I’m under water, deep under the sea in a zoo of some sort. There is air to breathe, as the zoo is in a handy protective bubble. Then there’s an announcement over the PA system, casually noting that the air supply will finish in X minutes, thank you for visiting, have a nice day. My 5 year old somnambulant brain made the quick calculations and realized, in a fatalistic and resigned way that only 5 year olds can pull off, that the air would run out before I would be able to ascend to the surface as ascending takes Y minutes and the air would be all gone by X. I sat down on a bench and waited for my fate.

I didn’t care much for deep water after that.

These aquatic creatures won't kill me or drag me to my death. Especially the elephants.

I like swimming. I like floating. I love doing somersaults in swimming pools. I love being in water. I’d spend half my life floating on my back looking up at the sky if I didn’t have to put up with months of ear infections and deafness as an inevitable result. I’m half deaf as we speak. Three weeks in Thailand did it.

But like I said, I don’t care much for deep, open water. After all, as the PA announcement in my dream said, the air will be gone in X minutes but it takes Y minutes to get to the surface. Better to stay in a nice, shallow, clear pool where you can touch the bottom when you aren’t floating on your back.

Indonesia

Two and a half years ago, on the island of Bunaken just off Sulawesi in Indonesia, just around the area where the coelacanth was discovered a few million years after anyone last took notice of it, Doug and I did our PADI open water dive certification. I needed a lot of coaxing to haul myself meters under water, voluntarily ripping off my mask a dozen meters below, or voluntarily misplacing my breathing regulator to show the instructor that I was capable of not immediately dying under water. During my first dive, near a steep, dark drop-off, with a shelf plummeting to very deep depths before me, I threw myself backwards off an Indonesian re-purposed wooden fishing boat and realized, as I kept on plummeting, that my BCD had sprung a leak  and that I was most definitely sinking quite rapidly, well weighted down by an enthusiastic set of, well, weights around my waist. My inner 5 year old was muttering nihilistically, I told you so.

Are we done yet?

I passed my open water course, warily accepting that my watery death might not come as soon as anticipated. I got a new BCD (one that wasn’t leaking) and a slightly lighter weight belt (one that didn’t immediately drag me to the ocean floor). I learned how long it takes to safely ascend (technically it takes longer than I was given in my dream, so I suppose my initial fears were spot on). I became somewhat comfortable with the idea of being utterly reliant on a tank strapped to your back, a few tubes attached,  and an inflatable vest that hopefully holds it all together. I did, however, emerge with a horribly mangled middle finger where an oxygen tank had been accidentally let down onto it when everyone was taking off their gear on the boat. It took months but the nail eventually fell off after a slow and rather gruesome season where it wiggled on my blackened fingertip like a second grader’s front tooth. I used it to frighten my students, tapping their faulty essays disapprovingly with my mangled, discoloured claw.

Sometime that Autumn, with my nail still barely holding on to the nail bed and the fingertip a lovely shade of bruise, Doug found out that it was possible to do your advanced open water course through the Shanghai PADI center at QianDao lake, a number of hours by car from Shanghai. This is a lake that used to be a town until Mao decided he preferred the town to be 25 meters under water sometime back in the 1950s. It’s a silty, cold lake, with the underwater town part of it quite far from any other above-water town. We signed up for their last session of the year before they shut down for winter, bought thermal dive vests and hoods and gloves, rented two full-body wetsuits each, and girded our loins for the icy waters. My confidence in my ability to not die immediately underwater was still somewhat, shall I say, buoyant after my relative success in Indonesia that summer. I knew that I might very well die but at least I knew a few tricks now for how to do it less quickly.

China

Qiandao was my downfall. It was grim. It was freezing. Visibility was nil. We did our requisite deep dive, one of the mandatory exam dives that you have to pass to be certified, and when I got down to what might have been 25 meters I hit an absolute white out. The silt was so thick that I couldn’t even read my gauges. I had no idea beyond that point how deep I was or how much air I had left. I couldn’t tell up from down because the grey rainy skies had failed to penetrate the murk with any hopeful light. Not long after the white out hit, both of my ill-fitting fins fell off my feet and fell to the distant bottom of the lake. They are still there now, perplexing the fish.

I'm going thataway. Where the bar is.

We did the rest of the course over the weekend, chilled by the icy waters and pouring rain. The lake’s visibility made it pretty much impossible to do anything more than just gird your loins and cope. Somehow I passed and didn’t cry. We were taken for a lovely lunch at a farmhouse nearby then driven back to Shanghai. We didn’t dive again for two and a half years.

Well, we would have, if Doug hadn’t fractured his spine on a bus in Sri Lanka the day before our dive trip in Trincomalee was set to start. But that’s another story.

I promised him that, in spite of my lingering Qiandao lake nightmares, I’d join him in diving on our next trip to somewhere warm, which had clear water and less lethal buses.

I still had a brain full of leaky BCDs, murky impenetrable icy waters, fins dropping off my feet methodically into the darkness below.  I couldn’t remember when you had to inflate or deflate, nor could I remember how many of those compact little weights I needed to strap around my waist to keep from sinking uncontrollably to the bottom or, alternately, from bobbing up to the surface unexpectedly and getting mown down by a passing outboard engine. I had done my underwater navigation exam in the murky shallows of the lake, in the pouring rain, focused mostly on not freezing to death. My buoyancy exam had been done in fresh water, not salt. I just knew I’d end up in somebody’s propeller by the end of the next trip. I wasn’t, one might say, looking forward to it.

Thailand

Doug signed us up for four nights on a liveaboard in the Similan islands, somewhere off the coast from Phuket. Just before we did the liveaboard, we did a few tentative fun dives on Phi Phi, in sheltered bays, looking at turtles and Nemo a mere 18 meters under. No current, no steep ocean drop offs, no silt, no rain, no complicated coral formations that you absolutely cannot touch but must swim amongst in disturbingly close quarters. It was like diving in a rather large, warm, busy bath tub. I felt…okay. I wrote down what our refresher course instructor had determined to be my appropriate weights. I carefully committed to memory (again) which button inflated the BCD and which deflated it. I tried to remember when and why I’d need to inflate or deflate it (it’s not as easy as you might think). I logged my first two dives since 2009. My confidence in my ability to not die underwater was relatively high.

Then we moved onto the boat. Aside from us and a woman who had just done her basic open water course (but who was a triathlete and water polo enthusiast who appeared to come equipped with her own gills as she always emerged from dives with fifty bar more air than me, every time), everyone else was either an instructor, a dive master or just a keener with over 400 dives under their weight belts. We had 12. And five of those had been in an opaque lake, deep in panic and survival mode.

At the Tachai Pinnacle, holding on for dear life to the mooring line

There were currents out there. Washing machine currents. Currents that would rip your arms from your sockets as you made your way along various sets of mooring lines, building up callouses and bruises and shredding off layers of skin until they were raw and weepy, trying to not get washed out to sea or slammed into neighbouring boats. Amongst those currents were tumbled undersea boulders as big as houses, with gaps you were meant to swim through and coral you mustn’t under any circumstance touch. One of the British divers who had logged over 400 dives remarked casually that the Tachai sunset dive on our second day (one we had to bail out of when I was a dozen meters down the mooring line, inching my way down to the boulders, because the current had caught Doug’s spare mouthpiece at an unfortunately powerful angle and had managed to purge three quarters of the air from the tank before we had even started swimming) noted that that dive had been one of the worst he’d ever done. Ever. Currents coming from every direction and little visibility. It was dire.

I was shaken, to say the least. When Doug realized he had no air left, we carefully made our way back up underwater along the mooring line to the buoy, then along the next line back to the boat. Like sad, bedraggled, incompetent Navy SEALS who hadn’t made the cut.  Doug got back in the boat first and I waited out in the dark churning waters in the middle of the Andaman Sea, being bobbed and pulled, my arms in the air, body suspended, unable to inch any further without assistance as the rope didn’t lead to anywhere I could actually go, just to the blank hull of the boat. We did it again the next morning. Same dive spot. The current was still frothing like an angry washing machine, the mooring line shuddering. Doug carefully turned his spare mouth piece around so the purge button was away from the current. I carefully turned off my emotions and went down.

Earlier on the second day, I’d been caught in another strong current at the edge of a massive drop-off, about thirty meters down. One of those swimming to stand still ones. I sucked back most of my tank trying to get back to the others, then felt like shit because I made Doug return to the surface with me, even though he still had half a tank left. I was beginning to think I was not meant to be an underwater person. The dive guide quietly and patiently kept trying to calm me, to reassure me, to suggest I try to be at one with the water, to not fight it so much. And he was right, of course. Ellen the Triathlete, who had just done her basic dive course, was down there swimming like a fish, barely breathing, kicking in a perfect and minimalist fashion as I chugged back the oxygen like I was at a frat party and tried to not slam into boulders.

At night in the swaying bunk bed in our cabin, I started to realize that it wasn’t the water that I feared. It wasn’t the water that I felt uncomfortable with. It was me. It was the equipment. It was me and the equipment. I wasn’t a fish. I wasn’t a turtle. I would have made an awesome turtle. A turtle doesn’t need dive gear. A turtle doesn’t need to monitor its gauges or worry about leaky BCDs or being incorrectly weighted and popping up to the surface to have your head made into mincemeat by a passing boat motor. A turtle just swims. It goes wherever it is that turtles go, at a turtle’s pace. Same with fish. I could be a very happy fish. It’s not the water I feel uncomfortable around, it’s all the external crap that needs to be constantly monitored: ascent, descent, equalizing, nitrogen bubbles, getting your regulator caught on something during a swim through and having your air source ripped out of your mouth, staying close enough to the corals or the boulders to avoid the current but not so close that you actually touch them.

When I’m down there and it’s not all going horribly wrong, like on our third and final day at Richelieu Rock when I had 4 untraumatizing dives in a row, I feel good and sane and I think, by gum, I think I’m okay with this. I still feel utterly vulnerable and incompetent, sure, but my inner turtle has more leeway. The gangly, ungraceful human is pushed aside long enough for a little finesse under water to emerge. I can look at the pretty fish, the coral, the weird ass marine life; I can manoever myself through awkward openings, enjoy the feeling of buoyancy and movement, be briefly at one with the water.

Briefly.

Then the current picks up and I get washed out to sea, slammed against a boulder or two and then eaten by formerly plankton’tarian whale sharks.

Self medication for those moments when you realize you're never going to be a turtle

Notes on Scuba Diving in Thailand (and Elsewhere) for the Non-Amphibious is a post from: A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai

The dragon knows where it's at

I have a terrible memory. When I actually stop to think back on my life, to specific moments or sequences of time and events, I often draw a blank. Or if not a blank then a whole bunch of fuzzy blotches punctuated by non sequential images or impressions that may or may not be accurate.

You know that thing I wrote in my bio, about doing all this writing because after X number of years it gets hard to remember where I’ve been?  That wasn’t a throwaway comment. I really can’t remember. It’s like I have early onset Alzheimers or something.

There was a throwaway comment in Bill Bryson’s book, The Lost Continent, where he says something to the effect that when his father died, he had been taken by surprise to find that a part of himself had gone with him. All of the memories his father had held were lost. Memories of his childhood. Memories of people and places and events they had known together.  Those memories made up part of who he was, part of a very complicated puzzle of identity. He wasn’t just himself alone but rather a collection of other people’s memories. When his dad died, he took a chunk of that with him.

When I first read that book, I was in my early 20s and hadn’t spent all that much time away from home. I was still a part of the collective memory of Vancouver Island, of my rather large extended family, of things I’d known for a long time.  I don’t think that line even registered with me. I felt rooted, secure. Everything and everyone was still around me to tell me who I was and where I’d come from.

I reread it recently and it resonated. Not that anyone died recently, no. But I started thinking about how much self, how much memory is held outside the body, in other people, in places, in contexts. When you grow up, you make associations with sounds and smells and tastes and when you meet them again, your memory is jogged. When you know people a long time, you are continually reminding each other of where you’ve been, who you have been, what you have done.

I’ve been travelling a lot for the past couple of decades. New places every year, people coming and going– mostly going. My memories are spread waaaaaaaaay out in so many directions. I have no idea where half those people or places are.

I think I was once in Cairo but I can't be certain. I did write it down so it must be true.

This morning I discovered that our hotel had face cloths in the bathroom. Facecloths. I hadn’t seen or used a face cloth in years. I squirted some of the lovely lavender bath gel onto it and gave my face a good scrub. And with that I remembered the feeling of the facecloths I had used as a kid growing up in the forest, of the wood frame around our bath tub, of the little window that looked out at the forest at shoulder height.  I remembered chainsaws and howling dogs, gravel roads, trails I cleared in the forest, drawers where certain Archie comics were kept. All those things I had pretty much forgotten about because I hadn’t been anywhere near a face cloth to jog the memory.

There are a lot of other cues and contexts that I haven’t had much of in a long time, things that would keep and build my memory: family, colleagues, friends that stick around longer than a year or two, landmarks, tchotchkes, certain foods, certain sounds, certain smells.

There was a time, a long time ago, when I suddenly found myself in a cafe somewhere in Amsterdam late at night, completely and rather frighteningly decontextualized. I realized I had no idea how I’d got there, where I was meant to go or who I was. That moment passed eventually (space cakes don’t stay in the system forever) but the memory of, well, total memory loss, total decontextualization, stuck with me.  Every so often a similar though less intense feeling hits me when I’m traveling (or when I’m in Shanghai, but tired).  Nothing around me is capable of reminding me of any of my previous incarnations.

I'm pretty sure I was here, because I have photographic evidence.

And so there’s the idea of writing to hold onto those memories when you are away from home, unrooted. I write a lot to tether myself to something. But I’m not to be trusted. I exaggerate. I minimize. I edit. I don’t say things that might hurt people. I don’t talk about people who hurt me. I avoid certain issues. I try to convince myself that things are far better or far worse than they really are.  I make shit up. I once sent home a series of now famed mass emails, detailing the glittering wonders of London at Christmas, with the lights of Oxford street and the loveliness of the decorations and the parties. Not one word in those exuberant emails let on the fact that I was in the middle of a rather horrific break up with my then boyfriend and had spent many days crying my brains out. I cannot be trusted to record my own memory.

My memory, it seems, is made up almost entirely of hyperbole and omission.

For those of you who travel a lot, do you feel anything similar? Or is it just me?

Notes on Memory and Context (and the Decontextualization of Travel) is a post from: A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai

Yes, I’m on the other tour. The Work Tour.  My super-secret part-time job is one of those theoretically coveted types that both pays well and lets you stay in exotic locations like, say, Hefei or Nanjing or Dalian, put up in places like the cushy Hefei Hilton (reportedly, the cheapest Hilton in the world, folks, but the bubble bath still has glitter in it and the bath tub comes with your very own yellow rubber duckie, gratis!) or the Huhhot Shangri-la (I’m still waiting for that assignment). It’s not the CIA but it’s close.

Yes, dear readers, I’m not the brave backpacking globe trotter you might have mistaken me for. When in Nanjing, I sleep at the Sheraton and I get there by way of the soft-seat class on the posh G-trains. Work pays for it all. I’d probably go hard-seat class and sleep on a park bench if left to my own devices (though these days, I’m sure Doug would have a flight booked and adorable boutique hotel reserved before I got a chance to cave in to my old, painful habits).

Having just spent a cumulative week in both ‘Zhous in the past fortnight, what can I tell you about their delights? Which scenic points can I point you toward? Which culinary treasures can I enlighten you on?

Er, none. I was working. I was locked in a room for hours at a time, grilling people, cop-style. The only thing missing was the spotlight, which would have actually been really nice because our venues aren’t well heated.

My itinerary was generally thus: taxi-train (or plane)-taxi-university-taxi-hotel-bed-taxi-uni-taxi-train (or plane)-taxi-home.

Let me give you a few highlights of my whirlwind Tour de Zhou.

Even this shark saw more of Hangzhou than I did this time

36 Pointless Hours in Fuzhou

• If you fly Xiamen Airlines, keep your ears open for the utterly swoony safety announcements given by the dude with the smooth as silk bedroom voice, enhanced by a slight lisp. He sounded a Chinese Michael Palin trying too hard to be sexy. It was strangely addictive.

• Watch those taxis. My two colleagues and I grabbed a taxi from the queue at the Fuzhou airport and, distracted by how late we were due to our delayed flight, failed to notice that, um, the driver hadn’t cleared the meter from his ride in. The fapiao was conveniently draped over the number displayed, which was most certainly not zero. When we were barely three minutes into the drive, we noticed that we were already at 70 rmb. When the rate is 5rmb for the first 3km and then 1.5rmb thereafter, we had either surpassed the speed of light or the driver was a jackass. Luckily, since we work for the linguistic equivalent of the CIA,  we sent them the fapiao. Other colleagues flying in from around Guangdong were gouged for even more.

• The highway in from the airport looks a lot like the road into HongKong (water, bridges, hills, etc), but not so nice. Dark, satanic mills spewing dark clouds of awfulness line the sides at intervals, interrupted by abandoned warehousey-type buildings. After a while there were generic strips of shops, shops and blocks of flats, all concrete and tile, dirty from age and pollution. There were plenty of pleasant green, rolling hills, which were a lovely surprise after Shanghai’s impossible, interminable flatness. It was grimly raining, but I don’t hold that against Fuzhou, as it was doing the same in Shanghai.

• The ride in to where we had to go was an hour, mainly because the airport isn’t actually in Fuzhou but rather, um, somewhere else. When we pulled up at the gates of our HQ, we had only minutes to spare.

• They speak funny down there. Really. I had finally wrapped my head around the Shanghai-Anhui-Zhejiang-Jiangsu pronunciations, especially of people’s names (because, well, I sure do have to say a lot of people’s names aloud in my line of work) and was feeling fairly confident when I greeted people by name during interviews.  In Fuzhou, I mispronounced quite a few in wildly divergent ways, names I had been pretty comfortable with until then. The ‘e’ sounds were especially off, and not just in tone, like the difference between ‘hee’ and ‘hey’ and ‘huh’. I was probably incomprehensible to 99% of people. Either that or hilarious.

• Scenic spots? Cultural traditions? Festivals and quaint local art? I couldn’t tell you. Remember, I was locked in a room for two days, grilling people.

This is pretty much all I saw of the city

Look at the funky mix and match technology I found in my room!

Useless Fuzhou Food Tips

Outside the Fujian Teacher’s College there was a lot of street food that looked really good. There were also a number of really good looking little restaurants in the area. Did I try any? No. I was locked in a room for two days, with lukewarm watery green beans and sauteed greens and rice brought in by the supervisor for a hasty lunch. Did I try them for dinner? No, because our hotel was half an hour away, in the pouring rain, in a neighbourhood completely devoid of places where a lone female could grab a bite to eat. A banquet for 12, sure. A bite? No. I had the hotel’s version of Singapore noodles and a beer for an absurdly inflated price that could have bought me half a dozen of the same elsewhere. It was really good, for the record. I was tired and not fussy.

Aren't Singapore noodles historically not soupy?

 Place(s) to Stay in Fuzhou

I ended up at the Shangri-la, courtesy of my CIA overlords. It’s nice (and free!) but not as nice as, say, the Hefei Hilton or the Oakwood in Hangzhou. My inner backpacker is becoming a spoiled brat, it seems.

I should note that there was no rubber duckie, no free tea or coffee and no fresh fruit. The bath gel was not glittery. Devastating!

I swear, the 12-bed dorm in the Three Ducks Hostel in Paris was posher (or not, now that I think of it)

Coming and Going

Our flight back to Shanghai, barely 36 hours after flying in, was inexplicably delayed a few hours so we were stuck in the over- crowded, overpriced waiting area near the gate. It was pretty standard airport tedium. There was theoretically wifi but it didn’t work. When we finally boarded the plane hours later, I was so happy to hear Mr Seductive Lispy Safety Dude again. It was like coming home.

How to kill time in a culturally authentic way (30rmb tins of warm beer)

For the record, I did not actually sample the cherry bolognese.

 4 Even More Pointless Days in Hangzhou

Now, this one will be even more useless than my Fuzhou guide because I was there twice as long and saw even less of Hangzhou this time than I did of Fuzhou (mainly because there was no extended taxi ride to and from the airport where I could look out the window at the spewing smokestacks and abandoned buildings).

Given that Hangzhou is a renowned cultural and culinary capital of China, one of Marco Polo’s bucket list faves, and is written up in all sorts of poetry and painted on millions of scrolls, I probably should have ventured further afield than the two block path between my hotel and where I was working. But I didn’t. I was tired. I didn’t even get anywhere near the lake this time because it was dark by the time I finished work each day.

Also, I’m sent to Hangzhou on a monthly basis these days so my inner traveller just can’t get worked up over it after a long day in the linguistic salt mines. This is what they call ‘working for a living’. It’s unfortunate but true.

The trees were all pretty when I was in HangZhou in December with my parents

Look at how pretty the lake can be when you actually make the effort to go see it!

When I finished work most days, I trudged back to my room, ate crackers and cheese brought from Shanghai, poured a bubble bath and slept, absolutely exhausted. Occasionally I stopped for noodles or baozi en route. I had coffee with some of my temporary colleagues once or twice, as there’s a Starbucks next to the hotel. Mostly I was just locked up in one room or another for four long days. I went for a half-hearted swim in the deserted hotel pool on the Saturday morning before work. I also took a few pictures of mops. It rained the whole time I was there. I didn’t have an umbrella so I was frequently soaking wet and chilled in my unheated exam room. On the whole, I experienced absolutely nothing worth noting.

So, yeah, a totally authentic Hangzhou dinner

Coming and Going

I went second class on one of the super fast G-trains. From Shanghai Hongqiao train station to Hangzhou in less than an hour for 78rmb each way. The scenery outside is generally flat and bleak. I read my Kindle. Nothing to see here. The taxis from the train stations at either end are generally manic, reasonably priced and brief.

I don’t even know why I’m bothering to write this.

Here, have a look at the lovely park near the hotel that I occasionally walk in. It’s totally authentic, totally culturally enriching! Yay!

This is the park near the hotel. I walked there a few times, mostly in a predictable loop.

Hey Zhou: A Totally Impractical Guide to Hangzhou and Fuzhou is a post from: A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai

I saw this.

Naked lunch: Shall we dress the pig in corduroy and denim? Or satin and lace?

Yes, that’s a pig. And yes, she’s wearing her best quilted winter PJs to take the pig for a walk.

I had something else on my mind though. Something far more pressing.

I wanted to know, why wasn’t the pig properly dressed like every other mammal in this city?

Be all you can be!

I’m thinking of assembling a proper outfit for the pig for the next time I see him out for a walk. What should he wear? Is he the sporty type? Should I get him one of those hooded track suits I’ve seen on poodles? Or a jeans and button-down shirt set, like I’ve seen on a few larger dogs? Maybe a militia camouflage ensemble? And what about shoes? Velveteen booties? Sneakers? Black cotton Chinese slippers with, say, dragon embroidery?

Any suggestions?

Oh, and one more dried meat shot for the road.

At the dry cleaners, not only is our wedding dress airing, but also our future dinners

Nothing to Say Here (The Solutions Edition): Put A Shirt on That Pig! is a post from: A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai

See?

Mop, drying duck, drying fish, huge pants drying on a laundry line, black car illegally parked: Shanghai in a nutshell

Antique store mop isn't actually antique

A nuclear family. The small one is probably a boy. If not, they'll soon be trying for one.

The bunny, official mascot for The Year thereof, in its cage outside a restaurant, accompanied by mop.

Emblematic of a city: mop and indoor/outdoor winter pyjamas

Nothing to Say Here: Shanghai Street Photos (Mops!) is a post from: A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai

For your viewing pleasure (or whatever else you may define it as- I’m open to suggestions), here is the first in a series of random, uncategorized photos of Shanghai, taken for no particular reason.  Today’s theme: salted, cured meat hanging in the streets. Every winter, our street gets strung up with flayed fish, hung ducks and laundry lines of drying sausages. Last year we even had a series of grim, butterflied pigs. It’s fascinating in a morbid kind of way.

Chorizo

Furniture refinishing and flayed fish, together at last

You could use these as snow shoes, I'm sure

Got duck?

When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a moray (eel)

Hardware stall dude doubles as fish flayer in winter

Insert a quarter and a salted duck or fish drops

Nothing to Say Here: Shanghai Street Photos (Curing Winter Meats) is a post from: A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai

I haven’t even looked at them in over a decade. I kind of cringe at the thought. Judging by the quality of the writing in my high school notebooks found this past summer when I was back home cleaning out my old room, some things are better left unread. I’ve toned down the hyperbole over the years. I think. I hope.

Sorry, this is one of the only photos of myself from that era that is actually in digital format. Look, Hungarian wine!

Those journals recorded all the ways in which my hopeful heart was broken (so many ways, my god!), the endless nature of overnight bus rides and the long slog to find affordable accommodation (dorm beds, sofas, floors, benches), the tedium of pretty much living off bread and cheese for weeks on end, the chronic bronchial infections from living in damp, crappy hostels, the minutiae of daily life, down to the last cup of tea and the doings of people whose names I have long since forgotten. 

When I moved to Turkey in 2002, I started sending out mass emails detailing my new life in Central Anatolia- the staring, the mustaches, the evil eye, the stinky pastirma and sucuk, the Selcuk tombs found in empty car parks and in the middle of a traffic roundabout, the enormous bottles of strong, soapy cologne.  These missives attempted to be funny (and maybe they were). I omitted the heartbreak and tedium, as those weren’t interesting to people in my address book. Being nearly married off to the brother of a woman we met on the Ankara metro was.

The mass emails eventually mutated into my LiveJournal prototype blog, which had maybe 5 readers. Between 2004 and 2010, I shifted back to my old journaling tendencies and started writing down everything around me. Minutiae reigned. I updated it daily.  There was often no subject line and no focus, no point, no tidy conclusion. Lots of descriptors. Lots of meandering sentences. Looking back now, I’m happy to have a record of my Turkish daily life- it seems so far away now, as if it belonged to a whole other person.

Blah blah blah blah, etc.

The Livejournal writing faded away when I started up this site for my MatadorU course. I started to have topics: alleys of Shanghai, slow travel, learning Mandarin, doomed street chickens, genocidal tourism.  My writing became more focused; the hyperbole and personal minutiae fell by the wayside.  If I showed any emotion or gave away any personal information, it was tightly controlled and had a point to it.

This past September, when my semi-unemployment was confirmed, I had grand plans to write more. I was going to expand this blog, make it bigger, better, more. I was going to update it several times a week. I was going to write a book. I was going to be a writer.

That kind of didn’t happen.

I stopped writing, in fact. You may have noticed the dearth of updates. Once every few weeks, at best. Most of my writing has been over at Wok With Me, Baby, and that’s because it’s just so much easier to talk about chicken soup and cookies than it is to come up with an endless stream of thoughtful, concise, witty, well-controlled pieces on intelligent topics pertaining (even tangentially) to living in Shanghai. Mostly I just feel like I have absolutely nothing I have to say. Or want to say. Nothing I want to say out loud. Nothing I feel a need to share. Nothing I feel able to share.

Which is a problem, really.

This site lies fallow for weeks on end while I busy myself in my head with a bazillion incoherent thoughts. My Facebook page gets inundated with random photos of mops and bunnies and pithy captions while my actual writing falls by the wayside. It’s rather embarrassing.

I’m trying to figure out what to do with this site. I don’t want it to fade away, shedding readers and interest until it finds its way into the forgotten blog graveyard.

I’m also trying to figure out why my brain refuses to want to write this year, now that I have the free time. I couldn’t even complete my Nanowrimo this time. I just stopped. I had nothing to say. Where did my words go? Where did I go? What happened?

Sometimes I think this year wasn’t meant to be my year of writing, that this chunk of relatively free time was meant to be a silent retreat instead. I’ve been writing non-stop about everything, all the time, for decades now. Maybe I’m supposed to take this time to go back to bed with a cup of tea and say absolutely nothing about anything. It’s hard to say.

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Scoldings?

Nothing to See Here; Kindly Move Along is a post from: A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai

Sometimes I think that these visits devolve into madness and confused terror because I’m generally as integrated into my home abroad as a fish is in helium: the language, the unwritten cultural rules, the subtleties of traffic regulations generally evade me and I spend most of my life flailing about, hoping to not screw up too badly or to get anyone killed. I’m going down ignominiously and I’m very obviously taking them with me.

That said, I’m not the only one who can seriously traumatize their parents when they come to visit you abroad! You can too with my simple yet effective list of hints and tips!

Survivors!

Top 4 Tips on How to Traumatize Your Parents When They Come to Visit You!

Maim Yourself

I’m really good at this one. It’s a skill I honed back in Turkey, whereby I made sure to be seriously  injured just days before their arrival, or alternately, to fall gravely ill just days after their arrival. Both work equally well.

They can be greeted at the airport by a wincing, pale, shuffling daughter, as was the case when I found myself in the middle of a 5 car pile up in Istanbul just three days before they flew in. I was barely able to walk due to massive soft tissue damage (and a concussion, to boot!) so my school loaned me one of their drivers to help me pick them up at the airport. It’s always a heartening sight to see your only child shuffling slowly toward your exit gate, leaning heavily on the luggage cart, letting out little yelps of searing agony, supported at the elbow by a doting middle aged Turkish man.

Alternately, as noted, you could always wait until they have settled in before you thoroughly traumatize them. This is what I did the year before the car accident and it was equally effective, if not more so. I managed to somehow contract a corneal ulcer just days after their arrival, which slammed my right eyelid shut, reduced my eyeball itself to a horrific meaty mess, and resulted in daily hospital visits and round the clock antibiotic drops they had to administer every hour or so for most of their one month visit. In their jet lagged state, they took turns getting up at 2am or 4am to pry my hideous lid back to administer the drops. I very nearly lost that eye- isn’t that something every parent wants to witness for their only child?

Provide Extreme Discomfort

I’m good at this one. It’s not as dramatic as maiming yourself but it can be prolonged and quite effective. For example, for the past two visits to Shanghai it has been so hideously bone-chilling cold that even my Canadian mother can’t get warm. I insist on long walks along roads that act as wind tunnels, blasting icy air into their pores then take them to unheated noodle joints for lunch. At the other end of the spectrum, you could also drag them to central Turkey in summer time and insist they go on rather long hikes through baking, open terrain. Other options include taking them to Hong Kong and Macau before the shoulder season eases the heat and humidity somewhat. Again, insist on the long, arduous hikes in unshaded areas.

To reach these places, I suggest you take overnight buses if possible, preferably the kind that still allow smokers and which pause every few hours for smoke and pee breaks throughout the night, interrupting any hope of sleep.  For best effect, I recommend a long arduous hike after the 12 hour overnight bus ride. If  you prefer to stay in the city, take them to the most crowded, aggressive areas for a quiet stroll after their sleepless, cramped night on the bus. I recommend a Saturday stroll along Istiklal caddesi in Istanbul, particularly if the riot police are out.  Nanjing Dong Lu in Shanghai, with its persistent touts and throngs of wide-eyed Chinese day-trippers ploughing into you, is also handy for this. In addition to the sleep deprivation caused by the overnight bus, you could always take it a step further and do as I did over a decade ago in London, when I got the inspired idea to take them on an all-day walking tour through the whole city immediately after they landed. So what if it was 4 in the morning in Vancouver? We needed to see Camden Town!

Mind your step

Put Them in Harm’s Way

This one is actually quite simple and needs little explanation. It works best if you are living in a developing country. For example, one of the best ways to bring about immediate terror is to take them from the airport to their hotel in a taxi. In Shanghai, I recommend combining one of the dodgy red or dark blue taxis with a rainy day and a driver who loves both the elevated expressways and playing chicken with other drivers at great speed. He should also be unable to understand the phrase, ‘please slow down’ in any language, including Mandarin as spoken by a non-Shanghainese.

As we discovered this past week when I took my parents out for dinner not long after their arrival in Shanghai, a very quick and easy route to trauma is to take them out to dinner at a restaurant which then proceeds to catch on fire. This isn’t as hard as it sounds. The key to maximizing the impact of such a simple action is to make sure you are sitting next to a window looking out over the kitchen window so that you can see the flames shooting out of the uncapped propane canister which is just outside the window.  Stare at the flames for a good minute or so before reacting, as it is rather hard to know in China when things are going horribly wrong or if they are totally normal. Lull them into thinking this is normal. Then evacuate as soon as the restaurant starts filling with smoke and the electricity shorts and plunges both floors into darkness. Allow the throngs to clog the stairway before your parents have a chance to leave. Bonus points for not allowing your mother time to finish her much needed beer before being thrust into the acrid, jostling throng.

Bikes on sidewalk to dodge

Assign Daunting Tasks

This one is also fairly easy to arrange and can be done in conjunction with other activities mentioned above. For example, when I found myself horribly damaged after that car crash in Turkey I sent my jet lagged father out to pay my rent and bills which were due but which i had been unable to pay as I couldn’t walk down our steep hill to the bank. The bank spoke no English and my father spoke no Turkish but I recklessly sent him down there anyway.

Another option is to agree to meet them somewhere after you finish work, cavalierly telling them that they can easily get a taxi to the destination but failing to explain to them how to tell the driver where to go. Similarly, you could send them down to the wet market to buy vegetables for dinner without explaining prices, weight units or arming them with even a word of Mandarin.

Braving the hordes

Have you any further tips on how to make your parents’ visit as nerve wracking and psychologically damaging as possible?

Top 4 Tips on How to Traumatize Your Parents When They Come to Visit You is a post from: A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai

What a pleasing shade of green

As I sink deeper into my hermit-like faux-unemployment and entertain myself with the delusional quest to make flatbreads out of every conceivable noodle dough,  I find myself somewhat at a loss for words here.

I mean, this is, in theory, a blog about Shanghai. An impractical guide to Shanghai but still, a blog about Shanghai.

Do you see any updates about Shanghai? Any at all? Even tangentially?

Er. No.

I think I’ve kind of run out of things to say about this city, even though I really haven’t said much at all. Not unless you count mops and murdered chickens and smog and chill. My repertoire, you see, is almost painfully limited, which is why I don’t make my living as a writer. The market for doomed street chickens is limited.

Recently, however, out of the blue, I was commissioned to write a feature-length article about Shanghai. You know, the kind of article that is intelligent and thoughtful and insightful enough to merit a substantial transfer of funds into your bank account. After two days of panic attacks and banging my head against every conceivable surface, I sat myself down and wrote it. The first dozen drafts were absolute shite. I realized I had way too much to say about this city but most of it emerged as an incoherent rant about pollution, grim city-scapes,  dodging black cars on sidewalks and bleak alienation. That was not good. Especially since this was for a travel periodical.

The crazy thing is, I don’t hate Shanghai. I never did. And now that I’m underemployed, I actually kind of like it. And the more I thought about it while I was writing my article, the more I realized I really ought to branch out from my current set of themes here.

The problem with actually living and working in a city long term is that you develop a certain set of pathways that you tread heavily, ignoring pretty much everything else. It’s called a daily routine. Many people have one. Mine just happened to follow the route of animal executions, the crowded line 1 Metro,  and the pleasant tree-lined roads of the French Concession where scooters and black cars feel free to take short cuts on the sidewalks, knee-capping pedestrians.  From our 16th story flat, I had a daily uninterrupted view of acres and acres of grim, overcast, densely urban sprawl. Earlier this week, I simply refused to leave the flat for two whole days. I just couldn’t bring myself to face it. I often feel that way.

Until my friend’s wedding last week, I hadn’t even seen the Bund in months (like, last February?). The Bund! The symbol of the city itself! And you know what?

It was…lovely.

Did you just hear that?

I just said that something in Shanghai was lovely.

*the sound of dozens of readers fainting from shock*

But it’s true!

See, it isn't awful!

When you’re standing out on the deck of a lovely boat, chugging up and down the river after sunset with an open bar supplying free flow bubbly, with a gaggle of good friends all consolidated in one place (and all quite happy due to it being a wedding and the bar being open), this city is remarkably inspiring.

With that in mind, I’ve decided I really have to get off my ass and steer myself away from my hermit-like well-trodden path and make use of my underemployment. I still have 3 walking tours to finish writing for that app company, which will need a fair amount of stomping around. Maybe this can help me to branch away from the chickens and mops into something more coherent and sane, something that actually (*ahem- cough cough*) is about Shanghai.

Speaking of doomed fowl, why did this chicken cross Yongjia Lu?

Now that I’ve dealt with the chickens, mops, grimness and alienation, and my vow to tread other routes through this fine city, I’d like to draw your attention to the second half of this post- the part that has been foreshadowed by that green Versatile Blogger badge up at the top. I thought it terribly ironic that at just the point when I feel the least versatile (chickens! mops! grim!), I’m nominated twice for the intra-blogger honor.

The honour was bestowed upon me by the lovely Istanbul’s Stranger and the Quiet Photographer. Please give them a warm hand.

Having been nominated, I’m now supposed to do one of two things, though I’m not sure which as each nomination was ever so slightly different. I gather that this is kind of the blog version of that telephone game you play as kids.

You start the chain by saying, “Hey, congrats! I just nominated you for the Versatile Blogger award because you’re really, um, versatile! Now, just list 7 things about yourself that you think show your versatility and then nominate three other bloggers that you think are worthy of such an honour!” and the last person at the end of the line gets a comment on their blog saying, “Hey, congrats! I just nominated you for the Versatile Blogger award because you’re virile! Now, just list 17 things about yourself that you think show your verbosity and nominate twenty other bloggers that you think have no sense of humour!”

The 7 things I was supposed to write about were:

• 7 quirky things about you
• 7 things no one knows about you

Unfortunately, I am not quirky. Weird, offensive and hermit-like, sure, but not quirky. Quirky implies a certain naive cuteness that I can’t even fake.

And as for the things people don’t know about me? Well, if others don’t know it then either I don’t want to share it or even I’m not really aware of it. I’m a pretty open book.

I’ve decided to just make up a list of random stuff that I can actually remember. I have a terrible memory, which is just as well as my brain would be awfully full by now given how many absolute life changes I’ve made over the years.

In no particular order, with a few swiped from a similar list request way back in my LiveJournal days (remember, I have a terrible memory so even just dredging up a few memories takes ages– this is why I’m a compulsive diarist), here are some, er, things about me. I’ve illustrated a few with photos, where applicable.

• I once taught the brother in law of Turkish President Abdullah Gül French for three weeks back in 2003 in Kayseri. I quit when he casually declared how fat and old I looked.

This would be me (and my lovely friend Erik) around that time. See how fat and old I look? Gah!

• As a kid, I used to be so terrified of fire that I used to run screaming out the door when my father lit our cast-iron wood stove. Unfortunately, this was the only source of heat in our house, deep in the forest, so I was pretty much running out that door on a daily basis, even with three feet of snow of the ground.

• My fingers are double jointed in ways that allow me to regularly horrify and disgust people.

If only I could exploit this for profit.

Have you met my brontosaurus?

• I was born on Friday the 13th AND I am left handed (both sinister and gauche).

• I was blond for nearly a year in my early 20s (a very spiky pixie cut with varying shades of platinum to odd yellow, depending on who did my touch-ups). Since my uniform at that time was tight black jeans and Docs, I was regularly getting approached by guys who inexplicably thought it would be cool to have a kooky lesbian side-kick. Seriously. Even Keone, the descendent-of-Hawaiian-royalty (turned surfer/banker) I met in London who decided I’d make a fine accessory. They all lost interest when I grew my hair out and dyed it red. The fact that I had a boyfriend the whole time didn’t seem to shake their conviction that I had other preferences.

• In my late teens and early 20s, I was a fierce music groupie and somehow managed to worm my way quite deeply into the mid-’90s Irish music scene in a surprisingly naive and innocent way (it never ever occurred to me that groupies slept with musicians- I just liked music a lot). It probably sounds quite irrelevant now, but I managed to somehow find myself invited to all sorts of pub sessions with Glen Hansard of The Frames, Luka Bloom, Christy Moore’s entire extended family, Clannad,  Sinead O’Connor, Brian Kennedy, everyone in Hothouse Flowers, and I was casually introduced to The Edge whilst strolling through St Stephen’s Green with Liam O Maonlai (of Hothouse Flowers). I also crashed at Liam’s house for a week when I was homeless in Dublin, and was the one who picked up the phone when Van Morrison called to chat.  Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil invited me to go clubbing once too (clad only in a towel after a show, backstage at a theatre in Seattle when I was too young to get into clubs in the US)

• I own about 10 pairs of knee-high stripy socks in various states of disintegration. Kadikoy Sali Pazari in Istanbul used to be my source for them but they stopped selling them around 2005, so I had to stock up in Sophia, Bulgaria for a few years. Now I get them from a tiny little place on Shanxi Nan Lu, though they are meant to be thigh-high. They are knee-high for me. Yes, I am a monster.

And my random number of nominations for Virile Verbose Versatile Blogger du semaine are…. *drum roll*

1.  Sally the Unbrave Girl, who is occasionally brave
2. Fiona, who doesn’t even live on Nanchang Lu anymore
3. Jeannie the Nomadic Chick, who doesn’t even own a herd of yaks
4. Kelly, who puts Chinese wives to shame in Hebei
5. Mike, whose Fevered Mutterings make me happy

Um. I’m sure there are more who deserve this intangible award but it’s Saturday morning after a marathon 2 days of speaking exams in Hangzhou and my memory is worse than usual. Also, we’re out of coffee.

To claim your award, just drag and drop the green badge at the top and approximately replicate what I’ve done here.

Congratulations all! I bake a virtual cake in your honor!

I’m Nothing if Not Versatile. PS Dear Shanghai, I Don’t Hate You Any More is a post from: A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai

Why was I in Dalian? And where is Dalian anyway?

Well, let me tell you what it isn’t. It isn’t the long form version of Dali, so I definitely wasn’t down in Yunnan, smoking a ton of weed supplied by twinkly-eyed grandmas with dreadlocked backpackers. It also isn’t Dalyan, down in the lovely Muğla province in the South West of Turkey, near Marmaris and Fethiye.  No Lycian tombs for me, no ancient amphitheaters, no blue skies or access to decent meze and raki. Alas.

Screenshot from the Dalian wikipedia page

The Dalian (aka 大连) that I was shipped off to for a frenzied weekend of Super Secret Educatrix Work is the one up in Liaoning province on a little peninsula looking over at Korea, on the verge of being Dong Bei but not quite. It’s the northernmost southern port and the southernmost northern port. Or something like that.

It’s northern enough that the people are really huge (comparatively) and there are cabbages everywhere; however it’s still southern enough that I was getting by in just a cardigan at the end of October. It is apparently famed for its supposed warm water beaches and, if my students are to be believed, its modernity as exemplified by shopping malls and tall shiny buildings. From what I’ve gathered, it was the southern tip of the Trans Siberian Railway back when northern China was colonized by the Russians.

Ceci n'est pas Dalian. This is Harbin. Isn't it awesome?

This doesn’t mean, however, that it escaped with an awesomely old-skool Russian onion-domed downtown core like Harbin. No. Dalian is pretty architecturally dull, actually, from what I could glean. Aside from a few anachronistic neo-classical public buildings and some older, walled houses that I passed by in the taxi from the airport, everything else was pretty much the usual low-key apartment blocks intermingled with generic boxy businesses. I’m sure there are a few traditional Chinese gardens tucked away in parks somewhere but, like I said, I was barely there.

Why was I up on that little peninsula way up North, looking over at Korea? Well, it has to do with my Super Secret Side Job– or rather, now that I’m unemployed- my Super Secret Main Job. The Beijing office was short staffed so last Thursday I got a phone call telling me that I had a flight booked for 9am on Saturday, returning Sunday night. Yes, I am a true jet setter in the nerdiest interpretation of the term.

I spent the entire weekend in about four places: the airport, the taxi, the hotel and (mostly) the university. I am now intimately acquainted with Liaoning Normal University (辽宁 师范 大学).

I am here now to give you my totally impractical tour de Dalian, educatrix-nerd style. Come join me as we explore the richness of Dalian that I was able to capture during my whirlwind tour!

Transportation from Shanghai

The 6:45am Maglev to Pudong Airport isn't exactly bustling

My flight left at 9:10 from Pudong International, which meant I had to be out the door and in a taxi by 6am on Saturday morning. Although 6am is a brutally awful hour to have to be up and awake, it is a great time to get a taxi over to the LongYang Lu Maglev train station: a journey that normally takes at least half an hour if not longer only took 15 minutes.

The looping elevated expressways were deserted and my driver was able to make his wide turns across as many lanes as he wanted. Crossing the river over to Pudong, we shared the normally packed bridge with a diesel spewing moving truck and a motorized tricycle. I was at the Maglev station by 6:20am, which was really unnecessary as the first train to the airport didn’t leave until 6:45.

I had forgotten to eat breakfast at home because it was 6am and I don’t like to see food before at least 8am, so I figured I would eat at the airport or on the plane. At Pudong Airport, you have a few choices: the Acting Cafe monopoly after the security check, where a coffee costs 70rmb and a few rubbery dumplings are valued at 50rmb, or the KFC and Lawsons just as you exit the Maglev station, sandwiched between Terminal 1 and Terminal 2.

I briefly poked my head into the Lawsons and rejected the glass cabinet full of lukewarm steamed buns, the shelf full of spongey sweet fake bread, the refrigerator cabinet full of oversweet mung bean yogurt and wheat flavoured soy milk and yesterday’s fake sushi. I then briefly queued at KFC, studying their breakfast menu (congee, fried dough, dubious looking eggy meaty sandwiches) before deciding that now was as good a time as any to start a cleansing fast.

I checked in using the China Eastern machines, totally not grasping the intuitive touch screen interface with such regularity that the poor woman stationed there to offer assistance turned into my full-time check-in assistant. I don’t do well with computerized instructions at 7am.

My gate was one of those hidden gates, tucked away in the lower floors of the airport, reachable only by bypassing all the other gates on the main floor then going down a series of escalators into the bowels of the departure lounge. It was full of early morning travellers clearing out their phlegm and trying to sneak cigarettes when they knew they were not allowed to.

I found an empty end of a bench, pushed aside the overflowing plastic baggie full of orange peels and cigarette ash that had been occupying it, and amused myself by alternating between attempting to read a book on my Kindle (Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent, if you must know- still subversive after all these years), sending out wholly lower case tweets using said e-reader’s wonderful firewall-leaping 3G powers, and watching a never ending loop of public service announcements on a flat screen television that was installed about two feet away from my left ear.

My favourite one featured a cartoon pig who had contracted H1N1 from his inconsiderate piggy girlfriend who had given him a kiss on the cheek through a face mask. He spent a lot of time rapping excitedly about public morality, clad in Qing Dynasty robes.  There was a surreal chorus of rapping bunnies with buck teeth, exaggeratedly slanted eyes and less elaborate pre-revolutionary robes, hands clasped in the manner of overtly racist WW2 American cinema.

The flight itself was uneventful, though for the first time ever, I was not fed on a Chinese domestic flight. The cleansing fast was definitely happening. I felt pure and light already.

Transport in Dalian

Dalian airport is quite small and simply laid out. You arrive and, well, you walk out and there’s the taxi rank. Are there public buses to take from the airport? Probably. I wouldn’t know. I had to get to a specific hotel at the edge of the city by a specific time in order to catch the shuttle to the university so I couldn’t be bothered with attempting the more authentic local option.

Traffic in Dalian heading out of the airport around 11am was pretty dire. My taxi driver kept himself amused by pulling off the highway every few hundred meters and taking shortcuts through the parking lots of car dealerships and supermarkets. I occupied myself by staring at the beer ad on the head rest in front of me.

Call 1-6666 Booze-Wants-Booze-Bar!

My inner linguistics nerd had latched on to a potential hidden pun in the ad and it wouldn’t let go until I had worked it out. If you look at the last four digits of the Carlsberg Chill phone number long enough, you start to realize that if you say it out loud it sounds remarkably like Booze Wants Booze Bar. Perfect for a beer campaign.

See?

• 9 (Jiǔ 九)  sounds exactly like liquor/booze (Jiǔ 酒)
• want (Yào 要) sounds an awful lot like the yao you use for ’1′ when dictating telephone numbers. I don’t know which tone that one uses.
•  9 (Jiǔ 九)-8 (Bā 八) sounds exactly like booze bar (jiǔbā 酒吧)

This is why I’m really not a good travelling companion.

Accommodation in Dalian

The Super Secret cabal I work for pays for my accommodation so I don’t really get a choice in the matter. I also know absolutely nothing about other accommodation options in the city. The folks I work for have immaculate taste in business hotels, however, so I can’t complain.

Thanks to them, I am a card carrying member of both the Hilton Hotel frequent-users club (Hello Hefei!) as well as the Sheraton’s Preferred Members club (Hi Nanjing!).

In Dalian, I was sent to the Grande Teda Mercure Hotel (or maybe it was the Teda Grande Mercure? I forget), which was on the residential outskirts of the city, nowhere near anything particularly interesting. It overlooked a rather pleasant hill on one side though. If you’ve spent as many years in pancake-flat Shanghai as I have, you too would be shocked to see such a pleasant landmass rising up outside your window.

I was shocked to discover a protruding landmass outside my hotel room window. I understand it is known as a 'hill'.

I have no idea how much the rooms cost as I didn’t have to pay for mine. I can tell you, however, that the lobby is magnificent in a truly Liberace manner. I can also tell you that, much to my surprise, I ended up queuing behind a former colleague from Istanbul whom I hadn’t seen since 2005. It turned out he also works for the Super Secret Organization, whose name I cannot tell you upon penalty of death. It is a very small world.

The hotel lobby was a study in understatement and delicate taste

The rooms at the Teda Grande Mercure (or Mercure Teda Grande?) are quite decent, at least by the standards of hotels I probably couldn’t afford if I actually had to pay for them myself.  Big curtained windows, wooden desk, flat screen tv, slightly obscenely arranged fruit plate (that banana really should not be placed between those two apples like that), big bouncy bed with a bazillion overstuffed pillows, wide array of pleasingly scented toiletries, bathroom with both ergonomically designed tub as well as a shower stall with one of those lovely overhead raindrop-style nozzles. The usual. Oh, and a complimentary plate of petit fours.

Unlike the Hangzhou hotel I was put up in the previous weekend, however, this one did not have birds nest or shark fin soup available through room service. Which was perfectly fine with me.

An educatrix's guide to gluttonous living

Eating in Dalian

Given that the hotel was in a desperately inconvenient location and I was pressed for time due to having to catch a service bus to the university within half an hour of checking in, I was limited to the hotel’s lobby restaurant for my lunch upon arrival. Their menu consisted of thoroughly un-Chinese a la carte options and a brutally overpriced business set lunch which I didn’t even look at.

This is what a Salade Nicoise Dalian-style looks like. They even had little whole wheat buns with butter!

Crappy phone photo, sorry

My former colleague from Istanbul joined me at dinner for their massive buffet, which was really quite impressive. However, I have no photos to show you as we were too busy stuffing our faces with sushi and sashimi and petit fours and egg tarts and attempting to catch up on six years of news and life stories to stop and take a picture. The same goes for breakfast, though for different reasons: 1. It was 6:30am on a Sunday morning 2. I mostly just drank coffee 3. toast and butter isn’t exactly interesting to photograph.

They had 3 choices of congee in the breakfast buffet, including a pellet-y millet one, and a wide array of congee toppings including a half dozen pickled or fermented veggies, dried shrimp, something cabbagey, and some deep red tofu labelled Chinese Cheese. There was also the usual steamed buns, dumplings, fried dough and all, but, again, it was Sunday morning at 6:30. I had a piece of toast and a coffee. Or rather, four coffees. With hot soy milk for a touch of regional authenticity– though, as noted by someone rather astutely on Twitter, bean juice in coffee is really weird.

Sights and Attractions

I know that Dalian is famed for its beaches and coastline and relatively fresh air. It also seems to have some pleasant hills and those aforementioned neo-classical public buildings. There may be even more things to explore but, again, I wouldn’t know.

I’ll show you what I saw.

Welcome, ladies and gents, to the grand tour of one particular building at the Liaoning Normal University, where I spent most of my weekend locked away in a small room. Let me take you on a photographic journey far beyond your wildest travel dreams…

This may look a bit familiar if you have ever been to Phnom Penh

Unlike Shanghai, Dalian can sometimes offer excellent natural light

As you can see, the light adds a lovely mood to the still life with potted trees.

How to make education feel more like prison: use bolted metal doors. This is where I spent my weekend.

Dalian is kind of pretty in Autumn. This was the view from my prison cell.

A typical university room triptych

This is what I am guaranteed to see in every room I am assigned. It seriously hurts my inner Virgo.

The ladies' room. And yes, the stalls only come up to waist height. After all, it's shoulder height when squatting.

I have an old skool wiring fetish. Please excuse this. This was in the hallway just outside my room.

I should note, with barely contained excitement, that this particular university was a hotbed of mop action. Yes! Mops are back! I thought I’d documented all possible permutations of moppery in Shanghai but Dalian proved to be a revelation of innovation.

For my own indulgence, here is the first in a series of Dalian mops.

Mops deconstructed, angled.

Closeted mops, with shadow and light

Returning to Shanghai

The only really noteworthy thing I have to say about this end of the journey was this. Did you know that you can buy live, bound crabs upon arrival in Shanghai? Yes! Right there at the arrivals gate as you step off your plane: crab kiosks! Dozens of them!

Crabs: You know you want one.

Hello, Dalian! A Totally Impractical Guide to That City up by Korea is a post from: A Totally Impractical Guide to Living in Shanghai