Nighttime is the right time...
I made plans with Sandy from Mandarin House to go to a Chinese bar tonight. We agreed to meet at Plaza 66 at 9pm. I called around 8:30pm to tell Sandy I was going to be running about ten minutes late. She said, “Oh! This is good because I am always late everywhere I go!” So, I took this as an invitation to be as late as I wanted.
After I got off the phone with Sandy, I futzed (I know this is a word, I just don’t know how to spell it…) around a bit with my plans for after Shanghai. Apparently, there are several amazing things to do and sites to see around Xi’an (one of them being the famous site of the Terracotta warriors) and I have between 7 and 10 days to spend in the area. I’m almost certain that I’ll be taking an overnight sleeper train from SH to Xi’an so that I can say I’ve done a sleeper train in China. There’s also an incredible mountain near Xi’an that is supposedly so treacherous to climb that people climb it in the middle of the night so as not to get vertigo from the view in the daytime and leap off. The other reason for climbing in the night is to arrive at the peak just in time to see the sunrise. I did a similar climb at the end of the Inca trail to see Machu Picchu at sunrise and it was well worth the sleepless night. I’m looking forward to stretching my limbs outside of the city and am already envisioning huge gulps of “fresh” air and temperature drops that bring goose bumps up on my sunburned arms.
After sitting here staring at the prices for plane tickets from Xi’an to Wuhan, I noticed I was going to be significantly later than ten minutes to meet Sandy, so I grabbed my camera and guidebook and scooted out the door.
Tonight was my first neighborhood night walk in Shanghai. I’ve been in this city for FOUR weeks now and hadn’t yet done this. I plan on walking around the neighborhood every night for the rest of my stay because I saw a completely different city. Each evening, trash is thrown into the street, right by the sidewalk for the early morning street sweepers to collect. Because most of the garbage being disposed of daily is food garbage, it isn’t neatly enclosed in bags, but instead is thrown in a fly-attracting pile from the door to the street, leaving a soggy and rice-laden trail across the sidewalk that is impossible to steer clear of. The smells sitting in the air at night are intense and not always bad. I walked along the street and peered into shops that in the daytime are shadowy enclosures due to the sun glare constantly in my eye. At night, these shadows become little illuminated worlds. Every store had a television blaring and a half-dressed man plopped right in front of the screen. Women and children and babies sat outside in the “cool” night air, freshly showered and eating a late night snack before trotting off to bed.
Tiny restaurants had placed a table or two out on the sidewalk and young men sat slurping up noodles and clinking glasses of light-colored beer. As I got closer to the Plaza, family life receded into the background to make way for the more seedy side of Shanghai nightlife. I passed a bar that I giggle at every day when I see its name, “LAFFTE CRUB”, and watched as a man too drunk to go home staggered between two colleagues who seemed to be egging him on to return to the bar. A nervous-looking waitress barred the entrance with her tiny uniformed figure and though the colleagues seemed to be making headway, the drunken man managed to stagger into a taxi that another waitress had flagged down to whisk him away from all the merriment occurring inside the LAFFTE CRUB.
Tonight, because I had the dark on my side, I was able to look carefully into what I believe to be two competing brothel-like establishments fronting as salons. Every afternoon, when I’m returning from class, I look into these little front rooms with rotating barber poles at their entrances, and I see heavily made-up young women looking bored to tears. I’ve never seen any of these women attending to a customer. They are usually sitting in the barber chairs, feet up, flipping through magazines, sipping diet cokes. The amount of make-up these women wear is amazing. Their eyelids are rainbows glistening with metallic greens, lavenders, blues and pinks. Their lips are always pouty and moist and purple or fuchsia or rose. Tonight, as I walked past, there were seven women in one of the salons. Four were at a table, wearing bustiers and see-through nightgowns, and playing Mahjong just like the women three times their age. Another three were draped across the salon chairs looking anxious and fiddling with each other’s hair absentmindedly. A middle-aged man sat behind a high desk in the back of the salon, talking on the phone using a headset. He was wearing sunglasses. Two doors down, the same scene was being played out in an almost-identical fashion, except the women were a little older, a little less shiny and a little sadder. I caught the attention of one particularly bored looking woman and she sneered at me with her eyes. It gave me the creeps. I walked quickly on.
Two long blocks from the Plaza, I passed a German restaurant and a tiny little orange and white cat leaped out from the bars of the restaurant’s front gate and bound right up to me. I bent down, and pet the little creature for a minute or so, stood back up and started on my way. I had a follower. The cat ran almost under my feet trying to keep up with me and rub around my ankles at the same time. I stopped, pointed back to the restaurant and said, “Go home, kitty!” The cat looked up at me and said, “Meow”. So, I walked back towards the restaurant and the cat ran ahead, but looked back every once and a while to make sure I was following. When we got back to kitty’s gate, I said, “Stay” and turned to walk away. But kitty jumped under my feet again and ran a dizzying crazy-eight pattern around my feet, falling over on the sidewalk in ecstasy from the human contact? I knew it was a bad idea, but I pet kitty some more, by now a good thirty minutes late to meet Sandy. I think this cat isn’t used to affection because when I tried to get up, it playfully clawed at my hands as if to say, “Oh PLEASE don’t stop!” I knew the cat would eventually tire of following me, but I was terrified of it trying to cross the street with me. I have a hard enough time staying alive when crossing the street (not really, mom and dad) and can’t imagine a bus stopping for a little kitty if it begrudges even SLOWING for me! So, I went back to the restaurant with the cat again and this time, another passerby caught its attention, at which point I turned and literally ran. I got to the intersection and thought I was in the clear until I heard a pitiful little, “Meow, meow, MEOW!?!?” I turned to see my little cat standing a good ten feet from me, asking me why I was leaving so soon. My heart ripped in two. It just stood there, meowing and looking back towards its gate. I was so sure it was going to run after me and get squashed by an electric donkey, but then it finally turned and ran away.
I was a block from Plaza 66 and sent Sandy a message telling her I was on my way. When I got to the front doors, they were locked so I sat on a wall and was about to write a few notes in my notebook when I was attacked by two dirty little children. One put his hand under my arm and tickled my armpit. The other pulled on my earring, then my necklace and then tried to pull my left ring off and then my right. I was surprised, but managed to hold on to all of my belongings. When the two children managed to confirm that I was harmless, another four children came running up. I pulled out my camera and the kids completely freaked out. They started out posing each other, all the while pulling on my cheap jewelry every once in a while to see if I’d forgotten to protect it. This one little girl really wanted my rings. The children’s parents were sitting a little ways off and I could tell they were fruit sellers. They looked on amused while their children attacked the foreigner who didn’t seem to mind.
Sandy called me to say she was almost ready to leave and I told her I was the one under six children down in front of the Plaza. One of the children, the oldest boy, was a complete cutup. He wanted to take pictures of me and I let him snap photos with the camera, all the while holding on to the camera’s strap. Only once did he try and abscond with it, but he looked at me as if he knew he wouldn’t get away with it and was just pretending. He’d try and mess up the photos of the other children and then told me he wanted me to take his picture. I set the photo up, and right as I pressed the shutter button, he jumped out of the frame and laughed so hard he fell over into the bushes behind the wall. The smallest of the children was a quiet little boy wearing a dirty red vest. He had a serene, serious look on his face until I showed him a picture I had taken of him and his whole face lit up with the biggest, brightest smile. Then the children started swishing back and forth and I took a little video of them, which sent them into squeals and shouts when I replayed it for them.
Sandy came out about ten minutes later and the children started shouting, “Money or rings! Money or rings!” and even became a little angry when I said I had nothing to give them. But as we walked away, they quickly began their antics with each other again and seemed to forget all about me.
Sandy took me to VEGAS, a terribly sad Chinese bar in a fancy part of town. The music was too loud, the ice in my vodka lime was salty and a little stale tasting and the bathroom reeked of mothballs. One of Sandy’s friends from high school is a bouncer at VEGAS and he “managed” to get us a VIP seating area – there were seven empty VIP seating areas around us. I took a photo or two with my flash off and a security guard came over and barked at Sandy that photos weren’t allowed. When she asked why, she was told it was to protect the privacy of the bars patrons. Sandy ordered dried sweet beef cubes and kettle corn for bar snacks and after my one drink, I told her I needed to go home and go to sleep. We left the bar and stopped at a little stand to buy some ice cream. A young man was on a telephone and was talking in a very whiney voice while a young woman stroked the back of his neck and hung on to him for dear life. Sandy told me that the boy was arguing with a parent about his curfew. According to Sandy, his Mandarin was very poor. She decided that he was from another province because he was using dated colloquialisms. I told Sandy I’d much prefer to walk the streets and talk with her than go to bars and we made a date for next Saturday.
I liked being out and about tonight. I felt like I was in China. I felt like I belonged to the city even if the city doesn’t belong to me. For the first time in five weeks, I felt, almost, invisible.
