Arrival In Shanghai

Originally posted 22nd January 2015

Neither of us had slept on the 11 hour flight from London, so we arrived at Shanghai Pudong airport at 9.30 am somewhat bleary-eyed, but fortunately we were met at the airport by a driver who took our 7 suitcases (5 large and 2 carry-on) and us to our hotel. I had tried to get a year’s worth of stuff into 2 large suitcases, but I had failed. There hadn’t been any room for any of my cycling kit, or my camera for that matter if I hadn’t started on a third case, so three it had to be. I had already managed to get in my arm pump for my lymphoedema and a year’s worth of medicines into the others, so I wasn’t feeling too ashamed with myself with the extra excess baggage charge we inevitably had. When my parents went out to Hong Kong in 1986 they shipped some stuff out ahead of themselves, so I wasn’t going to hang back on one extra case. Despite no sleep for 13 hours we were determined to keep going for as long as possible once we had reached our hotel, as Richard had to hit the ground running on Monday morning. So shortly after we arrived we went out and walked to Richard’s office, which is 5 minutes of so from the hotel where we are staying for our first week, so that I knew where it was. For someone as car/bike mad as Richard it’s in quite a good place – a Ducati motorbike shop at the entrance and Maserati and Ferrari garage round the back. Anyone who knows the Millers well knows that like Napoleon, whose army marched on its stomach, food comes first. So inevitably our first thing to do was to visit the local supermarket. This is like an underground IKEA in the basement of our hotel. There are so many twists and turns that it is easy to get lost, but we wound our merry way through the endless aisles of sweets and biscuits, and air conditioners and bicycles to the more interesting sections at the back of the shop.

Interesting beans and frilly mushrooms I’d never seen before. Green leaved vegetables and fish that all need identifying. Fish stored live in fish tanks, which would have been some animal welfare issues back home, are held in much better conditions than they were in the China of 1987. Pig’s cheeks and snouts, smoked eels, sea cucumbers, 100 years old eggs (they are not actually that old), chickens claws – all made me start to worry about how I’m going to cook an evening meal when we move into our flat in a week’s time, but I reminded myself that I’ve got my favourite Chinese cookery book with me The Chinese Kitchen which will not only help me work out what’s what and its Chinese name, but more importantly what on earth to do with it. We ate lunch at the supermarket café, by pointing at the pictures on the menu outside the shop to a rather bemused waiter and hoping for the best, which was fine, but I don’t think I’d have those pickled vegetables again. We then moved onto the centre of town, working out how to ride the metro, but failing in our attempt to purchase a Shanghai travel card, which works on the metro, the buses and in taxis. (We succeeded the next day, by taking the advice of handing over 100 yuan at the desk and holding our ground until we got what we wanted.) I noticed this in Beijing and it is the same here, that locals don’t wait for you to get off the train or out of the lift first before they pile in, whether there is room for them or not. And they have no compunction of pushing in in front of a couple of foreigners who are trying to make themselves understood. Two sets of people did this to us as we tried to buy our Shanghai cards. We miss having Rozy with us, who in such circumstances would have turned round and given them a piece of her mind – I think she had a personal mission of trying to teach the whole Chinese population some British manners. I must admit it was truly satisfying to see them behave sheepishly once they realized that a big nose could speak their language and had stood up for themselves. We didn’t achieve much on our expedition on the metro – we essentially ended up in a Macdonald’s in the centre of Shanghai for some much needed caffeine as we were both falling asleep and so we turned tail and headed back to the hotel.

For our supper we had a snack that Rozy had introduced us to in Taiwan essentially sushi on steroids – a rice cake with a fish or meat filling, encased in a seaweed wrap - delicious and as perfect as a sandwich in such circumstances.