Shanghai'd

Hengsha Island.

Well, I am flying Solo in Shanghai. Tim is back to the States for 2.5 weeks while I get to explore the city on my own. Its exciting, if a little lonely. :)

Anyway, first weekend back from my trip - and first weekend without Tim - I accepted an invitation (OK, so I invited myself along...) to go to nearby Hengsha Dao. I went with a local biking group called Sisu that our Chinese teacher Kitty is active in. She was the only one I knew, so I was looking forward to meeting some new faces. We met up Saturday morning around 5:30am since we had to make the 7:15 ferry at the north end of Shanghai on the Yangzte River, and since the sun was up anyway... why not! The first, and only, snafu of the trip came at the dock when the ferry guy would not let us on with our bikes. Kitty argued and argued, but it only took a tall blond foreigner to convince him to let us "try" and "see if they fit" before we got on with them. ;-) I find this tactic very effective. It was getting hot by the time we docked around 10 am. 1o am is, for all effects and purposes, high noon. After coming up at 5:10, the sun is directly above, and people are starting to go to lunch. We hadn't eaten yet and had a 11km (~7.5mile) ride to the hotel. The hotel was actually a collection of big villas, fairy tale style looking houses all in a row. There was enough room for our crowd: me, my teacher, one other Chinese guide, an American girl about my age, a mother-father team from Holland and their 2 teenage girls, and a collection of bachelors (all solo like me with their wives and kids home for summer) from England, Scotland, Chech Republic and the US of A. After breakfast the mercury was pushing 40C (104F) so I caught up on some much needed sleep for most of the afternoon. Others hung out at the pool, which was not cooler than the air.


The ride Sunday morning was of note: I went with the bachelors and the Chinese guy out to the retention walls. Hengsha is a island not 2m above sea level. Each year all land in front of the sea wall is eroded by the already very silty Yangzte before hitting the East China Sea in a few miles. Now, Hengsha is reclaiming the land, building retention walls and sucking out water/pumping in mud into the square mile area they've fenced in. We decided to try and ride out around one area that was being corralled. It started out good enough, flat and packed, but as we got further out, we met all stages of the construction: packed dirt with concrete walls, rock wall mortared by hand, talcum powder sand 4" deep, gravel, and finally massive plastic bags of sand. It was flat, and look at the blue sky! but tough going. At the end of the ride I was treated to a sight: A dozen laborers skinny dipping off the wall. No shame here, they all stood up to shout "HELLO!" to the white faces. I tried to divert my eyes :-/ Back at camp, breakfast and lounging by the pool ensued. What a nice weekend. I just wish Tim was there to enjoy it with me!

Award.


In a previous post, Laurel already wrote about the dragon boat race. Below is the email I received a few days after the event from the "The Organization Committee Of Zhangjiang Cup Dragon Boat Race":

Dear Mr.Tim Stelzer:
Not personally issues for you the Wins an award the certificate
, we felt extremely regretted.
That day afternoon, you informed us, you not to be able in four to receive an award. Also has the question which the possibility is links up to cause you not to attain wins an award the certificate, we felt so sorry.
Organization Committee Of Dragon Boat Race will be sent ”The Best Delimits The Oarsman” certificate and the to you company!
Thanks for your participant!

My intention is by no means to mock the English of this email (the old "he who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw stones" adage certainly applies here), but rather to highlight the bizarreness of the situation. The certificate was a nice gesture. As I later discovered, awarded to encourage foreigners in the race - unfortunately, not a reflection of my oarsmanship. The strange part is the 5 crisp Maojamins that accompanied it. My only thought is that the organizing committee must have had some money left over from the corporate sponsorship of the race. Is it unethical for me to accept the jiang? I suppose if I treat the rest of the dragon boat team to dinner with the cash I can still sleep at night. Weird.

Suzhou.


"China's Venice", "Heaven On Earth" and so many other names does Suzhou have, we had to check it out.

Suzhou is a very old city in Jiangsu Province, about an hour's train ride from Shanghai (36 minutes on the new bullet train, but those tickets were sold out). We went last Saturday with Tim's parents. Suzhou is famous for gardens and canals, which form a moat around the city and are down every side street. The garden we visited was peaceful and serene, comfortable even in the oven like heat, not much humidity that day. Suzhou is also a silk mecca so we visited an embroidery workshop, mostly for Linda, but it was really beautiful. You can see the women working on it in the pictures.

Suzhou's jewel, however, resides with the locals on the back streets of the old town. In recent years, Suzhou has developed (with the help of the Chinese government creating special tax zones) into an industrial area. AMD for one has a huge manufacturing plant there for packaging and test. The city inside the moat is developing too, with KFC, LV and any modern luxury you could hope for. The old town, located near Ou Garden in the eastern part of the city, remains unchanged. The cobblestone streets are too narrow for cars. The houses back up directly to the canals and women stand creekside doing Saturday laundry while the men in their ubiquitous wife beater tank tops and boxers chat in the doorways. It was China's water village before tour buses and souvenir peddlers. The southwestern corner of the old town is being gentrified with shops, restaurants and hotels, much like I imagine the hutongs in Beijing. In 5-10 years it will all be gone, but for the time being it is definitely worth a visit.

I am sure the pictures will be posted on Flickr soon.

UPDATE:
Suzhou photo set now posted.

Dragon Boat Race.

Last weekend, after weeks of practicing, NI and AMD competed with about 15 other teams in the Annual Zhang Jiang Cup Long Zhou Sai. In case you have never heard of a Dragon Boat or a dragon boat competition, I gave a quick background below (I realize this is a long post and if you only want to hear our story and see the pictures, I will put them at the top).

The race was on July 1, a scorching Sunday morning. Luckily Tim's parents who were in town and came to watch, got to sit in my boss's air conditioned office to watch the race - he has a great view! Each boat holds 12 - 10 rowers, a steerer, and a drummer. There are 5 rowers on each side, the paddles are canoe-like with no oar-lock. I was in the back left (they always put the girls in the back!) and Tim got a front row left for this race. We were on separate teams so there was a bit of rivalry, although we never competed directly. The race itself is 400m long, this takes about 2 minutes to row if you are fast and if you go straight. The strokes are to drum beat and are quick and sharp.

The match was divided into heats, Tim's team took 2nd in their heat and progressed to the quarterfinals and semi finals. AMD (my team, there were 3) took 3rd in the first heat and a devastating last for the next race - we were in 1st, and made it half way under the finishing flags when we made a sharp left for the bank. Those things can turn fast! Another team found out about the quick turning when they veered halfway through the race into another boat! The boat that made the abrupt turn sunk and 12 people were swimming or trying to scramble into the next boat. It was quite a spectacle, not to mention health risk for the people who spent time in that river. Yuck.

Anyway, we had a blast! Our teams all vowed to practice and win next year. As it was, the top team was suspiciously made of new employees to that company (it was the local government boat). Rumor has it that they seeded the team to avoid losing face! I can double confirm that since before the race, our team was offered some ringers - for a price! I love China. It was a good day.



Here's the full Flickr photo set.

Some searching revealed that there are actually 2 stories, an early one and a later adaptation:

First:

Dragon boat racing began more than 2000 years ago on the banks of the life-sustaining rivers in the valleys of southern China as a fertility rite to ensure plentiful crops. The first participants were superstitious and held their own celebration on the fifth day of the of the fifth lunar month of the Chinese calendar (summer solstice). This time of year was traditionally associated with disease and death; a dark and evil time. The race was held to avert misfortune and encourage the rains needed for prosperity - and the object of their worship was the dragon.

Later, their story changed to commemorate the death of a loved poet:

Chinese history describes the fourth century B.C. as the Warring States period; a time of shifting alliances and much treachery. In a kingdom called Chu, their lived a great patriot and poet by that name of Qu Yuan. He championed political reform and truth as essential to a healthy state. The King, who had fallen under the influence of corrupt ministers banished his most loyal counselor, Qu Yuan, from the kingdom. Left to wander if the countryside, Qu Yuan composed some of China's greatest poetry expressing his fervent love for his country, his deep concern for his country and its future. Upon learning of Chu's devastation at the hands of a rival kingdom, he leaped into the Mi Lo river holding a great rock in a display of his heartfelt sorrow. The people loved Qu Yuan very much and raced out in their fishing boats to the middle of the river in a vain attempt to save him. They beat on drums and splashed their oars in the water, trying to keep the of fish and water dragons away from his body. To honour his soul and to ensure it didn't go hungry, they scattered rice into the water. However, late one night, but spirit of Qu Yuan appeared before his friends and told them that the rice that was meant for him was being intercepted by a huge river dragon. He asked his friends to wrap their rice into three-cornered silk packages and to tie five colours of string about it to ward off the dragon. This tradition is continued to today, although now the dumplings are wrapped in leaves rather than silk.

This time every year, we also have zongzi, or the leaf-wrapped sticky rice described above. It is a fun tradition!