Sliday Blog

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Thu, 23 Feb 2012 05:00:05 +1300

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Wed, 22 Feb 2012 05:00:05 +1300

Bamboo Forest near Nanchang, 2008

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 18:04:43 +1300

Here, fifty minutes away from Nanchang, next to the river rests an island of a bamboo forest in which the opportunistic Chinese organized something like a rest base. As far as I know, this is part of a national park meant to save rare forests. Hammocks, comfortable bamboo huts, delicious cuisine, simple karaoke, a river in which locals with lights tied to sticks catch lobsters at night and give tourists rides on colourful rafts during the day. This corner has been a favored spot of tourists in Nanchang for a while. These are mostly English teachers in local schools and universities. The sociable owner is not multi-lingual, but this does not stop him from being hospitable and benevolent.

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With my friends Alex and Max we drank the famous Tsingtao beer and played guitar on the river bank. Alex tapped out the rhythm section on a tum tum and Max yelled out in a crazy voice to all the Chinese swimming by in boats: “Tsiang! Gei yo tsiang!” - “Money! Give me money!” In the evening, after an nontrivial card game in an English-Canadian company in which the rules require drinking after almost every move (drinking game), Alex, having lost, sang three verses of “Love Me Gentle, Love Me Sweet” to a confused Chinese man sleeping in a hammock in the yard, we tried not to laugh, hiding in the bushes.

After several days of running around an overpopulated Beijing, three days in the bamboo forest completely refreshed the conscious, making room for new impressions.

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Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:00:05 +1300

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Mon, 20 Feb 2012 05:00:06 +1300

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Sun, 19 Feb 2012 05:00:05 +1300

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Sat, 18 Feb 2012 05:00:05 +1300

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Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:00:05 +1300

A City by the Sea

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:23:35 +1300

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Shanghai is a real City: it engulfs and amazes from all directions. With building size, Victorian architecture and the countering cosmic forms of the business center across the street. In Shanghai, which translates as “on-above the sea,” there are, according to different estimates, 16 to 20 million people, the density is, on average, is over 2000 per square kilometer. Managers in extremely expensive suits, vendors of fakes, freaks and beggars who ask for charity all bustle back and forth, above the crowd tower fat American tourists. In the center, where several streets are closed to drivers, people mostly speak English, unlike in China. To sit in an Internet cafe, you must show your passport, they are afraid of the white threat, yep. Only two blocks away from a magnificent flower park with mirror buildings across the street, ground rhinoceros horns and deer hooves are sold from a rag that is spread out on the roadway, and the vendor rather aggressively suggests walking past with photo cameras. This is China: the country of contrasts.

Living in Shanghai, as in any normal city, is expensive. The bigger the population, the less friendly the taxi drivers. I recall how on one of the checkered cars we drove about fifty kilometers, explored the local sights from the trusty guide-book “Lonely Planet.”

Lines into the cosmic tower Oriental Pearl, measuring 468 meters in height, given the ticket price of 120 yuan, which is equal to almost 500 rubles, form on a looong curvy path that is limited by dividers.

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You can get to the base of the tower by the subway, a boat or an underground tunnel that is nothing but a scam to get money from tourists. In neat boxes you will be transported with quite, but not super, impressive special effects under smooth water. An elderly German turned around and said what I was going to say to him: “It’s like Star Wars, huh!”

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I was actually really comfortable in Shanghai, which means I liked it. I don’t get tired of telling my close friends that, when we grow up, we simply must get a glass of tequila cocktail in the posh sector French Concession that is paved with small, neat bricks.

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Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:00:05 +1300

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Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:00:06 +1300

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Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:00:05 +1300

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Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:00:06 +1300

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Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:00:05 +1300

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Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:05 +1300