Whaddaya know, it’s been a week already

Honestly, I’ve eaten so much obscure and strange food here, most of which I haven’t even known what it’s been (nor do I now), that it’s a wonder I hadn’t been sick already when I was at the Norwegian-owned restaurant Salabim. I had a pizza at that place (yes, it was a good pizza), and let me tell you, the morning after was not a pleasant experience; for the most part it was spent at the toilet with a highly rebellious stomach. Also, it turns out I was far from the only one who got sick after that visit, so I’m sure as hell not going back there. This city is filled to the brim with good restaurants anyway.

Once I’d recovered myself that morning it was time for the day’s first lecture. Or pre-lecture more like it. Held by one of the course assistants, we had a 15 minute crash course in Chinese vowel and tone pronounciation. It sounded really funny when 35 Nordic people at the same time tried to mimic our teacher’s “aaaaaoooo”, “ooouuu”, “iong” and the like.

The actual lecture was on “Chinese Economic Policy” and was both good and interesting. Had lunch at a Korean restaurant, where chopsticks are even harder to use because they’re flat and not square. Trust the Koreans to make something hard even harder (overall I’ve got the whole chopstick thing going rather well though). Food was so-so, don’t really like Korean food to be honest (he says based on one dish). Second lecture was on “China’s Strategic Culture” and was quite interesting as well.

At 17 that evening (afternoon?) it was time for KARAOKE (hereon known as KTV, which is what it’s called here)! If you’ve seen Lost in Translation (and if you haven’t, then you really should), then you’ve got a rough idea of how it works. Basically, our teacher had booked us three KTV rooms at a rather fancy place downtown. All I can say is that it’s insanely fun! Take Singstar and multiply the funness of that a couple of times. Main issue when doing it with a group of fairly unknown Nordic people is to get people to sing. As we all know, Nordic people tend to require rather large amounts of alcohol before they can make asses out of themselves. So, being the able to make an ass out of myself without the use of alcohol, I bravely started singing once we’d had dinner (buffé is included in the price of the rooms, which we had booked from 17-22). A Norwegian girl joined me in the slaughtering (I probably did most of the slaughtering) of Backstreet Boys’ Everybody. And once someone had dared the first song the rest just sort of came naturally, and as the alcohol kept flowing in (mainly beer and a crapload of Bailey’s) people also started to show off a bit more, and also had more fun. And for your information, no, I still haven’t been drunk.

As for the songs, quite a few were actually rather bad covers by local Chinese bands, and the music videos were seemingly chosen at random from a highly limited list (many of which looked like intros to some bad German Tele-sex tv-channel (I’ll show you some images once I get back)), but this all just kind of added to the fun of it all, in a strange way. We ended up staying to 23, and I got home around midnight. End bill: 230 yuan per person (as opposed to the Politics and Society group who were there the day before and payed roughly a 100 less, but apparently they got wasted on beer and vodka instead of Bailey’s).

The next day we all met in the lobby of the hotel at 9 and walked to an on-campus gym where we got to try out Shaolin Kung Fu and Tai Shi. Many people did not quite appreciate this after a night of rather hard partying, but I thought it was really fun, although I have never in my life sweated as much as I did then (need I mention that the place wasn’t airconditioned and that friday was the hottest day thus far?). I much prefer my Ju jutsu to the Shaolin (which felt mostly like an fancy-looking artsy thing than something practical), but the Tai Shi I really liked; might try it out at home (slow motion for the win). Being soaked in sweat, I headed back to the hotel in the lunch brake and had a shower before eating noodle soup at a next-door restaurant.

After lunch there was a lecture called “Summing up of week 1”, which consisted of some repetition of this week’s lectures, as well as quite a lot of new stuff on Chinese politics. At 17 we all met up the main gate of campus (by the giant statue of Mao) and were driven downtown where we went on a short boat trip on the river just as the city was going dark. Shanghai really is a lot prettier at night, what with all the lights and shiny skyscrapers and stuff. After the boat trip there was some organisatory chaos (it’s hard to coordinate larger groups of people), as some people were going to a club, other’s were hitting a restaurant first, and yet some others were just going back home. I ended up in some really cool small pedestrian streets filled with street cooked food and loads of people, together with a Danish student. We got some fried noodles (good) and rice (good), as well as some random meat (probably random roadkill, tasted really well though) and squid (not so good, way to sinewy for my taste, although licking it like a lollipop was rather good (but kind of gross in a way) on a stick and had that for dinner in the midst of bootleg shops and Chinese people.

I had planned on going back to the hotel after this, but ended up in the club with a bunch of the other students after all. Entrance cost 100 yuan and free drinks included (i.e, the two beers I had were really expensive ones). More than 50% if the guests there were westerners. But I had a good time anyhow, even if I only got to sleep for four hours since I had to get up at 6 the morning after because many people in the course (including me) were going to Huangzhou (very popular city for tourists).

After a three hour bus ride (most of which I tried to sleep, which was hard, because I was sitting in the front of the bus and the driver was really happy to use his horn) we ended up at a Buddhist temple in the woods/hills which was really beautiful, and after two-three hours there we went to Westlake, a very nice lake/park, where we had lunch and walked around for a bit (at one point I sat down on a bridge for a minute, and in that time two Chinese people just came up to me and had their photo taken next to me; this wasn’t the first time it happened (quite funny actually, although I suspect the blond and blue-eyed people in my course are getting a bit tired of it since they’re photographed a lot more than I am)). On the way back we went to a so called tea-ceremony, but it was basically just a live TV-shop thing where they wanted us to buy some really expensive Chinese tea and the like. Went back to Shanghai after that, and after a dinner down at a pedestrian street not too far from the hotel, I went back to my hotel and hit the sack around midnight.

Today I first woke up at 6 by myself, then at half past seven by the telephone ringing and some Chinese guy trying to speak Chinese with me, but in the end I actually managed to sleep till 11 which was incredibly nice. Decided to go to a laundry place (cost 69 yuan for 6 pairs of socks, 6 boxers and 9 t-shirts/shirts, but I really can’t be bothered to do it by hand any more) this morning, and had noodle soup for breakfast (lunch?). And now I’m going to dare the outdoor heat and go downtown.

Until next time!