Tuesday Oct 5 Shanghai

We got up to go on the Jewish tour.  I was feeling OK; not great, just OK.  We went to the Peace Hotel, an old classic art deco place from the 1930s.  We met the group, who were not hard to spot.  Our guide was Dvir Bar-Gal, an Israeli journalist who came here 9 years ago for a story and stayed.  More about his story later.  I won’t go into all the details, but basically the story of the Jews here comes down to 3 families:  the Sassoons, the Khaduris, and the Harduns.  They were Iraqi Jews who came to China to do some trading of opium starting with Elias David Sassoon in the mid 1840s.  The Khaduris and Hardouns came later as clerks for the Sassoons, and struck out on their own.  The Peace Hotel, which once was the tallest building in Shanghai, was built and lived in by one of the Sassoon descendents.  When troubles began in Europe in the 20s and 30s, Jews came here because of a long standing tradition of open immigration in Shanghai.  No visa needed, just show up and test your luck.  When the Germans really began to crack down in the later 30s and during the war, several Japanese Righteous Gentiles, Mr Sugihara and Doctor Ho wrote thousands of exit visas in Lithuania and Vienna respectively to allow people to get to Shanghai, then in Japanese hands.  The Germans tried to impress on the Japanese how unsuitable the Jews were, but they really had no history of anti-Semitism, so they really could care less.  They did accommodate them by making a ghetto for “stateless persons” arriving after 1937, which certainly did not include all the Jews.  After the war, most of the Jews left for Israel or America, but there are a number remaining. 

Dvir also told us of his “calling” and why he has stayed in Shanghai.  In looking for the Jewish cemeteries, he found that none were left.  One was the site of an office, one a shopping center, etc.  What happened to the headstones? He began looking and found them as walkways, chopping blocks, buried in swamps, etc.  He has been collecting them and is trying to convince the Chinese government to allow a memorial site in the old ghetto area.  Chinese bureaucracy is Chinese bureaucracy.  He is still working at it, but wasn’t even able to ask for donations, as he is still too far from approval fro the project.

We had lunch at a snack shop in the Bund area where the Peace Hotel with a couple from New York who was on the Jewish tour.  The 4 of us then went to the Expo.  Here was our only rip-off of the entire trip, although it wasn’t much.  The taxi took us on a very long ride around Shanghai until we reached the entrance gate.  I wasn’t completely sure until the ride home was less than 1/3 the price.

The Expo is huge.  People, people, people.  And we were there late in the day when the crowds were less!!  We walked in by the huge China pavilion, but the lines were 2-3 hours long.  Israel was nearby, and we went to the VIP entrance, and flashed our passports with Israeli stamps from our trip in the spring.  Sometimes it helps to be Jewish!  The exhibit emphasized Israel’s strong intellectual prowess and technological achievements.  They finely tuned the message to match the Chinese exhortation of A Better Life.  The one thing I was surprised they didn’t include was a reference to the age of the Jewish People.  The Chinese are always talking about the fact that they have been a people for 5000 years with the same language to which I say “So?”.  But al least now the Chinese have some value in tradition and history, and we can share that with them.

After Israel, we hit Cambodia and the Shanghai City exhibits, both of which were pretty lame.  We chose our sites by the line length and how far it was to walk.  Very practical, but enough already.  We had walked around for a few hours at the Expo, and most of the day on the Jewish tour.  We were beat.

Monday Oct 4 Shanghai

This has been a weird 24 hours.  I woke up with a feverSunday and felt like total crap.  I dragged myself through the Shanghai museum, which was wonderful, but I couldn't really appreciate it.  I spent the rest of the day in bed, schvitzing.  Bah.  Ann went on to the pagoda, park and other stuff including the acrobat show.  I don't think I'm too upset to have missed them.

Jewish tour today, and then the Expo

Sat Oct 2 Shanghai

Early plane flight.  It's interesting how we react to different guides.  Li, from Xian, was friendly enough, but had some very annoying speech patterns.  One of them was that she wouldn't shut up.  Every second, she was talking, whether or not there was anything new to say.  She repeated herself on everything.  She tried, but it got on our nerves.

We awoke to a beautiful blue sky day.  It might have changed a lot about our feelings of Xian, but I doubt we're coming back to check it out.  Maybe we're both getting Paul's SAD, and hating the gray weather.

We arrived in Shanghai to more of the same weather.  We were met by "Charlie", who said we couldn't pronounce his real name.  Driving around this city of 20 million, we were amazed to see that it is built on a very human scale.  The land here is very flat, and you can see for miles.  It is all city, but there are low buildings and medium sized buildings and a few very tall buildings.  Yes, it goes on and on, but it feels very manageable from the ground.  Despite the mist, we could see the architecture is very varied and interesting.  Lunch was at another touristy place, but at least there were lots of Chinese there also.  We overlooked the river and the Bund area, where most of the buildings dated to the 1930s.  An oasis of classicism in the middle of modern.

After lunch, we were delivered to a shopping street.  Again, this was not only westerners running around.  Since it was now raining, we bought some umbrellas and sat at a coffee place to people watch.

We had to negotiate with Charlie about Monday.  Ann had booked a separate Jewish tour of Shanghai, and the conflicted with their plans for us.  Charlie realized that he could give us our Monday dinner tonight, and then we would be free to go to the Expo.  The only problem was the tickets for the Expo, since we were booked as a "group" at a specific time to go in.  So we will abandon those and just walk in when we get there.  Chalk it up to stupidity tax.

Dinner was at another touristy place with dancing girls.  Again, most of the crowd was not Caucasian, but the meal was again nondescript.  I fear most of Shanghai will be like this for the food.  Tonight had been our chance to be on our own.

After dinner, we tried to walk around, but the rain and wind really prevented much walking.  We went back to our hotel (one of the tall buildings), and had a drink from the bar on the 50^th floor.  Even with the mist, the view was spectacular.  Many of the buildings have lights, either on the upper floors and roof, or on the sides.  There was a kaleidoscope of colors.  The elevated highways running through this part of town have blue lights underneath, giving a blue glow to the streets below.  Many of the buildings have the same light pattern on them, with a blue neon light running around the upper floors with the white lights above.  Cute.  We could see the Expo, which is about a mile or so from our hotel.  It  is on either side of the river, with a bridge joining the halves.  The bridge had a rainbow of colors.  Very very pretty.

Interestingly, as we drove and walked around, I got the feeling of less traffic and less craziness.  The drivers still barge right ahead, but appear to stop for people in crosswalks.  There are definitely less cars on the road than in Beijing and Xian.  Maybe because it's Saturday night, but that doesn't seem too good an explanation.  More as the week progresses.

Friday Oct 1 Xian

Another non-descript all-inclusive breakfast at the hotel.

Li picked us up and we started off for the Banpo Museum.  This traced the history of the area concentrating on Neolithic times.  There had been an archeological site nearby, which prompted the authorities to create the museum.  It was actually very interesting, showing the earliest stone tools, pottery, and graves, dating back to 7000BCE.  The explanations did not exactly trace the development of this civilization, or give dates or a good time line, but we could tell from the creativity and complexity of the items where things came in.  There was a diorama of life of this era, with a wonderful explanation of the tribal life with everyone equal as a sort of "primitive communism".  Politics enters everything.  The actual site is preserved with explanations of the apparent home building practices with post holes noted.  There was even one house with 3 obvious layers of post holes, indicating successive buildings at that exact site.

On our way to the Terra Cotta Warriors, we had to stop at another factory.  This had the largest showroom we have seen yet, with more and more schlock.  And to top it off, the prices were higher than anything we've had yet.  They just don't stop.

We got to the Terra Cotta Warrior site and walked in.  Again, more and more people.  There are 3 excavations, with huge enclosures over each.  We started with a cheesy movie in 360 degree format (not Imax as we were told it would be).  It looked like it was filmed in the 70's.  I laughed through it all.  The warriors were built for Quin Shi Huang, the first emperor who united China at the Qin Dynasty from 220-207BCE.  He was also they guy who started the Great Wall.  The warriors themselves were destroyed after his death, and were discoved in 1974.  They have been reconstructed since.  The hall places thousands of these warriors all in a row.  Fascinating to see what a megalomaniac with absolute control can do.  Supposedly, he had 1/3 of the kingdom working on this project.

It was raining as we left, but we had to walk through the shopping street.  I saw one couple try to take the shorter route out through the "in" walkway, and was rebuffed by a soldier.

More traffic back to the hotel.  The drivers here are crazy crazy crazy!  Red lights mean nothing.  Turning left or right means nothing.  Just go.  I almost broke Ann's fingers half a dozen times in the near misses.  Changing lanes?  Just go.  Motor cycles or pedestrians near by?  So what?  Just go.  They can take care of themselves.

Then the coup de grace:  Dinner theater.  We had another tourista meal, with mystery meat and mystery fish.  The dumplings at the beginning were half decent, and the orange tapioca stuff at the end was sorta ok.  Everything in the middle was forgettable.  During dinner, we were "entertained" by a female musical group wearing ancient costumes playing ancient music on ancient instruments.  Then came the show of shows.  This was an "extravaganza" of native dancers in colorful costumes prancing around the stage.  Why China promotes this to tourists is beyond me, other than the bucks they get for this.  It would be as if every tourist coming to America had to see a Native American dance show.  It has nothing to do with anything of today or even of the recent past.  During the performance there was a guy playing a Pai Xiao, which is some kind of a wind lute instrument.  He supposedly is very famous, but I had to leave as it hurt my ears.  Ann stuck it out till the end of the show.

Maybe Shanghai will be better, but I'm not holding my breath.