Am considering adopting this as my motto
So we went to Qibao yesterday, our first grand excursion in a week or so, as I’d been busy with stupid school stuff and having my jaw sledge-hammered, and my mother was battling her semi-inevitable post-flight cold.
Doug and I had gone there about two years ago when we first moved to Shanghai, back when we used to go out and explore on weekends. Now we mostly base our weekend schedules around eating, drinking and being horizontal. Of course, we tend to walk great distances to get to the food and drink (and thus are not 100kg each) but the wandering is a bit less compulsively curious. Â It was good to get out and see the city through unjaded eyes.
The last time we went, line 9 hadn’t opened yet so we took a taxi there. This time, we just walked down to the Jiashan lu metro stop at the bottom of our street and emerged a half dozen stops later opposite the giant billboard advertising the Ancient Water Town ™. Â I appreciated not having to go anywhere near a freeway in a taxi.
It was slightly less crowded this time, though not by much. The previous visit had been on a weekend in springtime and the hordes, oh the hordes were brutal.  Here are the photos  from that visit that I had uploaded to a Facebook album. The narrow lane ways were still packed but at least there was some leeway this time. My parents were brave and happily ate all sorts of unidentifiable street food I thrust at them. I took a lot of photos. Mops predominated. Let me show you some.
First of all, here are the brave little soldiers standing on the bridge over the canal, having just braved the insanely crowded, narrow entry lane.
Bracing themselves for the further onslaught of hordes
And here are the mops I promised you, with just a hint of drying fish and laundry.
Drying fish, drying mop
3 mops on an orange wall
Sunshine falling on mop and laundry
Of mops and men
And there was the inevitable public display of laundry.
Banging your head on low hanging laundry
And there were children, practising their lone English vocabulary word.
Hello hello hello hello hello hello
If you go far to the back of the neighbourhood, away from the crowded, touristy food streets, it gets quieter.
Oh, where did the hordes go?
There’s a church! And a new year’s poster with Santa!
1 Cathedral, 2 stone lions and someone’s laundry
Snow melting in alleyway, many droplets falling
Wet alley and unlit lanterns
Shanghai has many canals
We ate a lot of things, from the inevitable soup-filled xiao long bao in a styrofoam container (10 rmb) to a spicy stuffed fried bread that was hacked into bits and thrown into a baggie (3rmb) to those odd jus filled meatballs in paper tubs of spicy red-oil-dotted broth (6 for 10rmb) to skewers of mystery meat brushed with cumin and chili (3 big ones for 10rmb, possibly something seafoody but I didn’t recognize the name the grill dude told me). I mostly enjoyed the sausages in natural sausage casings from DCW Casing.
These are the grill dudes.
I don’t have any photos of the other things we ate because I was too busy eating them. At least here, I had to wait 5 minutes for the mystery meat to cook.
Mystery meat from men of mystery
And there was some lovely light. The sun was shining quite nicely. The snow was nearly melted.
Pretty light on a construction/demolition site
Wall and light and tiles
And I saw some rope that looked cool.
Various knots under a flatbed tricycle
Oh, and I met a relative of Gerald’s! Very exciting.
Arthur, Gerald’s second cousin twice removed, wears plastic bag booties
And after a few hours of wandering around, battling hordes, stuffing our faces and stalking mops, we walked back to the metro and went home (via a not-too-quick detour to Metro hypermarket in Pudong for cheap coffee which was sadly out of stock), tired but happy. It was just like an Enid Blyton novel, except without the dog.
13 Responses
Talking of an Enid Blyton book, except without a dog, I am glad to inform you that I have written and published a book on Enid Blyton by the title of “The Famous Five: A Personal Anecdotage (www.thefamousfiveapersonalanecdotage.blogspot.com).
Stephen Isabirye
Loving your captions… and all the mops.
Mops are always photogenic.
That picture of a church is quite impressive. Looks like a lot of work went into that. Would of loved to see some pictures of what you were eating though, specially since you did not know what it was!!!
I’ll try to get the food photos next time- I was too busy dealing with the crowds around the food streets to pause and take pictures.
That church was interesting…so randomly hidden in the back alleys.
Ha to the Enid reference…
Love the mops everywhere. Although I’m not sure I would want my mop so close to my fish.
Both mops and fish were dried so not too unsanitary! Bleached clean by the winter sun!
So many mops… Also love the slogan on that top. I found your comment on Allison’s Pink Fibro Blogoversary post and followed it back here, and I’m so glad I did. I’m sending this entry to a couple of friends of mine who are considering uni exchange in Shanghai.
Best of luck with your entry in the Pink Fibro comp, and with your blog!
Thank you! I’m so happy you enjoyed it. Please feel free to pass my blog along to anyone who might be interested in it, whether they might be coming here or not. I don’t need to increase my reader numbers for revenue (it’s a pleasure blog, not a monetized blog) but I would love to engage in dialogues with as many varied people as I can. I hope to see you here again. 🙂
I’m glad your parents survived Qibao – the last time we took visitors there was may 1st holiday – a near-fatal experience – the crowds swept us up at the station, carried us down a narrow street between rows of tourist shops, generally swamped and elbowed us, unceremoniously dumped us in a teahouse, then as soon as we stepped out of that quiet sanctuary, carried us off to the exit, crowd-surfing style. At one point we felt like we may have been passing over a bridge, but it was only an impression – we couldn’t see through the sardine squash of people. Vowed to stay home for all future Chinese public holidays.
The first time we went was in early Spring, on a weekend but not a holiday one. It wasn’t as crowded as what you faced. And this time (a week day in January) was much, much better. Seriously- there was actually space to walk and benches to sit on and side alleys to wander down without seeing a soul (besides the folks who live there). I’d actually recommend it… say, a Wednesday…in the rain…in January! And once off that main souvenir street there are lots of quiet canals to walk along. It’s actually a nice break from the rest of the city. We were able to walk side by side a lot of the time– 3 people! Side by side! Imagine that!
[…] you say Neat Freaks?? Mary Anne’s parents went to visit her and on their day trip to Qiboa all they saw were mops! Ok, that wasn’t it entirely but the funny mop photos on her blog, A Totally Impractical Guide […]