Train To Qingdao

China is a freaking science fiction wet dream!

I take a taxi to the train station planning to arive an hour and a
half early wondering if that's enough time to figure things out, buy a
ticket, find the right gate and so on.

It took me 10 minutes. Really 10 minutes.

Buying the ticket took a whole minute, and that includes 30 seconds of
hesitation because everything seemed too easy. All over the train
station are these automatic kiosks. You flip the thing into English
mode, select your date (today is the default), select your city,
select your class, and pay.

Selecting the city and paying are the best parts. To select a city,
you're presented with a tabbed screen, with each tab a picturing one
line leaving your starting point and all the connecting lines off that
line. The cities are dots on that line and the transfer cities are red
dots. All you have to do is find your grid and press your destination
dot.

To pay you just stick your money in the slot. You don't have to orient
it in any way. It figures it all out.

A few weeks ago I tried to buy a movie ticket from an automated kiosk
in Canada and it took me 10 times as long before I gave up and stood
in line.

Your ticket isn't a multiple page incompressible thing like in Europe,
it credit card sized. It just lists your destination, train number,
car number, and seat number.

You go to the heated, modern waiting area and on the way in a cute
girl inspects your ticket to make sure you've not made any mistakes.
There is free hot water for drinking or if you want to make noodles.
Signs tell you all the trains and how much time left to wait for each.
20 minutes befor departure time your sign lights up, and a door opens
for you to go to your platform.

Boarding takes five minutes. No pushing and shoving. Everything just works.

The train left exactly on time.

The train thing looks like it's from the Star Trek set. The LED
display says we're moving at 200 km/hr right now (and we're still in
built up areas).

I've checked, and these trains are built in China. These guys are
going to run th world! And it's going to be a better place for it!

--

– GL

Gregory Levonian – gregory@levonian.org, gregory.levonian.org

BBQ In Shanghai

This is what half my lunches consisted of in Shanghai: shaokao, or shish kebap in English and shashlik in Russian.

Notice how popular the place is judging by the discarded skewers. The price, by the way, was about 50 cents a skewer (I'm in Qingdao now, here it's 3o cents).

Gregory Levonian - gregory@levonian.org, gregory.levonian.org

Shishkebap, Shashlik Or Shaokao

This is what half my meals in Shanghai consisted of.

Notice how popular the place is judging by the discarded skewers.

Shaokao, Shashlik Or Sish Kebap

This is what half of my meals in Qingdao consisted of.

Notice how popular the place is judging by the discarded skewers.

Shaokao

Half of my meals: shaokao  - shashlik or shish kebap.

Notice how popular the place is judging by the discarded skewers...

Jeoba

A few places in the city have little clumps of these things called
jeoba or alcohol bars.

Basically these are seedy places where people go to get a drink.
Here's what you'll find unusual: There will be ten or so girls working
there whose job it is to talk and flirt with you.

I've done some resaearch. Most of them will not sleep with you for
money. Each of their drinks cost about ten dollars and the bar gives
them two. Plus they get a regular sallery if they keep regular hours,
otherwise they can come to work only when they want. Ones that speak
english well and are pleasent can earn about $2000 a month, which bye
the way is about twice what English teachers make. One if the girls I
spoke too (and later had dinner with) was renting a pretty fantastic
apartment. Plus she was supporting her brother through university (the
family thought she was a waitress in an American expat bar).

I said these places were seedy because that's the way look. But nobody
overcharges you, or trys to steal your stuff. It's, like everything
else here, tottally above board.

The girls give Chinese lessons too. As far as I can figure, a number
of Brits and Americans I've met seem to have aquired an enviable
proficiancy of Chinese talking to these girls.

--

– GL

Gregory Levonian – grgrlvnn@gmail.com, grgrlvnn.blogspot.com

Shanghai visuals

This is what Shanghail looks like to me: Bladerunner.

This city was obviosly the director's insperation for the visuals.

I yet to see the same skyscrapper twice. They are all lit up in
magical video game ways. One level down you have a snake's nest of
elivated highways, interchanges and clover leaves. At street level,
day or night throngs of people, noodle soup shops, aquariums of
seafood, open markets, and basement clothing shops.

Once in a while among these there is a bizarre American expat bar or a
Chinese jeoba (alcohol bar). A few streets are filled with glass,
steel and marble shopping malls with Rolexes, diamonds, Armani suits,
and 1000$ womens handbags.

There are entire shopping centers of nothing but cameras, iPods, cell
phones, hard disks, video game add ons and memory sims. A medium sized
store migh sell only nintendo add ons.

It rains constanly and there is no sunlight.

I'm just waiting to run into Roy Batty or Rachel.

--

– GL

Gregory Levonian – grgrlvnn@gmail.com, grgrlvnn.blogspot.com

Shanghai Intersections

This is what a typical downtown major intersection looks like:

two large multilane roads like Moscow's (like Bronson but about 5
times as large and fast) intersecting. At each corner there is two
sets of trafic lights like everywhere… which would normally be enough…

But here there is usually a policeman at the center who reads the
lights and with his whistle and arm gestures repeats the lights's
instructions.

But that's not all… There are another four to eight policemen at each
corner who's job it is to run up to people, cars, bikes, scooters and
so on who are ignoring the lights and the policeman in the center and
shame them into inching back to where they belong.

The whole thing doesn't work regardless. Even (especially) buses just
ignore the whole the rules.

Still nobody gets hurt. People are carefull and it seems safe as long
as you think and don't make any sudden moves.

--

– GL

Gregory Levonian – grgrlvnn@gmail.com, grgrlvnn.blogspot.com

Food, Coffee And Sunlight

There is lots of fairly exotic food here but this is Shanghai, a very
western city with a colonial past. The people here fancy themselves
not very Chinese (though it's better not to ask exactly what). So
there is lots of western restaurants too.

And most importantly coffee. I'm happy to say that I've located
sevaral source of affordable coffee: Dunkin Doughnuts, 7/11 and the
Japanees place I wrote about.

As for meals, I live on Shashlik (that's shish kebap for you unwashed)
noodles, soup and somethings a lot like Georgian khinkali (dumplings
of a sort).

Food is available 24 hours a day. This city never sleeps at all. I
haven't seen the sun since I've left Canada. My room has no window,
it's been raining nonstop, and I get up around 4 PM.

Here's something you'll like: a lot of streets get closed off to
traffic at night and they transform themselves to open air markets. A
lot of people seem to buy food late at night (the city never sleeps so
lots of people work at night) but mostly I think this is where
restaurants buy their food.

Remind me to tell you about the bars (or jioba — alcohol bars as they
are called) next time…

--

– GL

Gregory Levonian – grgrlvnn@gmail.com, grgrlvnn.blogspot.com

Shanghai Intersection

--

– GL

Gregory Levonian – grgrlvnn@gmail.com, grgrlvnn.blogspot.com