China 2014 Day 6: Yuyuan Bazaar, Sichuan Food, and a Blind Massage

4/2/2014
China 2014 Day 6: Yuyuan Bazaar, Sichuan Food, and a Blind Massage

Day 6 began with a.. wait for it... early start! First to breakfast and another EPIC buffet breakfast. Man!!! We had custard buns, Shanghai rice and chicken, juice, little samosas, and a "pumpkin ball" that tasted like fried cheese. Amazing. We ate with some new friends that we had just made the night before and that totally rocked. The buffet was intensely awesome, but I was careful to pace myself because... miraculously... we get to experience the buffet again 2 MORE TIMES! So I figured I didn't need to eat every single thing at once. :)

First up - awesome breakfast!

View of the Pearl Tower from the dining room, but not great visibility this morning

There was a tea making ceremony at the hotel scheduled at 10am... and we finished breakfast at 8:50... can I make it to Yu Garden AND back? Do all the things! And... GO!

I literally ran to the subway and used my awesome 3-day MetroPass from yesterday. 1 stop to Yu Garden, and then out and I tried to find it... I got super lost in the Yuyuan Bazaar (which was super  cool though!) Again, the shopkeepers were not very pushy, different that what I was expecting. As I was in the Bazaar a group of teenagers came up to me and one of the dudes was SO excited to see a foreigner... "Excuse me, can I take a photo with you?!" We both gave a thumbs up in the photo and he was totally psyched. Funny.

Captain America: Winter Soldier!

KFC, Haagen-Daaz... in an unexpected location

The fanciest looking Dairy Queen ever

Streets of Yuyuan Bazaar

I finally found the gardens after about 15 min of wandering around somewhat aimlessly, and it was beautiful. I'm really glad I went. There was an awesome Koi Pond, wicked architecture, cool trees and roots and stones and typical roof tiles. Very cool. It was a quick wander through there, but I probably spent about 20-30 min in there which was good. After a nice visit there, I zoomed back out and ran to the subway to get back to the hotel in time for the tea ceremony.

Old and New, seen from Yuyuan Gardens

Awesome architecture

Amazing

Cool tree

A tourist group

Lanterns

Old + New

Yuyuan Gardens

Koi Pond

Lots of Koi Fish

Here's a video of the Koi Pond.



I headed back to the hotel and got there just in time for the tea, only 5 or 10 min late. It had already started but was pretty casual. They called one of the teas "Romeo and Juliet", a flowering tea. They had Jasmine, they had Black Tea fermented with Lychee Juice and Rose Petals... all very tasty. They did also have a Longjing Tea there but it tasted nothing like the one I got at the farmer's place in Hangzhou (as expected -- I don't think anything can compare to that!) Presumably this is not Pre-QingMing Longjing. They were selling 100gr for 250Yuan, whereas the one from our farmer was more like 100gr for 500Yuan. It tasted totally different. The other teas were great to try as well and I really enjoyed the Lychee one. They also had a REALLY cool tea board and a clay teapot, I'd really like to get one of those. She suggested that I shop at Yuyuan Bazaar instead of going to the wholesale "Tea City" like Lonely Planet had suggested. A few people had told us that it would be hard to get anything under 500gr at the Tea City, so maybe it made more sense to go to a normal tea shop instead.

Tea Ceremony at the hotel

Trying lots of tea

After that, I chatted with a sweet girl in the lobby who worked at the front desk. She told me all about her dream to travel to Italy and I gave her some advice on traveling there. She was very excited about it and said she was saving up so she could do it. As we were chatting, Hugh from New Brunswick came by to ask a question about some "Bug Medicine" he'd found at a store nearby for $2500!! It was some sort of ground-up bugs used for skin care or something, and it was astronomically expensive, so he asked about it in bewilderment, wondering why such a thing existed! After a nice chat, I got a coffee and Macaron at Victor's, the hotel's coffee shop. I caught up on my journal there with a great view of The Bund. Stellar!

Back at the hotel at the cafe, writing my blog notes

Amazing hotel lobby

This tree is amazing

Today is another day of exploring. I met up with Spring and we took off back to Yuyuan Bazaar to check it out in a bit more detail. We got there and it was fun to wander the shops a bit but I didn't really see the tea stuff that I was really keen for. We looked at teapots for a bit but then headed off to the "Science and Tech Museum" metro stop to shop in the bargaining markets. And... we begin!

Back to Yuyuan Bazaar

The "Bargaining" Market!

Anything you want to buy is here, but haggling required!

Michal started by trying on some shoes she really liked and she drove a hard bargain! She ended up getting 3 of the same shoe in different colours for an excellent price. The original "price" was 450Yuan for one, and I think she ended up getting them for 300Yuan for 3 PAIRS. So the amount they start the bargaining at is way more than the actual amount you should ever pay. Lonely Planet even suggested that some places you should start your bargaining at 10% of their initial amount, and then move slowly up from there! Crazy. This, although, is highly expected at this market... you should never pay the actual ticket price ever (unless you are a huge sucker)... in fact you should probably never pay more than half or even 40% of it.

We worked on some tactics together to lower the price, like pulling out the money you are willing to pay and saying "I only have this much left for the day". They will not sell it to you at a loss, so you can sortof sense when they are too close to their cost price... though they were very good :) The first girl at the shoe place was very nice and said "I want to make friends" and was really keen to make the deal, but she tried hard to keep the price up for a while.

After we were done there and made a good deal, a random dude walking around (probably a guy that sortof runs the place) found us and we said we were looking for Yixing Clay teapots. He took us to a store with a very tiny shopkeeper who was very nice and made us feel welcome right away. The dude sortof hung around (presumably to make sure she charged us enough), but we ended up staying there for a good 45 minutes. We sat there for a while and first looked at teapots. I loved this Yixing Clay dragon teapot which was sortof burgundy in colour, and also I found one of those awesome bamboo tea ceremony trays that I really liked, in a cool lime green colour. It looked great together and I definitely wanted to get that. They also had some interesting tea there, and I liked the look of a "Green Pu-erh" that we found there. She made us some and we chatted while she made it for us. Very tasty. She started us off with an initial 10% off from the sticker price, but I "bargained" down to about 40% off. She accepted the offer without too much of a fight, so I suspect I could have paid a little less... but no big deal. I loved everything and the tea was fantastic, so I was super happy with what I got and I paid what I felt it was worth to me. So that's all good. She was also a very sweet shop keeper and I didn't feel like I needed to drive the hardest bargain ever, (not that I'm that much of a pro at that anyway!) since she spent so much time with us and made us tea. It was a great experience and I looooove my teapot and tray.

We wandered some more, and there were some nice men's suits and peacoats, dresses, and fancy men's bright coloured wingtip dress shoes. Those were cool but were clearly very good quality... the starting price on those was 2000Yuan... $350! They were also not pretending to be any famous brand, they were just fancy, nicely made, good quality leather shoes. So you could tell though that there was not nearly as much leeway on those, so despite being awesome we didn't bargain for those. They had some cool red ones but I really liked the green ones... they said they'd need to create them for me in a custom order and I'd have to come back to pick them up, so we didn't have time for that. Too bad, but they were cool anyway :) We walked around lots and many people said "Come take a look!" There was one area with particularly good bags and shoes and it was sortof in a backroom with a secret bookcase door! Crazy. I didn't like that they closed the door when we went in there, but it was cool to see some of the nicer bags and watches and stuff. Still though, if you actually wanted something in there, you should make a good bargain here because there was no way any of these were not cheap reproductions.

It was fun there but after about 3 hours we were ready to roll. We went back to the hotel and dropped off stuff and showered and relaxed for a bit. From there we went to Spicy Joint, a very popular Sichuanese spicy restaurant that several people and Lonely Planet had recommended! You needed a local phone number to sign up for a spot in line so a guy there helped us with that. Our number came up within 5 minutes and we went to our table. It was awesome.

Nightlife on the way to Spicy Joint

Cute Spring excited for Sichuan food at Spicy Joint

Local Harbin Beer

Chicken and rice

Beef stew

We got rice and some great spicy chicken. This reminded me a bit of the food at Spices II here in San Francisco (which, I believe is actually a Sichuan restaurant, actually!) The beef stew was intense but good, and the Harbin beer was cold and awesome. The noodles were a bit awkward as we weren't sure if actually there was potentially pork intestine in there (even though, of course, it was on the vegetarian part of the menu!) As usual in China though, the veggies were EXCELLENT. The spicy potatoes as well as veggie dish were both really awesome. Some businessmen at the table beside us were so excited we were there and were "Cheers-ing" us with their glasses and seemed impressed we'd figured out how to order the local beer (and not Budweiser, which we almost got by mistake).

After a GREAT meal, we headed to one of the Tea shops recommended in Lonely Planet. On the way there I saw a (legit) New Balance shoe store, so I had to check to see if they had any super crazy new neon shoes like they did in Japan and South Korea. They didn't have a lot that was different from USA, but they did have some crazy "Colour Run"-themed shoes with speckles of colour on them. Pretty awesome design. This area of town was pretty fancy so we were a bit worried about inflated prices at the tea shop, but it was a GREAT deal there. The tea was of excellent quality and the prices were rock-bottom. I was so excited.

Fancy area outside of Spicy Joint

Starbucks!

This shop was a true shop and not a market stall kind of place, so it seemed pretty clear to me that this was not a place that you are supposed to bargain at. The lady at the shop was very helpful and pointed out a few different grades of tea for me to smell. For instance there was a Yunnan Red/Black Tea that I wanted to buy, and she had it priced by 50g increments which was perfect. The high-grade one was 70Yuan ($11) for 50g, and the cheaper version was 15Yuan ($2.50) for 50g. I don't really need a mountain of tea, just some stuff that seems nice, and the nicer version was significantly fresher and clearly a much better quality tea. So I generally went for the higher grade ones, since the pricing was already so affordable compared to getting this stuff in the US. So I got the nicer Yunnan tea as it smelled so incredible and fresh! I also smelled a TieGuanYin Oolong tea but didn't get it because I was looking for the Milk/Silk Oolong instead. I got some great Silver Needle White Tea... at 10Yuan ($1.75) for 50g!!!! Totally insane!!!! The Jasmine Pearls were great and I got some of those along with some Shun and Sheng Pu-erh Tea. The Pu-erh had a huge price range on it (as Pu-erh gets much more expensive if it is a very old, aged tea), so I opted for ones lower on that scale since I'm not as knowledgeable about that kind of tea and can't appreciate it as much yet.

Me buying almost all the tea in China!

Learning about the different kinds of Yunnan Gold, Pu-erh, and Jasmine Pearl teas they have

Smells good!

MAN that tea place was SO awesome. Uhh!!!!!!!!! So wicked.

A great after-dinner massage from blind masseurs at the Double Rainbow Massage House

We the headed to the Double Rainbow Massage House, to get a "Blind Massage". There is apparently a law in this area where massage places get a big tax credit if they employ blind masseurs. So we were excited to try it out (after verifying that this sort of thing was legit), and it was very good! You get a massage in a main room, and everyone is in the same room. You don't take off any clothing or get under a towel as you might in a fancy spa environment, rather this is just a massage on a regular massage table. It was very good, and the value was insanely epic at only 55Yuan ($9) for 45 minutes! You could also get a foot massage so we considered doing that given all of our walking so far, but went for a regular back and arm massage instead. What an awesome evening.

After this we headed back to the hotel and I tried a Mochi Strawberry McFlurry on the way back and we took the requisite photos of the strange and unusual and awesome McDonald's localizations in China.

Mochi McFlurry time!

Other cool and funny localized stuff at McDonald's

McCafe!

I think that burger has Potato Salad in it!

Whew! What a long and awesome day. We were super tired and I was certainly on my last ounce of energy, but we really wanted to make sure to see the legendary Peace Hotel Jazz Bar, so we went down to check it out for just a short moment.

Finishing off the evening at the famous Jazz Bar at the Peace Hotel

It was awesome to see it and a great experience. I had a glorious night-cap on the evening with some excellent Japanese Hibiki 17 whisky! What a day!

China 2014 Day 5: Cherry Blossoms, French Concession, Party!

4/1/2014
China 2014 Day 5: Cherry Blossoms, French Concession, Party!

As is seeming to be the trend, we got up early again today! But not quite as crazy early (no 4:30am this time), so we're starting to adjust to the time difference. We hit the pool/spa again, had some ginger tea, had a muffin, swam, did the steam room again... all so epic. We also crushed a good amount of the glorious (2nd!) fruit plate we scored in the room.

Mmm... fruit bowl

Main room at the hotel

Cabinet for coffee and tea

Gas Masks in the room for extreme pollution -- thankfully we didn't need to use them!

Bathroom

Crazy vase

We went to the hotel Concierge and asked for some advice about the Cherry Blossom Festival we'd read about in a local Shanghai newspaper. "Oh, it's quite far!" she said, "You will need a full day!" We figured we could just do our usual thing and haul it over there, enjoy it, and then zoom off to some other cool stuff to see without much worry.

Gucun Park is pretty much entirely "off the reservation" as it were, none of the major maps (even Lonely Planet) seem to have this section on it, so it will presumably be a VERY local experience. Let's just do it! We were already more than comfortable with the idea of taking the Metro everywhere so we asked the concierge to write "Can I please buy a 3 day metropass" in Mandarin so we could hand that to the agent at the Metro station. That worked like a charm, and was only 45Y, about $8!! What a steal! And so off we went. I called it "Goo-Koon Park", but the real pronunciation is of course absolutely nothing at all close to how I said it... more like "Yu-Chi-Oon" I think.

We got up there no probs in about 45 min and got off the subway to start the day off right with some tasty street food. We got a Banana Pancake from this place that was doing green onion ones... weren't sure what we were gonna get but sounded good to us. It was great.

Banana street pancake for breakfast

In Gucun Park for the Cherry Blossom Festival!

We then went into the park... WOW! It was beautiful and there were a lot of Chinese tourists, but, to our surprise, it was not wall-to-wall with people as everyone had warned us about. I guess going on a weekday really makes a huge difference. Our timing so far on this trip has been just incredible.

Tourists wearing Cherry Blossom hats :)

Not sure what they are getting at here, am *I* the bicycle?

"Mickey"

Walking in the gardens

Glorious

And... amazing

Sweet

This is an incredibly popular spot for "local tourism" (i.e. visitors from other parts of China). We saw only one other foreigner there, and she came up to ask us a question. Turns out she was South African! She was asking about "Plum Blossoms" -- not sure if that's the same as Cherry Blossoms or not, but we pointed her in the general direction of the awesomeness.

Wistfilly planning our afternoon

We walked in the fields, checked out a cool bridge and some nice purple flowers, and went to a funny area they called the "Romantic Zone". It had a funny huge wedding ring sculpture as well as some nice heart sculptures.

Hilarious ring sculpture

Inquisitive

My Love

After chillin and checking out the Cherry Blossoms for a bit longer, we took the subway back down the line a ways, but first got an awesome Lime Bubble Tea for only 10Y! So good! The girl at the store asked us a question in Mandarin and we had no idea, and some girl in line translated for us, and said "Hot or cold". I, in my usual way, touched her arm to give her a heartfelt "thank you" for her help... and she went a bit stiff and was a bit surprised! Whoops! I'm not supposed to do that, I think Lonely Planet mentioned that culturally you should not to give hugs to people you don't know and that sort of thing... I presume general contact like this is probably not the usual thing. Whoops. :)

We got off the Metro at Dapuqiou, the old French Concession area. First, some tasty snacks in the mall surrounding the subway station... we got a "Matcha Ring" donut as well as a Strawberry Filled one, plus some Hi-Chews and cool Passionfruit mints at a 7-11. There were some cool alleyways here and some touristy food places, "Come in, please! Don't worry, we have Pizza, French Fry!" -- obviously they don't know what kind of travelers we are :) I liked the alleyway vibe and there were some nice and fun craft stores to check out here. The shops were nice and there didn't seem to be any major crazy pressure from the shopkeepers here... I was expecting a crazy market vibe, but it was quite chill and a nice stroll.

Crazy donuts at the mall

Frank, this one's for you

Wandering the alleyways in the French Concession

Guard cat

Ok, not really a guard cat... he's just super sweet

We then wandered down Madang Rd and saw some cool shops with old homes on top. That was pretty neat. We walked for a little while and everything kindof looked similar until suddenly the vibe changes into brand-new, fancy apartments. One was not-so-subtly called "Richgate". There were also Facebook and Twitter sites posted on an advertisement of the big, fancy mall we walked by... which was very surprising, as Facebook and Twitter are both blocked in China. How strange. That was puzzling. (Later I looked into it, and apparently some areas that are foreigner-heavy are getting "Free Trade Zone" status, meaning there are some areas on unrestricted - or perhaps, less restricted - internet access. As far as we heard, the Chinese government doesn't want to bother policing foreign tourists or foreign businesspeople from using Facebook and that sort of thing, it's a waste of their time to do that). There was even a Crystal Jade Dim Sum place there, the place we loved in Singapore a few years back!

Homes above the shops in the French Concession

Cool sculpture as we get closer to Xintiandi

Fancier apartments here

Ummm.... ballllerrr

There was a nice walkway alley area with some Starbucks and other American establishments, but we found a nice local-ish coffee place to sit down and take a break from all the walking and exciting stuff. The Lambo we saw was awesome. I was surprised to see this much wealth in Shanghai as compared with the norm (and as compared with the standard wages), but I guess there are business owners now in Shanghai that do well for themselves. We enjoyed our little French cafe place but skipped the western choices of Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Haagen Daaz, etc.) The cafe was nice quality and we were psyched about the "Rockmellon" Juice... amazing! Turned out it was "just" Cantelope and not some random crazy fruit, but still awesome anyway. This was very pricey compared to our previously-purchased Veggie Baozi (only 2Y... about 32 cents!), the potato wedges, mango sticky rice and juice were all 45Y (about $7) each. Not totally insane by San Francisco standards, but way more than other things we've seen around here. It was interesting to note the difference between this area and all the other places we'd seen so far. Anyhow, it was super nice stuff and was great to sit down and take a break.

Nice one of Springs with "Rockmellon" juice... nothing exotic, just Cantelope. But still super good

Our non-Chinese food of the afternoon

Our Chinese food of the afternoon :)

And... McDonald's has Mochi McFlurries.

After taking a nice rest and getting the feeling in our legs and feet back, we headed back to the hotel. My stomach was a bit annoyed (prob from the tasty-but-super-greasy Banana pancake in the morning) so it was nice to just take a sleep and chill after a long day out.

After a good nap, we started to prep for the opening night reception! We got some fancy clothes on and headed up to the roof of the Fairmont Peace Hotel... WHOA!!!!!!!!!!! There was a REALLY incredible view of The Bund at night and I just *loved* the lit-up buildings and bright nightlife view. It was SO cool. It was also a really clear night... about as clear as you might ever expect to see Shanghai, and so that was really amazing. We had some tasty cocktails up there as well as some light hors d'oeuvres. We chatted and met lots of cool, interesting, talented peeps.

Opening Night Reception

Spring!

On the rooftop of the Peace Hotel!

Amazing view of the city

After an awesome opening reception, we went inside to dinner. There was tons of cool stuff to do and see and to take part in. There were standing tables only, which encouraged you to mingle and meet people, which was all super interesting. There was the option to get a suit tailored, and all of these cool handcrafted items that could be made for you right then and there. There was a calligraphy master painting your name in Chinese on a fan, ripped paper profile art, a "Year of the Pig" ornament made out of small flowers, a paper cutting with your Chinese year animal as well... such an incredible atmosphere. It was awesome and I made lots of new friends.

The food and other demonstrations were amazing, too. We had lamb, a duck roll, Shanghai noodles, broccoli, steak roast, dumplings... awesome. Also chatted with a lot of Michal's colleagues as we ate. There was a welcoming from the President of Fairmont as well as VPs, followed by a super epic Kung Fu show and drums. Sweet.

Posing with some super serious dudes

Tasty food

Drumming show

Sugar-"Year of the Horse"

After dinner, I hit up the dessert table with some of my newfound friends. OMG it was glorious and super classy. There was an amazing Banana-Chocolate Pudding Cup, little chocolate tarts, Chantilly creme and berries, a little muffin, etc. Really nice stuff and definitely a night to remember!

We got back up to the room after an awesome dinner and there was a gift waiting for us!!! This trip is crazy awesome, I can't believe how much cool stuff there is going on already and also how amazingly epic they are treating us. It is so special to be here. Springs got an amazing silk scarf which rocked, and I got WICKED silk slippers. They are soooo epic and I love them. What an awesome day!!

And... after another action-packed day... Sleep!