Bureau of Public Safety

According to the immigration card I got at Pudong Airport, foreigners living in Shanghai have to register their presence at a local police station within 24 hours of arriving in the city. I was assured by Christine, my main contact at Homestay Shanghai, that the window for registering was more like three days — anything beyond that and I would be fined for my rampant civil disobedience. So on the third day, Yun and I took the bus to a nearby district and walked (dodged) through streets filled with schoolchildren, old men with their shirts rolled up to their necks (couldn’t blame them — it was so hot I felt like doing the same) and pretty young women in floaty white dresses with their groceries.

your average Shanghainese bus, complete with a TV screen on an advertisement loop

The police station turned out to be a very local, understated affair, and while Yun went to get my passport photocopied (the real one this time — you don’t muck around with the cops) I was afforded an unparalleled view of what appeared to be several small, tube-like aquariums beside each service desk. Then one of the police officers took a swig of her aquarium and I realised it was actually tea and the seaweed-like greenery within the tube was tea leaves. Hunh.

I didn’t feel like my time at the station was really complete without a photo, but Yun and I decided I was probably less likely to be arrested if I curbed my photo-snapping-happy ways for a moment. Which lasted all of thirty seconds when I took a picture of a police car parked out front.

Neat huh?

Card Me Up, Scotty
On the way to the police station, Yun had to swipe her transport card twice on the bus to cover my fare, and we both decided it would be best if I got my own card lest we antagonise any more bus-bound ticket ladies. So we headed to the nearest metro station, and I bought a transport card that is supposed to work on buses and the metro (地铁) for 120RMB (about AUD$20), which included 100RMB of credit.

When we came out of the station we passed multiple food stalls of Chinese snacks (小吃, literally, “small eat”) and we decided to get lunch. Yun suggested we go to a nearby Japanese restaurant, but I confessed I’d much prefer to eat Chinese food while I was in China, and Japanese food when I got to Japan. Yun then told a story about her father’s first business trip to Japan, when he had to subsist on instant noodles because everything else was too expensive!

We wound up eating at a large, cafeteria-like noodle and baozi restaurant called (老上海小吃店), which apparently quite famous. Yun and I each got a bowl of noodles (mushrooms! Yummy!), I ate a giant red bean baozi and Yun ventured outside to another stall to buy some more snacks. On the way out I noticed one of Shanghai’s ubiquitous World Expo propaganda posters, encouraging us that all of the rapid development and construction of the city’s infrastructure is necessary to exhibit Shanghai to the world next year.

The poster reads, “City, makes life better”.

After lunch we walked along a boulevard skirting a surprisingly tranquil river. Shanghai is one of those strange cities where you can walk along what seems to be the busiest street in the world, and just a few metres away is an oasis of quiet.
Unsurprisingly enough, the boulevard was also flanked by lots of shops, and it didn’t exactly take long to convince me that we needed to go shopping. I bought a present for a friend’s 40th, the first five seasons of Boston Legal for 40RMB (AUD$7), and after Yun did some very impressive haggling with a shop keeper (skills she confessed she’d learnt from her previous homestay girl, who was reportedly a haggling demon), a pair of black rose studs for 3 kuai (AUD50 cents). We also stopped by a bookshop, which was filled to the brim with cheap reproductions of foreign books, including a whole section of shonen-ai manga(!)

Hey, no complaints ;)

Ghost Day

Not far from the boulevard was a four storey shopping mall, and although we didn’t buy anything there, I had great fun going around all the floors in a circle and looking at all the clothes and shoes and jewellery, and kock-offs of brands you wouldn’t think they’d bother copying. At one of the clothing stores Yun pointed out a pair of t-shirts for couples (情侣衫).

The left shirt (for the girl) reads “I only eat, and don’t clean”, and the right shirt (for the guy) says “I only clean (the dishes), and don’t eat”. Excellent sentiments, and you’ve gotta love the pink field.
Our shopping expedition took a turn for the spooky though when Yun overheard one of the shopkeepers tell another customer not to stay out too late because tonight was “Gui Jie” (鬼节, “ghost day”), and the ghosts would be out on the prowl for young girls. Before my eyes Yun became quite agitated, and when I asked her whether she believed in ghosts, she said she didn’t know. I managed to convince her, however, that because we were together, the ghosts wouldn’t target us, and even thought about adding that Chinese ghosts would probably find Australians smelly and not particularly delectable anyway. But Yun seemed to forget about the whole thing pretty quickly, though I couldn’t help but be amused that in such a forcibly areligious society, other superstitions still persist very strongly.

Carrefour Supermarket and the Giant Trompe-l’Oeil Painting of Glory

The reason for staying out so late, it turned out, was because Yun wanted to show me one of her favourite bridges complete with statuary lit up magnificently in the dark. She was disappointed to see that for some reason the lights hadn’t been turned on tonight, though as soon as we stepped onto the bridge, the statues lit up and cast the passing traffic in a stately, if hazy, glow.

The bridge’s columns flanked by blue-striped Shanghai skyscrapers

Looking out across the water I suddenly noticed a giant Carrefour, part of a French supermarket chain and beloved for its Western-style products on ShanghaiExpat.com. Yun proceeded to tell me the story of how, ten years ago, the government had plans to redevelop the area on which the Carrefour supermarket had been built, and gave the store its marching orders. Carrefour protested and cited how successful it had been in the location, but the government still refused to budge. So Carrefour came up with a rather excellent piece of compromise (called bribery in some parts of the world), and said they’d fund major decorations on the nearby bridge if they were allowed to stay. And — voila! — You have a rather gaudy approximation of French architectural embellishment on the bridge, and Carrefour continues to stand in its old location to this very day. But not content to rest on its diplomatic laurels, the walls of the building are now home to the world’s largest trompe-l’oeil painting. Don’t believe me? The sign says so:

It’s so real I can practically smell the baguette.

It was only when we got home that I realised I’d spoken more Mandarin that day than English, and even if my grammar is rough, my tones half-forgotten and my ways of describing things roundabout because I don’t know enough nouns, Yun can understand me, and — most of the time — I can understand her too.