![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amethyst73Saturday 6/28 opened gray, but happily not raining! The lack of rain was a good thing, as we spent much of that day visiting outdoor spots. The two areas that we visited were essentially adjacent to each other, so there'll be a little mixing of pictures and stories today.
We rode the bus to one of the few remaining historical areas of Shanghai, the so-called Old City and Yuyuan (Jade Garden). Our path to the Garden lay through the Old City; we took lots of photos as we passed quickly through.
Shanghai and Beijing each has their own unique ancient architectural style; the hallmark of Shanghai's are these flying eaves.
We rode the bus to one of the few remaining historical areas of Shanghai, the so-called Old City and Yuyuan (Jade Garden). Our path to the Garden lay through the Old City; we took lots of photos as we passed quickly through.
Shanghai and Beijing each has their own unique ancient architectural style; the hallmark of Shanghai's are these flying eaves.
As you can see, while the buildings are old, they're all inhabited.
The next section of the garden was set around a lovely little pond with a lot of rockwork and bridges and stuff. 
(That ball is actually a representation of worldly power, rather like the orb on a Western king's scepter.)
This area was one of our favorite spots in the garden. Rocks, water, greenery, who wouldn't like it? 
There's a lot to notice with this Chinese dragon. First, it's a remarkably chimeric creature: it has the eyes of a shrimp, the scales of a fish, the horns of a stag, and the claws of an eagle. Second, if you look closely at the claws, you'll see that this one has only three claws on its foot. That's because the dragon was the symbol of the emperor; an imperial dragon has five claws. If one was a government official, one might have dragons adorning one's estate, like this one - but it had to be made clear that it was not an empiric dragon by partially declawing it and presumably thus making it less powerful. Finally, it's difficult to see in this picture but there's a toad sitting under the dragon's head: he represents the peasantry, consuming the spittle of the dragon/Emperor.
Here's a gateway where a pair of dragon heads meet. 
The shops down on street level were packed in quite closely. We noticed fairly quickly that each of these tourist-trap shops all sold essentially the same gimmicky toys and gewgaws as every other one, though the picture doesn't really show it.
The Old City, nicknamed "Chinatown in China," is full of lots of little shops. It's a popular tourist attraction even with native Chinese, as you can see by the number of people in the square.
Once we were see some of the old architecture up close, I was quite sorry that so little of it is being preserved in Shanghai.
Once we got through most of the square, we walked over a large pond towards the garden. I have never seen so many koi of so many different colors in one place as there were here:
The views across the water showcased the architecture well.
The frog fountain below reminded me of a similar fountain that I'd seen at Versailles (photo here). In the Versailles fountain, the frogs were intended to represent the Dutch, a people I was told at the time had been under the thumb of the French; supposedly, these frogs too represent some nation that the Chinese had overrun. (Mind you, I can't find references on either of these!)
And, of course, there are ducks all over the world.
We entered the garden proper at a preserved dwelling. As was universal in all the older Chinese architecture we saw, the household entrance has a threshold that's raised by about six inches. This is termed "the shoulder of the Buddha." It's meant to keep evil spirits out and good luck in. (I never imagined spirits as being denser than air, but what do I know?)
This elaborately carved gateway led into the next section of the garden. All the animal representations you see in the pictures that follow are meant to represent positive aspects in one way or another, e.g. luck, longevity, wealth. (I made a point of asking our tour guide late in the garden tour whether there were any animals that signified bad luck. She claimed not, though I somehow doubt it. What does seem certain is that no such animal would be carved or modeled on someone's property!)
Here are a couple of pictures of the interior of another building. As usual, they're kind of dark and hard to see. You can make out the carved window screens pretty well in this one:
The piece of writing on the wall here details the history of the Yuyuan; I figure there's about 300 characters on it. The mirror and the vase on the table are meant to promote harmony.
We saw several vase- and jar-shaped doorways in the gardens to promote harmony amongst those passing through them. If the man of the household had a wife plus several concubines, he would want to take every opportunity to prevent conflict between them!
The next section of the garden was set around a lovely little pond with a lot of rockwork and bridges and stuff.
That house across the pond had the very traditional pair of lions flanking the door. As our tour guide put it, the female lion, to the left of the doorway as you face it, spends her time taking care of the kids...
.. while the male lion gets to play with a toy!
(That ball is actually a representation of worldly power, rather like the orb on a Western king's scepter.)
This area was one of our favorite spots in the garden. Rocks, water, greenery, who wouldn't like it?
The walls separating one area from the next were termed 'dragon walls'. The tops of the walls undulated up and down and were topped by a long sinuous dragon body. When one came to a gate, one often found an impressive dragon head like this:
There's a lot to notice with this Chinese dragon. First, it's a remarkably chimeric creature: it has the eyes of a shrimp, the scales of a fish, the horns of a stag, and the claws of an eagle. Second, if you look closely at the claws, you'll see that this one has only three claws on its foot. That's because the dragon was the symbol of the emperor; an imperial dragon has five claws. If one was a government official, one might have dragons adorning one's estate, like this one - but it had to be made clear that it was not an empiric dragon by partially declawing it and presumably thus making it less powerful. Finally, it's difficult to see in this picture but there's a toad sitting under the dragon's head: he represents the peasantry, consuming the spittle of the dragon/Emperor.
Here's a gateway where a pair of dragon heads meet.
As was generally the case, the rooflines of the buildings were full of carved figures:
As we turned each corner or entered each area, we were presented with stunning view after stunning view.
The next section held the 'jade' rocks for which the garden is named. These aren't jadeite, the mineral that jewelery and statuary is made from. It is instead a highly porous stone which makes really interesting shapes. The stone in the middle is said to have 72 holes in it, and if you light incense at the bottom or pour water in at the top, the smoke or water supposedly travels through all 72 holes before reaching the top or bottom.
Everyone was clearly enjoying the tour - even our tour guide (center, making bunny ears on one of our group members).
These were some neat-looking characters on a wall. I initially found them unusual because the third one seemed so close to having a circle when I first saw it - you never see tight curves in Chinese characters, because they're very difficult to draw with a brush. We realized fairly quickly that it was a somewhat stylized version of the symbol for 'middle,' generally shown as a box with a line bisecting it from top to bottom.
That wall marked our exit from the Yuyuan. Our next stop was a tea shop nearby, where we would get to view an authentic Chinese tea ceremony. The tea shop was on the upper floor of one of the buildings close to the Old City, so we took more photos of neat rooflines.
We were seated around a long rectangular table. I wished afterwards that I'd taken a photo of the initial setup for the ceremony: a double-layered clay tray laden with tiny blue-patterned china cups about the same diameter and twice the height of a thimble; each cup was topped with an inverted bowl-shaped cup. Pots of just-boiling water were poured over the whole setup, presumably to warm it; there was little to no water spilled on the table, as the clay tray's top had holes in it to capture the water. Shortly thereafter, the demonstration began.
The first tea to be brewed was a pair of jasmine tea balls, steeped in tall clear glasses. After seven or eight minutes, the balls had unfurled in the hot water, revealing the flower blossoms within:
The first tea to be brewed was a pair of jasmine tea balls, steeped in tall clear glasses. After seven or eight minutes, the balls had unfurled in the hot water, revealing the flower blossoms within:
These were meant to be brewed on a special, intimate occasion. The red flower was a blossom from the tea plant, and the tea was named Romeo.
The white flower was (we think) jasmine, and the tea was named Juliet.
We tasted both of these in our tiny little cups as well as several others: oolong, a variety of green tea named Dragon Well, and a black tea with lychee bits and rose petals. The last one was our favorite; dry, it smelled curiously like dill, and brewed it had a distinctly rose odor and a pleasant fruity sweetness to it. I don't know whether the blending of fruit and flowers with tea is traditional in China, or if it's more of a recent addition - the concept reminded me of a couple of my favorite blended black teas from Republic of Tea. All the teas were pretty different from much of anything you get here in the States though. We suspect that the differences in flavor were due to the fact that the tea leaves used in the demo were all significantly fresher than you get here, and the brewing times for most of the teas was extremely short: thirty seconds to a minute. At the end of the demo, we purchased some prepackaged Dragon Well for a tea-loving friend of mine at work.
(The tea house also had the first example we'd seen of traditional Chinese toilets. I'll leave the details of that for another post!)
After the tea house, we were set free to wander around the Old Town Market. To date, this was the biggest hoot of the trip. The Old Town Market is a kind of bazaar full of little shops and wagons selling low- to mid-quality handicrafts: limestone seals that you could have your name carved into in English and ancient Chinese, paintings of various sorts, cut-paper art, woven bamboo baskets, gowns and kimonos and scarves made of silk that might or might not be genuine, antiques that almost undoubtedly were fakes, T-shirts, snacks, random cheap kitsch, and musical instruments. The huz really enjoys messing around with folk instruments, and got to play with a couple. A merchant demonstrated a miniature version of an erhu, a Chinese two-string fiddle in which the hairs of the bow are permanently set between the two strings of the instrument.
(The tea house also had the first example we'd seen of traditional Chinese toilets. I'll leave the details of that for another post!)
After the tea house, we were set free to wander around the Old Town Market. To date, this was the biggest hoot of the trip. The Old Town Market is a kind of bazaar full of little shops and wagons selling low- to mid-quality handicrafts: limestone seals that you could have your name carved into in English and ancient Chinese, paintings of various sorts, cut-paper art, woven bamboo baskets, gowns and kimonos and scarves made of silk that might or might not be genuine, antiques that almost undoubtedly were fakes, T-shirts, snacks, random cheap kitsch, and musical instruments. The huz really enjoys messing around with folk instruments, and got to play with a couple. A merchant demonstrated a miniature version of an erhu, a Chinese two-string fiddle in which the hairs of the bow are permanently set between the two strings of the instrument.
The huz gave it a try:
Another merchant was selling several kinds of flutes. The huz got to try a gourd flute:
We really liked the sound of it and strongly considered it as a gift for the huz's brother, but eventually decided against it as it would be both bulky and fragile (thus making it difficult to pack). The merchant was really disappointed; as we walked away, she chased us shouting lower and lower prices for the instrument, and it took some doing to convince her that our rejection of the instrument was not a matter of price. She stamped her foot and glared sadly at us as we passed along.
In one of the shops, we saw a finger painter like the one we'd seen in the Jade Buddha Temple - perhaps the skill was not quite as rare as the fellow at the Temple had led us to believe! We had our first experience with bargaining, purchasing a really lovely painting of a tree that we later gave to the huz's parents. We almost undoubtedly overpaid for the item compared to how a more experienced buyer would have done, and it ended up being the most expensive piece of art that we acquired during the whole trip. Nonetheless, we were very pleased with the purchase, and suspect that had it been sold here in America, the asking price would have been easily twice what we ended up paying for it, if not more. I will try to get a photo of the painting and post it.
In another cart, we saw some neat art made of flat bamboo. The bamboo was brown and dry, but had several different shades from light to dark, and had been cleverly cut and assembled on black backgrounds into representations of birds, trees, etc. We bargained the price down on a nice bird picture for one of my aunts.
Our final purchase was our first (and virtually only) 'street snack' in China. We needed to get back to the bus, but wanted something to eat before we left. There were plenty of food carts around, and - pretty much at random - I grabbed a couple of large dumpling-shaped items, each in its own little bamboo basket. The basket was 2.5-3 inches across; the dumplings looked to be made of unleavened dough. The top of each one had a small hole in it. Somewhat puzzled, I paid for them and was given a pair of straws. We looked around to see if we could find other diners consuming these items; the straws were apparently supposed to be placed in the holes in the tops, and one sipped what turned out to be really tasty beef soup! I've since heard that there's a place in Millbrae, CA that specializes in these things, which I definitely want to check out sometime.
If we'd chosen, we could have had familiar drinks with our snack:
In one of the shops, we saw a finger painter like the one we'd seen in the Jade Buddha Temple - perhaps the skill was not quite as rare as the fellow at the Temple had led us to believe! We had our first experience with bargaining, purchasing a really lovely painting of a tree that we later gave to the huz's parents. We almost undoubtedly overpaid for the item compared to how a more experienced buyer would have done, and it ended up being the most expensive piece of art that we acquired during the whole trip. Nonetheless, we were very pleased with the purchase, and suspect that had it been sold here in America, the asking price would have been easily twice what we ended up paying for it, if not more. I will try to get a photo of the painting and post it.
In another cart, we saw some neat art made of flat bamboo. The bamboo was brown and dry, but had several different shades from light to dark, and had been cleverly cut and assembled on black backgrounds into representations of birds, trees, etc. We bargained the price down on a nice bird picture for one of my aunts.
Our final purchase was our first (and virtually only) 'street snack' in China. We needed to get back to the bus, but wanted something to eat before we left. There were plenty of food carts around, and - pretty much at random - I grabbed a couple of large dumpling-shaped items, each in its own little bamboo basket. The basket was 2.5-3 inches across; the dumplings looked to be made of unleavened dough. The top of each one had a small hole in it. Somewhat puzzled, I paid for them and was given a pair of straws. We looked around to see if we could find other diners consuming these items; the straws were apparently supposed to be placed in the holes in the tops, and one sipped what turned out to be really tasty beef soup! I've since heard that there's a place in Millbrae, CA that specializes in these things, which I definitely want to check out sometime.
If we'd chosen, we could have had familiar drinks with our snack:
Interestingly, this was the only Starbucks we saw the entire time we were in China. McDonald's was also made conspicuous by its relative absence. What we did see a lot of was Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. We never went into one, but we were told that the menu was somewhat different from the standard KFC offerings in the States.
As we walked out of Old Town Market, we could see that people lived in the apartments above the shops, as was evidenced by the laundry hanging out of people's windows and across the alleys. Apartments in the cities in China tend to be small, so people use their outdoor space whenever they can.
The shops down on street level were packed in quite closely. We noticed fairly quickly that each of these tourist-trap shops all sold essentially the same gimmicky toys and gewgaws as every other one, though the picture doesn't really show it.
As we exited the district, I reflected on what a shame it was that Shanghai was putting so much effort into becoming as ultra-modern a city as it could as quickly as it could. I wished that there were more spots in the city where the old architecture and gardens had been preserved; instead, the old neighborhoods are rapidly being torn down to make way for super-high-rise apartments and offices. This picture embodies the current state of Shanghai.
Overall, our expedition to Old Town Market felt much more authentic than anything that the tourist company had shown us thus far. We were finally interacting with real people and getting to do slightly real things! Our guide had taught us a few Chinese phrases a day or two earlier, and the members of our bus unanimously agreed that the Yuyuan and the Old Town Market had been a ding ding hao (top top good) experience as we rode back to the hotel.
We had some free time when we got back. We started by supplementing our lunch with some tasty donburi (cooked egg, chicken, and onions served over rice) at a Japanese restaurant across the street from the hotel. It was suprising how pleasant it was to have a set of flavors that was so different from Chinese cuisine for a main meal. The huz amused himself when we paid the check by thanking the waitress in both Chinese and Japanese. The wait staff were amused as well.
We then spent the next hour or two attempting to do laundry by hand. Suffice it to say that it worked. But I wouldn't generally recommend washing clothing with Woolite in a hotel sink, rinsing it in the bathtub, and draping every available surface with damp clothing if there's a reasonably inexpensive alternative. (The hotel did have a laundry service, but it was stupidly expensive.)
Then it was time to go off to the Arts Center for more rehearsal and the evening performance. I was able to get a photo of the giant Chinese drum being successfully loaded onto its stand - quite a feat, given that the drum is easily four feet in diameter:
We had some free time when we got back. We started by supplementing our lunch with some tasty donburi (cooked egg, chicken, and onions served over rice) at a Japanese restaurant across the street from the hotel. It was suprising how pleasant it was to have a set of flavors that was so different from Chinese cuisine for a main meal. The huz amused himself when we paid the check by thanking the waitress in both Chinese and Japanese. The wait staff were amused as well.
We then spent the next hour or two attempting to do laundry by hand. Suffice it to say that it worked. But I wouldn't generally recommend washing clothing with Woolite in a hotel sink, rinsing it in the bathtub, and draping every available surface with damp clothing if there's a reasonably inexpensive alternative. (The hotel did have a laundry service, but it was stupidly expensive.)
Then it was time to go off to the Arts Center for more rehearsal and the evening performance. I was able to get a photo of the giant Chinese drum being successfully loaded onto its stand - quite a feat, given that the drum is easily four feet in diameter:
Our conductor looked as if he needed rather more rest than he'd gotten, but led us well nonetheless. We were once more met with "tea time" between the rehearsal and performance, which was much more pleasant than it had been the day before: ham and American cheese sandwiches (this was before the melamine scare, so no issues there) and chocolate chip cookies. Ther performance that night was better-attended than the previous night, being about 85% full. The audience was also more enthusiastic than it had been the previous night. Their enthusiasm led our piano soloist, Jon Nakamatsu, to play Chopin's Fantasy Impromptu as an encore. The orchestra did two encores in addition: Stars and Stripes Forever, and Aaron Copeland's Hoedown. I think the audience got their money's worth that evening!
It was now quite late (around 10 PM). Earlier in the day, it had been arranged that one of the tour buses would drive those who wished to the French Concession area of Shanghai. This is a region of town that has lots of expat restaurants and bars, and is where Westerners tend to hang out. It was, I believe, in the opposite direction to the hotel from the Arts Center. Unfortunately, the tour gudes hadn't gotten the message, and so for the sake of the 5 or so individuals (out of 30) on our bus who actually wanted to go there, we spent an hour in traffic (on a Saturday night, of course traffic in a big city going towards the fancy restaurants is going to be bad!) getting to the French Concession and back to the hotel. Our bus driver then pulled into the hotel driveway badly, and felt it was necessary to back and fill for five full minutes before allowing us all to get off (we never figured out why).
Our tour guide indicated that there were a few 24-hour restaurants open near the hotel. We met one of the other tour members for dinner and had a pleasant (albeit badly belated) meal at the dim sum place where we'd eaten lunch a few days previously. We were extremely grateful to finally fall into bed at half past midnight.
NEXT: The Silk Factory, and Farewell to Shanghai
It was now quite late (around 10 PM). Earlier in the day, it had been arranged that one of the tour buses would drive those who wished to the French Concession area of Shanghai. This is a region of town that has lots of expat restaurants and bars, and is where Westerners tend to hang out. It was, I believe, in the opposite direction to the hotel from the Arts Center. Unfortunately, the tour gudes hadn't gotten the message, and so for the sake of the 5 or so individuals (out of 30) on our bus who actually wanted to go there, we spent an hour in traffic (on a Saturday night, of course traffic in a big city going towards the fancy restaurants is going to be bad!) getting to the French Concession and back to the hotel. Our bus driver then pulled into the hotel driveway badly, and felt it was necessary to back and fill for five full minutes before allowing us all to get off (we never figured out why).
Our tour guide indicated that there were a few 24-hour restaurants open near the hotel. We met one of the other tour members for dinner and had a pleasant (albeit badly belated) meal at the dim sum place where we'd eaten lunch a few days previously. We were extremely grateful to finally fall into bed at half past midnight.
NEXT: The Silk Factory, and Farewell to Shanghai
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-25 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-26 01:15 am (UTC)