Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou. One of the Most Brutal Vacations of my Life

I'm not much for organized travel. Rather, the ideal trip for me involves flying into developing country X (preferably sans return airfare), with a guidebook, a backpack, and a sense of "well, we don't really have any reason to be here, so let's make the best of it and see how things go". I've had a lot of incredible trips fitting this mold, and hope to continue taking trips like this for many years.

Like Shooting Fish in a....Pond?

This past weekend we had a "company sponsored holiday", which involved a 4-day trip to Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Shanghai. Now for those who have actually traveled in their lifetimes, you'll notice that this is a 3-city trip in 4 days. That is to say, there is a 0% chance that we were actually going to "see" any of these cities, it was just going to be "get on the bus, get off the bus" for 4 days. I sort of expected this, as it's a very Chinese style of travel, and tried to mentally prep myself for the rather ho-hum nature of this type of trip. But my god could I have never prepared myself for what went down that weekend in the Yangtze River Delta.

We left the office at about 5:30am on Thursday. After flying from Shenzhen to Hangzhou, we were immediately hurled into a bus with a tour guide. A really. obnoxious. tour guide. He had a microphone with like a hip-speaker thing, and was yelling into it the entire trip. In very obnoxious Chinese. So that was pretty awesome. Our first stop on the trip was a pretty decent restaurant in Hangzhou, as we arrived about lunchtime. It was immediately obvious that I was going to be something of a "guest of honor" during this trip--I always sat at the head table, immediately next to the sister of the 2 brothers that own this company (the brothers were not on the holiday, and their sister is what I would refer to as the "Company Mom", just a really nice 40ish year old Chinese woman who speaks about as much English as I do Arabic....so she's pitch-perfect). Anyway, so we had a decent lunch. After lunch we went to the pretty amazing West Lake of Hangzhou, and took a very crowded touristy boat around the West Lake. Still decent. We walked around that area for most of the afternoon, before going to a sort of shopping street, then this bizarre Song Dynasty-themed Chinese amusement park/folk village/mental institution/song and dance theater. Yeah, it was all of the above. Weird first day overall, but nothing compared to the devastation of Day 2.

Temple somewhere near Hangzhou

Day 2. A brutal day for sure. We got on the bus in Hangzhou, and our first stop was a "silk museum". By silk museum, I mean a place where they tell you how silk is made, then spend an hour trying to convince you to buy some silk. And of course I'm in the market for silk scarves, bedsheets, and lingerie, if not this may have been a pointless excursion. That said, there was some entertainment when, on their map of the old Silk Road, they had labeled Kuala Lumpur as a city in Northern Sri Lanka (I assume they meant to say Colombo...) Anyway, so after this whole silk business, we went to an equally asinine place that was a "Chrysanthemum Tea Museum". Same thing, "here's our tea, here's how it's made, now buy some". Should also be noted that this was all in Chinese. And of course I"m in the market for chrysanthemum related products, otherwise this may have been a pointless excursion. From here, we went to a place selling various trinkets. And of course I'm in the market for that too, otherwise...well you get the point. Anyway, all these places were ~1 hour apart by bus (ferally hot bus as well), so by the time we'd been harassed to the point of wanting to stab the tour guide, the day was done and we were just arriving in Suzhou.

A brief aside--I asked Lisa why the hell we had wasted 1 of our 4 days doing an unbelievable amount of shopping/completely idiotic activities. She informed me that this is how the tour guide makes money--he gets commission from the shops if we buy things. Frankly, I would be just as happy giving the guy like $10 (or even less, we could realistically each give him like $5, and the $200 he makes would be about 2 weeks' wage in China), and just have that extra day to not be assaulted by merchants peddling their crap. But apparently this is not how China works. Also quite interesting, none of my Chinese coworkers seemed fazed or aggravated about this absurd series of shopping misadventures.

The lads, Jacky (#3 guy in the company) and Michael (Old friend of the owner's, company chef)

Day 3 was interesting, we went to a very beautiful old village called Zhouzhuang, which was definitely one of the coolest places I've ever seen. Appropriately named the "Venice of the East", it is world famous for its canal system, and I was pretty surprised and intrigued to find that many people were still living here despite it being a tourist-infested village.

Zhouzhuang, the Venice of the East

Another brief aside--days 3 and 4 of this trip (Saturday and Sunday) were absolutely mental from the standpoint of the INSANE NUMBER OF TOURISTS AT THESE SITES. And they were all Chinese. I had no idea that domestic tourism in China was such an enormous industry, but I can assure you that having 10 tour guides with 10 hip-speakers screaming at their tour groups inside a relatively cramped temple is not the greatest way to enjoy the historical relevance and general awesomeness of these places. But anyway, such is life when the country you're living in has 1.3+ billion people.

So after our tours around Suzhou, we finally arrived in the center of the center, the economic heart of the People's Republic of China, one of my favorite cities in this world (as of now, currently #3 on my list behind Hong Kong and Seoul), Shanghai. Upon arrival, I left the tour group to go meet up with my old friend Douglon, who I had lived with for about a month in Hong Kong upon my return to Asia in October-November 2011. He's currently living in Shanghai and managing his Dad's building, the House of Roosevelt. I met up with him at the House, which was a surreal experience. Put bluntly, it is one of the nicest buildings on the nicest and most famous street in China's most cosmopolitan and expensive city. The building has a restaurant on the 8th floor, where we went for dinner.

At this point 2 things should be noted--

1) I had already eaten dinner at this point.
2) Douglon is a world renowned eater, and more importantly, a world renowned host. So I knew what I was getting into to some extent, but was sure to tell Douglon upon my arrival

"Now Douglon, I've already had dinner. So can we just do some appetizers or something else light?"
"Of course, no problem at all"

As it was Douglon, I should have known better. The next thing I knew, a waiter asked me how I would like my steak cooked. Sweet jesus. Before dinner, I ended up getting a text from Martin, the old friend that I'd met up with in Hong Kong a couple of weeks prior. He was in Shanghai, and came to meet us at the House of Roosevelt (he's also a good friend of Douglon's, so it was a nice reunion). We were also joined by another friend of Douglon's, a Peruvian girl who had grown up in Sweden. The four of us enjoyed a magnificent meal atop one of the nicest buildings in the city, with a beautiful view of Pudong/Lujiazui and The Bund. Or at least, the 3 of them enjoyed the meal, as well as the sight of me trying to force down more food after having already eaten dinner.

Wuxinting Tea House, Shanghai

Overall a fantastic evening. The following day, I went with some coworkers to a really interesting temple near the Wuxinting Tea House and Yuyuan Gardens. I'd been to the exact place almost exactly a year before, which was kind of cool. Following this, I ended up meeting up with another couple of old friends of mine, Madlien and Martin, who are currently living/working in Shanghai. We went to the French Concession, a beautiful, leafy, up-scale area of Shanghai, and had a few afternoon drinks. I then received a call from Douglon inviting us for an afternoon lunch/few drinks at the House of Roosevelt. It should be noted that they have the largest wine cellar in China there, and that Douglon, being a ridiculously good host, would not take a cent for the food or wine. Consequently, we had a fair bit of food and wine. The food was infinitely better than the night before, as this time I was not already horrendously full, and we had a couple of bottles of white wine/champagne. I was to meet with my coworkers at Pudong International Airport around 4pm. The House is around 1hr from the airport by taxi, and consequently when 3:45pm rolled around, we decided I'd best hightail it to Pudong. And so I did, but not before falling asleep in the back of the cab (too many glasses of champagne it would seem), only to be woken by a call from Jacky asking where I was (though to be fair, they didn't care that I was a bit late, as the weather was crap and our flight ended up being delayed a bit anyway).

So that was the trip to Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou. As I noted in the beginning of this blog post, I tend to prefer trips that are completely unplanned. After returning from this atrociously constricting trip, I decided it was time to book something stupid, so yesterday I booked 1-way airfare from Hong Kong to Dhaka for the day after my birthday, as we have 1 week's holiday for Chinese National Day that week (I was really, really, really hoping to do Tibet, but unfortunately the Chinese government has closed Tibet to foreigners for the foreseeable future....welcome to China!). For those who don't know where Dhaka is, you clearly haven't been reading my blog often enough, as I wrote a fairly decent piece on Bangladesh last year. Anyway, so will be heading there for some amount of time in late September. Interestingly, that's the tail end of the rainy season, so should involve some flooding and perhaps malaria. And I cannot freaking wait.

That's about all from here, interesting and manic trip to the Yangtze River Delta, and making plans for an even more interesting trip to Bangladesh. Some photos from the trip below (apologies that they're a little grainy, my camera broke the other day...5 years old so that'll happen, so I used my iPad camera on the trip, which is not bad, but not sensational. Also, if my grandfather is reading this, a huge thanks for the iPad a few months back, it's been remarkably useful so far, and had I not had it during these last few days, I would have had no pictures of the amazing places I just went to. Also happy belated birthday to my grandfather, and belated father's day to both he and my Dad)

Weird Song Dynasty Themed Theme Park

Near Hangzhou

Love the Chinglish

Yeah it was this crowded in the temple...

It Ain't Easy Being Bangladeshi: 30 Days of Blogging, Day 3

My writing about such a random topic is due to a number of factors. I was having an interesting conversation with a friend of mine about Bangladesh the other day, which got me inspired. Also, a good friend of mine is currently travelling in Bangladesh, so I figured I'd put this up as a sign of how immensely jealous I am that she's able to be traveling through dirt poor 3rd world Asia (really, though). Anyway, without further ado--

It's tough to be a Bangladeshi. As though crippling poverty (per capita GDP of $638 in 2010), yearly monsoons, massive overcrowding, and the fact that your country is sinking isn't enough, they're also the (relatively) completely insignificant member of a subcontinent that includes the world's largest democracy in India, and a country that steals headlines in the US and Europe for their alleged ties to terrorism in Pakistan. And OhByTheWay, they're also in the same neighborhood as such countries as China.

In yesterday's blog post, I spoke very briefly about the fact that climate change in this century will cause an acceleration in the migration of people from one place to another. One of the most dramatic examples of this will be the country of Bangladesh, a place that most people from the US have probably at least heard of, and one which some (read: very, very few) people in the US even know a little bit about. I would imagine that the most mainstream exposure that people in the West have had to Bangladesh would have been George Harrison and Ravi Shankar's "Concert for Bangladesh" in 1971, one which was meant to raise money for a country ravaged by a civil war/war of liberation.

Realistically, there's absolutely nothing wrong with 99% of people in the West knowing nothing about Bangladesh. Yes, a lot of our clothes and other textiles are made there. And yes, it is the 8th most populous country in the world (more people than Italy, the UK, Netherlands, and Belgium. Combined). But speaking completely honestly, it is a dirt-poor and undeveloped 3rd world country in every sense of the phrase, with about as much political clout and relevance in the West as, let's say, the Mexican province of Chiapas. However, I guess one could say I woke up this morning hoping to educate some people (i.e. the 5 readers of this blog) about Bangladesh. It's a pretty fascinating (and fast-disappearing) place.

So a bit of recent history: Bangladesh was overtaken by the British East India Company in 1757, and remained in some capacity or another essentially a British Colony until 1947, at which time things got kind of weird. In 1947, British India (which included Bangladesh) was granted independence from the UK. For whatever reason, the decision was made to divide the region of Bengal into two sections, basically a Muslim and a Hindu section. The Hindu section became the Indian state of West Bengal, which includes the city of Kolkata (Calcutta). The Muslim section

became, for whatever unbelievable reason, a part of newly formed Pakistan, known as the province of East Pakistan.

Those familiar with their South Asian geography may point out--isn't that area separated from the country of Pakistan by, well, India? Yes, that is correct. I recall reading at some point that during this rather awkward time of geopolitics, flights going from East Pakistan to Pakistan (quite common, given they were domestic flights) had to fly around India, as India would not allow them in their airspace. Given that the Himalayas are to the north, the flights had to fly around the southern tip of India. Inconvenient.

Anyway, this ended in 1971, when Bangladesh, with the help of India, won an extremely bloody war of independence against Pakistan. This was inarguably one of the most devastating wars of the latter half of the 20th century, and the atrocities committed still resonate with many people today.

Since independence, Bangladesh has struggled to develop economically, and has been forced to deal with their problems of staggering overpopulation. Some of the numbers are literally unbelievable. Such as:

Bangladesh has about 56,000 square miles of land. This is approximately 1.5% the size of the United States. Their population of some 158 million, is just over half that of the US. For those keeping track at home--that means that Bangladesh has a population 28 times denser than that of the United States.

Put another way, in a place slightly larger than Greece, there are 16 million more people than there are in... Russia.

All of which contributes to a population density of 2,496 people per square mile. Which is good for the 12th highest population density of any sovereign state in the world. Now one might say, "well there are 11 places that are more dense! It's not so bad!"

Not quite. Among the 11 places above Bangladesh are the Vatican City, Gibraltar, Macau, and Monaco. In fact, the most populous state in the top 11 is Hong Kong, with a paltry 7 million people. No where else in the world is there the insane combination of such dense population over such a (relatively) vast area.

Which would all be inconvenient enough, even if the country wasn't sinking. Which, by the way, it is. About 75% of the land in Bangladesh is less than 10 meters above sea level. And given the yearly flooding that takes place there, a lot of this land ends up underwater at some point throughout the year. How much, you ask? Try something like, 75% of the country flooded in 1998. In 1988, a 20-day flood covered 60% of the country's land area, and in 2004, 2/3 of the country was underwater. Annually, on average about 18% of the country is flooded.

Furthermore, their farmable land is disappearing at a rate of 220 hectares (what the hell is a hectare) per day. I don't really know how much that is, but it sounds like a lot (fact check: a hectare is 100mX100m, or about the size of Trafalgar Square in London, or substantially larger than an American Football field). And finally, climatologists predict that in the coming decades, there will be

20 million "environmental refugees" in Bangladesh.

Overall, certainly the situation doesn't seem real promising. However, that's not to say there's nothing good about Bangladesh. Hardly! Bangladesh is home to BRAC, the largest nonprofit organization in the developing world, with revenues of nearly half a billion US$ in 2009. Additionally, among the 160 million or so Bangladeshis is a Nobel Laureate, Muhammad Yunus.

A recent National Geographic article on Bangladesh hailed its people as remarkably resilient, and commented that their massive population could be a whole lot worse--their birth rate has fallen from 6.6 children per woman in 1977 to 2.4 today, "a historic record for a country with so much poverty and illiteracy". Additionally, their infant mortality rate has dropped from 100 per 1,000 births in 1990 to 43 per 1,000 births today. Some really remarkable improvements for such a populous and disadvantaged country.

Overall, surely Bangladesh is a country with its share of problems. It suffers from too many people with too little money, and the unfortunate consequence of being located at such an elevation as to suffer mightily from a climate change that, realistically, they're doing very, very little to cause. I'm certainly not trying to say that Bangladesh is the only country with these problems (look no further than Maldives if you want to see the effects of rising sea levels), nor am I trying to drum up popular support for sending aid to Bangladesh. Simply put, I woke up this morning feeling like educating some people about a country that tends to not get much publicity. So there.

For those who read this incredibly random tangent, I hope you enjoyed it, and that you now know a little bit more than before about Bangladesh. Make sure to come back tomorrow, if for no other reason than to see what ridiculous topic I pull out of thin air for that post.

For further reading, I really do highly recommend checking out this NatGeo Article from May 2011. It's pretty short, has a really great photo gallery, and provides some good insight into the current situation in Bangladesh.