortizer 95011 (with heated seat option) would be very, very happy together.

If you’re ever in the neighbourhood- this place on Beijing Lu, near Shaanxi Lu is my favourite massage place in town.

As you can sort of tell from the sign, it’s a blind massage place, meaning that most of the masseuses (masseuii? 天这道) are, you know, blind, which supposedly makes them more skilful at rubbing your knots. I don’t believe that’s true, but you still get a great rub down at this place- fully clothed with a sheet over you, they work on your back, shoulders, face, scalp, hands, arms and legs (nothing else, sorry Wiggy) for about 45 minutes for 42RMB. Bargain.

In fact I enjoy it so much, that I often want to go more than anyone really should.Once a week is pretty acceptable I think, but any more than that and it’s a bit weird. Thankfully they’re all blind so I just have to remember to rotate my comedy accents and fake names when I talk to the staff.
It’s my ambition to get through a whole session in there just talking Chinese- then at the end I’ll do a Scoobie Doo ending

“Thankyou. By the way, I’m a foreigner- surprise!”

In my imagination they’ll explode with shock and awe, then we’ll high five each other and agree that I’m the coolest person in China.

On Sunday I like to walk around the back streets of my neighbourhood: Wuding Lu, Xinzha Lu, Xikang Lu, I get lost within about 5 steps of my apartment block. Most of the streets have the same stuff on them- DVD shop, fruit stall, foot massage place, two guys with their shirts off sleeping in deck chairs whilst still smoking cigarettes, and a dumpling/noodle shop.

At the dumpling shop, the ayi who worked there disagreed with our order. “That’ll never fill you up” she said, and gave us an extra ration of pork Jiaozi  for a special price. The total bill was 5RMB (35p) so perhaps she was right. Whilst they were boiling, I went to the fruit stall opposite and saw something new-

Emma thinks it’s called a ‘Strawberry Apple’ in English,  but since that’s clearly some name she just made up, I’m not 100% convinced. Anyhoo the woman in the shop told me to eat it like a tomato (people just eat whole tomatoes here as though they were some kind of delicious treat) and it tasted, funnily enough, like a cross between an apple and a strawberry.

Took these photos with my new camera by the way. The old one got dirty so I threw it in the bin.

[March 27, 2007]

Sunday I left the apartment at about 4pm and just rode my bike around and around until about 9:30. I had a vague plan to go along Huaihai Lu to buy the stuff I still don’t have for my apartment (plates, wine glasses, food that isn’t fun-sized Snickers), and also to stick it to the man since you’re not supposed to ride a bike down Huaihai Lu. I didn’t buy anything useful, but I did manage to bike along several miles of that main road, past several police cars, without being fined or shot.  

Just what I’m looking for! 

WoAiZhongGuo left a comment about Shanghai being crap to ride around, and I see his point now. If you stuck to the traffic restrictions it would be really hard to get around the city, and when I was having a quick butty break, I saw 3 or 4 suckers being fined for biking where they shouldn’t so they do enforce the law. The guys at work tell me that my beautiful white face will never get stopped by the cops, and the fine is only between 10 and 20RMB (just over 1 pound) anyway so for the time being I’ll continue being a rebel. 

Speaking of comments, here’s one from Andrew G:

‘Something about China from the pics is slightly off — perhaps it’s the color scheme . It is even slightly depressing. Or slightly suffocating. “Smells” like chemicals.’

Well Andrew G- I think this is the kind of photo you mean:

Under an overpass, South-East Puxi. There was  weird mist hanging over the city all Sunday. 

Taking increasingly random streets I headed East and South and soon bumped into a big Photography shopping centre where I bought a book of photos from China in the 1940s. There aren’t so many Red Guards administering random beatings on the streets as there was back then, but the laundry and fish hung out to dry over the streets is still here, and there’s a great photo of a drunken western guy grabbing a Chinese girl’s arse in a bar which could have been taken last Friday night [I’ll steal it and put it up here later on].

By the time the sun went down I was about as close to the river as you can get around that area and found myself at an outdoor market. There were woks blazing, live chickens having their breasts’ pinched, women (but never men) wandering around in their flannel teddy-bear pyjamas, and scores of very busy little hair-dressing and foot-massage places. Everyone likes a bit of a trim and a rub down on Sunday night apparently.

I bought a massive bag of popcorn (2RMB), put it in the front basket where I could reach in and eat it without crashing, then rolled through the streets watching the goings on like a film.