Becky Goes to China

In the morning, there was an optional trip to the Urban Planning Museum and Shanghai Art Museum. I skipped both because I had a mission: I needed to find a UPS outlet.

This errand requires a bit of explanation. Yes it would have been cheaper to just buy a second bag, some cheap Louis Vuitton knock off at one of the markets, but I had a rather special problem: the first leg of my trip back to Denver was actually a domestic flight from Shanghai back to Beijing, booked separately from my round trip fare, and thus my luggage was subject to a 20 kg weight limit. Especially after our visit with the Qataris the day before, I knew my bag would be overweight unless I shipped some things home.

But isn’t that weight limit per bag? I have no idea. The airline’s English pages were not helpful. All I knew for certain was that 20 kg number, and after the fiasco that was my flight to Beijing, the last thing I needed was more airport drama.

I found the address of a nearby outlet online and asked the front desk to write it for me in Chinese so I could show it to a taxi driver, hailed a cab and set off. I spotted it easily, paid my driver, hopped out and he sped away. But as I walked up, I quickly realized that the place was closed. Not closed as in “not open right now”, but CLOSED. Completely gutted with a note taped to the door – thankfully in both Chinese and English – with the addresses for alternative outlets.

Now, the thing about taking a cab in China is that the English name and address of any given location is almost completely useless. The first thing you do when you check into a hotel is get the hotel’s business card so you can show it to a driver. This way you can at least always get back to your hotel. But now I didn’t want to go back to the hotel and I was stuck somewhere in Shanghai with no idea how to tell a taxi where I needed to go. I flagged down a random guy on the street and somehow managed to communicate with hand signals that I needed him to please copy the address from the note into a small notebook I’d been carrying with me for note-taking during company visits. Armed with a fresh address, I hailed a fresh cab and was on my way once more.

Thankfully, the guys at UPS spoke English. There was a flurry of paperwork for Customs, a brief panic when it was revealed that they couldn’t take a Mastercard or Visa which was quickly resolved by the revelation of an entire row of ATMs just across the lobby, some minor confusion when for some reason they couldn’t ship my tea, and far too much cash later my overweight baggage problem was solved. A somewhat bizarre assortment of souvenirs should be arriving at my door by the end of the week.

Later that afternoon, Chen Ji led the group to the Old Shanghai City Market for more shopping. Just as we arrived, some of the girls spotted Jason Biggs crossing the square and about freaked out. (Really? You’re going to lose your shit over the guy from American Pie? I know I’m all jaded about celebrity from Disney, but still… the guy was famous eleven years ago for about two minutes. It’s worth a raised eyebrow at best.)

It had been raining all day and I was less than enthusiastic about shopping since I’d just unloaded all my excess bag weight that morning, so I just tagged along with Brian and Simon, who were on a mission. Brian wanted chopstick sets to give as gifts. Simon was determined to find a remote controlled Apache helicopter and some tea. We wound up in a tea shop tasting samples and I fell in love with a ginseng oolong. I picked that up, along with a “travel buddy” tea bottle that would have cost me $30 at a Whole Foods type store here in Colorado. The tea and bottle were both light enough that it wasn’t going to hurt my luggage weight at all.

Simon found his helicopter, and Brian challenged me to a game of mini billiards (precariously balanced on a wire rack nearby) while he tested it to make sure it worked. A couple of foreigners doing anything remotely interesting in China tends to draw a crowd, so after a few minutes we had spectators, but the game was quickly dropped when Simon was ready to go.

It was our last night in Shanghai and the end of our program. We had a group farewell dinner, yet another affair in which far too much of the same Chinese food glided past on a giant lazy susan. I picked at it as I had been with all Chinese food since I’d been sick. Now associated with illness, the smell is nauseating. I don’t think I’ll be getting over that for quite awhile.

The rest of the group went out to celebrate our last night in Shanghai, but I went to bed early. I had to be up at 4am to begin the long journey home.